Nevertheless, as an Englishman, I shrink from giving any emphasis there
may be in my "hand and signature" to these righteously condemnatory and
withering cartoons; and because, each one of them, as I turn to it,
brings more and more crushingly home to me the transcending sin of
England--of every individual Englishman with a vote for Members of
Parliament--in not having prepared for this war; a sin that has
implicated us in the destruction of the whole rising generation of the
flower of our manhood; and, before this date, would have brought us
under subjection to Germany but for the confidence placed by the rank
and file of the British people and nation in Lord Kitchener of Khartum.
Now--face to face with enemies--from the Kaiser downward to his humblest
subjects--animated by the highest, noblest ideals, but again perverted
for a time--as in the case of their ancestors in the Middle Ages--by a
secular epidemic of "Panmania," they are to be faced not with idle
reproaches and revilings, still less with undignified taunts and gibes,
but with close-drawn lips and clenched teeth, in the determination that,
once having cast Satan out of them, he shall be bound down to keep the
peace of Christendom--"for a thousand years."
GEORGE BIRDWOOD.
[Illustration: WE'LL GIVE YOU THE TITLE OF MPRET OF POLAND
The new Governor has had the title of Mpret given to him, the same that
was given to the ill-starred Prince of Wied when made ruler of Albania
in 1914.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132