it will light up for them, and a new era is begun.  In such a moment is evil abandoned, hate buried and friendship reborn.  There is one honest fear that our independence would threaten their security:  it will yet be replaced by the conviction that there is a surer safeguard in our freedom than in our suppression; the light will break through the clouds of suspicion and a star of stars will glorify the earth.  For this end our enemy must have an ideal as high as our own; if thus an objector, he is right.  But if in the gross materialism and greed of empire that is now the ruling passion with the enemy there is apparently little hope of a transformation that will make them spiritual, high-minded and generous, we must not abandon our ideal:  while the meanness and tyranny of contemporary England stand forward against our argument and leave our reasoning cold, we can find a more subtle appeal in spirit, such an appeal as comes to us in a play of Shakespeare’s, a song of Shelley’s, or a picture of Turner’s.  From the heart of the enemy Genius cries, bearing witness to our common humanity, and the yearning for such high comradeship is alive, and the dream survives to light us on the forward path.  We must travel that path rightly.  We can so travel whatever the enemy’s mind.  More difficult it will be, but it can be done.  That is the great significance and justification of Nationalism:  it is the unanswerable argument to cosmopolitanism.  If the greatness and beauty of life that ought to be the dream of all nations is denied by all but one, that one may keep alive the dream within her own frontier till its fascination will arrest and inspire the world.  If this ultimate dream is still floating far off, in its pursuit there is for us achievement on achievement, and each brave thing done is in itself a beauty and a joy for ever.  For the good fighter there is always fine recompense; a clear mind, warm blood, quick imagination, grasp of life and joy in action, and at the end of day always an eminence won.  Yes, and from the height of that eminence will come ringing down to the last doubter a last word:  we may reach the mountaintops in aspiring to the stars.

CHAPTER V

THE SECRET OF STRENGTH

I

To win our freedom we must be strong.  But what is the secret of strength?  It is fundamental to the whole question to understand this rightly, and, once grasped, make it the mainstay of individual existence, which is the foundation of national life.  So much has the bodily power of over-riding minorities been made the criterion of absolute power, that to make clear the truth requires patience, insight, and a little mental study.  But the end is a great end.  It is to reconnoitre the most important battlefield, to discover the dispositions of the enemy, to measure our own resources and forge our strength link by link till we put on the armour of invincibility.