and these people here know it.  The trade of the world, or as much of it as is profitable, we may take as we will.  The over-taxed, under-productive, army-burdened men of the Old World—­alas!  I read a settled melancholy in much of their statesmanship and in more of their literature.  The most cheerful men in official life here are the High Commissioners of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and such fellows who know what the English race is doing and can do freed from uniforms and heavy taxes and class feeling and such like. . . .

* * * * *

. . .  The two things that this island has of eternal value are its gardens and its men.  Nature sprinkles it almost every day and holds its moisture down so that every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive as the lawns do—­the most excellent of all races for progenitors.  You and I[33] can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this stock.  Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield good scythes yet.  But I have moods when I pity them—­for their dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) for their very bread and meat.  They frantically resent conveniences.  They build their great law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to provide an entrance hall of imposing proportions which they use once a year; and to get this fine hall they have to make their court rooms, which they must use all the time, dark and small and inaccessible.  They think as much of that once-a-year ceremony of opening their courts as they think of the even justice that they dispense; somehow they feel that the justice depends on the ceremony.

This moss that has grown all over their lives (some of it very pretty and most of it very comfortable—­it’s soft and warm) is of no great consequence—­except that they think they’d die if it were removed.  And this state of mind gives us a good key to their character and habits.

What are we going to do with this England and this Empire, presently, when economic forces unmistakably put the leadership of the race in our hands?  How can we lead it and use it for the highest purposes of the world and of democracy?  We can do what we like if we go about it heartily and with good manners (any man prefers to yield to a gentleman rather than to a rustic) and throw away—­gradually—­our isolating fears and alternate boasting and bashfulness.  “What do we most need to learn from you?” I asked a gentle and bejewelled nobleman the other Sunday, in a country garden that invited confidences.  “If I may speak without offence, modesty.”  A commoner in the company, who had seen the Rocky Mountains, laughed, and said:  “No; see your chance and take it:  that’s what we did in the years when we made the world’s history.” . . .

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 11:  Mr. Irwin Laughlin, first secretary of the American Embassy in London.]