John Morley: “For us there is no excuse: there was no difficulty whatever in our doing our duty.”

For this line of contention he was called an “unpatriotic trumpet of disaster,” and other names commonly bestowed on all men in all countries who venture to say that what chances for the hour to be a popular war is a blunder.

A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.

Happy the man who from out the floods has fled the storm and found the haven; happy too is he who has surmounted toil and trouble.—Bacchae, 902-5.

If they, situated exactly as we are, decline to join, we are not bound single-handed to make up the deficiencies of the rest.