love of country is general to mankind, yet is not the love of country a general thing to be described by a general title. love changes with the object of love. the country loved determines the nature of its services.
the love of england has in it the love of landscape, as has the love of no other country: it has in it as has the love of no other country, the love of friends. less than the love of other countries has it in it the love of what may be fixed in a phrase or well set down in words. it lacks, alas, the love of some interminable past nor does it draw its liveliness from any great succession of centuries. say that ten centuries made a soil, and that in that soil four centuries more produced a tree, and that that tree was england, then you will know to what the love of england is in most men directed. for most[pg 220] men who love england know so little of her first thousand years that when they hear the echoes of them or see visions of them, they think they are dealing with a foreign thing. all englishmen are clean cut off from their long past which ended when the last mass was sung at westminster.
the love of england has in it no true plains but fens, low hills, and distant mountains. no very ancient towns, but comfortable, small and ordered ones, which love to dress themselves with age. the love of england concerns itself with trees. accident has given to the lovers of england no long pageantry of battle. nature has given englishmen an appetite for battle, and between the two men who love england make a legend for themselves of wars unfought, and of arms permanently successful; though arms were they thus always successful would not be arms at all.
the greatness of the english soul is best discovered in that strong rebuke of excesses, principally of excess in ignorance, which a[pg 221] minority of englishmen perpetually express, but which has not sufficed as yet to save the future of england. in no other land will you so readily discover critics of that land ready to bear all for their right to doubt the common policy; but though you will nowhere discover such men so readily, nowhere will you discover them so impotent or so few.
the love of england breeds in those who cherish it an attachment to institutions which is half reverential, but also half despairing. in its reverence this appetite produces one hundred living streams of action and of vesture and of custom. in its despair, in its refusal to consider upon what theory the institution lies, it permits the institution to sterilise with age and to grow fantastic.
the love of england has never destroyed, but at times, and again at closer and at closer times (while we have lived) it has failed to save. yet it will save england in the end. men are more bound together by this music in their souls than by any other, wherever england is[pg 222] or is spoken of by englishmen. here you may discover what religion has been to many, and also you may discover here how legend and how epics arise. in men cut off from england, the love of england grows into a set repetitive thing, a thing of peculiar strength yet almost barren. nourished and exampled by england, flourishing upon the field of england, the love of england is a love of the very earth: of the smell of growing things and of certain skies, and of tides in river-mouths, and of belts of sea.
if a man would understand this great thing england which is now in peril and which has so worked throughout the world, he must not consider the accident of england's success and failure, nor certain empty lands filled without battle, nor others ruined by folly, nor certain arts singularly discovered and perfected by england, nor other arts as singularly neglected and decayed. nor must he contrast the passionate love of england with some high religion of which it takes the place, nor with some active[pg 223] work in contrast with which it seems so empty and unproducing a thing. he must not set it against a creed (it is not so high as that), nor against a conquest or a true empire such as spain and rome possessed.
if a man would understand the love of england he must do what hardly any one would dare to do: that is, he must clearly envisage england defeated in a final war and ask himself, "what should i do then?"
