The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-02-19
ENGLAND IN SACKCLOTH.
The Beers Successes Cause Much
Searching of British Hearts, and Re-

The Beers Successes Cause Much
Searching of British Hearts, and Re.
solves for Amendment.
| The greatest blessing of the war is its
complete and damning exposure of oul
national weaknesses. In every depart
ment of public life our methods are out
of date We feast on words and trade
upon tradition. We are ready to in
dulge at any moment in an orgy Of rhet-
ORIG upon "the glories of our birth and
state" until in the very absence Of any
practical efforts to enhance or maintain
them, they threaten, in the words of the
old poet, to become shadows, not sub
stantal things" We forget that
though the camel may exist for a perl
Cd upon it's own hump, the process can
not last forever We have been like the
Brahmins in our pride, and Mandarins
in our methods, and that is a bad COM
bination. Sir John Seeley has taught us
that we won our empire in a fit of alb
sence of mind, and we are only begin
ming to realize that we shall require a
very constant and active presence of
mind if we are to preserve it. We have
rejected the tenets of the Manchester
School, and adopted the principles of
imperialism; but we have never made
an effort to replace the old political ma
chinery of a little England by prac-
teal organization equal to the main
tenance of real imperial system. In
one respect we have never shaken off
the most fatal delusion of the Bright
and Golden period, when nations were
regarded of a pacific cooperative socie-
ty lending it's harmonious energies more
and more to the work of universal pro-
vision. A state of things in which the
energies of rival nations would be bent
upon the effort to sell the same thing to
the same customers seems never to have
entered into the prophetic soul of the
Manchester School to which we owe
most of the political mischief that we
are forced to remedy to-day.
We ourselves have taught other ma
tons very different philosophy, and
we have given no more frequet phrase
to the current political discussion of
every country in Europe than this, "the
struggle for life" 1t is the root of the
whole evil that, while every nation is
alive to that memorable law, we have
regarded ourselves as possessing some
rightful and secure monopoly of the
oldest and most profitable department
in the universal cooperative society
While other nations are exerting every
faculty and straining every fibre to car
nv off the prizes Of politics and COM
merce, and, ceaselessly seeking to per-
feet the equipment with which they
strive for success in the competition of
peoples, we have complacently gathered
idle flesh We have relaxed our efforts,
lost our initiative, fattered our own
superiority instead of observing the
marvellous progress of our neighbors,
and we have abandoned ourselves to
the deadly decisions of a vain and lazy
fatalism We have the greatest empire
in the world, with the shadow or the
vestige of imperial institutions in poll
tics We have House of Commons
which ought to be the powerful heart of
national life, but it is divided into two
parts, which think more of preying up
on each other than of promoting a
healthy circulation in the body polite.
We have a commerce, the greatest and
the most cosmopolitan in the world, but
admittedly less progressive by far than
the trade of America or Germany or
Belgium or Japan.
Our educational system is a byword
for confusion, and is carried on without
the slightest effort to direct it with