If she can do that,
she might make a good ruler, for she has solid virtues and good
instincts. It is her intellect that has gone wrong. Bishop Butler was
one day found pondering the problem whether, a whole nation can go mad.
If he had lived to-day what would he have said about it? Would he have
admitted that that strangest of grim fancies is realized?
It would be vain for Germany to take the world; she could not keep it;
nor, though she can make a vast number of people miserable for a long
time, could she ever hope to make all the inhabitants of the world
miserable for all time. She has a giant's power, and does not think it
infamous to use it like a giant. She can make a winter hideous, but she
cannot prohibit the return of spring, or annul the cleansing power of
water. Sanity is not only better than insanity; it is much stronger, and
Might is Right.
Meantime, it is a delight and a consolation to Englishmen that England
is herself again. She has a cause that it is good to fight for, whether
it succeed or fail. The hope that uplifts her is the hope of a better
world, which our children shall see.
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