“I do congratulate you,” I said; “that is certainly a triumph! What Britisher could ask more?” There is a little plant of which every Englishman carries the seeds about with him. It is called Love-of-the-soil. Give him a bit of land anywhere—the best or the worst, a vast fertile tract or a few miles of desert island; tell him it is his very own to do as he likes with; and before you can turn round every grain of its dust is sprouting with Love-of-the-soil. He sees, knows, loves, only that spot. He will fight for it, work for it, cheat for it if need be, perhaps even slay; for to him it has taken on the sacred character of the mother country; it is _his_ piece of England, and woe to any one who tries to take it away from him! That is why English colonies succeed. And it is the lack of this passion for the land which makes bad colonists of men of other nationalities. The Americans are simply brutal about their possessions. Out here in the North-west one is horrified at the general callousness. I have watched people making what _we_ should call a home, breaking new land, building a charming house, working hard to make everything within and without as perfect as they know how. A cloud of dust shows up on the road, a motor car full of “land grabbers” kicks and coughs and stinks at the gate; the next minute the hard-eyed hucksters are being shown into all the sacred arena of airy rooms and flowering garden, are fingering, valuing, depreciating; there follows an hour or two of hard bargaining, and then your neighbour’s wife flies across lots to tell you, with shining eyes, “We’ve sold the place!” “Sold the place?” I cry. “Why, I thought it was to be your home!” “What does that matter?” she retorts, huffed. “I got my price! We can easily build another house that we shall like just as much.” I suppose it is a form of the disease now diagnosed as Americanitis, the feverish restlessness that would rather “trek” anywhere than stay put for more than a year or two. But it is a terrible disqualification for building a State. Since I have seen it at close quarters, I have often thought of the contrast presented by that handful of North Country shepherds and their descendants in the Falklands,[6] so proud of doing their best with the best they could get, pleased with their drizzly climate (it rains two hundred and fifty days in the year) because it is so English, proud of their thriving little community, sending out their pelts and mutton by the once-a-month steamer, actually growing their pelargoniums and fuchsias in the open air, and so furiously interested in their miniature politics that the Government and the Opposition are ready to knock each other forty ways from Sunday every time they meet! Good luck and long life to you, my incorrigible brothers! The secret of success is certainly yours, and it all comes from the little plant called Love-of-the-soil. CHAPTER VI POPE PIUS IX