And I really do not see why poor Mr. Asquith should be
represented as having violated the Christian virtue of mercy by saying
that. I myself could compose a great many paragraphs upon the same model,
each containing its stinging and perhaps unscrupulous epigram. As, for
example:--"The Archbishop of Canterbury, realising that his choice now lay
between denying God and earning the crown of martyrdom by dying in
torments, spoke with a frenzy of religious passion that might have seemed
fanatical under circumstances less intense. 'The Children's Service,' he
said firmly, with his face to the congregation, 'will be held at half-past
four this afternoon as usual.'"
Or, we might have:--"Lord Roberts, recognising that he had now to face
Armageddon, and that if he lost this last battle against overwhelming odds
the independence of England would be extinguished forever, addressed to
his soldiers (looking at them and not falling off his horse) a speech
which brought their national passions to boiling point, and might well
have seemed blood-thirsty in quieter times. It ended with the celebrated
declaration that it was a fine day."
Or we might have the much greater excitement of reading something like
this:--"The Astronomer Royal, having realised that the earth would
certainly be smashed to pieces by a comet unless his requests in
connection with wireless telegraphy were seriously considered, gave an
address at the Royal Society which, under other circumstances, would have
seemed unduly dogmatic and emotional and deficient in scientific
agnosticism.
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