We find to-day that our national needs are greater than we knew, our resources less than they have been for many years. The only true satisfaction to be gathered from the prospect is that we recognise it. For once in our history it is not left to a few courageous men to preach an unpopular gospel in the ears of indifferent wealth and vanity-stricken fashion. The people who are alive to the truth of our national state are not devoting anxious hours to keeping up appearances. Shams that our life seemed full of so recently, are known for what they are. For the first time in the social history of our generation it suffices to be an Englishman or an Englishwoman and to have filled the _rôle_, however modest, that the fates have assigned in this world crisis. Shall we miss the old luxuries of life? Will those of us who accepted them without thought or comment as part of the natural order of things, forego them without a qualm? I think we shall, because we shall all have a serious and definite occupation. The landowner must develop a good business faculty or go under, the mistress of a large establishment must learn all the domestic arts that her grandmothers practised to perfection or she will not be able to keep it together. The younger sons will not be brought up to look upon loafing as a career, and the girls will be trained to take a part in the world's work, fortified by the knowledge that the State no longer regards them as a negligible quantity. In the near future the British Empire will be demanding more of its sons and daughters and giving them less reward for it, but such a condition encourages the national virtues. We are rather a flint-like people. If we are properly struck we emit light.
Decidedly the world is out of joint, and it is possible to survey the situation and find ample material for pessimism. But we who have made the mistakes or inherited them can set the crooked straight if we recognise the nature of the task. And I see on all sides of me men and women who do. They are preparing the ground on which the virtues engendered by a struggle for national existence may blossom and bear fruit.
ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN PEACE AND WAR
The Anglo-Saxon race is on its trial just now, and, however strenuous the times, they do not deny us a measure of leisure in which to estimate the forces upon which we may rely. With battleships and regiments woman has nothing to do, she does but bring painfully into the world those who serve both. It is her mission to shield them with her love and devotion in the season of their helplessness and wait, watch, and pray while the battles join. Hers too it is to do what may be done to heal the wounds of battle, to comfort and to minister, to know the anxiety without the excitement of conflict, to see much of the horror and little of the glory. Yet, far outside the area of strife, woman plays no negligible part in controlling the destinies of nations, for there is a field of social diplomacy in which she labours persistently and the measure of Anglo-Saxon unity that obtains to-day is in no small measure the fruit of her effort.