which some of the working class clung to their sectional interests and
ambitions when the very life of England was at stake. In France the
whole people saw at once what was upon them; the single word _patrie_
was enough to unite them in a common enthusiasm and stern
determination. With us it was hardly so; many good judges think that
but for the "Lusitania" outrage and the Zeppelins, part of the
population would have been half-hearted about the war, and we should
have failed to give adequate support to our allies. The cause is not
selfishness but ignorance and want of imagination; and what have we
done to tap the sources of an intelligent patriotism? We are being
saved not by the reasoned conviction of the populace, but by its
native pugnacity and bull-dog courage. This is not the place to go
into details about English studies; but can anyone doubt that they
could be made the basis of a far better education than we now give in
our schools? We have especially to remember that there is a real
danger of the modern Englishman being cut off from the living past.
Scientific studies include the earlier phases of the earth, but not
the past of the human race and the British people. Christianity has
been a valuable educator in this way, especially when it includes an
intelligent knowledge the Bible. But the secular education of the
masses is now so much severed from the stream of tradition and
sentiment which unites us with the older civilisations, that the very
language of the Churches is becoming unintelligible to them, and the
influence of organised religion touches only a dwindling minority.
And yet the past lives in us all; lives inevitably in its dangers,
which the accumulated experience of civilisation, valued so slightly
by us on its spiritual side, can alone help us to surmount. A nation
like an individual, must "wish his days to be bound each to each by
natural piety." It too must strive to keep its memory green, to
remember the days of old and the years that are past. The Jews have
always had, in their sacred books, a magnificent embodiment of the
spirit of their race; and who can say how much of their incomparable
tenacity and ineradicable hopefulness has been due to the education
thus imparted to every Jewish child? We need a Bible of the English
race, which shall be hardly less sacred to each succeeding generation
of young Britons than the Old Testament is to the Jews. England ought
to be, and may be, the spiritua