As a rule men of letters of all degrees abstain from intruding conspicuously on the field of politics. But every now and then a band of them, or an individual, feels impelled to expression, and the expression is more noticed by virtue of its rarity. Mon âne parle! exclaims the public, like the prophet, but it seldom adds, et même il parle bien. The literary recluse is not often on the popular side: when he shouts, it is generally ‘with the smaller mob.’ So he is, of course, in the wrong. In fact, the student is in a dilemma. If he abstains wholly from political expression, he is regarded as a contemptuous dilettante. If he speaks out, he is marked as an unpractical person, labelled a ‘faddist,’ and advised to return to his crucibles, his dictionaries, his metaphysics, or other wares. The only exception is made when he shouts, or, like Mr. Kipling and other poets, sings on the popular side.

Though I labour under these disabilities myself, I do not think them unnatural or entirely unjust. Other men – say, solicitors, barristers, doctors and the clergy – are in daily and close touch with active human beings. Our ‘days among the dead are past’ from them, and from historical precedents, we partly draw our opinions of current affairs. We come to conclusions based on analogies, and no analogy can ever be a perfect fit, or, at least, the perfection of the fit will not be admitted by opponents, Thus, for example, one may feel (to put it in the least annoying way) that if we sympathise with Scottish, Swiss, Italian, Dutch and Polish thirst for national Independence, there may, perhaps, be something to be said for the motives of the Boers. Am I dreaming, or did not Mr. Gladstone himself once express sympathy with the Soudanese and their struggles to be free?

The student, who has heard his fellow-countrymen applaud the Greeks, the Hungarians, William Tell, Kosciusko, and the rest, finds that Independence is very well, but not if it is Independence of England. We are to wish well to Finns and Armenians, but not to any race which opposes itself to us.