good seed which
is in them take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards? and make them all
what that fair France has been, in spite of all her faults, so often in
past years--a joy and an inspiration to all the nations round? Shall it
be thus? God grant it may; but He, and He alone, can tell. We only
stand by, watching, if we be wise, with pity and with fear, the working
out of a tremendous new social problem, which must affect the future of
the whole civilised world.

For if the agonising old nations fail to regenerate themselves, what can
befall? What, when even Imperialism has been tried and failed, as fail
it must? What but that lower depth within the lowest deep?

That last dread mood
Of sated lust, and dull decrepitude.
No law, no art, no faith, no hope, no God.
When round the freezing founts of life in peevish ring,
Crouched on the bare-worn sod,
Babbling about the unreturning spring,
And whining for dead creeds, which cannot save,
The toothless nations shiver to their grave.

And we, who think we stand, let us take heed lest we fall. Let us
accept, in modesty and in awe, the responsibility of our freedom, and
remember that that freedom can be preserved only in one old-fashioned
way. Let us remember that the one condition of a true democracy is the
same as the one condition of a true aristocracy, namely, virtue. Let us
teach our children, as grand old Lilly taught our forefathers 300 years
ago--'It is virtue, gentlemen, yea, virtue that maketh gentlemen; that
maketh the poor rich, the subject a king, the lowborn noble, the deformed
beautiful. These things neither the whirling wheel of fortune can
overturn, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither
sickness abate, nor age abolish.'

Yes. Let us teach our children thus on both sides of the Atlantic. For
if they--which God forbid--should grow corrupt and weak by their own
sins, there is no hardier race now left on earth to conquer our
descendants and bring them back to reason, as those old Jews were
brought, by bitter shame and woe. And all that is before them and the
whole civilised world, would be long centuries of anarchy such as the
world has not seen for ages--a true Ragnarok, a twilight of the very
gods, an age such as the wise woman foretold in the old Voluspa.

When brethren shall be
Each other's bane,
And sisters' sons rend
The ties of kin.
Hard will be tha