Somewhere at the back, in some pleasure ground or casino or place of entertainment, an undaunted brass band was playing against the cosmic uproar. I do not know what band it was. Judging from the boisterous British Imperialism of most of the airs it played, I should think it was a German band. But there was no doubt about its energy, and when I came quite close under it it really drowned the storm. It was playing such things as “Tommy Atkins” and “You Can Depend on Young Australia,” and many others of which I do not know the words, but I should think they would be “John, Pat, and Mac, With the Union Jack,” or that fine though unwritten poem, “Wait till the Bull Dog gets a bite of you.” Now, I for one detest Imperialism, but I have a great deal of sympathy with Jingoism. And there seemed something so touching about this unbroken and innocent bragging under the brutal menace of Nature that it made, if I may so put it, two tunes in my mind. It is so obvious and so jolly to be optimistic about England, especially when you are an optimist--and an Englishman. But through all that glorious brass came the voice of the invasion, the undertone of that awful sea. I did a foolish thing. As I could not express my meaning in an article, I tried to express it in a poem--a bad one. You can call it what you like. It might be called “Doubt,” or “Brighton.” It might be called “The Patriot,” or yet again “The German Band.” I would call it “The Two Voices,” but that title has been taken for a grossly inferior poem. This is how it began-- “They say the sun is on your knees A lamp to light your lands from harm, They say you turn the seven seas To little brooks about your farm. I hear the sea and the new song that calls you empress all day long. “(O fallen and fouled! O you that lie Dying in swamps--you shall not die, Your rich have secrets, and stronge lust, Your poor are chased about like dust, Emptied of anger and surprise-- And God has gone out of their eyes, Your cohorts break--your captains lie, I say to you, you shall not die.)” Then I revived a little, remembering that after all there is an English country that the Imperialists have never found. The British Empire may annex what it likes, it will never annex England. It has not even discovered the island, let alone conquered it. I took up the two tunes again with a greater sympathy for the first-- “I know the bright baptismal rains, I love your tender troubled skies, I know your little climbing lanes, Are peering into Paradise, From open hearth to orchard cool, How bountiful and beautiful. “(O throttled and without a cry, O strangled and stabbed, you shall not die, The frightful word is on your walls, The east sea to the west sea calls, The stars are dying in the sky, You shall not die; you shall not die.)”