Since luncheon I have been to see a neighbour, in the vague hope that
some fresh war news might have arrived this morning. There was none of
course, and I walked home again between banks of withered bracken and
trailing bramble, under the big tree-hollies, glistening all over their
surfaces with a thousand reminders of Christmas, and of its gifts.
England is so big, and old, and sensible that she does not generally
care about Christmas presents, but there is one present that, I take it,
she would dearly like to have to-day. Shiploads of holly, forests of
mistletoe are hers for the asking, but that one little leaf of victor’s
laurel that she wants so badly, that she would so gladly pin upon that
broad breast of hers, this, it seems, is denied her. It may come
to-morrow. It _must_, we all, not alone Cuttle, feel convinced, come
before long, but it will not come in time for her Christmas-box.
What an odd convention it is, when one thinks of it, that habit of
embodying a country in an individual! Considered seriously the whole
contention is absurd. To talk of a nation as a person is to talk sheer
nonsense. If one handles the idea a little it tumbles to pieces in one’s
fingers. The fiction of unity resolves itself into a mere vortex of
atoms, all moving in different ways, and moreover with a different
general drift in each successive generation. As a matter of fact I doubt
whether Englishmen, who are nothing if not practical, ever do think of
their own country as an individual, unless one of them happens to be
called upon to design a coin or a cartoon. The whole idea is extraneous,
a survival from classical days, and the lumbering absurdities which are
now and then dragged about the streets only go to prove how far from the
genius of the people such representations really are.
Perhaps it is because I am not English that I find myself falling so
readily into the trick. There was a time,--not a very recent one--when I
thought of England habitually in that light, and in the most truculent
fashion possible. In my eyes she stood visibly out as the Great Bully,
the Supreme Tyrant, red with the blood of Ireland and Irish heroes. It
was always _she_ and _her_ then; indeed it was only by keeping up the
fiction of an incarnate Saxondom that indignation could be retained at
the proper boiling point. To turn from the past to the present was to
spoil the whole effect. In place of War, Famine, Massacre, one only got
dull political controversies, or equally dull agrarian disturbances. For
the Raleighs, the Sydneys, the Straffords, the Cromwells,--vast
impressive figures, large and lurid--only a group of rather harassed
gentlemen, “well-meaning English officials,” painfully endeavouring to
steer their way so as to offend everyone as little as possible. Yes, I
had quite a respectable capacity for hatred in those days, and
England--that historic England of which I knew absolutely
nothing--enjoyed the greater part of it. Especially, I remember, that I
used to gloat over the notion of some day or other a great national
HUMILIATION befalling her--a Sedan, a Moscow--I hardly knew what;
retribution at all events in some very visible and dramatic form. With
what glee I used to picture her standing helplessly before the nations;
without a friend or an ally to turn to; naked and ashamed; crushed
bleeding to the earth, as she had so often crushed Ireland; a mark for
every wagging head----
Well, well, thus we play the fool, and the spirits of the wise sit in
the clouds and mock us! Here am I walking home along an English lane,
and almost wringing my hands in despair because such a very mild and
colourless version of those old cherished dreams has befallen mine
ancient enemy!
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