98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and symptom — a sign of racial inadequacy, a cause of further enfeeble- 

 ment and an effect of unjust and injurious social, political and indus- 

 trial conditions in the past. 



But the problem before us is not the problem of the slums. What 

 mark has been left on England by her great struggles for freedom and 

 by the thousand petty struggles to impose on the world the semblance 

 of order called " Pax Britannica," the British peace ? 



To one who travels widely through the counties of England some 

 part of the cost is plain. 



There's a widow in sleepy Chester 



Who mourns for her only son; 

 There's a grave by the Pabeng River — 



A grave which the Burmans shun. 



This is a condition repeated in every village of England, and its 

 history is recorded on the walls of every parish church. Everywhere 

 can be seen tablets in memory of young men — gentlemen's sons from 

 Eton and Rugby and Winchester and Harrow, scholars from Oxford 

 and Cambridge, who have given up their lives in some far-off petty 

 war. Their bodies rest in Zululand, in Cambodia, in the Gold Coast, 

 in the Transvaal. In England only they are remembered. In the 

 parish churches these records are numbered by the score. In the cathe- 

 drals they are recorded by the thousand. Go from one cathedral town 

 to another — Canterbury, Winchester, Chichester, Exeter, Salisbury, 

 Wells, Ely, York, Lincoln, Durham, Litchfield, Chester (whsit a won- 

 derful series of pictures this list of names calls up!), and you will find 

 always the same story, the same sad array of memorials to young men. 

 What would be the effect on England if all of these " unreturning 

 brave " and all that sliould have been their descendants could be num- 

 bered among her sons to-day? Doubtless not all of these were young 

 men of character. Doubtless not all are worthy even of the scant glory 

 of a memorial tablet. But most of them were worthy. Most of them 

 were brave and true, and most of them looked out on life with " frank 

 blue Briton eyes." 



This too we may admit, that war is not the only destructive agency 

 in modem society, and that in the struggle for existence the England 

 of to-day has had many advantages which must hide or neutralize the 

 waste of war. 



It suggests the inevitable end of all empire, of all dominion of man 

 over man by force of arms. More than all who fall in battle or are 

 wasted in the camps, tiie nation misses the "fair women and brave 

 men" who should have been the descendants of the strong and the 

 manly. If we may personify the spirit of the nation, it grieves most 

 not over its "unreturning brave," but over those who might have been 

 but never were, and who, so long as history lasts, can never be. 



