Two days later they arrived in sight of headquarters, having passed fairly easily through the confluence where the waters of the Mali and Nmai Kha meet. Shannon spoke to Sau La as they drifted into the bank. "You must come to hospital with me," he said. "Duwa, I cannot," he said. "I must go to the police." "Why the police?" asked Shannon. Chief, I killed a man up there (pointing back up-stream). After killing him I went mad, and went off into the jungle. The headman and villagers found me, and told me that the Government wanted me. So I came to explain Shannon looked at the little savage, and marvelled at his simple faith and absolute honesty, and, above all, his complete trust in the white man's judgment, for Sau La must have known that Government generally takes a life for a life taken. Occasionally it means transportation, which to Kachin is worse, for it means home-sickness, and home-sickness is worse than death. a So this was the murderer he had come to give evidence against. "Well, anyway," he thought, "I'll do my damn'dest to get him off." The local magistrate commenced the case the next day. Shannon was main evidence, but it was hardly needed, for the prisoner frankly owned to committing the crime. He stood up with his manacled hands in front of him, and looking the judge straight in the face. . . 66 W- S- - told me he would never forget the scene: the little court-house of corrugated iron, the drip, drip of the rain off the roof, the silent, stuffy, little room filled to choking point with the Burman rag-tag and bobtail, who loathe Kachins, the smell, and then the question, "Do you realise what it means when you plead guilty? Do you realise there is only one thing I can do?" And then Sau La, a stumpy uncivilised little savage, with all the passion of a great love: Is it wrong, Duwa, to kill a bamboo rat when it eats the household grain? Is it a sin to kill the tiger that steals one's cow? I loved my wife, and I killed a thief. If the great white 'Asoza' considers I must hang, I am ready. I am a Kachin, and I'm not afraid to die:" Silence, and then the magistrate, banging the table with his fist, with tears starting from his eyes like a highlystrung woman: "By Heaven! I'd like to let you off." And Shannon quietly: "May I tell you something about this man, sir?" And then the story of the whirlpool, a long silence, and the quick decision against all the laws and regulations of the hide-bound judicial world: "This case may be settled by the village elders; you can go"; and the sudden light in Sau La's eyes, and Shannon's memory of his song: MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. THOSE WHO PROPHESY ENGLAND'S RUIN-OUR ENEMIES ABROAD AND AT HOME-THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 1815 AND 1919-A COMPARISON WITH OUR NEIGHBOURS-OUR DIFFICULTIES NOT INSUPERABLE-THE TRADITION OF ENGLAND-AMERICA'S HIGH STANDARD OF LIVING-THE LACK OF HUMILITY IN THE UNITED STATES-ARE DRUMMOND'S 'CONVERSATIONS' WITH BEN JONSON FORGERIES? IT is being said all over the world by those to whom the wish is father to the thought that England is on the highroad to ruin and decay. Canada, our own loyal dominion, rings, we are told, with the news of England's downfall. The anti-English press of America sedulously proclaims, in its largest type, the imminent collapse of Great Britain (which meanwhile is paying America tribute), and sends its newspapers across the Canadian frontier with a peculiar satisfaction. There is no returned traveller from Canada who does not bring back intelligence of our lost prestige, of our waning influence; and the worst of it is that the Canadians believe what they are told. What is true of Canada is true of our other dominions, and it seems. as though we are living again in the corrupt atmosphere of "propaganda," which we were asked to breathe in war-time. In those far-off days Germany joined hands with America to darken the fair fame of England. England would fight, it was said, unto or the last Australian. She was represented as a nation of shirkers, which sent out Scots, Irishmen, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders to do battle for her. When the published figures proved that she was bearing the brunt of the fighting, no word was offered of retraction apology. Now that the war is over, the same amiable persons who brought foul charges against England's honour are publishing abroad the glad news of her supposed embarrassment. They delight to picture her as bankrupt in hope and pocket, as on the verge of revolution, as unable to find any work for her labourers to do. They pretend, and pray, that she will presently descend to the level of a fourth-rate power; and there is many an enemy who would gladly throw a stone at her as she descended from her pedestal. The hatred which her enemies bear England proceeds from envy. It irks them to see her holding a place which they think should be theirs. They are irritated by her imperturbability. They believe that the He The time has come when her Empire the aggression and insult of should be divided up among her enemies. To-day he is themselves, and they rejoice more active than ever. to pick up, to embroider, and would, if he could, destroy the to circulate the slightest rumour carefully established fabric of which can be turned to her society to flatter his vanity or discredit. For this hatred we to indulge his whim, and he should be grateful. It is merely gladly adds his own noisy the tribute which jealous men rhetoric to the chorus of forpay to those who are beyond eigners, who "voice aloud," in their reach. We need not be a daily hymn of hate, the fall disturbed by the openly ex- of England. pressed envy of others. They are dangerous only when they sow the seeds of falsehood in our own dominions, and attempt to shake the faith of those, their neighbours, who owe (and pay) allegiance to Great Britain. A more subtle foe, harmless for the most part, is the Englishman who takes pleasure in abusing his own country, and who cries Stinking Fish up and down the world. This gentleman, the legitimate descendant of the Whigs, delights in cannibalism. He would, if he could, devour his country at a meal. If his country find an enemy, there is the cannibal at the enemy's side. He has been familiar to us for many a day. He encouraged the Americans when they rebelled. He piously worshipped at the shrine of Napoleon when the Corsican threatened the liberties of England. He was, and still is, ready to rejoice in public at the fall of England, which he deemed (and deems) imminent. One thing