The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-09-27

Us the retrospect is wholly satisfactory
 The conditions have been, of all imaginable conditions, perhaps the least favorable to a god moral effect. It has been very long and a very expensive contest, and upon vital issue. But it has not given us the inspiration that
 we should have derived from really great war aginst another first-class Power, with our existence at stake We have always felt that the Boer was a preposterously little fellow, and that the work of crushing him. though it
 would have been madness to shrink from it, was not in itself an essentially pleasant or heroic thing to carry through. What has been the upshot? There is no doubt--there can hardly be a doubt, even in the minds of those, like MT. Morley, who hate all wars and this one most-that England is measurably
 better for her experience. She is on the whole, more sober, more earnest, less tolerant of shams. and more anxious for improvement. But she realizes as she never had done before, the almost hopeless inertia of her pres- ent political system; and it remains, uri- fortunately, very questionable as to wether she has sufficient clearness and
 persistency of, purpose to compel any searching change. The test applied by the war to national character has, therefore, had two broadly contrasted results. It has shown some of our characteristics to be even better than we could have expected, and others to be rather worse than we had feared. In a word, England has indeed found her. self, and she has also found herself out.
 For the passive qualities displayed by the nation as aw hole hardly any praise could be excessive. Englishmen under the actual stress of a. crisis are still the calnest and most discerning of races. They are far less fertile and ingenious in resources than Frenchmen, but far more likely to do the simply right thing. They are far less educated than Germans and yet they are more reason able. far less logical but saner, far less open to ideas but infinitely more inn pervious to sophistry. We express a right feeling when we say we have not degenrated. But let us face the con- verse of that proposition, which is that we have not progressed. America in developing every day thousand fresh forms of energy and inventiveness. Germany In single generation has de- veloped in spite of militarism and pro- lection manufacturing activity which is almost as extensive as our own. The nation of n1etaphysicians and musicians has surpassed us in the technique of in- dustry, and the greatest military people is deeply advanced in the work of creat- ing for itself a wholly fresh form of na- tional power in the shape of fleet, much more compactly organized and rather more competently managed, than our own. In the case both of the Ger man Empire and the United States there has been an immense progress in their position relatively to ours. The experiences of the war ought to have satisfied us that if we have not degen- erated absolutely, we have not develop ed, and, what is far more serious, that we show more alarming symptoms of losing the power to develop than have appeared as any previous period of our history.
 What may be said of our passive qualities after the war cannot be said of our active. If we are to measure by the extent of our preoccupation with the things of the mind and the things of the spirit then the war has shown that in the last half century there has been a great retrogression Physical exercise has become our religion. Dis belief in every sort of earnestness has become our special form Of inffdelity. There is no fanaticism among us, but