taking one line as another?  If there is talk of conflict, were it not better to leave the issue in the discriminating hands of One whose judgment is indisputable?  Yet in the very midst of hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal.  There is no clear evidence of heroism around.  The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men.  No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course.  Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from securely sheltered crowds who hound victims to the combat, bloodthirsty as spectators at a bull-fight.  In the sweat and twilight and crudity of the actual event, when so much is merely ludicrous and discomforting, and all is enveloped in the element of fear, it is rare to perceive a glory shining, or to distinguish greatness amid the mud of contumely and commonplace.

Take the story of Italy’s revival—­the “Resurrection,” as Italians call it.  In the summer of 1911, Italy was celebrating her jubilee of national rebellion, and English writers who spend their years, day by day or week by week, sneering at freedom, betraying nationality, and demanding vengeance on rebels, burst into ecstatic rhapsodies about that glorious but distant uprising.  They raised the old war-cry of liberty over battle-fields long silent; they extolled to heaven the renown of the rebellious dead; their very periods glowed with Garibaldian red, white, and green; and rising to Byronic exaltation they concluded their nationalist effusions by adjuring freedom’s weather-beaten flag: 

  “Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
  Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind!”

So they cried, echoing the voice of noble ghosts.  But where in the scenes of present life around them have they hailed that torn but flying banner?  What have they said or done for freedom’s emblem in Persia, or in Morocco, or in Turkey?  What support have they given it in Finland, or in the Caucasus, or in the Baltic Provinces?  To come within our own sphere, what ecstatic rhapsodies have they composed to greet the rising nationalism of Ireland, or of India, or of Egypt?  Or, in this country herself, what movement of men or of women striving to be free have they welcomed with their paeans of joy?  Not once have they perceived a glory in liberty’s cause to-day.  Wherever a rag of that torn banner fluttered, they have denounced and stamped it down, declaring it should fly no more.  Their admiration and enthusiasm are reserved for a buried past, and over triumphant rebellion they will sentimentalise for pages, provided it is securely bestowed in some historic age that can trouble them no more.