may Hinder, or Delay, or Retard the success of your application.  But if you Foretell, or Prophesy, or Predict that the War will have an End, or Close, or Termination that shall not only be Speedy, or Rapid, or Accelerated, but also Great, or Grand, or Magnificent, you may perhaps Stir, or Move, or Actuate him to have Ruth, or Pity, or Compassion on your Mate, or Colleague, or Collaborator.  The English language, then, is a language of great wealth—­much greater wealth than can be illustrated by any brief example.  But wealth is nothing unless you can use it.  The real strength of English lies in the inspired freedom and variety of its syntax.  There is no grammar of the English speech which is not comic in its stiffness and inadequacy.  An English grammar does not explain all that we can do with our speech; it merely explains what shackles and restraints we must put upon our speech if we would bring it within the comprehension of a school-bred grammarian.  But the speech itself is like the sea, and soon breaks down the dykes built by the inland engineer.  It was the fashion, in the eighteenth century, to speak of the divine Shakespeare.  The reach and catholicity of his imagination was what earned him that extravagant praise; but his syntax has no less title to be called divine.  It is not cast or wrought, like metal; it leaps like fire, and moves like air.  So is every one that is born of the spirit.  Our speech is our great charter.  Far better than in the long constitutional process whereby we subjected our kings to law, and gave dignity and strength to our Commons, the meaning of English freedom is to be seen in the illimitable freedom of our English speech.

Our literature is almost as rich as our language.  Modern German literature begins in the eighteenth century.  Modern English literature began with Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, and has been full of great names and great books ever since.  Nothing has been done in German literature for which we have not a counterpart, done as well or better—­except the work of Heine, and Heine was a Jew.  His opinion of the Prussians was that they are a compost of beer, deceit, and sand.  French literature and English literature can be compared, throughout their long course, sometimes to the great advantage of the French.  German literature cannot seriously be compared with either.

It may be objected that literature and art are ornamental affairs, which count for little in the deadly strife of nations.  But that is not so.  Our language cannot go anywhere without taking our ideas and our creed with it, not to mention our institutions and our games.  If the Germans could understand what Chaucer means when he says of his Knight that

                     he loved chivalry,
     Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy,

then indeed we might be near to an understanding.  I asked a good German scholar the other day what is the German word for ‘fair play’.  He replied, as they do in Parliament, that he must ask for notice of that question.  I fear there is no German word for ‘fair play’.