ll ruling
men's minds resist such an attack?

For one brief space Napoleon reared his head; and had he cast his
vision to. Ireland instead of to Egypt he would have found out the
secret of the pirate's stronghold. But the fates willed otherwise; the
time was not yet. He sailed for Alexandria, lured by a dream, instead
of for Cork; and the older Imperialists beat the new Imperialists and
secured a fresh century of unprecedented triumph. The Pyramids looked
down on Waterloo; but the headlands of Bantry Bay concealed the
mastery, and the mystery, of the seas.

With 1811 was born the era of Charles Peace, no less than of John
Bull--on Sundays and Saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the
plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. Truly, as John Mitchel
said on his convict hulk: "On English felony the sun never sets." May
it set in 1915.

From Napoleon's downfall to the battle of Colenso, the Empire founded
by Henry VIII has swelled to monstrous size. Innumerable free peoples
have bit the dust and died with plaintive cries to heaven. The wealth
of London has increased a thousand fold, and the giant hotels and
caravanserais have grown, at the millionaire's touch, to rival the
palaces of the Caesars.

"All's well with God's world"--and poet and plagiarist, courtier
and courtesan, Kipling and cant--these now dally by the banks of
the Thames and dine off the peoples of the earth, just as once the
degenerate populace of imperial Rome fed upon the peoples of the
Pyramids. But the thing is near the end. The "secret of Empire" is no
longer the sole possession of England. Other peoples are learning to
think imperially. The Goths and the Visigoths of modern civilisation
are upon the horizon. Action must soon follow thought. London, like
Rome, will have strange guests. They will not pay their hotel bills.
Their day is not yet but it is at hand. "Home Rule" assemblies and
Indian "Legislative Councils" may prolong the darkness; but the dawn
is in die sky. And in the downfall of the Tudor Empire, both Ireland
and India shall escape from the destruction and join again the free
civilizations of the earth.

The birds of the forest are on the wing.

It is an Empire in these straights that turns to America, through
Ireland, to save it. And the price it offers is--war with Germany.
France may serve for a time, but France like Germany, is in Europe,
and in the end it is all Europe and not only Germany England assails.
Permanent con