We pray in contrite humility to remember, but we have forgotten. In speaking of Finland's loss of liberty, Madame Malmberg, the Finnish patriot, once said that in old days, when their liberties seemed secure, the Finns felt no sympathy with other nationalities--the Poles, the Georgians, or the Russians themselves--struggling to be free. They did not know what it was to be a subject race. They could not realise the degrading loss of nationality. They were soon to learn, and they know now. We have not learned. We have forgotten our lesson. That is why we remain so indifferent to the cry of freedom, and to the suppression of nationality all over the world.
Let us for a moment imagine that something terrible has happened; that our statesmen have at last got their addition sums in Dreadnoughts right, and have learned by hard experience that we have less than two to one and therefore are wiped from the seas; or that our august Russian ally, using Finland as a base, has established an immense naval port in the Norwegian fiords and thence poured the Tartar and Cossack hordes over our islands. Let us imagine anything that might leave some dominant Power supreme in London and reduce us for the sixth or seventh time to the position of a subject race. Where should we feel the difference most? Let us suppose that the conqueror retained our country as part of his empire, just as we have retained Ireland, India, Egypt, and the South-African Dutch republics; or as Russia has retained Poland, Georgia, Finland, the Baltic Provinces and Siberia, and is on the point of retaining Persia; or as Germany has retained Poland and Alsace-Lorraine; or as France has retained Tonquin and an enormous empire in north-west Africa and is on the point of retaining Morocco; or as Austria has retained Bohemia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and many other nationalities, and is constantly plotting to retain Albania. Let us only judge of what might happen to us by observing what is actually happening in other instances at this moment.