e move. But we have to look the facts in the face, and to realise that
the educational system of a nation must endeavour to secure the
industrial and military efficiency of its future members as a means of
security and protection against other competing nations and as one of
the essential conditions for the self-preservation of the particular
State in that war of nation against nation which Hobbes so eloquently
describes: "For the nature of war, consists not in actual fighting; but
in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no
assurance to the contrary."[14]

In so far, then, as the provision of education by the State is
undertaken with this end in view, it may be maintained that part, at
least, of the cost of its provision should be borne by the general
taxpayer in return for the greater national and economic security which
he enjoys through the greater efficiency of the nation as an economic
and military unit.

But the spread and the higher efficiency of education confers in
addition both a local and an individual benefit. It confers a local
benefit, in so far as by its means advantages accrue to any particular
district. It confers an individual benefit, in so far as through the
means of education placed at his disposal the individual is enabled to
attain to a higher degree of social efficiency than would otherwise have
been possible.

Further, if we look at this question not from the point of view of
benefit received, but from that of the obligation imposed, we reach a
similar result. It is an obligation upon the State to see that the
means of education and their due co-ordination and organisation are of
such a nature both in extent and in quality as to furnish a complete
system of means for the training up of the youth of the country to
perform efficiently all the services required by such a complex
community as the modern State. This duty devolves upon the State chiefly
for the reason set forth by Adam Smith in his discussion of the
functions of government. It is the duty of the sovereign, he declares,
to erect and maintain certain "public institutions which it can never be
for the interest of any individual to erect and maintain, because the
profit could never repay the expense to the individual, or small number
of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a
great society."[15]

It becomes further an obligation placed upon the local authority to aid
the central au