ch were vigorous enough to establish internal peace
and to protect their frontiers were not vigorous enough to conquer their
neighbors. Political efficiency was brought to a much better realization
of its necessary limits and responsibilities, because of the moral and
intellectual education which the adoption of Christianity had imposed
upon the Western peoples.

One of the earliest examples of political efficiency in mediaeval Europe
was the England of Edward I, which had begun to exhibit certain
characteristics of a national state. Order was more than usually well
preserved. It was sheltered by the Channel from foreign attack. The
interest both of the nobles and of the people had been considered in its
political organization. A fair balance was maintained among the leading
members of the political body, so that the English kings could invade
France with united national armies which easily defeated the incoherent
rabble of knights and serfs whereby they were opposed. Nevertheless,
when the English, after the manner of other efficient states, tried to
conquer France, they were wholly unable to extinguish French
resistance, as the similar resistance of conquered peoples had so
frequently been extinguished in classic times. The French people rallied
to a king who united them in their resistance to foreign domination; and
the ultimate effect of the prolonged English aggression was merely the
increasing national efficiency and the improving political organization
of the French people.

The English could not extinguish the resistance of the French people,
because their aggression aroused in Frenchmen latent power of effective
association. Notwithstanding the prevalence of a factious minority, and
the lack of any habit or tradition of national association, the power of
united action for a common purpose was stimulated by the threat of alien
domination; and this latent power was unquestionably the result in some
measure of the discipline of Christian ideas to which the French, in
common with the other European peoples, had been subjected. That
discipline had, as has already been observed, increased men's capacity
for fruitful association one with another. It had stimulated a social
relationship much superior to the prevailing political relationship. It
had enabled them to believe in an idea and to fight devotedly on its
behalf. It is no accident, consequently, that the national resistance
took on a religious character, and in