of my plunder.  What else has been gathered up is hardly worth talking about, in comparison with these two discoveries which are, after all, perhaps only useful to myself:  the discovery of the real youthfulness of the country and the discovery of the real meaning and the necessity of the spread-eagle speeches and the flaunting of the flag in season and out of season.  It may seem a small thing to learn, but the lesson has wholly changed my point of view.  The fact is perhaps hardly worth recording; it matters little what a single Englishman thinks; but if he can induce others to think with him, or to modify their views in the same direction, it may matter a great deal.

And, of course, an Englishman must think of his own future—­that of his own country.  Before many years the United Kingdom must inevitably undergo great changes:  the vastness of the Empire will vanish; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa will fall away and will become independent republics; what these little islands will become then, I know not.  What will become of the English-speaking races, thus firmly planted over the whole globe, is a more important question.  If a man had the voice of the silver-mouthed Father, if a man had the inspiration of a prophet, it would be a small thing for that man to consecrate and expend all his life, all his strength, all his soul, in the creation of a great federation of English-speaking peoples.  There should be no war of tariffs between them; there should be no possibility of dispute between them; there should be as many nations separate and distinct as might please to call themselves nations; it should make no difference whether Canada was the separate dominion of Canada, or a part of the United States; it should make no difference whether Great Britain and Ireland were a monarchy or a republic.  The one thing of importance would be an indestructible alliance for offence and defence among the people who have inherited the best part of the whole world.  This alliance can best be forwarded by a promotion of friendship between private persons; by a constant advocacy in the press of all the countries concerned; and by the feeling, to be cultivated everywhere, that such a confederation would present to the world the greatest, strongest, wealthiest, most highly cultivated confederacy of nations that ever existed.  It would be permanent, because here would be no war of aggression in tariffs, or of personal quarrel; no territorial ambitions; no conflict of kings.

Naturally, I was not called upon to speak at the Harvard dinner.  Had I spoken, I should like to have said:  ’Men of Harvard, grandsons of that benignant mother—­still young—­who sits crowned with laurels, ever fresh, on the sedgy bank of Granta, think of the country from which your fathers have sprung.  Go out into the world—­your world of youthful endeavour and success; do your best to bring the hearts of the people whom you will have to lead back to their kin across the seas to east and west—­over the Atlantic and over the Pacific.  Do your best to bring about the Indestructible fraternity of the whole English-speaking races.  Do this in the sacred name of that freedom of which you have this day heard so much, and of that Christianity to which by the very stamp and seal of your college you are the avowed and sworn servants.  Rah!’