They were always physically strong enough to
defy it, if they chose. They did not defy it, because they believed
in it, and felt that in obedience and loyalty lay the salvation of
themselves and of their race.
It was not, understand me, the mere physical training of these forty
years which had thus made them men indeed. Whatever they may have
gained by that--the younger generation at least--of hardihood,
endurance, and self-help, was a small matter compared with the moral
training which they had gained--a small matter, compared with the
habits of obedience, self-restraint, self-sacrifice, mutual trust,
and mutual help; the inspiration of a common patriotism, of a common
national destiny. Without that moral discipline, they would have
failed each other in need; have broken up, scattered, or perished, or
at least remained as settlers or as slaves among the Arab tribes.
With that moral discipline, they held together, and continued one
people till the last, till they couched, they lay down as a lion, and
as a great lion, and none dare rouse them up.
You who are here to-day--I speak to those in uniform--are the
representatives of more than one great body of your countrymen, who
have determined to teach themselves something of that lesson which
Israel learnt in the wilderness; not indeed by actual danger and
actual need, but by preparation for dangers and for needs, which are
only too possible as long as there is sin upon this earth.
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