A little time after I was helping King George V to get crowned, by walking round a local bonfire and listening to a local band.  Just as a bonfire cannot be too big, so (by my theory of music) a band cannot be too loud, and this band was so loud, emphatic, and obvious, that I actually recognised one or two of the tunes.  And I noticed that quite a formidable proportion of them were Jacobite tunes; that is, tunes that had been primarily meant to keep George V out of his throne for ever.  Some of the real airs of the old Scottish rebellion were played, such as “Charlie is My Darling,” or “What’s a’ the steer, kimmer?” songs that men had sung while marching to destroy and drive out the monarchy under which we live.  They were songs in which the very kinsmen of the present King were swept aside as usurpers.  They were songs in which the actual words “King George” occurred as a curse and a derision.  Yet they were played to celebrate his very Coronation; played as promptly and innocently as if they had been “Grandfather’s Clock” or “Rule Britannia” or “The Honeysuckle and the Bee.”

That contrast is the measure, not only between two nations, but between two modes of historical construction and development.  For there is not really very much difference, as European history goes, in the time that has elapsed between us and the Jacobite and between us and the Jacobin.  When George III was crowned the gauntlet of the King’s Champion was picked up by a partisan of the Stuarts.  When George III was still on the throne the Bourbons were driven out of France as the Stuarts had been driven out of England.  Yet the French are just sufficiently aware that the Bourbons might possibly return that they will take a little trouble to discourage it; whereas we are so certain that the Stuarts will never return that we actually play their most passionate tunes as a compliment to their rivals.  And we do not even do it tauntingly.  I examined the faces of all the bandsmen; and I am sure they were devoid of irony:  indeed, it is difficult to blow a wind instrument ironically.  We do it quite unconsciously; because we have a huge fundamental dogma, which the French have not.  We really believe that the past is past.  It is a very doubtful point.

Now the great gift of a revolution (as in France) is that it makes men free in the past as well as free in the future.  Those who have cleared away everything could, if they liked, put back everything.  But we who have preserved everything—­we cannot restore anything.  Take, for the sake of argument, the complex and many coloured ritual of the Coronation recently completed.  That rite is stratified with the separate centuries; from the first rude need of discipline to the last fine shade of culture or corruption, there is nothing that cannot be detected or even dated.  The fierce and childish vow of the lords to serve their lord “against all manner of folk” obviously comes from the real Dark Ages; no longer confused,