ys been a difficult task. It is
doubtful if it would ever have been accomplished but for a significant
alliance--that of Church and State. The convenient fiction of the divine
right of kings was invented, and religion was used to bolster up the
institution and to provide a sanction for submission to absolutism. In
other words, irresponsible leadership was tolerated because
responsibility was supposed to exist to a Higher Power. So we find that
all the great religious movements--Christianity, Mohammedanism, and even
Buddhism--have been associated with the establishment of mighty
kingdoms. Moreover, the only two kingdoms in Europe in which absolutism
still holds out are Russia and Turkey, in which the head of the State is
also head of the Church. But military despotism, which was based solely
on the exploitation of weaker communities, of which ancient Rome was
the culminating type, wanted the elements of permanent progress, and was
bound to disappear before a new type which rested on the development of
internal resources. Militarism must therefore be looked on as a real
stage of progress; for in contrast with patriarchal society it was
competitive, and it broke down many ancient barriers, and prepared the
way for industrial co-operation. Thus we arrive at the conditions
favourable to the rise of representative institutions. For when the cost
of wars had to be raised out of the national resources kings found it
convenient to get the consent of the people to taxation. Hence the great
movement throughout Western Europe for the establishment of parliaments
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Why is it that in England alone
this movement was successful? Partly no doubt because its isolated
position was favourable to internal progress, but mainly because it was
the only State in which the principles of organization and responsible
leadership were continuously given effect to. So it is that in England
there was developed that wonderful machinery of representative
government which has enabled the people to substitute responsible for
irresponsible leadership, and has made the national character what it
is. This machinery has now been adopted nearly all over the world,
wherever it has been desired to make the popular will felt, but in no
case has it sufficed to give effect to the underlying principles to the
same extent; and success has been attained only in so far as they have
been effective. The lesson of the last century has