Above and beyond these
personal considerations was a real sense of England's duty to the man who
was weaving the destiny of a new land.
"It isn't England's business?" he retorted, in answer to an interjection
from a faithful soul behind the ministerial Front Bench. "Well, it wasn't
the business of the Good Samaritan to help the man that had been robbed
and left for dead by the wayside; but he did it. As to David Claridge's
work, some have said that--I've no doubt it's been said in the Cabinet,
and it is the thing the Under-Secretary would say as naturally as he
would flick a fly from his boots--that it's a generation too soon. Who
knows that? I suppose there was those that thought John the Baptist was
baptising too soon, that Luther preached too soon, and Savonarola was in
too great a hurry, all because he met his death and his enemies
triumphed--and Galileo and Hampden and Cromwell and John Howard were all
too soon. Who's to be judge of that? God Almighty puts it into some men's
minds to work for a thing that's a great, and maybe an impossible, thing,
so far as the success of the moment is concerned.
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