The spirit of our manhood will always flame
up to resent and resist that link. Separation and equality may restore
ties of friendship; nothing else can: for individual development and
general goodwill is the lesson of human life. We can be good neighbours,
but most dangerous enemies, and in the coming time our hereditary foe
cannot afford to have us on her flank. The present is promising; the
future is developing for us: we shall reach the goal. Let us see to it
that we shall be found worthy.
VI
That we be found worthy; let this be borne in mind. For it is true that
here only is our great danger. If with our freedom to win, our country
to open up, our future to develop, we learn no lesson from the mistakes
of nations and live no better life than the great Powers, we shall have
missed a golden opportunity, and shall be one of the failures of
history. So far, on superficial judgment, we have been accounted a
failure; though the simple maintenance of our fight for centuries has
been in itself a splendid triumph. But then only would we have failed in
the great sense, when we had got our field and wasted it, as the nations
around us waste theirs to-day. We led Europe once; let us lead again
with a beautiful realisation of freedom; and let us beware of the
delusion that is abroad, that we seek nothing more than to be free of
restraint, as England, France and Germany are to-day; let us beware of
the delusion that if we can scramble through anyhow to freedom we can
then begin to live worthily, but that in the interval we cannot be too
particular.
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