The thing is too vast, it is
too important, to be achieved in a day, or in a generation. But it
will come--it will come; it must come--it must come; Asia and Europe
may become Chinese or Cossack, but our people shall rule over every
other land, and all the islands, and every sea.
II.-THE LAND OF REALITY
When a man has received kindnesses unexpected and recognition unlooked
for from strangers and people in a foreign country on whom he had no
kind of claim, it seems a mean and pitiful thing in that man to sit
down in cold blood and pick out the faults and imperfections, if he
can descry any, in that country. The 'cad with a kodak'--where did I
find that happy collocation?--is to be found everywhere; that is quite
certain; every traveller, as is well known, feels himself justified
after six weeks of a country to sit in judgment upon that country and
its institutions, its manners, its customs and its society; he
constitutes himself an authority upon that country for the rest of his
life. Do we not know the man who 'has been there'? Lord Palmerston
knew him. 'Beware,' he used to say, 'of the man who has been there!'
As Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs he was privileged to make
quite a circle of acquaintance with the men who 'had been there'; and
he estimated their experience at its true value.
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