One does not have to be a soldier, charging "over the top," to deserve the badge of Distinguished Service. The "top" may not be swept by bullets from machine guns, but by bullets of a very different kind. It was a soldier who once said of William Pitt that no man ever entered his private conference room who did not feel himself braver when he came out than when he went in.

Such a life of heroic service to justice and freedom was lived by Edmund Burke, friend of America in the Revolutionary period. He was born in Dublin in 1729. His father sent him, after he had completed a college course, to London to study law, but he spent more time in reading literature and history, in attending debating clubs and the theaters, and in travel, than he spent on his legal studies. So his father stopped his allowance, and the young Edmund went to writing for a living.

Some of his writings attracted the attention of the editors of the Annual Register, a summary of important events, and to this publication Burke contributed for many years. He became a member of the famous Literary Club, to which Dr. Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith belonged, as well as Garrick, the great actor, and Reynolds, the famous artist.

In 1766, Burke entered Parliament. He won immediate fame for his speech against the Stamp Act, and then began his long opposition to the policy of George III. He made many speeches on American affairs, in all of which he sought to secure for America a treatment based on justice and a spirit of conciliation.

The heroism of Burke comes out in the fact that though by compromise he might have had the highest positions,

he preferred a course that was unpopular rather than to give up his principles. What is more, he knew that he had no chance of getting Parliament to adopt his policy. As we have seen, the "King's Friends" controlled the government absolutely. To fight on for the right, though he knew right could not conquer, was his task.

Some of Burke's ideas are of great value today. The two great ends of all political dealing, he thought, are Justice and Freedom. It was because the course taken by the king in dealing with the Americans was unjust to men who were descendants of Englishmen, and because the overthrow of the freedom of Englishmen in America would lead to the overthrow of Englishmen at home, that he fought, against odds, with small hope of success, year after year.

In March, 1775, a little more than three months before the American Declaration of Independence, the British House of Commons was the scene of an event full of meaning for America and the world. Lord North's bill, limiting the commerce of the Colonies and forbidding the New England fishermen from carrying on their work, was up for consideration. This act, called the Grand Penal Bill, would, if passed, reduce New England to beggary.

That the act would be passed, all men knew. Nevertheless, Burke spoke in behalf of Conciliation with the American colonies, in behalf of Justice and Freedom.

Three principles on which this speech rests are full of significance for us today.

The first is his belief that government should be based on "plain good intention." "Plain good intention,” he

says, "which is as easily discovered at the first view, as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle."

The course of autocratic government is never marked by "plain good intention." It was not so in George III's dealings with America. It has not been so in Germany's dealings with the world. For it, Germany has substituted intrigue, plots to get Mexico and Japan to attack the United States, plots to overthrow the South American republics, plots against the government of the United States even when she was at peace with us. The same intrigue and secret plotting came out in the revelations of the German ambassador who was in London before the war broke out. To such a government a treaty is but a "scrap of paper"; hence the treatment of Belgium by Germany. But all these secret treaties by which nations are compelled to go to war at the will of a few military despots, this method of intrigue, of spies, of secret propaganda, will be done away with when this war is over. Burke's principle of "plain good intention," of friendly desire to help others and to play a fair game, will take its place, to be a "healing and cementing principle" in the world.

The second principle is that a people, or a nation, has a right to determine for itself its form of government and its ideals of liberty. George III and his ministry knew little and cared less about what the Americans wanted. But Burke devoted much of his time to explaining the temper and character of the American people, and his conclusion was that England must comply with this spirit, not seek to break it. Here was a great population, used to self-govern

ment, which the British authorities thought they could handle as they desired.

So Germany today thinks that the Poles, or the Belgians, or the many different peoples in eastern and southeatern Europe can be bought and sold, placed under one king or another, attached to one empire or another, without regard for the feelings and ideals of the peoples. But peoples are not like boxes of merchandise to be shipped here and there. They have a right to "self-determination."

The Colonies, Burke thought, were a part of the English nation, not dependencies; they must be treated as Englishmen. Here is the third idea that concerns us today. Burke laid stress on the fact that the Colonies were not only founded by Englishmen, having English love of liberty, but that they left England when that passion for liberty was at white heat. Liberty, Burke said, always attaches itself to some one real object. To an Englishman taxation is the test. To be taxed without being represented, to an Englishman, is tyranny. Thus Burke pointed out the very thing that was driving the Americans to separation from the mother country, and he said, boldly and manfully, in the presence of Lord North and all the "King's Friends," that the Americans were right.

Now, after all the years, we see the full significance of Burke's argument about the relations between Americans. and Englishmen.

First, the Revolution was not fought against the English nation, but against the government that was then in power. It was a part of the long struggle for free government that had been going on in England for centuries. Second, Americans are related to England not only by

descent but through their institutions. The political ideals of the two peoples are the same. Pitt and Burke hoped that the differences between the Colonies and the British government might be settled and that no separation would take place. Their work was unavailing. But the spiritual unity that both men saw and valued has become a great and inspiring fact today. Many years ago John Richard Green, writing about the American Revolution, foresaw this day and wrote of its significance. And Alfred Tennyson has put into a single short poem this whole story of how the spirit of liberty in England and America grew through two centuries.

ENGLAND AND AMERICA NATURAL ALLIES

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Whatever might be the importance of American independence in the history of England, it was of unequalled moment in the history of the world. If it crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. From the hour of American Independence the life of the English people has flowed not in one current, but in two; and while the older has shown little signs of lessening, the younger has fast risen to a greatness which has changed the face of the world. In 1783 America was a nation of three millions of inhabitants, scattered thinly along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It is now [1877] a nation of forty millions, stretching over the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific.