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The italics are ours, and they speak for themselves. Even to-day men and women assemble, in thousands, in Trafalgar Square in London to do honour to a statue of stone that stands there; they illuminate the whole neighbourhood; they place garlands of flowers on the object of their adoration. Is it idolatry they practise? Are they idolators? No, no, such a thing is simply impossible; no one can accuse the English of idolatry ! It is not worshipping the block of stone; they ask rothing from it; they offer it no food, nor do they pray to it. If you look more closely into their 'statue-worship you will find it to be the adoration of a something of which the figure is a symbol. It is not the statue of Nelson they assemble to worship, but the spirit of the brave man, the fearless sailor, who made England what she is to-day--the acknowledged Queen of the Seas The English are a nation of sailors; take away their sea-power, and they are gone. But for the glorious achievements of the British Navy, England would have been overrun by Germany to-day. The English know it, and pour forth, spontaneously, almost unconsciously, the warmest devotion of their free hearts on the one being who saved them from utter ruin in the past. But if Nelson himself was able to save England from destruction once, his inspiration has been her salvation not once, not twice, but repeatedly. The great sailor is now dead; he may no longer command the fleet of England in the hour of danger; he may win no more laurels for himself of victories
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