“THIS ENGLAND"

Evening Star, Issue 22685, 26 June 1937, Page 2

“THIS ENGLAND"

The Lord Chief Justice (Lord Hewart), proposing the toast, “England,” at the annual banquet of the Royal Society of St. George, in London, said that Englishmen now approaching the age of three-score years and ten, had had the opportunity of seeing, among those that have now passed on to the Elysian Fields, one English statesman undoubtedly of the first rank, certainly one first-rate judge, probably one first-rate soldier, and perhaps one firstrate poet. That was not a bad record fop a single country in so short a period as three-quarters of a century. The whole world had never produced more than, one Shakespeare, one Milton, one Homer, one Virgil, and one Horace, and none of them had left any known descendant. In spite of foreign invasion, civil war, and religious persecution, the thread of English public life had never once been severed. The continuous history of English institutions had already, as the historian reminded them, extended over nearly 1,500 years. Under -those institutions the English nation had enjoyed a degree of peace and prosperity which, at any rate, it would be difficult to parallel in the records of any other people.