ts and even a
definite Evangelical Alliance have been in evidence before, but now
has come a permanent organization, to include all the religious
interests that can be held in common, and especially to stress the
more ambitious programme of social regeneration. The Federal Council
of the Churches of Christ in America has yet to prove that it is not
ahead of the times, but it is an earnest of a religious interest that
oversteps the bounds of creed and denominational organization and
calls upon the various divisions of the Protestant Church to unite for
a national campaign.

328. =The Scope of National Life.=--Social life in the nation is not
confined to any organization. It does not wait upon government to
perform its various functions. It goes on because of the constant flow
and counterflow of population through all the channels of acquaintance
and correspondence, of travel and trade. People feel the need of one
another, are in constant touch with one another, and inevitably are
continually exchanging commodities and ideas. Barriers of race and
language, of tariff walls and national conventions stand in the way of
exchange between individuals of different nations, though a strenuous
commercial age succeeds in making breaches in the barriers, but
opportunity within the nation is free, and such natural barriers as
language and race differences speedily give way before the mutual
desires of the native and the hyphenated American.

READING REFERENCES

DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 63-115.

_Reports of the Commissioner of Education._

_American Year Book_, 1914, _passim._

WARD: _Year Book of the Church and Social Service_, 1916, pages
24-29.

CHAPTER XLII

THE STATE

329. =The State and Its Sovereignty.=--The various economic and social
functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be
performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are
organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty.
When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be
large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full
sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York;
the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. It
is conceivable that this political authority may be exercised through
the sheer force of public opinion, but the experience of the newly
organized United States under the Articles o