"the intellectual sphere," or in what would have been called at a later
date in Palestine the "kingdom of heaven." 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. 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