life was to be conducted on the same principles, for the very purpose
of enabling them to live as members of a free nation. If the self-
will of the individual was curbed, now and then, needlessly--as it is
the nature of all human methods to caricature themselves at times--
the purpose was, not to weaken the man, but to strengthen him by
strengthening the body to which he belonged. The nation was to be
free, self-helping, self-containing, unconquerable; to that great
purpose the will, the fancy--even, if need be, the mortal life of the
individual, must give way. Men must be trained at all costs in self-
restraint, because only so could they become heroes in the day of
danger; in self-sacrifice for the common good, because only so would
they remain united, while foreign nations and evil home influences
were trying to tear them asunder. In a word, their conception of
life was as a warfare; their organisation that of a regiment. It is
a question whether the conception of corporate life embodied in a
regiment or army be not, after all, the best working one for this
world. At least the problem of a perfect society, howsoever
beautiful on paper, will always issue in a compromise, more or less
perfect--let us hope more and more perfect as the centuries roll on--
between the strictness of military discipline and the Irishman's
laissez-faire ideal, wherein 'every man should do that which was
right in the sight of his own eyes, and wrong too, if he liked.' At
least, such had England been for centuries; under such a system had
she thriven; a fact which, duly considered, should silence somewhat
those gentlemen who, not being of a military turn themselves, inform
Europe so patriotically and so prudently that 'England is not a
military nation.'

From this dogma we beg leave to differ utterly. Britain is at this
moment, in our eyes, the only military nation in Europe. All other