Here be ghosts that I have raised this Christmastide, ghosts of dead men
that have bequeathed a trust to us living men. Ghosts are troublesome
things in a house or in a family, as we knew even before Ibsen taught
us. There is only one way to appease a ghost. You must do the thing it
asks you. The ghosts of a nation sometimes ask very big things; and they
must be appeased, whatever the cost.
Of the shade of the Norwegian dramatist I beg forgiveness for a
plagiaristic, but inevitable title.