He took a
proprietary interest in the British Empire, and paid a munificent
salary to the Army and Navy for looking after it. There his Imperial
responsibilities ceased. As for other nations, he recognized their
existence; but that was all. In their daily life, or national ideals,
or habit of mind, he took not the slightest interest, and said so,
especially to foreigners.
"I'm English," he would explain, with a certain proud humility.
"That's good enough for yours truly!"
This sort of thing rather perplexed the American people, who take a
keen and intelligent interest in the affairs of other nations.
But to-day the average Briton would not speak like that. He will never
speak like that again. He has been outside his own island: he has made
a number of new acquaintances. He has been fighting alongside of the
French, and has made the discovery that they do not subsist entirely
upon frogs. He has encountered real Germans, at sufficiently close
quarters to realize that the "German Menace" at which his party
leaders encouraged him to scoff in a bygone age was no such phantom
after all.
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