Saki

“ There’s the British Empire beyond the seas; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa.”
He rolled the names round his tongue with obvious relish.
“If it was a list of first-class battleships, and armoured cruisers and destroyers and airships that you were reeling off, there would be some comfort and hope in the situation,” said Yeovil; “the loyalty of the colonies is a splendid thing, but it is only pathetically splendid because it can do so little to recover for us what we’ve lost. ”

“ Yeovil privately doubted if he ever heard anything but his own opinions.
“It stands to reason,” continued the fisherman, “that a highly civilised race like ours, with the record that we’ve had for leading the whole world, is not going to be held under for long by a lot of damned sausage-eating Germans. Don’t you believe it! I know what I’m talking about. I’ve travelled about the world a bit.”
Yeovil shrewdly suspected that the world travels amounted to nothing more than a trip to the United States and perhaps the Channel Islands, with, possibly, a week or fortnight in Paris. ”

“ Yeovil gave a grunt of acquiescence.
“They grew soft in their political ideas,” continued the unsparing critic; “for the old insular belief that all foreigners were devils and rogues they substituted another belief, equally grounded on insular lack of knowledge, that most foreigners were amiable, good fellows, who only needed to be talked to and patted on the back to become your friends and benefactors. ”

“ That sort of thing is done once in a generation, not twice. Who is going to protect Australia or New Zealand while they enlarge their dockyards and hangars and build their dreadnoughts and their airships?”
“Here’s my station and I’m not sorry,” said the fisherman, gathering his tackle together and rising to depart; “I’ve listened to you long enough. You and me wouldn’t agree, not if we was to talk all day. Fact is, I’m an out-and-out patriot and you’re only a half-hearted one. That’s what you are, half-hearted.” ”

“ Austrians, Roumanians, Serbs, Italians, Czechs, we know what they think of us, and we know what to think of them, we know what we want in the world, and we know what they want; that knowledge does not send us flying at each other’s throats, but it does keep us from growing soft. ”

“ They had seen, in one generation, the rise of the military and naval power of the Japanese, a brown-skinned race living in some island rice fields in a tropical sea, a people one thought of in connection with paper fans and flowers and pretty tea-gardens, who suddenly marched and sailed into the world’s gaze as a Great Power ”

“ I don’t imagine that they are going to give us an easy chance to push them out. To do that we shall have to be a little cleverer than they are, a little harder, a little fiercer, and a good deal more self-sacrificing than we have been in my lifetime or in yours. ”

“ They’re only waiting to enlarge their dockyard accommodation and get the right class of artificers and engineers and workmen together. The money will be forthcoming somehow, and they’ll start in and build.”
“And do you suppose,” asked Yeovil in slow bitter contempt, “that the victorious nation is going to sit and watch and wait till the defeated foe has created a new war fleet, big enough to drive it from the seas? ”

“ They were tired of their faith, but they were not virile enough to become real Pagans; their dancing fauns were good young men who tripped Morris dances and ate health foods and believed in a sort of Socialism which made for the greatest dulness of the greatest number. ”