" But the strongest impulse of
mankind is to realise its ideals. Its fervent prayer, which once uttered
can never cease, is "on earth as it is in heaven," and the ideals
developed in man's spiritual life gradually take shape in laws and
become prohibitions and injunctions backed by the forces of the State.
The State, however, is not an abstraction. For English people it means
the United Kingdom; and if an Englishman wants to realise what he owes
to his country let him look back through its history and see how all
that he values in the character of the men he most admires and all that
is best in himself has gradually been created and realised through the
ceaseless effort of his forefathers, carried on continuously from the
time when the first Englishman crossed the North Sea until the present
day. Other nations have their types of conduct, perhaps as good as our
own, but Englishmen value, and rightly value, the ideals particularly
associated with the life of their own country. Perhaps two of the
commonest expressions convey peculiarly English views of character. We
talk of "fair play" as the essence of just dealing between man and man.
It is a conception we have developed from the national games. We
describe ideal conduct as that of a gentleman.
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