Jeanne d'Arc gave birth to one of
the most fragrant figures in human history. Thus the French national
resistance, and the national bond thereby created, was one political
expression of the power of cooeperation developed in the people of Europe
by the acceptance of a common religious bond. On the other hand, the use
which the English had made of their precocious national organization
weakened its foundations. The aggressive exercise of military force
abroad for an object which it was incompetent to achieve disturbed the
domestic balance of power on which the national organization of the
English people rested. English political efficiency was dependent partly
upon its responsible exercise; and it could not survive the disregard of
domestic responsibilities entailed by the expense in men and money of
futile external aggression.

The history of Europe as it emerged from the Middle Ages affords a
continuous illustration of the truth that the increasing political
efficiency of the several states was proportioned to the exercise of
their powers in a responsible manner. The national development of the
several states was complicated in the beginning by the religious wars;
but those peoples suffered least from the wars of religion who did not
in the end allow them to interfere with their primary political
responsibilities. Spain, for instance, whose centuries of fighting with
the Moors had enormously developed her military efficiency, used this
military power solely for the purpose of pursuing political and
religious objects antagonistic or irrelevant to the responsibilities of
the Spanish kings towards their own subjects. The Spanish monarchy
proclaimed as its dominant political object the maintenance by force of
the Catholic faith throughout Europe; and for three generations it
wasted the superb military strength and the economic resources of the
Spanish people in an attempt to crush out Protestantism in Holland and
England and to reinforce militant Catholicism in France. Upon Germany,
divided into a number of petty states, partly Protestant, and partly
Catholic, but with the Imperial power exerted on behalf of a Catholic
and anti-national interest, the religious wars laid a heavy hand. Her
lack of political cohesion made her the prey of neighboring countries
whose population was numerically smaller, but which were better
organized; and the end of the Thirty Years' War left her both despoiled
and exhausted, because her polit