its mission in the world.  A statesman who is to lead the nation and the Empire must keep his eyes on Europe and on the world.  A party leader who is to defeat the other party must keep his eyes on the other party.  No man can at the same time be looking out of the window and watching an opponent inside the house, and the traditional system puts the Prime Minister in a painful dilemma.  Either he never looks out of the window at all or he tries to look two ways at once.  Party men seem to believe that if a Prime Minister were to look across the sea instead of across the floor of the House of Commons his Government would be upset.  That may be the case so long as men ignore the nation and so long as they acquiesce in the treasonable doctrine that it is the business of the Opposition to oppose.  But a statesman who would take courage to lead the nation might perhaps find the Opposition powerless against him.

The counterpart of leadership is following.  A Government that shows the line of Britain’s duty must be able to utilise the whole energies of her people for its performance.  A duty laid upon the nation implies a duty laid upon every man to do his share of the nation’s work, to assist the Government by obedient service, the best of which he is capable.  It means a people trained every man to his task.

A nation should be like a team in which every man has his place, his work to do, his mission or duty.  There is no room in it either for the idler who consumes but renders no service, or for the unskilled man who bungles a task to which he has not been trained.  A nation may be compared to a living creature.  Consider the way in which nature organises all things that live and grow.  In the structure of a living thing every part has its function, its work to do.  There are no superfluous organs, and if any fails to do its work the creature sickens and perhaps dies.

Take the idea of the nation as I have tried to convey it and apply it as a measure or test to our customary way of thinking both of public affairs and of our own lives.  Does it not reveal that we attach too much importance to having and to possessions—­our own and other people’s—­and too little importance to doing, to service?  When we ask what a man is 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.