All this is very obvious, and the consecrated common-sense of the Church in every age has clearly perceived it. The political science of the Apostles and the Early Fathers, and still more expressly that of their successors, recognized the authority of kings, the jurisdiction of courts, the justice of taxation, the rights of property, the majesty of human law, the protective function of soldiers, and the necessity of military service. All these were accepted as inevitable in society in its present state of imperfect development; although it was proclaimed that none of them would be required in the ideal Kingdom of God.

In the Sermon on the Mount itself, however, the truth as to the relativity of Christian institutions is obscured by the faith of the compiler that, when he wrote, the second advent of Christ was at hand, and that the Kingdom of Heaven was immediately to be established. For him there was no terrestrial future worthy of consideration; the reign of the Messiah had already begun; the consummation of all things was impending. Hence he did not feel it necessary, or indeed possible, to distinguish between the ideal of the perfect day and the practical policy of the actual moment. His citizenship already was in Heaven: to him present and future were one. The eschatological hopes of the evangelist were of course speedily dispelled, partly by mere lapse of time, partly by the growing wisdom and experience of the Church. The Church learned that its early expectation of the speedy and triumphant return of its Lord was ill-founded, and that its task was to convert the world to righteousness, not to preside over its immediate dissolution. Hence it accommodated its doctrines and its institutions to the changed outlook.

This fact causes no difficulty to those who believe in the progressiveness of revelation. Such as admit that New Testament ethics show an advance on those of the Old, will hardly contend that in politics any New Testament writer said the last word. What Tolstoy and his literalist school call the corruption and secularization of the Church was to no small degree a simple recognition of the facts that the Earth continued to exist, and that the Roman Empire and not the New Jerusalem was the dominant power therein. But though the Church as a whole was guided safely through the crisis of disillusionment, it nevertheless remains unfortunate that the compiler of the Sermon on the Mount should have made the false assumption. For the picture which he presents of the perfect man and the ideal society is so fascinating and magnificent that it is not marvellous that saints and visionaries, in a long and pathetic succession, should have repeated his error, should have ignored the distinction between present and future, should have assumed the actual existence of the Divine Kingdom towards which, as a matter of fact, mankind has still a weary and protracted pilgrimage to make; should have proclaimed the celestial anarchy, and should as a result have been overwhelmed in tragic or ludicrous disaster.



VI. THE PACIFICIST SUCCESSION

Those who have asserted the present applicability of the full detailed programme of the Sermon on the Mount, and have endeavoured to carry it into immediate effect, have been scanty in numbers, and obscure. A few early Christian communities, soon extinct; a few hermits isolated from their fellows; a few monks in secluded cloisters; a few friars repudiated by their own orders; a few small antinomian Protestant sects springing up and vanishing with gourd-like rapidity; a few groups of Slavonic dreamers forming the innocent extreme of the Nihilist fraternity—such have been the leading professors of Gospel Anarchy. One can, even while condemning them, respect them for their purity of purpose, their lofty idealism, their sincerity, and their consistency in following their false premiss to its logical conclusion.

Much more numerous, but far less worthy of regard, are those who have picked and chosen among the precepts of the Lord, have accepted what seemed good to them and have explained away the rest. It would be easy, did space allow, to present a motley succession of fanatics and heretics from apostolic days to the present who have developed fantastic theories and have maintained them by means of passages drawn from the Sermon on the Mount.

No damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text.

Only one group, however, now concerns us, and that is the group of anti-militarists who, for the most part arbitrarily ignoring or repudiating the other commands of their authority, fasten on those precepts that seem to inculcate the doctrine of non-resistance, and on the strength of these erect the visionary superstructure of pacificism. They form a strange and suspicious company. Among their early representatives stand prominent the able advocate, but furious schismatic, Tertullian; the amiable scholar, but heretically Gnostic, Origen; the accomplished stylist, but bigoted and ignorant special-pleader, Lactantius. It would not be a harsh judgment to say that most of the early pacificists had some twist of mind or character that disturbed the perfect balance of their sanity.

