living flame there intervened pallid times of depression, where every disease of soul and body crept into the open.  True hearts lived, scattered here and there, believing still but disorganised and bewildered—­the leaders were stricken down and in their place, obscuring the beauty of life, the grandeur of the past, and our future destiny, came time-servers, flatterers, hypocrites, open traffickers in honour and public decency, fastening their mean authority on the land.  These are the two great resting-places in our historic survey:  the generation of the living flame and the generation of despair; and it is for us to decide—­for the decision rests with us—­whether we shall in our time merely mark time or write another luminous chapter in the splendid history of our race.

III

Let us consider these two generations apart, to understand their distinctive features more clearly for our own guidance.  Take first the years of vision and the general effort to replant the old flag on our walls.  With the first enthusiasts breathing the living flame abroad, the kindling hope, the widening fires, the deepening dream, there grows a consciousness of the greatness of the goal, of the general duty, of the individual responsibility for higher character, steadier work, and purer motive; and gradually meanness, trickeries, and treacheries are weeded out of the individual and national consciousness:  there is a realisation of a time come to restore the nation’s independence, and with passion and enthusiasm are fused a fine resolve and nerve.  All the excited doings of the feverish or pallid years are put by as unworthy or futile.  The great idea inspires a great fight; and that fight is made, and, notwithstanding any reverse, must be recorded great.  Whatever concourse of circumstances mar the dream and delay the victory, those brave years are as a torch in witness to the ideal, in justification of its soldiers and in promise of final success.

IV

Let us examine now the deadening years that intervene between the great fights for freedom.  We have known something of these times ourselves, have touched on them already, and need not further draw out the demoralising things that corrupt and dishearten us.  But what we urgently require to study is the kind of effort—­more often the absence of effort—­made in such years by those who keep their belief in freedom and feel at times impelled in some way or other to action.  They have followed a lost battle, and in the aftermath of defeat they are numbed into despair.  They refuse to surrender to the forces of the hour, but they lack the fine faith and enthusiasm of the braver years that challenged these forces at every point and stood or fell by the issue.  They lie apathetic till, moved by some particular meanness or treachery, they are roused to spasmodic anger, rush to act in some spasmodic way—­generally