"Let me tell you a little story, my children, of the most interesting, the most wonderful--yes, even the most marvellous of all the doings of man on this most erratic little planet.
"These British Isles are separated from the Continent of Europe by a damp streak, and they are inhabited by the mixed offspring of a dozen sturdy and virile tribes, all from the northern water-front. All these virile tribes, whether natives or invaders, were strongly imbued with the spirit of liberty--as they understood it. They loved peace--if they had to fight for it. They loved liberty--to squeeze the other fellow. But in the fibre of these people there was a sublime stubbornness that often made things awkward for the authorities.
"Everybody wanted to boss, so nobody would wear the collar. Everybody wanted to be free, but the feeling was so unanimous that there was abundance of officers but no privates, so it took many centuries of disputes, and quarrels, and conflicts, and wars, before they had accumulated sufficient 'grey matter' to comprehend the fact that civilised government is a compromise; that where any can be oppressed, none can be secure; and that liberty, which must halt at the gate of the other fellow's paddock, is the inalienable right of man.
"But the British can learn, and they have so well mastered this problem that the highest now yield the most ready obedience to the law, and the strongest most readily defend the rights of the weak. Though it took Britain, with her sturdy conceit, centuries to learn this, and though she, by her fibre and her position as a coloniser, was the legitimate successor of Phoenicia and Greece, she was rather backward about coming forward, for after the discovery of America, when all the other nations were madly participating in western exploits, she stood aloof for over a hundred years to complete her preparations.
"Then she came with a lunch basket, she came with both feet, she came to stay, and her achievements find no parallel in the history of human progress. Before she opened her foreign real estate office, the new world had been parcelled out. Others had staked their claims--many over-lapping--and there were plentiful notices to 'keep off the grass,' but she was undaunted.