The later sects who have included pacificism in fleeting religious systems of varying degrees of impossibility and absurdity are still more open to suspicion on mental and moral grounds. The Cathari, the Waldenses, the Anabaptists, and the "Family of Love," not only developed monstrous doctrines: they also boasted of an antinomian freedom from legal restraint which led some of their devotees into such wild excesses of conduct as made their destruction inevitable. The Franciscan Tertiaries, who never wholly abjured war, became involved in the conflict between the Empire and the Papacy, and departed from their ideal. The more recent Nazarenes in Hungary and Doukhobors in Russia and Canada have shown themselves, by their refusal to recognize and obey any form of government, a hopeless nuisance to any community that is unfortunate enough to be afflicted by their presence. It surely must give the present-day pacificists pause, if anything can do so, to find themselves mixed up with such a throng. If men are to be judged by their company, they can hardly hope to escape certification.

It is true that the Society of Friends has a more respectable history. But the Society of Friends has for the most part consisted of sensible persons who have accepted the common Christian interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, and so have been pacificists of an unusually moderate type—by no means unconditional non-resisters. Just as they do not give indiscriminately, or lend (especially such of them as are prosperous bankers) expecting no return, or refrain from judging, or going to law, or laying up treasure on earth, or taking thought for the morrow, so they do not interpret literally the command "resist not evil." They accept the constitution of the country, the government of which is based on force; they pay taxes for the maintenance of the army and the navy, and admit their necessity; they support the police, and call it in if their persons or property are threatened; many of them, to their infinite credit, actually join the fighting forces when they feel that great moral issues are at stake. George Fox himself, the founder of the Society, was an extremely belligerent and even truculent individual. He supported the militant Cromwellian regime, and it was only after the collapse of the Puritan Commonwealth, which was based on the force of the New Model army, that he abjured all weapons of offence, except his tongue. Isaac Pennington, his contemporary and friend, was actually a chaplain in the New Model (which contained many Quakers), and to the very end he was engaged in stirring it up to repeat its early exploits against "Babylon." His writings contain the passage: "I speak not against any magistrates or peoples defending themselves against foreign invasions, or making use of the sword to suppress the violent and evil-doers within their borders; for this the present state of things may and doth require."[47] A sounder and saner statement of good Christian teaching on the matter of police and military service one could not desire. With this admission in one's mind, one can view with unqualified admiration the efforts of the Friends to eliminate war, and to perfect the methods of peace in the intercourse of men. More than most Christian people have they laboured effectively to hasten the advent of the Kingdom of God. It is true that their attempts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to establish a pacificist regime have failed—it was inevitable that they should fail—but this does not in any way lessen the debt which the world owes to them for their powerful and far-reaching influence in favour of love and gentleness and peace.

FOOTNOTE:

[47] I quote from J. W. Graham, War from a Quaker Point of View, p. 71. See also my review of this book in Hibbert Journal, No. 55.



VII. CONCLUSION

The sum of the matter seems to be this. Government is necessary in this present evil world. Only by means of sovereign political authority, based upon physical as well as moral force, can there be effective "punishment of wickedness and vice" or "maintenance of true religion and virtue." This is clearly recognized in the Bible, which proclaims that "the powers that be are ordained of God," which enjoins obedience to kings and governors as a religious duty, and which sees in the sword of justice carried by the secular ruler a weapon directed against the same enemies as oppose the establishment of the Kingdom of God. It is essential for the well-being and even for the existence of society, that crime should be suppressed. Hence, in addition to moralists and ministers who seek to educate and convert, there must be police and soldiers—in short, the full organized force of the community—ready to stamp out incorrigible villainy, if need be with blood and iron. Similarly, it is essential for the well-being and even for the existence of the polity of peoples—the growing society of nations—that aggression should be prevented, that treacherous intrigues should be frustrated, that treaty engagements should be enforced, that the reign of law should be confirmed. But, in order to realize this end, there is need not only of pacific missions and cosmopolitan congresses, but also of an armed might sufficient to prevent or to punish with irresistible certainty breaches of international conventions and violations of the World's peace. Hence, whether we have regard to internal good government, or the maintenance of international justice, the need of military force is imperative. Not only does there exist what the Russians quaintly call a "Christ-serving and worthy militancy," there are occasions, of which the present is one, when military service becomes the highest form of Christian duty. To hold aloof is not to display a superior form of Christianity; it is to be an apostate. As Solovyof has impressively shown in his notable conversations on War and Christianity, pacificism under present conditions is that very sort of religious imposture with which is associated the abominable name of Antichrist.



