Still, he is coming on and making progress; whereas the old original English hearts of oak do not appear to be getting much "forrader." Besides, it is well known that the English do not possess anything like enough of them, and those whom they do possess have such a love for the service that they take particularly good care to warn would-be recruits off it. From time immemorial the English have made a point of treating the saviours of their country meanly and shabbily. In the Crimea the English troops were half-starved and went about in rags, while a lot of broad-shouldered, genial Englishmen made fortunes out of army contracts. It was the same in the Transvaal, and it will be the same whenever England is at war. In peace-time she does manage to keep her soldiers and sailors decently dressed, but it is notorious that she nips them in the paunch, and that the roast beef and plum-pudding and flagons of October which are supposed to be the meat and drink of John Bull are not considered good for his brave defenders. A beef-fed army and a beef-fed navy are what Englishmen believe they get for their money. The rank and file of the army and navy are better informed. With a navy that is undersized, undermanned, underfed, and underpaid, the English chances of triumph, when her real strength is put to the test, are problematical. Meanwhile, we may comfort ourselves with Mr. Kipling and the _Daily Telegraph_. CHAPTER IX THE CHURCHES The English have one sauce. But the number of their religions is as the sands of the sea. Roughly speaking, they divide themselves religiously into two classes--Anglicans and Nonconformists. The Anglicans, one may say, are reformed Catholics; the Nonconformists, reformed Anglicans. Apparently all English religions--with the exception, of course, of the Catholic religion, which is not counted--date from or since the Reformation. We know what the Reformation means in Scotland, though the English notion of it seems to be a trifle vague. We also know in Scotland what religion means. I doubt if the English have any such knowledge. One has only to visit an average Anglican or Nonconformist church on the Sabbath to perceive that in England religion is under a cloud and has almost ceased to be a spiritual matter. In the first place, you will notice that the congregation is for the most part composed of women and children. Englishmen are too busy or too bored to go to church on the Sabbath. What little faith, what little religious fervour or feeling, they ever possessed has been knocked out of them, and they no longer go to church. And this change has been accomplished, not by the failure of dogmas, not by the spread of free-thought, not by secularists, anti-clericalists, or philosophers, but simply by an indolent clergy on the one hand and cheap railway fares on the other. The mediocre preacher and the new-fangled English week-end have emptied the churches of England's manhood. The women and children are left, a