That This Should Occur In The
French Journals Is Not Unnatural, Since Our History Has Been
Largely A Contest With That Power, And We Can Regard With
Complacency An Enmity Which Is The Tribute To Our Success.
Russia,
too, as the least progressive of European States, has a natural
antagonism of thought, if not of interests, to the Power which
stands most prominently for individual freedom and liberal
institutions.
The same poor excuse may be made for the organs of
the Vatican. But what are we to say of the insensate railing of
Germany, a country whose ally we have been for centuries? In the
days of Marlborough, in the darkest hours of Frederick the Great,
in the great world struggle of Napoleon, we have been the
brothers-in-arms of these people. So with the Austrians also. If
both these countries were not finally swept from the map by
Napoleon, it is largely to British subsidies and British tenacity
that they owe it. And yet these are the folk who turned most
bitterly against us at the only time in modern history when we had
a chance of distinguishing our friends from our foes. Never again,
I trust, on any pretext will a British guinea be spent or a British
soldier or sailor shed his blood for such allies. The political
lesson of this writer has been that we should make ourselves strong
within the empire, and let all outside it, save only our kinsmen of
America, go their own way and meet their own fate without let or
hindrance from us.
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