e the Peacemakers_.

Of old with a divided heart
I saw my people's pride expand,
Since a man's soul is born apart
By mother earth and fatherland.

I knew, through many a tangled tale,
Glory and truth not one but two:
King, Constable and Amirail
Took me like trumpets: but I knew

A blacker thing than blood's own dye
Weighed down great Hawkins on the sea;
And Nelson turned his blindest eye
On Naples and on liberty.

Therefore to you my thanks, O throne,
O thousandfold and frozen folk,
For whose cold frenzies all your own
The Battle of the Rivers broke;

Who have no faith a man could mourn,
Nor freedom any man desires;
But in a new clean light of scorn
Close up my quarrel with my sires;

Who bring my English heart to me,
Who mend me like a broken toy;
Till I can see you fight and flee,
And laugh as if I were a boy.

When we read this poem, with its proclamation of a faith restored,
Chesterton's temporary absence from the field of letters appears even
more lamentable. For even before his breakdown he had given other signs
of a resurrection. Between the overworked descriptions of _The Flying
Inn_ and the little book _The Barbarism of Berlin_ which closely
followed it, there is a fine difference of style, as if in the interval
Chesterton had taken a tonic. Thus there is a jolly passage in which,
describing German barbarism, he refers to the different ways of treating
women.

The two extremes of the treatment of women might
be represented by what are called the respectable
classes in America and in France. In America they
choose the risk of comradeship; in France the
compensation of courtesy. In America it is
practically possible for any young gentleman to
take any young lady for what he calls (I deeply
regret to say) a joy-ride; but at least the man
goes with the woman as much as the woman with the
man. In France the young woman is protected like a
nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a
mother she is really a holy woman; and when she is
a grandmother she is a holy terror. By both
extremes the woman gets s