ngdom of God is the only true method
of human service, is so clear and final in my own mind, it seems
so inevitably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must
ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of
blind-man's bluff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political
ideas. The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners,
he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he must surely find and
hold and feel over and guess the name of the plainly visible quarry.

Some of the French and Italian people I talked to said they were
fighting for "Civilisation." That is one name for the kingdom of God,
and I have heard English people use it too. But much of the contemporary
thought of England stills wanders with its back to the light. Most of it
is pawing over jerry-built, secondary things. I have before me a
little book, the joint work of Dr. Grey and Mr. Turner, of an ex-public
schoolmaster and a manufacturer, called _Eclipse or Empire?_ (The title
_World Might or Downfall?_ had already been secured in another quarter.)
It is a book that has been enormously advertised; it has been almost
impossible to escape its column-long advertisements; it is billed upon
the hoardings, and it is on the whole a very able and right-spirited
book. It calls for more and better education, for more scientific
methods, for less class suspicion and more social explicitness and
understanding, for a franker and fairer treatment of labour. But why
does it call for these things? Does it call for them because they are
right? Because in accomplishing them one serves God?

Not at all. But because otherwise this strange sprawling empire of ours
will drop back into a secondary place in the world. These two writers
really seem to think that the slack workman, the slacker wealthy man,
the negligent official, the conservative schoolmaster, the greedy
usurer, the comfortable obstructive, confronted with this alternative,
terrified at this idea of something or other called the Empire being
"eclipsed," eager for the continuance of this undefined glory over their
fellow-creatures called "Empire," will perceive the error of their ways
and become energetic, devoted, capable. They think an ideal of that sort
is going to change the daily lives of men.... I sympathise with their
purpose, and I deplore their conception of motives. If men will not
give themselves for righteousness, they will not give themselves for
a geog