arrangement would not tend to promote the welfare of mankind and will
not be accepted by those nations that have confidence in their own
future. That such a proposal should have been announced by a British
Government is evidence not of the strength of Great Britain, not of a
healthy condition of national life, but of inability to appreciate the
changes which have been produced during the last century in the
conditions of Europe and the consequent alteration in Great Britain's
relative position among the great Powers. It was long ago remarked by
the German historian Bernhardi that Great Britain was the first country
in Europe to revive in the modern world the conception of the State. The
feudal conception identified the State with the monarch. The English
revolution of 1688 was an identification of the State with the Nation.
But the nationalisation of the State, of which the example was set in
1688 by Great Britain, was carried out much more thoroughly by France in
the period that followed the revolution of 1789; and in the great
conflict which ensued between France and the European States the
principal continental opponents of France were compelled to follow her
example, and, in a far greater degree than has ever happened in England,
to nationalise the State. It is to that struggle that we must turn if we
are to understand the present condition of Europe and the relations of
Great Britain to the European Powers.




V.


THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR