eful or
necessary to the country. It is to them that the following pages are an
appeal. I appeal with some confidence because what I shall try to show
to be necessary is not so much a change of institutions as a change of
spirit; not a new constitution but a return to a true way of looking at
public and private life. My contention is that the future of England
depends entirely upon the restoration of duty, of which the nation is
the symbol, to its proper place in our lives.

II.

DEFEAT

Great Britain is drifting unintentionally and half unconsciously into a
war with the German Empire, a State which has a population of sixty
millions and is better organised for war than any State has ever been in
modern times. For such a conflict, which may come about to-morrow, and
unless a great change takes place must come about in the near future,
Great Britain is not prepared.

The food of our people and the raw material of their industries come to
this country by sea, and the articles here produced go by sea to their
purchasers abroad. Every transaction carries with it a certain profit
which makes it possible. If the exporter and the manufacturer who
supplies him can make no profit they cannot continue their operations,
and the men who work for them must lose their employment.

Suppose Great Britain to be to-morrow at war with one or more of the
Great Powers of Europe. All the sailing vessels and slow steamers will
stop running lest they should be taken by hostile cruisers. The fast
steamers will have to pay war rates of insurance and to charge extra
freights. Steamers ready to leave foreign ports for this country will
wait for instructions and for news. On the outbreak of war, therefore,
this over-sea traffic must be greatly diminished in volume and carried
on with enormously increased difficulties. The supply of food would be
considerably reduced and the certainty of the arrival of any particular
cargo would have disappeared. The price of food must therefore rapidly
and greatly rise, and that alone would immediately impose very great
hardships on the whole of the working class, of which a considerable
part would be driven across the line which separates modern comfort from
the starvation margin. The diminution in the supply of the raw materials
of manufacture would be much greater and more immediate. Something like
half the manufacturers of Great Britain must close their works for want
of materials. But will the ot