to ourselves than any formal Union.

Here, as we see it, is our opportunity. The Christian forces of the
Empire have the onus of maintaining the national outlook at this high
level. Our faith, our audacity, our leadership will be needed if lesser
counsels are to have no chance of prevailing. There must be no swing of
the pendulum back to smaller views.

With the coming of Peace, the temptation to the Nation to take off its
armour, to come down from the pedestal, to revert to pre-war conditions,
to re-act in self-indulgence from the strain of war, or to let
materialism defeat idealism, will be well-nigh overwhelming. To give
way to that temptation will be to rob victory of any permanent values.
It will be a poor thing to have taught Germany her lesson, if we fail to
learn our own.

We see no hope of successful resistance of that temptation apart from
the mobilisation of the Christian forces within the Empire into an army
committed to the sacred task of making the conscience of the Nation
effectively Christian, leading the way in bringing about a closer
approximation between the politics of the State and the programme of the
Kingdom of God, and proclaiming that Kingdom at hand.

If we are agreed so far it behoves us to look for the practical
implications of the position. These islands are still the heart and home
of the Empire. This was the rock whence its younger peoples were hewn.
Our nation has produced the men and the machinery that govern our
commonwealth. The lonely places, farthest removed from us, will be
peopled largely by and through the work of children of the Old Country.
There, wherever her children go, is England.

England is a treasure house, where the very stones are eloquent. Her
history, her buildings, her national and civic life, her denominations
and movements are all of them of vital interest to her children. It is a
place of pilgrimage and remembrance. It is more. They find here the
mature growths from which their institutions have sprung. They love our
historic places, they love our crowded cities, they love our seashores
and our quiet country-side, for everywhere they go they find not only
the story of our past, but that of their own. This is their spiritual
home. Our art, our literature, our movements are parts of a common
inheritance, and it is the pride of the Motherland that her children
have never outgrown their love of the old home, their veneration for its
sanctions and restraints, and