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: