It is a condensation of
the best part of English history, and a search for a definition of the
function of Great Britain in the moral economy of the world will hardly
find a better answer than that it is to stamp upon every subject of the
King the character implied in these two expressions. Suppose the British
State to be overthrown or to drop from its place among the great Powers
of the world, these ideals of character would be discredited and their
place would be taken by others.
The justification of the constraint exercised by the State upon its own
citizens is the necessity for security, the obligation of self-defence,
which arises from the fact that outside the State there are other
States, each endowed like itself with sovereignty, each of them
maintaining by force its conception of right. The power of the State
over its own subjects is thus in the last resort a consequence of the
existence of other States. Upon the competition between them rests the
order of the world. It is a competition extending to every sphere of
life and in its acute form takes the shape of war, a struggle for
existence, for the mastery or for right.
IV.
ARBITRATION AND DISARMAMENT
To some people the place of war in the economy of nations appears to be
unsatisfactory.
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