eaning
and responsibility, more potent for good or for ill than it has ever
been before--than our predecessors even in the time of Napoleon could
have dreamed of.

The greatest inventors and most skilful practitioners of the political
art in the modern world have been the English, for it is the English
who, of all nations, have held closest to the ideal of freedom in its
many and various manifestations. Superficially regarded, the English are
a stupid people, and so their continental neighbours have often
regarded them. But their racial heritage and their island situation seem
to have given them just that combination of experience and natural
endowment necessary to success in the task of government. Taken as a
whole, the English are not brilliant, but they are clear-headed: they
are not far-sighted, but they can see the fact before their eyes: they
are ill equipped with theoretical knowledge, but they understand the
working of institutions and have a good eye for judging character: they
have little constructive imagination of the more grandiose sort, but
they have an instinct for the 'next step' which has often set them on
paths which have led them far further than they dreamed; above all, they
have a relatively high standard of individual character and public duty,
without which no organization involving the free co-operation of man and
man can hope to be effective. It is this unique endowment of moral
qualities and practical gifts, coupled with unrivalled opportunities,
which has made the English the pioneers in modern times in the art of
human association. Englishmen, accustomed to what eighteenth-century
writers used to call 'the peculiar felicity of British freedom', do not
always remember how far their own experience has carried them on the
road of political progress. They do not realize how many problems they
have solved and abolished, as the art of medicine has abolished
diseases. When they hear speak of the eternal conflict between
Nationality and Nationality, they often forget that a war between
England and Scotland has long since become unthinkable and that the
platitudes of St. Andrew's Day are still paradoxes in Central and
Eastern Europe. When they are told of States where the spontaneous
manifestations of group-life, non-conforming sects, workmen's
associations, and ordinary social clubs, are driven underground and
classed as dangerous secret societies, they should realize how precious
a thing is that fr