was crowded about. St. Alban was in the center of the human
pack, in a pace or two of clear deck, his injured arm in a sling; his
split sleeve open around it; his shoulders thrown back; his head lifted;
and before him, the Hun commander with his big automatic pistol.

"It's a wonderful, spirited picture, and it thrilled England. It was in
accord with her legends. England has little favor of either the gods of
the hills or the gods of the valleys. But always, in all her wars, the
gods of the seas back her."

The big Baronet paused and poured out a cup of tea. He tasted it and set
it down on the table.

"That's a fine monument," he said, indicating the white shaft that shot
up into the cloudless evening sky. "The road makes a sharp turn by it.
You have got to slow up, no matter how you travel. The road rises there.
It's built that way; to make the passer go slow enough to read the
legends on the base of the monument. It's a clever piece of business.
Everybody is bound to give his tribute of attention to the conspicuous
memorial.

"There are two faces to the monument that you must look at if you go
that road. One recounts the man's services to England, and the other
face bears his memorable words:

"'Don't threaten, fire if you like!'"

The Baronet fingered the handle of his teacup.

"The words are precisely suited to the English people," he said. "No
heroics, no pretension, that's the whole spirit of England. It's the
English policy in a line: We don't threaten, and we don't wish to be
threatened by another. Let them fire if they like,--that's all in the
game. But don't swing a gun on us with a threat. St. Alban was lucky
to say it. He got the reserve, the restraint, the commonplace
understatement that England affects, into the sentence. It was a piece
of good fortune to catch the thing like that.

"The monument is tremendous. One can't avoid it. It's always before the
eye here, like the White Horse of Alfred on the chalk hill in Berkshire.
All the roads pass it through this countryside. But every mortal thing
that travels, motor and cart, must slow up around the monument."

He stopped for a moment and looked at the white needle shimmering in the
evening sun.

"But St. Alban's greatest monument," he said, "was the lucky sentence.
It stuck in the English memory and it will never go out of it. One
wouldn't give a half-penny for a monument if one could get a phrase
fastened in a people's memory like that."

Sir