A REJOINDER 187 



suggests an attitude of mind which persists in in- 

 dulging in futile hopes at any price. " To live in 

 hope though we die in despair " may be good counsel 

 to those for whom life has in store nothing more solid 

 than aspirations which remain unfulfilled, but it is 

 neither science nor sound counsel to a nation that has 

 forgotten all that was good in its religion and has 

 ignored the best of its traditions. We cannot rest a 

 nation's destiny upon a metaphysician's " may " ; 

 but only upon Nature's " is," 



But though, for the sake of argument, we may 

 grant the possibility of her hope, and suppose that 

 on a given day in the life of a youth born of hooligan 

 parentage with a similar grandparentage behind it, 

 there may arise a spontaneous and burning desire to 

 become washed with hyssop and to become changed into 

 a saintly citizen, at somebody else's expense, and that 

 he only awaits the coming of the right environment 

 created around him by the national grandmother and 

 her retinue of State officials, how futile is this meta- 

 physical abstraction compared to the mundane and 

 concrete biological fact that given an organism with 

 right inherent desires, the right thing will be done, 

 even under the most adverse environment. Is it not 

 better to have the noble man unscathed and un- 

 scathable by the fires of temptation than to endeavour 

 to render indestructible that which is incapable of 

 transformation ? I commend to Miss Wodehouse 

 two names that must be ever honoured by those who 

 admire dauntless and brave characters — George 

 Stephenson and Captain Cook. They achieved their 



