e of the British character,
its habit of concentration on the work that lies to hand, and the
influence of our traditional social and political ideals, have slowly
brought us to a deeper insight, till to-day the Commonwealth is becoming
alive to the real nature of its task--the extension and consolidation of
liberty. If it has thus taken up, in part, the work of the mediaeval
Empire and has had a measure of success where the other failed, it is
because of the character of its individual citizens, because despite
constant and heart-breaking failures in knowledge and imagination, we
are a people who, in the words of a stern, if friendly, critic, 'with
great self-assertion and a bull-dog kind of courage, have yet a
singular amount of gentleness and tenderness'.[66]

* * * * *

We have come to the end of our long survey. Some of you may feel that I
have fetched too wide a compass and given too wide an extension to the
meaning of government. But if I have sinned I have sinned of set
purpose. I refuse to confine government within the limits of what is
ordinarily called politics, or to discuss the association called the
State in isolation from other sides of man's community life. To do so, I
feel, is to lay oneself open to one of two opposite errors: the error of
those for whom the State is the Almighty, and who invest it with a
superhuman morality and authority of its own; and the error of those who
draw in their skirts in horror from the touch of what Nietzsche called
this 'cold monster' and take refuge in monastic detachment from the
political responsibilities of their time. We must be able to see
politics as a part of life before we can see it steadily and see it
whole. We must be able to see it in relation to the general ordering of
the world and to connect it once more, as in the Middle Ages, with
religion and morality. No thinking man can live through such a time as
this and preserve his faith unless he is sustained by the belief that
the clash of States which is darkening our generation is not a mere
blind collision of forces, but has spiritual bearings which affect each
individual living soul born or to be born in the world. It is not for us
to anticipate the verdict of history. But what we can do is to bear
ourselves worthily, in thought and speech, like our soldiers in action,
of the times in which we live--to testify, as it were, in our own lives,
to that for which so many of our fri