68 



What an odd convention it is, when one 

 thinks of it, that habit of embodying a country 

 in an individual ! Considered seriously the whole 

 contention is absurd. To talk of a nation as 

 a person is to talk sheer nonsense. If one 

 handles the idea a little it tumbles to pieces in 

 one's fingers. The fiction of unity resolves 

 itself into a mere vortex of atoms, all moving in 

 different ways, and moreover with a different 

 general drift in each successive generation. As 

 a matter of fact I doubt whether Englishmen, 

 who are nothing if not practical, ever do think 

 of their own country as an individual, unless 

 one of them happens to be called upon to design 

 a coin or a cartoon. The whole idea is extra- 

 neous, a survival from classical days, and the 

 lumbering absurdities which are now and then 

 dragged about the streets only go to prove how 

 far from the genius of the people such repre- 

 sentations really are. 



Perhaps it is because I am not English that 

 I find myself falling so readily into the trick. 

 There was a time, not a very recent one 

 when I thought of England habitually in that 

 light, and in the most truculent fashion possible. 

 In my eyes she stood visibly out as the Great 

 Bully, the Supreme Tyrant, red with the blood 

 of Ireland and Irish heroes. It was always 

 she and her then ; indeed it was only by keeping 

 up the fiction of an incarnate Saxondom that 