only he would not and will not do-he would not and will not by arm, voice, or pen defend his country against And those Englishmen who still do not despair of the State keep an obstinate silence. Perhaps it is their arrogance which forbids them to correct the falsehoods of ill-wishers. They refuse to make excuses, or to defend themselves against aspersion. Let the world abuse us as it will, they say. world cannot do us permanent harm, or shake our confidence in ourselves. Besides, they are not skilled in that odious business which is called " propaganda." They despise the liar so bitterly that they expose his lie with reluctance. From this reluctance they suffered in the war; from this reluctance they suffer now when peace is seven years old. They thought, with some justice, that truth would in the end overtake and conquer falsehood, and meanwhile they possessed their soul in a patience which is not always prudent. For our own part, we believe that the best way of averting the despair in which our unamiable foes would involve us is to set forth, as well as we can, the state of England, the causes of the misery which we are said to endure, and so discover what hope there is for the future. of disarming, by the sudden change from war to peace. The relief brought with it carelessness and the lust of pleasure. And what happened after Waterloo was repeated with far greater intensity when the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The bow, drawn to its limit, was suddenly relaxed. Or, to change the image, the sick man, restored suddenly to boisterous health, set no restraint upon his impulses. He clamoured for amusement, and yet refused to do the work and earn the money which should pay for it. As the profiteers, on the one hand, piled extravagance upon extravagance, so the working men shouted aloud for higher wages and less toil. The whole world seemed grossly materialised, and they who pretended that they had fought a war to end war forgot their aspirations. All they asked was that peace should be the herald of joyousness. We are suffering, like the rest of Europe, from the reaction which inevitably follows the end of a great war. If we are in a worse condition than we were after Waterloo-and our condition was bad enough then it is because the Great War, though it did not last so long as the struggle against the tyranny of Napoleon, was more closely intensive than any war in which we have ever been engaged. For the first time in our history we were practically a nation in arms. The energy of the country was devoted, wholly and solely, to the defeat of Germany, and it is not wonderful that the main current of our industry was turned into new channels. A hundred years ago, on the other hand, the normal life of the country had been but slightly disturbed, and yet the peace which followed the fall of Napoleon did not bring calm and prosperity to a troubled people. "A land," says a wise historian, "in which no year of the war passed without the building of factories, the enlargement of mines, the reclaiming of waste, the construction of piers, canals, roads, and bridges, the invention of something new in sciences applied to arts, was troubled and even streaked with blood in consequence of the great disarming." Why, then, did distress and a streak of blood come upon England after so our demagogues cried out, Waterloo By the mere act on platforms and at the street Nor can we blame those who went out to seek the primrose path. They had escaped from the nightmare of war. The nerves of many of them were shattered. They were not ready to turn from the life of the trenches to toil of another kind. They had earned a holiday, they thought, and they demanded as their right bread and the circus. And they who might have given them better counsel knew that their best chance of gathering votes was to flatter the voters. And corners, that they would give the returned soldiers houses fit for heroes to live in, when they were unable to find hovels sufficient to shelter the weary. And, as always happens after a war, authority began to decay. As in 1815, so in 1919 and onwards, our governors forgot how to rule, and the people, sensitive always to a weakening of authority, took advantage of it. There is, however, this difference between the two periods. In 1815 the government of England was in stout hands, which, if for a moment they lost hold of their task, speedily grasped it again. The head of the Government was Lord Liverpool, who has been admirably described by a historian who ne ver was a partisan. "He was a patient and discreet man," says this historian, more fit for power than many men then alive whose intellects were more brilliant. He knew how far he must defer to men of genius, and he was not too proud to learn new lessons in politics; but he betrayed no fear of orators, and he behaved as if he knew that eloquence, if it was to rule Britons, must be the outward sign of character. He courted neither the prince nor the populace. By the conscientious exercise of authority he did as much as any of his successors, and more than any of his predecessors, to make statecraft acceptable to virtuous citizens. His tenure of power lasted fourteen years without a break; it gave the nation time to choose between the more and the less trustworthy advocates of Liberal principles." Fortunate, indeed, was the nation which in a time of stress found Lord Liverpool. Fourteen years without a break! Though the superficially clever Whigs laughed at him, Liverpool was their master, as he was the master of the country. If only our amateur diplomatists, whom the ineffable President Wilson called "plain men "-destined (so he said) to contrive a better peace than was made at Vienna when they returned from Versailles had found a Minister with the force and character of Liverpool holding the reins of office, all might have been well. Alas! in 1919 England fell an easy prey to the charlatans. And let it be added that in 1815 that great man, Lord Castlereagh, stood at Liverpool's side. A statesman, fresh from the triumph of the peace, he, too, was not afraid to exert his authority. The passing of the famous Six Acts proved that the Government was resolved to preserve order, and their effect was salutary and immediate. For heroic measures such as these our Ministers had not the stomach. They wavered and were lost. With the hope of ease for themselves, they let everybody do as he liked. Unable to construct the better life which they had promised-how should politicians construct it-they renounced authority, took away |