VI

THE STATE AND ITS RIVALS



I. THE IDEA OF THE STATE IN ENGLAND

Most of our recent political troubles are attributable to what Fortescue in the fifteenth century called "lack of governance." We are all of us painfully aware of the fact; but we are not all of us equally conscious that the feebleness and inefficiency of our supreme administration are to no small extent due to the absence among our people as a whole of any adequate idea of the position and function of the State. For if it is true generally that every nation has the sort of government that it deserves, it is specially true of a nation with democratic institutions. Weaknesses of intellect, infirmities of will, and faults of character in the sovereign representative assembly are but reproductions on a magnified scale of the same defects in the electorate. It is the failure of our people as a whole to realize the idea of the State that has resulted in the filling of the House of Commons with men who stand, not for the Nation in its unity and the Empire in its integrity, but for all sorts of limited and conflicting sectional interests—parties, leagues, fellowships, unions, cliques, schools, churches, orders, classes, trusts, syndicates, and so on. No wonder that in times of national and imperial crisis such representatives prove totally unequal to the duty of strong, corporate, and patriotic administration.

The weakness of the idea of the State among the peoples of the British Isles is explicable on geographical and historical grounds. For the idea of the State—that is to say, the idea of society politically organized as an indivisible unit under a sovereign government—although it has other and deeper sources of vitality, is specially fostered by a sense of national danger, but tends to languish when complete immunity from external peril can be postulated. Never has the realization of "the commonwealth of this realm of England" been so strong as it was in the days when Spanish invasion threatened. The splendid patriotism of that great age is portrayed for all time in the immortal glory of Shakespeare's historical plays. Not far short, however, rose the patriotic realization of national unity during the crisis of the Napoleonic struggle. Wordsworth's magnificent Sonnets dedicated to Liberty remain as the enduring memorial of the heights which British State-consciousness then attained:

In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spoke; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

But, except at rare intervals, Britain's insular position has given her people so soothing a sense of security that they have allowed the conception of the commonwealth to droop, and have tended to regard the State as, under normal conditions, a nuisance which should as far as possible be abated, as an intruder into the sphere of private enterprise which should be extruded, as an enemy to liberty which should be suppressed. It may readily be admitted that in days before the State had been democratized this hostile attitude was not without justification. In the early seventeenth century, for instance, the State meant the Stuart monarch—L'Etat c'est Moi—and the interests of the Stuart monarch were by no means those of any of the nations that he governed. In the early eighteenth century the State meant the Whig oligarchy, and its members only too easily came to regard the welfare of the Empire as identical with their own prosperity. In the early nineteenth century the State meant the landed and moneyed magnates of the Tory aristocracy, and they had an extremely inadequate apprehension of the needs and aspirations of the rapidly increasing millions over whom they exercised authority. Hence one can understand that opposition to the policy of Stuart king, or Whig nobility, or Tory plutocracy, readily took the form of antagonism to the State as such. Thus the political theory of Milton and the Puritans not only justified resistance to Charles I, it also proclaimed a doctrine of the natural rights of the individual fatal to all types of government. Similarly the political theory of Adam Smith and the laissez-faire economists, together with that of their contemporaries, Bentham and the utilitarian philosophers, not only attacked the restrictive regulations of the Whig oligarchy, but showed on general principles the strongest dislike of what it called "State interference" in all circumstances. So, too, Herbert Spencer and the nineteenth century school of scientific individualists not only demonstrated (as they did with extraordinary pungency and success) the extreme folly and incompetence of the main government departments of their own day; they also sought to establish the eternal and inevitable antagonism of Man versus the State, and to limit universally the functions of government to the irreducible minimum.

