In addition to the two old parties, however, there are two comparatively new ones which occupy places of importance in the world of politics. These are the Nationalist and the Labour parties. Neither of these professes to make the interests of the State its prime concern. The one concentrates its energies upon a struggle to advance the cause of a single nation from among the four that constitute the United Kingdom; the other devotes itself to the affairs of a single social class. The existence of these powerful sectional organizations is a disastrous portent. They stand, not as the old parties do for divergent views concerning the interests of the State as a whole, but for mortal schism in the body politic. Never can there be a full return to healthy national life until means have been found for reabsorbing these and other incipient schismatic organizations into the unity of the Great Society. A third rival to the State has recently come into prominence in the shape of a number of various non-political corporations which claim to possess an organic existence independent of, and co-ordinate with, the State, and thus deny the right of the State to intrude within the spheres of their operations. The most important are the Syndicalists, who proclaim the autonomy of the industrial union or guild, and the Ecclesiastics, who assert the autonomy of the denationalized church. Both agree in repudiating political control, and in abjuring the use of political instruments. They rely upon "direct action" of their own, the one employing the terrors of the general strike to overawe the community, the other the horrors of hell. Now it may be freely granted that one of the most notable advances in modern political theory has been the recognition of the fact that men naturally organize themselves into groups--families, clans, tribes; sects, societies, churches; guilds, trade unions, clubs, and so on--and that the State is rather a federation of groups than an association of isolated individuals. It may be granted, secondly, that some of these organizations are anterior to the State in point of time, and that they deal with matters that are not appropriate for direct State control. Finally, it may be granted that the State will be well advised to leave some or all of them in possession of large powers of self-administration. Nevertheless, when once the Great Society has come into existence, and has organized itself as the National State, they must, if anarchy is to be avoided, all take their places as constituent members of the community, and recognize that they exercise such autonomous powers as they possess in virtue of the permission of the general will. The State, however prudently it may employ its powers, must be, and must be universally admitted to be, in all causes, civil or ecclesiastical, throughout all its dominions, in the last resort, supreme. In the interests of the common good it cannot tolerate any rivals. FOOTNOTES: