just sufficiently evolved to show that they were not Teutons. Probably they
will say both. But the truth is that all that they call evolution should
rather be called evasion. They tell us they are opening windows of
enlightenment and doors of progress. The truth is that they are breaking up
the whole house of the human intellect, that they may abscond in any
direction. There is an ominous and almost monstrous parallel between the
position of their over-rated philosophers and of their comparatively
under-rated soldiers. For what their professors call roads of progress are
really routes of escape.



LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN


Italy, twice hast thou spoken; and time is athirst
for the third.
--SWINBURNE.


My Dear ------

It is a long time since we met; and I fear these letters may never reach
you. But in these violent times I remember with a curious vividness how you
brandished a paintbrush about your easel when I was a boy; and how it
thrilled me to think that you had so brandished a bayonet against the
Teutons--I hope with the same precision and happy results. Round about
that period, the very pigments seemed to have some sort of picturesque
connection with your national story. There seemed to be something gorgeous
and terrible about Venetian Red; and something quite catastrophic about