"
"Doesn't there come a time in the history of most families,"
Lorne replied, "when the old folks look to the sons and
daughters to keep them in touch with the times? Why
shouldn't a vigorous policy of Empire be conceived by
its younger nations--who have the ultimate resources to
carry it out? We've got them and we know it--the iron
and the coal and the gold, and the wheat-bearing areas.
I dare say it makes us seem cheeky, but I tell you the
last argument lies in the soil and what you can get out
of it. What has this country got in comparison? A market
of forty million people, whom she can't feed and is less
and less able to find work for. Do you call that a
resource? I call it an impediment--a penalty. It's
something to exploit, for the immediate profit in it,
something to bargain with; but even as a market it can't
preponderate always, and I can't see why it should make
such tremendous claims."
"England isn't superannuated yet, Murchison."
"Not yet. Please God she never will be. But she isn't as
young as she was, and it does seem to me--"
"What seems to you?"
"Well, I'm no economist, and I don't know how far to
trust my impressions, and you needn't tell me I'm a rank
outsider, for I know that; but coming here as an outsider,
it does seem to me that it's from the outside that any
sort of helpful change in the conditions of this country
has got to come.
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