It took us two days to prepare ours. Our instinct is quick
and sound; for the resources and wealth of the Continent, if once they
were controlled by a single autocratic power, would make it impossible
for England to follow her fortunes upon the sea. But we never stand
quite alone. The smaller peoples of the Continent, who desire
self-government, or have achieved it, always give the conqueror trouble,
and rebel against him or resist him. England always sends help to them,
the help of an expeditionary force, or, failing that, the help of
irregular volunteers. Sir Philip Sidney dies at Zutphen; Sir John Moore
at Corunna. There is always desperate fighting in the Low Countries; and
the names of Mons, Liege, Namur, and Lille recur again and again.
England always succeeds in maintaining herself, though not without some
reverses, on the sea. In the end the power of the master of legions,
Philip, Louis, Napoleon, and shall we say William, crumbles and melts;
his ambitions are too costly to endure, his people chafe under his lash,
and his kingdom falls into insignificance or is transformed by internal
revolution.
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