This attitude of hostility, however, ceased to have its old justification with the advent of democracy. The Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884 have so enlarged the electorate as to convert government into something approaching self-government, and the State has become the organized form of democracy itself. Hence the individualism of Milton, Adam Smith, Bentham, and Spencer is an anachronism. It is not remarkable, then, that, following Parliamentary Reform, the idea of the State revived in Britain with new force and in a new form—no longer stimulated by the pressure of extreme peril, but excited by the new possibilities of corporate democratic activity. The young lions of the Fabian Society in their optimistic infancy were filled with the idea of the State, and advocated State action in wide spheres of industrial organization, municipal enterprise, and social reform. The Imperial Federation League gloried anew in the name of Britain, and strove to bring the four quarters of the earth within the circle of a self-conscious Empire. Later on, the Tariff Reform League demanded State-control and regulation of our world-wide commerce.

But the revival of the idea of the State, under the stimulus of Socialists, Imperialists, Protectionists, and others, was short lived. All these enthusiasts became disappointed and disgusted with democracy and with the State which it controls. Democracy did not move fast enough for them, nor always in the direction that they desired. Hence—and most markedly since the dawn of the twentieth century—a reaction against the State has set in. There has been, as we have already seen, an epidemic of passive resistance. Individualists of all sorts, together with Trade Unionists, Syndicalists, Clericals, Suffragists, No-Conscriptionists, Ulstermen, Nationalists, and other bodies, giving up the attempt to convert democracy and to secure their ends through the sovereign agency of the democratic State, are taking direct action, are proclaiming rival authorities to the State, and are threatening the very existence of the body politic. The outlook is ominous, and it needs to be steadily faced. The present moment, moreover, is peculiarly favourable for its consideration. For the sudden and unexpected return of extreme national danger has once again quickened in our midst the idea of the State, has revived the spirit of patriotism, has restored the national unity, and has reenforced the principle of civic service. We can see under the revealing searchlight of the war the anarchy towards which we have been drifting during the past ten or more years.



II. THE RIVALS OF THE STATE

The first rival of the State that calls for consideration is the Individual. His rights as against the government are still loudly proclaimed. "The chief message of 1915," says one of our leading individualists, Rev. Dr. Clifford, in a New Year's oration to his flock,[48] "is a clarion call to guard our personal and democratic liberties against the attacks of State absolutism." The idea of guarding "democratic liberties" against democracy itself is, of course, mere nonsense—one of those point-blank contradictions in terms which, though full of sound and fury, signify nothing. It is, however, unfortunately, typical of much of the loose thinking and vague talking indulged in by the leaders of those pestilent anti-patriotic unions and fellowships which infest and harass the country at the present moment. The idea of guarding "personal liberties" against democracy is not so palpably absurd; it does not involve a contradiction in terms. Moreover, it appears to have some relation to the admitted fact that the rule of a democracy may press very heavily upon some or all of its constituent members. Nevertheless, it is equally fallacious. It rests upon a false antithesis between the individual and the community to which he belongs. No such antithesis exists. "The individual," rightly says Mr. W. S. McKechnie, "apart from all relations to the community is a negation."[49] In similar strain, Mr. E. Barker contends that "a full and just conception of the individual abolishes the supposed opposition between the Man and the State."[50] Long ago Hegel exclaimed: "Our life is hid with our fellows in the common life of our people," and his true and fruitful conception forms the basis of the political philosophy of T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Bernard Bosanquet. It is, also, the foundation of all that is good and enduring in present-day Socialism. The individual apart from society is a mere abstraction, like the "economic man" of the old economists.

