that involves England.  We must fight for her or get clear of her.  There can be no neutrality while bound to her; so a military policy is an eminently practical question.  Moreover, it is an urgent one:  to stand in with England in any danger that threatens her will be at least as dangerous as a bold bid to break away from her.  One thing above all, conditions have changed in a startling manner; England is threatened within as without; there are labour complications of all kinds of which no one can foresee the end, while as a result of another complication we find the Prime Minister of England going about as carefully protected as the Czar of Russia.[Footnote:  The militant suffragette agitation.] The unrest of the times is apt to be even bewildering.  England is not alone in her troubles—­all the great Powers are likewise; and it is at least as likely for any one of them to be paralysed by an internal war as to be prepared to wage an external one.  This stands put clearly—­we cannot go away from the turmoil and sit down undisturbed; we must stand in and fight for our own hand or the hand of someone else.  Let us prepare and stand for our own.  However it be, no one can deny that in all the present upheavals it is at least practical to discuss the ethics of revolt.

III

We can count on a minority who will see wisdom in such a discussion; it must be our aim to make the discussion effective.  We must be patient as well as resolute.  We are apt to get impatient and by hasty denunciation drive off many who are wavering and may be won.  These are held back, perhaps, by some scruple or nervousness, and by a fine breath of the truth and a natural discipline may yet be made our truest soldiers.  Emerson, in his address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ Monument, Concord, made touching reference in some such in the American Civil War.  He told of one youth he knew who feared he was a coward, and yet accustomed himself to danger, by forcing himself to go and meet it.  “He enlisted in New York,” says Emerson, “went out to the field, and died early.”  And his comment for us should be eloquent.  “It is from this temperament of sensibility that great heroes have been formed.”  The pains we are at to make men physically fit we must take likewise to make them mentally fit.  We are minutely careful in physical training, drill regulations and the rest, which is right, for thus we turn a mob into an army and helplessness into strength.  Let us be minutely careful, too, with the untried minds—­timid, anxious, sensitive in matters of conscience; like him Emerson spoke of, they may be found yet in the foremost fighting line, but we must have patience in pleading with them.  Here above all must we keep our balance, must we come down with sympathy to every particular.  It is surely evident that it is essential to give the care we lavish on the body with equal fulness to the mind.

IV