herself and shake
off the torpor of her government. She must learn that we have arrived at
one of those supreme moments in which one world is destroyed and another
is to be created; in which, for the sake of others and for her own, it is
necessary to adopt a new policy."

England to-day has adopted this "new policy"; she has responded to
Mazzini's appeal by stepping into the arena and declaring herself ready to
take part in "the organisation of the European task"; her sons are dying on
the Continent in defence of the principle of nationality, in support of
the rights of other nations to that liberty which her insular position has
secured for herself for many centuries, the liberty "to associate freely,
without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and
express their idea." She is fighting, moreover, not only on behalf of the
threatened freedom of Belgium, France, and Serbia, on behalf of the
unborn freedom of Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, and the subject races of the
Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, but also on her own behalf. It is not
merely that she recognises that her Empire is in danger; she recognises
also that she is unable to work out her own salvation, unable to carry on
her industrial development and her schemes for the betterment of her people
in security, while the Continent at her doors remains in constant peril
of change. "The social idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever
before this reorganisation of Europe is effected."

Sec.1. _Nation and Nationality_.--The social idea and the national idea have
been for a century past the twin pivots of European development. The
political structure of the Continent has oscillated this way and that
according as these ideas have in turn assumed ascendancy over men's minds;
and when, as in 1848, both claimed attention at the same time, the whole
edifice was shaken to its very foundations. In England, on the other hand,
it is the social idea alone which has been a motive force in the nineteenth
century, although she has always had to reckon with the national idea
across the St. George's Channel. Owing to her fortunate geographical
situation, she acquired national unity many centuries ago and has always
been able to defend it successfully against the danger of external
aggression. The national idea, therefore, has long ceased to be an
aspiration, and consequently a revolutionary force, among us; it has
been realised in actual fact, we have