We English

Extract

It is rather a tragic moment when a man suddenly discovers that he is disliked by all his neighbours, particularly tragic if he happens to have been under the impression that to his own terrible cost and undoing he has gone out of his way to help them. To be denounced as greedy when you have emptied your pockets to finance those who now cry out against you, or accused of being selfish when at the risk of his life you have sent your boy to save your accusers, or to be called a tyrant by the people who have learnt from your teaching all they know of freedom, is heartrendingly tragic. It is the tragedy of England to-day.

There certainly is no good denying it. We are at the present moment the nation most disliked by foreign politicians and the Press, not least among our late allies. Perhaps our enemies alone have any sympathy with us, any respect, any understanding of our difficulties or of our ideals. But this only bewilders us the more. To judge from what is said of us in France and Belgium and the United States and even in Italy, one might suppose we had spent the last seven years in bullying the world. All our sacrifices are forgotten. The pretty compliments paid us when we were rather better off, and, at some loss to our family-circles, were standing by our neighbours in their peril, are shouted back to us now only in derision.