To be sure, half the population stayed away from weekly services-when the Archbishop of Canterbury grieved that the church was losing the working people, Disraeli replied, вЂњYour Grace, it has never had themвЂќ-but this was a matter of propriety, not piety.25 The poor were only too well aware that they were unwelcome. Days of Humiliation, such as the one commemorating the Mutiny martyrs, signified national atonement. He could not matriculate at Oxford, or graduate from Cambridge, until he had signed the churchвЂ™s Thirty-Nine Articles. By the time a youth of good family had reached manhood, he had heard more than a thousand sermons. That blind faith could have flourished in an age of intellectual ferment may be puzzling, but the Victorians could rationalize anything for them, doubts raised by evolution, for example, were resolved by TennysonвЂ™s In Memoriam. The devout took the Bible literally, assumed the existence of an afterlife, and believed that the only significance of life on earth was as a preparation for eternity. Reverence for the past was especially strong in the church. This allegiance to tradition accounts for the immense popularity of TennysonвЂ™s Idylls of the King and the flood of best-selling historical novels: ScottвЂ™s Ivanhoe, Bulwer-LyttonвЂ™s Last Days of Pompeii, Robert Louis StevensonвЂ™s Kidnapped, Charles ReadeвЂ™s Cloister and the Hearth, Stanley WeymanвЂ™s Under the Red Robe, Charles KingsleyвЂ™s Westward Ho! and Harrison AinsworthвЂ™s Old St. War was Henleyized, and such ancient institutions as the Crown, the aristocracy, and the Church of England were venerated. With loyalty went courage, as witness Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Alice, the Ugly Duckling, and Tom Thumb. Henty, published the first of his eighty novels for children.

Winston Churchill was four years old when the most popular glorifier of discipline, G. Spurgeon wrote of the Victorian wife that her husband вЂњhas many objects in life which she does not quite understand but she believes in them all, and anything which she can do to promote them, she delights to perform.вЂќ24 Unquestioning submission to orders was taught to schoolboys as soon as they reached the age of awareness they recited вЂњThe Death of Nelson,вЂќ вЂњDrakeвЂ™s Drum,вЂќ вЂњThe Boy Stood on the Burning Deck,вЂќ вЂњThe Wreck of the Hesperus,вЂќ and вЂњThe Charge of the Light Brigade.вЂќ Every story for Victorian children had a point, a moral usually one of dutifulness. It was a time of pervasive authoritarianism. Behind the calls to honor, duty, and glory lay the VictoriansвЂ™ firm belief in obedience-absolute obedience to God, the Queen, and oneвЂ™s superiors, in the family as much as in the army. On the slightest excuse, Londoners in the cityвЂ™s rookeries hung out bunting and gay streamers, crisscrossing mews and alleys where washing was usually hung to dry. Jingoism was part of it, or rather one of its outward manifestations, and it wasnвЂ™t confined to the music halls.

Alfred North Whitehead defined a civilization in spiritual terms, and Christopher Dawson, in The Dynamics of World History, said: вЂњBehind every great civilization there is a vision.вЂќ What was the vision of imperial Britain? So vast an Empire, so vigorous a society, could have been neither built nor held without staunch ideological support, a complex web of powerful beliefs, powerfully held. Their epitaph may be found today on sinking gravestones: вЂњFor Queen and Empire.вЂќ It is inadequate. Including Indian sepoys, there were about 356,000 soldiers in the army-at the time of Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, RomeвЂ™s legions had numbered 300,000 men-including 55 line battalions scattered about India, Ireland, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Ceylon, Malta, Egypt, Gibraltar, Canada, Singapore, the West Indies, South Africa, Barbados, and Mauritius.

The British soldier was given a small island for his birthplace and the whole world as his grave. WeвЂ™ve got the ships, weвЂ™ve got the men, weвЂ™ve got the money, too. We donвЂ™t want to fight, but by jingo, if we do, вЂњthe GreatвЂќ Macdermott, the most celebrated of the music hall performers, who, singing the lyrics of George William Hunt, gave voice to their determination in the 1878 crisis which arose during the Russo-Turkish War: Not the Queen, not peers, not the Commons, and not public-school men wrote the ditties that celebrated the nationвЂ™s glory and defied those who sought to curb the growth of an Empire which they believed belonged to them. But BritainвЂ™s people counted because they, like the distant races toiling beneath the same flag, consented to be ruled as they were. Britain was hardly a democracy, at least as we understand it only 16.4 percent of the people could vote. Music hall performers were keenly aware of politicians and public events, of EnglandвЂ™s power around the world, of LondonвЂ™s role as an imperial capital.

Visions of glory creech