HUNGARY: A LAND OF SHEPHERD KINGS 





it is made to fit the criminal. The ille- 

 gitimate child, which in England bears 

 a brand a little more shameful than that 

 of Cain, is here treated as an ordinary 

 citizen, on the very sound principle that 

 if the child is responsible for the sin of 

 his birth the responsibility of the High 

 Gods must be unbearable. 



Throughout the length and breadth of 

 this fair land there is no rabbit warren 

 to compare with the insanitary areas of 

 London or New York. There is neither 

 squalor nor drunkenness like to that in 

 Anglo-Saxon communities. The child 

 which goes barefoot does so of his own 

 free will. The man who goes in rags 

 may do so for a freak wager, but never 



of necessity. It may be that the people 

 are few on the ground and competition 

 not so terribly keen, but it is a good 

 people, and the poor help the poor. 



For his courtesy to the stranger and 

 his goodness to his own ; for his lordly 

 hospitality ; for his vivacity and simple 

 faith in the ultimate ; for his unconquer- 

 able spirit and scorn of the wrong, and 

 for all the qualities of heart and nerve 

 which have helped to preserve his heri- 

 tage for himself, and himself for his 

 sturdy children, God bless this true son 

 of a lion breed wherever he be, and smile 

 upon his golden fields and rolling mead- 

 ows, and the little saint which, day and 

 night, guards his crops. 



THE OLDEST NATION OF EUROPE 



Geographical Factors in the Strength of Modern England 



By Roland G. Usher 



Professor of History, Washington University 



UNLESS some military genius of 

 the first order should appear on 

 the one side or the other or some 

 terrible blunder be committed, the out- 

 come of the present war may depend 

 more upon the relative strength of the 

 States involved than upon the deeds of 

 their armies. Conceivably, even the abil- 

 ity to keep armies in the field may be 

 determined by forces not military at all 

 and possibly not at this moment related 

 to the general issue of the war. 



Certain European writers have pro- 

 duced so formidable a series of state- 

 ments which lead, as they insist, to the 

 conclusion that England is not only deca- 

 dent at present, but never has been 

 strong, that it may be worth while to 

 examine at some length the general prem- 

 ises of English history and geography. 



The general contention of these writers 

 is that England is strong because of her 

 fleet, because of her colonies and de- 

 pendencies, rather than because of fac- 

 tors inherent in her situation. They look 

 at the obvious facts, which, of course, 

 are not to be denied, that England is, in 



total area, much smaller than the other 

 Great Powers ; that the proportion of 

 arable land in England is smaller than it 

 is in France or Germany ; that its fer- 

 tility is less than that of the average land 

 in the two latter. From her own re- 

 sources, therefore, England should not 

 be able to support anything like as large 

 a population as easily as other nations 

 should. 



In the long run everything goes back 

 to the land, and certain schools of econo- 

 mists have insisted that the normal, nat- 

 ural strength of a nation should roughly 

 approximate its natural resources. The 

 fact that England, with proportionately 

 less natural resources, has for a century 

 or more supported a large population in 

 relatively greater comfort with relatively 

 greater ease than other nations have 

 demonstrates to many that England must 

 be an artificial, and therefore vulnerable, 

 structure. 



In such statements there is so much 

 that is true and so much more that is 

 specious that the conclusion drawn from 

 them is only too likely to seem inevitable 



