attracting to itself all the
idle, all the vicious, all the rich, all the unworthy, from every corner
of Europe and America. But Monte Carlo didn't make them; it only gathers
to its bosom its own chosen children from the places where they are
produced--from London, Paris, Brussels, New York, Berlin, St.
Petersburg. The vices of our organisation begot these over-rich folk,
begot their diamond-decked women, and their clipped French poodles with
gold bangles spanning their aristocratic legs. These are the spawn of
land-owning, of capitalism, of military domination, of High Finance, of
all the social ills that flesh is heir to. I feel as I pace the terrace
in the broad Mediterranean sunshine, that I am here in the midst of the
very best society Europe affords. That is to say, the very worst. The
dukes and the money-lenders, the Jay Goulds and the Reinachs. The
idlest, the cruellest: the hereditary drones, the successful
blood-suckers. But to find fault with them only for trying to
win one another's ill-gotten gold at a fair and open game of
_trente-et-quarante_, with the odds against them, and then to say
nothing about the way they came by it, is to make a needless fuss about
a trifle of detail, while overlooking the weightiest moral problems of
humanity.

Whoever allows red herrings like these to be trailed across the path of
his moral consciousness, to the detriment of the scent which should lead
him straight on to the lairs of gigantic evils, deserves little credit
either for conscience or sagacity. My son, be wise. Strike at the root
of the evil. Let Monte Carlo go, but keep a stern eye on London
ground-rents.

XVIII.

_THE CELTIC FRINGE._

We Celts henceforth will rule the roost in Britain.

What is that you mutter? "A very inopportune moment to proclaim the
fact." Well, no, I don't think so. And I'm sorry to hear you say it, for
if there _is_ a quality on which I plume myself, it's the delicate tact
that makes me refrain from irritating the susceptibilities of the
sensitive Saxon. See how polite I am to him! I call him sensitive. But,
opportune or inopportune, Lord Salisbury says we are a Celtic fringe. I
beg to retort, we are the British people.

"Conquered races," say my friends. Well, grant it for a moment. But in
civilised societies, conquerors have, sooner or later, to amalgamate
with the conquered. And where the vanquished are more numerous, they
absorb the victors instead of being absorbed by th