The Project Gutenberg EBook of England and the War, by Walter Raleigh

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Title: England and the War

Author: Walter Raleigh

Release Date: November 20, 2003 [EBook #10159]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ENGLAND AND THE WAR

being

SUNDRY ADDRESSES

delivered during the war
and now first collected

by

WALTER RALEIGH

OXFORD

1918

CONTENTS

PREFACE

MIGHT IS RIGHT
First published as one of the Oxford Pamphlets,
October 1914.

THE WAR OF IDEAS
An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute,
December 12, 1916.

THE FAITH OF ENGLAND
An Address to the Union Society of University
College, London, March 22, 1917.

SOME GAINS OF THE WAR
An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute,
February 13, 1918.

THE WAR AND THE PRESS
A Paper read to the Essay Society, Eton College,
March 14, 1918.

SHAKESPEARE AND ENGLAND
The Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British
Academy, delivered July 4, 1918.

PREFACE

This book was not planned, but grew out of the troubles of the time.
When, on one occasion or another, I was invited to lecture, I did not
find, with Milton's Satan, that the mind is its own place; I could speak
only of what I was thinking of, and my mind was fixed on the War. I am
unacquainted with military science, so my treatment of the War was
limited to an estimate of the characters of the antagonists.

The character of Germany and the Germans is a riddle. I have seen no
convincing solution of it by any Englishman, and hardly any confident
attempt at a solution which did not speak the uncontrolled language of
passion. There is the same difficulty with the lower animals; our
description of them tends to be a description of nothing but our own
loves and hates. Who has ever fathomed the mind of a rhinoceros; or has
remembered, while he faces the beast, that a good rhinoceros is a
pleasant member of the community in which his life is passed? We see
only the folded hide, the horn, and the angry little eye. We know that
he