Respected institutions and reputations did indeed waver and collapse on many sides: though the chief of the states replied worthily to a bribe from the foreign bully, many other politicians were sufficiently wild and weak, though doubtless patriotic in intention.

One was set to restrain the journalists, and had to be restrained himself, for being more sensational than any of them.

Another scolded the working-classes in the style of an intoxicated temperance lecturer.

But England was saved by a forgotten thing--the English.

Simple men with simple motives, the chief one a hate of injustice which grows simpler the longer we stare at it, came out of their dreary tenements and their tidy shops, their fields and their suburbs and their factories and their rookeries, and asked for the arms of men.