What, then, are these so-called "personal liberties" which the individual is supposed to possess in virtue of his humanity and independently of any authority external to himself? If it is said that they are freedom of thought, freedom of emotion, and freedom of will, the criticism is that these are not "liberties" at all, but merely movements of the mind which no power whatsoever external to the individual can possibly control, and with which no political authority in the country would ever dream of attempting to interfere. If, however, it is said that they include further such things as freedom of speech, freedom of writing, freedom of public meeting, freedom to act generally as conscience dictates, the criticism is that such liberties as these are not "personal" merely, or even primarily: they are liberties that profoundly affect the community. Regarded from the communal point of view, in fact, they are not "personal liberties" at all, if by that term is meant individual rights. They are rights derived from the community; they are concessions to be granted or withheld according to the requirements of public policy; they are matters of regulation by the common will. Society does not, and cannot, recognize the existence, independent of its own consent, of any such so-called "personal liberties." It does not, and cannot, admit the possession by individuals of any rights, inherent and indefeasible, to do as they like in matters that concern the interests of the community generally. Still less can the State be expected to protect individuals in the exercise of activities which it regards as detrimental, or in the neglect of duties which it regards as essential, to the general well-being. It cannot restrain anyone's conscience; but it must control everyone's conduct. All this, of course, is the commonplace of political theory, and it is curious that at this late day one should have to repeat Burke's destructive criticism of metaphysic liberties, or Bentham's damning exposure of the "anarchic fallacy" of the Rights of Man, or Mr. D. L. Ritchie's quite recent dissipation of the errors underlying the idea of Natural Rights. But it is still more curious that many of the men who revive against the modern democratic State this long-laid ghost of eighteenth-century individualism call themselves Socialists, and invoke the State (when it suits them to do so) to embark on all manner of anti-individualistic enterprises. This anomaly, however, is merely one among many flagrant instances of that ignorance of precedent which revives long-buried heresies, that incapacity for thought which seems unaware of inconsistencies, or that shameless perversity which seeks out and proclaims any sort of general principle which happens to suit the exigencies of the moment.

A second rival to the State is Political Party. At the present juncture there are four important political parties in existence in the British Isles, viz., Liberal, Conservative, Nationalist, Labour, beside various incipient ones. The two old parties, Liberal and Conservative, stand for more or less clearly defined and sharply opposed general principles. Hallam has described them as the party of progress and the party of order respectively; and he (followed by Macaulay and other writers) has devoted a good deal of care to the elucidation of the fundamental differences between them. These old parties are by far the most vital and powerful political entities in the United Kingdom. They have deep-rooted traditions, efficient organizations, large funds secretly raised and administered, formulated programmes, and all the paraphernalia of habitations, catchwords, and badges calculated to excite loyalty and stimulate zeal. They secure in alternation the control of the State, and administer in the name of the nation as a whole the vast affairs of the British Empire. It may be at once admitted that parties such as these are inevitable in any system of representative government. For so long as fundamental differences of opinion exist among electors, it is only by means of organizations based on the primary opposing principles that any working constitution can be framed. To attack party-government as such is vain and even absurd. Nevertheless, party has become the rival of the State; and its rivalry is all the more dangerous and insidious because it always professes to act in the interests of the State and on behalf of the nation as a whole. Its professions, however, have become false and hypocritical. In the name of the People it seeks its own gain. It has ceased to be a means to good democratic government, and has grown to be an end in itself. In its rivalry to other parties, in its struggle for power, in its scramble for the spoils of office, in its eagerness to secure votes, it has debased political ideals, it has corrupted citizenship, it has abandoned truth, it has proclaimed smooth lies, it has betrayed the State, it has almost destroyed the nation. Happy indeed will it be if this war, which is revealing to us the hideousness and deadliness of the party-spirit, enables us to reduce the old parties to their proper place of subordination to the State.

