THE DUTY OF THE SOLDIER AND THE PATRIOT

GOLDWIN SMITH

GOLDWIN SMITH (1823- ) was born in England but has lived in Toronto, Canada, for many years. As an author and lecturer he has gained a wide hearing.

The soldier is not responsible for the righteousness of the war. His valor, chivalry, and devotion to duty are 5 equally admirable whatever the cause of the war may be. His commander's word is his warrant and his absolution. The Duke of Marlborough bade his soldiers lay waste the country around Munich. The soldier who, in obedience to the command, set fire to the homestead, turning the 10 woman and the child, the aged and the sick, adrift, was blameless. He did what he was bound to do; though he was not bound to take pleasure in his task, to think of it afterwards with pride, or to count it among the glories of the British army. A volunteer, perhaps, enlisting for 15 the particular cause, may be more concerned to satisfy himself of its justice.

The real interest and honor of a nation are inseparable from good faith, equity, and humanity. . . . Is it to be the rule that as soon as war is proclaimed, opinion shall 20 be gagged and the national conscience shall be suspended?

While the party of peace is silenced, is the party of war to be freely heard? Is it to be heard even when

it is most extreme, when it calls for the most inhuman measures, when it thwarts the most reasonable power? Did not men whose patriotism was above suspicion, such as Chatham and Burke, oppose the war with the American 5 colonies not only in its inception but during its course? Did not their opposition at last bring it to a close when it had become a war not only with the colonists but with the powers of Europe, and when the madness of the king and the servility of his ministers would have prolonged it 10 to the ruin of the kingdom?

The Duke of Marlborough: a great English general who possessed few of the finer traits of human character. - Munich: the capital of Bavaria. Chatham and Burke: famous English statesmen in the reign of George III.

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ENGLAND1

GRACE ELLERY CHANNING

GRACE ELLERY CHANNING STETSON is an American writer and poet. She is the granddaughter of the famous preacher William Ellery Channing.

Who comes to England not to learn.

The love for her his fathers bore,
Breathing her air can still return

No kindlier than he was before?

In vain, for him, from shore to shore

1 From "Sea Drift." By permission of Small, Maynard & Co., Publishers.

Those fathers strewed an alien strand
With the loved names that evermore
Are native to our ear and land.

Who sees the English elm trees fling
Long shadows where his footsteps pass,
Or marks the crocuses that Spring

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Sets starlike in the English grass,
And sees not, as within a glass,
New England's loved reflection rise?-

Mists darker and more dense, alas!
Than England's fogs are in his eyes.

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And who can walk by English streams,
Through sunny meadows gently led,
Nor feel, as one who lives in dreams,
The wound with which his fathers bled,
The homesick tears which must, unshed,
Have dimmed the brave, unfaltering eyes

That saw New England's elms outspread
Green branches to her loftier skies?

How dear to exiled hearts the sound
Of little brooks that run and sing!
How dear, in scanty garden ground,
The crocus calling back the Spring
To English hearts remembering!
How dear that aching memory

Of cuckoo cry and lark's light wing!
And for their sake how dear to me!

Who owns not how, so often tried,

The bond all trial hath withstood;
The leaping pulse, the racial pride
In more than common brotherhood;
Nor feels his kinship like a flood
Rise blotting every dissonant trace?—
He is not of the ancient blood!
He is not of the Island race!

THE END OF A REIGN

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

NOTE. The reign of George III, so full of mistakes and wrongs, had a piteous and tragic end. Thackeray recounts it with a kindly charity and sympathy.

From November, 1810, George III ceased to reign. All the world knows the story of his malady; all history 5 presents no sadder picture than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apart- 10 ment of his daughter, amidst a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast. He was not only sightless; he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human 15 voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had, in one of which the Queen, desiring to see him, entered the room and found him singing a hymn and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished he knelt 20 down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy