raphical score. If they will not work well for the hatred of bad
work, they will not work well for the hatred of Germans. This "Empire"
idea has been cadging about the British empire, trying to collect
enthusiasm and devotion, since the days of Disraeli. It is, I submit,
too big for the mean-spirited, and too tawdry and limited for the fine
and generous. It leaves out the French and the Italians and the Belgians
and all our blood brotherhood of allies. It has no compelling force
in it. We British are not naturally Imperialist; we are something
greater--or something less. For two years and a half now we have been
fighting against Imperialism in its most extravagant form. It is a
poor incentive to right living to propose to parody the devil we fight
against.

The blind man must lunge again.

For when the right answer is seized it answers not only the question why
men should work for their fellow-men but also why nation should cease to
arm and plan and contrive against nation. The social problem is only the
international problem in retail, the international problem is only the
social one in gross.

My bias rules me altogether here. I see men in social, in economic
and in international affairs alike, eager to put an end to conflict,
inexpressibly weary of conflict and the waste and pain and death it
involves. But to end conflict one must abandon aggressive or uncordial
pretensions. Labour is sick at the idea of more strikes and struggles
after the war, industrialism is sick of competition and anxious for
service, everybody is sick of war. But how can they end any of these
clashes except by the definition and recognition of a common end which
will establish a standard for the trial of every conceivable issue, to
which, that is, every other issue can be subordinated; and what common
end can there be in all the world except this idea of the world kingdom
of God? What is the good of orienting one's devotion to a firm, or to
class solidarity, or _La Republique Francais_, or Poland, or Albania, or
such love and loyalty as people profess for King George or King Albert
or the Duc d'Orleans--it puzzles me why--or any such intermediate object
of self-abandonment? We need a standard so universal that the platelayer
may say to the barrister or the duchess, or the Red Indian to the
Limehouse sailor, or the Anzac soldier to the Sinn Feiner or the
Chinaman, "What are we two doing for it?" And to fill the place of that
"it," no other id