more personally, than in the actual experience of them. It seemed now
that not my country only, but myself, had been struck down and humbled
to the dust by the soldiers of the Kaiser. I saw the broad fair faces of
the German cavalry as they had sat their horse in Whitehall on the
evening of Black Saturday. I heard again the clank of their arms, the
barking of guttural orders. Could it be that they had mastered England?
that for nine long years we were to be encircled by their garrisons?
Nine years of helotry!

A sudden coolness in the air reminded me of the lateness of the hour,
and I rose and began to cross Barebarrow.

But this ancient land was British in every blade of its grass, I
thought--root and crop, hill and dale, above and beneath, no single sod
of it but was British. Surely nothing could alter that. Nine years of
helotry! I heard again the confused din of the Westminster Riot; the
frantic crowd's insistent demand for surrender, for unconditional
surrender. And now the nation's word was pledged. Our heads were bowed
for nine years long.

Suddenly, then, as I descended upon the turnpike, a quite new thought
came to me. The invasion had overridden all law, all custom, all
understandings. The invasion was an act of sheer lawless brutality. No
surrender could bind a people to submission in the face of such an
outrage as that. The Germans must be driven out; the British people must
rise and cast them out, and overthrow for ever their insolent dominion.
But too many of the English people were--like myself! Well, they must
learn; we must all learn; every able-bodied man must learn; for a blow
had to be struck that should free England for ever. The country must be
awakened to realization of that need. We owed so much to the brave ones
who gave us England; so much could be demanded of us by those that came
after. The thing had got to be.

I walked fast, I remember, and singing through my head as I entered
Davenham Minster, long after my sister's supper hour, were the lines to
which I had never till then paid any sort of heed:

Regions Caesar never knew,
Thy posterity shall sway!

III

THE RETURN TO LONDON

Oh! 'tis easy
To beget great deeds; but in the rearing of them--
The threading in cold blood each mean detail,
And furze brake of half-pertinent circumstance--
There lies the self-denial.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.