“There is an ancient belief,” he said, “that the hunted thing always turns on us.  Well, if there was ever a man in this world on whom the hunted thing awfully turned, it was St. Alban.”

He put out his hand.

“Look at the shaft yonder,” he said, “lifted to his memory, towering over the whole of this English country, and cut on its base with his services to England and the brave words he said on that fatal morning on the Channel boat.  Every schoolboy knows the words: 

“`Don’t threaten, fire if you like!’

“First-class words for the English people to remember.  No bravado, just the thing any decent chap would say.  But the words are persistent.  They remain in the memory.  And it was a thrilling scene they fitted into.  One must never forge that:  The little hospital transport lying in the Channel in a choppy sea that ran streaks of foam; the grim turret and the long whaleback of a U-boat in the foam scruff; and the sun lying on the scrubbed deck of the jumping transport.

“Everybody was crowded about.  St. Alban was in the center of the human pack, in a pace or two of clear deck, his injured arm in a sling; his split sleeve open around it; his shoulders thrown back; his head lifted; and before him, the Hun commander with his big automatic pistol.

“It’s a wonderful, spirited picture, and it thrilled England.  It was in accord with her legends.  England has little favor of either the gods of the hills or the gods of the valleys.  But always, in all her wars, the gods of the seas back her.”

The big Baronet paused and poured out a cup of tea.  He tasted it and set it down on the table.

“That’s a fine monument,” he said, indicating the white shaft that shot up into the cloudless evening sky.  “The road makes a sharp turn by it.  You have got to slow up, no matter how you travel.  The road rises there.  It’s built that way; to make the passer go slow enough to read the legends on the base of the monument.  It’s a clever piece of business.  Everybody is bound to give his tribute of attention to the conspicuous memorial.

“There are two faces to the monument that you must look at if you go that road.  One recounts the man’s services to England, and the other face bears his memorable words: 

“`Don’t threaten, fire if you like!’”

The Baronet fingered the handle of his teacup.

“The words are precisely suited to the English people,” he said.  “No heroics, no pretension, that’s the whole spirit of England.  It’s the English policy in a line:  We don’t threaten, and we don’t wish to be threatened by another.  Let them fire if they like, — that’s all in the game.  But don’t swing a gun on us with a threat.  St. Alban was lucky to say it.  He got the reserve, the restraint, the commonplace understatement that England affects, into the sentence.  It was a piece of good fortune to catch the thing like that.