It could be easy to fence with you for ever and parry every point you attempt to make, until English people began to think there was nothing wrong with England at all.

But I refuse to play for safety in this way.

There is a very great deal that is really wrong with England, and it ought not to be forgotten even in the full blaze of your marvellous mistakes.

I cannot have my countrymen tempted to those pleasures of intellectual pride which are the result of comparing themselves with you.

The deep collapse and yawning chasm of your ineptitude leaves me upon a perilous spiritual elevation.