It is really extraordinary to find a united England.
Indeed, until lately, it was extraordinary to find a united Englishman.
Those of us who, like the present writer, repudiated the South African war
from its beginnings, had yet a divided heart in the matter, and felt
certain aspects of it as glorious as well as infamous. The first fact I can
offer you is the unquestionable fact that all these doubts and divisions
have ceased. Nor have they ceased by any compromise; but by a universal
flash of faith--or, if you will, of suspicion. Nor were our internal
conflicts lightly abandoned; nor our reconciliations an easy matter. I am,
as you are, a democrat and a citizen of Europe; and my friends and I had
grown to loathe the plutocracy and privilege which sat in the high places
of our country with a loathing which we thought no love could cast out. Of
these rich men I will not speak here; with your permission, I will not
think of them. War is a terrible business in any case; and to some
intellectual temperaments this is the most terrible part of it. That war
takes the young; that war sunders the lovers; that all over Europe brides
and bridegrooms are parting at the church door: all that is only a
commonplace to commonplace people.
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