When it becomes an art, every
one wants to look at it. When it was frivolous it may have won Waterloo:
when it was serious and efficient it lost Magersfontein.
In the Waterloo period there was a general rough-and-tumble athleticism
among average Englishmen. It cannot be re-created by cricket, or by
conscription, or by any artificial means. It was a thing of the soul. It
came out of laughter, religion, and the spirit of the place. But it was
like the modern French duel in this--that it might happen to anybody. If
I were a French journalist it might really happen that Monsieur
Clemenceau might challenge me to meet him with pistols. But I do not
think that it is at all likely that Mr. C. B. Fry will ever challenge me
to meet him with cricket-bats.
AN ESSAY ON TWO CITIES.
A little while ago I fell out of England into the town of Paris. If a
man fell out of the moon into the town of Paris he would know that it
was the capital of a great nation. If, however, he fell (perhaps off
some other side of the moon) so as to hit the city of London, he would
not know so well that it was the capital of a great nation; at any rate,
he would not know that the nation was so great as it is.
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