It sounds plausible and magnanimous, but it is Utopian. You must
reckon with your own people. They know that when we last had peace, the
sunshine of that peace was used by the Germans to hatch the spawn of
malice and treason. If the Germans are defeated in the war, we shall, I
suppose, forgive them, for the very English reason that it is a bore not
to forgive your enemies. But if they escape without decisive defeat in
battle, their harder trial is yet to come.
In some ways we are stronger than we have been in all our long history.
We have found ourselves, and we have found our friends. Our dead have
taught the children of to-day more and better than any living teachers
can teach them. No one in this country will ever forget how the people
of the Dominions, at the first note of war, sprang to arms like one man.
We must not thank or praise them; like the Navy, they regard our thanks
and praise as something of an impertinence. They are not fighting, they
say, for us. But that is how we discovered them. They are doing much
better than fighting for us, they are fighting with us, because, without
a word of explanation or appeal, their ideas and ours are the same.
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