It is an enterprise of volume, and all would be
well if I were normal in mind and body; but I am not. I have a past
that stinks to heaven, as Shakespeare says, and I am an outlaw of
the one land which has all my soul and name and heritage. Yes, that
is what they have done to me--made a convict, an outlaw of me. I
may live--but not in the British Isles; and if any man kills me, he
is not liable to the law.
Men do not treat me badly here, for I have property and money, and
this is a land where these two things mean more than anywhere else,
even more than in a republic like that where you live. Here men
live according to the law of the knife, fork, and bottle, yet
nowhere in the world is there deeper national morality or wider
faith or endurance. It is a land where the sea is master, where
naval might is the chief factor, and weighs down all else.
Here the navies of the great powers meet and settle their disputes,
and every being in the island knows that life is only worth what a
hundred-ton brig-of-war permits.
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