And how about Ireland?  England has blundered there, and she admits it freely.  They exist in England who cry out for the coercion of Ireland, and who at times have almost had their way.  But to do this, of course, would be a surrender to the German contentions, an acknowledgment of the wisdom of the German methods against which she is protesting with all her might.  Democracy, apparently, must blunder on until that question too, is solved.

V

Many of those picturesque features of the older England, that stir us by their beauty and by the sense of stability and permanence they convey, will no doubt disappear or be transformed.  I am thinking of the great estates, some of which date from Norman times; I am thinking of the aristocracy, which we Americans repudiated in order to set up a plutocracy instead.  Let us hope that what is fine in it will be preserved, for there is much.  By the theory of the British constitution —­that unwritten but very real document—­in return for honours, emoluments, and titles, the burden of government has hitherto been thrown on a class.  Nor can it be said that they have been untrue to their responsibility.  That class developed a tradition and held fast to it; and they had a foreign policy that guided England through centuries of greatness.  Democracy too must have a foreign policy, a tradition of service; a trained if not hereditary group to guide it through troubled waters.  Even in an intelligent community there must be leadership.  And, if the world will no longer tolerate the old theories, a tribute may at least be paid to those who from conviction upheld them; who ruled, perhaps in affluence, yet were also willing to toil and, if need be, to die for the privilege.

One Saturday afternoon, after watching for a while the boys playing fives and football and romping over the green lawns at Eton, on my way to the head master’s rooms I paused in one of the ancient quads.  My eye had been caught by a long column of names posted there, printed in heavy black letters.  ‘Etona non, immemora’!  Every week many new names are added to those columns.  On the walls of the chapel and in other quads and passages may be found tablets and inscriptions in memory of those who have died for England and the empire in by-gone wars.  I am told that the proportion of Etonians of killed to wounded is greater than that of any other public school—­which is saying a great deal.  They go back across the channel and back again until their names appear on the last and highest honour list of the school and nation.