In addition to the two old parties, however, there are two comparatively new ones which occupy places of importance in the world of politics. These are the Nationalist and the Labour parties. Neither of these professes to make the interests of the State its prime concern. The one concentrates its energies upon a struggle to advance the cause of a single nation from among the four that constitute the United Kingdom; the other devotes itself to the affairs of a single social class. The existence of these powerful sectional organizations is a disastrous portent. They stand, not as the old parties do for divergent views concerning the interests of the State as a whole, but for mortal schism in the body politic. Never can there be a full return to healthy national life until means have been found for reabsorbing these and other incipient schismatic organizations into the unity of the Great Society.

A third rival to the State has recently come into prominence in the shape of a number of various non-political corporations which claim to possess an organic existence independent of, and co-ordinate with, the State, and thus deny the right of the State to intrude within the spheres of their operations. The most important are the Syndicalists, who proclaim the autonomy of the industrial union or guild, and the Ecclesiastics, who assert the autonomy of the denationalized church. Both agree in repudiating political control, and in abjuring the use of political instruments. They rely upon "direct action" of their own, the one employing the terrors of the general strike to overawe the community, the other the horrors of hell. Now it may be freely granted that one of the most notable advances in modern political theory has been the recognition of the fact that men naturally organize themselves into groups—families, clans, tribes; sects, societies, churches; guilds, trade unions, clubs, and so on—and that the State is rather a federation of groups than an association of isolated individuals. It may be granted, secondly, that some of these organizations are anterior to the State in point of time, and that they deal with matters that are not appropriate for direct State control. Finally, it may be granted that the State will be well advised to leave some or all of them in possession of large powers of self-administration. Nevertheless, when once the Great Society has come into existence, and has organized itself as the National State, they must, if anarchy is to be avoided, all take their places as constituent members of the community, and recognize that they exercise such autonomous powers as they possess in virtue of the permission of the general will. The State, however prudently it may employ its powers, must be, and must be universally admitted to be, in all causes, civil or ecclesiastical, throughout all its dominions, in the last resort, supreme. In the interests of the common good it cannot tolerate any rivals.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Reported in Daily Chronicle, January 4th, 1916.

[49] McKechnie. The State and the Individual, p. 3.

[50] Barker. Political Thought from Spencer to the Present-Day, p. 108.



III. WHAT THE STATE IS AND DOES

In the purification and exaltation of the Democratic National State rests the one hope of the salvation of Britain and the Empire. In a federation of Democratic National States resides the best prospect of the future peaceful and well-ordered government of the world. The individualism of Dr. Clifford leads straight to anarchy; the unchecked development of the party-system means the corrupt tyranny of the caucus; the triumph of Syndicalism would involve the tragedy of class war; the dream of the reunion of humanity in the bosom of a cosmopolitan church is a vain revival of a mediaeval illusion. The individual must be brought to recognize that politically he has no separate existence, and must learn to limit his operations to his proper share in the constitution and determination of the general will; party must be remorselessly reduced to its legitimate subordination to the interests of the community as a whole; syndicates and trade unions must be prevented from cutting themselves loose from the body of the nation, must be compelled to recognize the supremacy of the law of the land, and must be deprived of any inequitable privileges which they may have secured; ecclesiastics of all orders must be persuaded to rest content with such autonomy as the general will may grant them, and must strive to become, not a separate corporation, but the indwelling and directing conscience of the people. The State must be supreme.

