vote himself an enemy, but if against his will he is voted an enemy, he accepts the election, and discharges the duties of his office with painstaking vigilance and care.  Now, no one does that, and ever gets re-elected, no matter what the office.  Such is the world.  And so the Dutchman has never been voted an enemy twice by the same people.  One term of his vigorous administration of hostile forces is quite enough, and inasmuch as he does not care for the office personally, and takes it only from a sense of duty, he never seeks a re-election.  He is always ready to step down and out, and resume his old occupation of being a good neighbor and a peace-loving citizen.

That is perhaps his greatest virtue, and it all grows out of the fact that his spirit of antagonism is located in his backbone, leaving his heart free.  He does not love strife and he does not hate the man with whom he fights, and so, in all his battles, he has never been vindictive, cruel, merciless.  When he has had to fight he has fought like a man and a Christian, for righteousness’ sake, and not like a demon to humiliate and to annihilate his foes.  That makes the Dutchman a rare kind of enemy, and that, more than anything else, I think, has distinguished his enmity through all the years of his history.  He has gone far toward obeying the precept, “Love your enemies, and bless them that curse you.”  If he has not been able to keep men from hating him, and cursing him, and persecuting him, he has been able to keep himself from hating and cursing and persecuting in return; and so, while he is one of the greatest of military heroes in history, he is also one of the greatest of moral heroes, and that is a greater honor, inasmuch as “He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.”

I do not claim all glory for the Dutch.  It is not given to any one nation to monopolize virtue.  I only assert that the Dutchman’s virtue is of a peculiarly exalted type.  The Englishman’s virtue is just as real, only another kind of virtue.  If the Dutchman’s spirit of hostility or of antagonism resides in his backbone, the Englishman’s spirit of hostility or antagonism resides in his breastbone.  That makes all the difference between them.  The Englishman fights, but he fights aggressively.  And as the heart lies back of the breastbone it never gets into his fighting.  He neither loves his enemies nor hates them.  He simply loves England.  If it has been the mission of the Dutch to keep, it has been the mission of the English to get, and in the getting he has had to do a world of fighting.