while it is consolidating, they argue that if the
Empire ceased to exist armaments would cease too, and the money so saved
could be spent on their creature comforts. They pride themselves on
being an avowed and organised enemy of the Empire which, as others see
it, waits only to give them health, prosperity, and power beyond
anything their votes could win them in England. But their leaders need
their votes in England, as they need their outcries and discomforts to
help them in their municipal and Parliamentary careers. No engineer
lowers steam in his own boilers.

So they are told little except evil of the great heritage outside, and
are kept compounded in cities under promise of free rations and
amusements. If the Empire were threatened they would not, in their own
interests, urge England to spend men and money on it. Consequently it
might be well if the nations within the Empire were strong enough to
endure a little battering unaided at the first outset--till such time,
that is, as England were permitted to move to their help.

For this end an influx of good men is needed more urgently every year
during which peace holds--men loyal, clean, and experienced in
citizenship, with women not ignorant of sacrifice.

Here the gentlemen who propose to be kept by their neighbours are our
helpful allies. They have succeeded in making uneasy the class
immediately above them, which is the English working class, as yet
undebauched by the temptation of State-aided idleness or
State-guaranteed irresponsibility. England has millions of such silent
careful folk accustomed, even yet, to provide for their own offspring,
to bring them up in a resolute fear of God, and to desire no more than
the reward of their own labours. A few years ago this class would not
have cared to shift; now they feel the general disquiet. They live close
to it. Tea-and-sugar borrowing friends have told them jocularly, or with
threats, of a good time coming when things will go hard with the
uncheerful giver. The prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to
their Savings Bank books. They hear--they do not need to read--the
speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of
their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by
roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When
the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family
ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they
k