What is the State which is thus exalted above all rivals? Let Mr. Bernard Bosanquet answer. "The State," he says, "is not merely the political fabric. The term 'State' accents indeed the political aspect of the whole, and is opposed to the notion of an anarchic society. But it includes the entire hierarchy of institutions by which life is determined, from the family to the trade, and from the trade to the church and the university. It includes all of them, not as the mere collection of the growths of the country, but as the structures which give life and meaning to the political whole, while receiving from it mutual adjustment, and therefore expansion and a more liberal air."[51] In a similar strain T. H. Green says: "The State is for its members, the society of societies, the society in which all their claims upon each other are mutually adjusted."[52] The keynote of both of these profound utterances is "adjustment." They recognize the fact that the convictions and opinions of individuals differ, that the purposes of parties conflict, that the interests of racial units and social classes diverge from one another, that the demands of churches are mutually irreconcilable. They recognize further that unless individuals, parties, races, classes, churches agree in acknowledging the adjusting authority of the general will of the community to which all belong, endless struggle and hopeless chaos must supervene. No pretension is made that the State is of supernatural origin; no claim to divine right is advanced. It is admitted that the State at one time did not exist. It is foreseen that a day may come when it will be merged in a still larger community. But for the present it is the only possible organ by means of which the common will can operate in the interests of the common good. The basis of its claim for obedience rests upon the facts, first, that every individual subject, and every organized group of subjects, owes to the State, and to it alone, the conditions that make existence possible, and secondly, that only as a member of the State can the individual attain to his full development, and only under the protection of the State can the group achieve its purposes. The attainment of the common good, as that good is conceived of by the common intelligence, and by means which the common will determines—such is the ideal of the Democratic National State. Here surely is a sphere in which every man can find the fullness of life.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Bosanquet. Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 150.

[52] Green. Principles of Political Obligation, p. 146.



IV. THE SPHERE OF NATIONAL SERVICE

The above statement of the ideal of the Democratic National State brings home to the mind a realization of the magnitude of the sphere which lies open to National Service in the broad sense of the term. Democracy is sovereign; although it is flouted by individuals, deluded and debauched by parties, and challenged by separatist syndicates. It must remain sovereign, and its sovereignty must be made a more real, more conscious, and more effective thing than it has ever been before. Rarely, however, has there been a sovereign less adequately equipped than democracy for its gigantic responsibilities. One of its most enthusiastic modern supporters, Professor John MacCunn, gravely admits that "Democracy, still raw to its work, whether in politics or industry, may blunder—may blunder fatally."[53] Long ago it was pointed out by Plato that democracy is the cult of incompetence. In more recent times Mill has emphasized the possibility that democracy may govern badly and oppressively; Maine has warned us that the dominance of the commonalty may end in the triumph of the mediocre, and a more than Chinese stagnation; Carlyle has denounced democracy as powerful for destruction, but impotent for building up, as helpless in the face of great emergencies, as incapable of choosing good leaders; Lecky has demonstrated the danger of the corruption of the democracy by evil politicians; Belloc has shown how it tends to develop, and then become a slave to, a bureaucracy; Graham Wallas has portrayed the psychological peril of its hypnotization by colours and claptrap. All the dangers thus enumerated are real and formidable. They have, however, to be faced and overcome by men of goodwill: for there is now no alternative to democracy but anarchy. Fortunately they may be faced in confidence and hope. For the British democracy—as the revealing crisis of this great war has shown—is sound at heart, is eager to be delivered from its betrayers, and is longing to learn. It calls pathetically for those who know to teach it, and for those who can to lead it. Here, then, is the sphere of National Service. Who will not come forward to help democracy to become conscious of its power and its dignity; to aid it in establishing its authority over all rebels and rivals; to teach it how to use its omnipotence gently, so as to leave to those beneath its sway the largest possible room for freedom consistent with the common good; to make it aware of its responsibilities for its vast dominions across the seas and their teeming populations; to awaken it to a realization of the extent to which the whole future of the human race rests upon the success of its experiment in government? It is in the service of such a sovereign as this, and in the pursuit of such an ideal, that faithful souls attain that self-realization which is perfect freedom.

FOOTNOTE:

[53] MacCunn. Six Radical Thinkers, p. 69.

GARDEN CITY PRESS LTD., LETCHWORTH, ENGLAND



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