worth, we think of what he owns. But the words ought to make us think of
what he is fit for and of what service he renders to the nation. The
only value of what a man has springs from what he does with it.

The idea of the nation leads to the right way of looking at these
matters, because it constrains every man to put himself and all that he
has at the service of the community. Thus it is the opposite of
socialism, which merely turns upside down the current worship of
ownership, and which thinks "having" so supremely important that it
would put "not having" in its place. The only cry I will adopt is
"England for ever," which means that we are here, every one of us, with
all that we have and all that we can do, as members of a nation that
must either serve the world or perish.

But the idea of the nation carries us a long way further than I have yet
shown. It bids us all try at the peril of England's fall to get the
best Government we can to lead us. We need a man to preside over the
nation's counsels, to settle the line of Britain's duty in Europe and in
her own Empire, and of her duty to her own people, to the millions who
are growing up ill fed, ill housed and ill trained, and yet who are part
of the sovereign people. We need to give him as councillors men that are
masters of the tasks in which for the nation to fail means its ruin, the
tasks of which I have enumerated those that are vital. Do we give him a
master of the history of the other nations to guide the nation's
dealings with them? Do we give him a master of war to educate admirals
and generals? Do we give him a master of the sciences to direct the
pursuit of knowledge, and a master of character-building to supervise
the bringing up of boys and girls to be types of a noble life? It would
serve the nation's turn to have such men. They are among us, and to find
them we should only have to look for them. It would be no harder than to