What is the civic form of this proverb? It is this, No rights without duties, no duties without rights. In England I am afraid--though I may be wrong--that for some time past there has been too much prating of rights, and too little reflection upon duties; though the commonwealth depends for its stability upon the equal recognition of both. What, you may ask, do you owe to the State? Well, you owe to it gratitude for the fact that you can for the most part walk about decently clad and purse in pocket without danger of being knocked on the head; and that you can pursue your lawful avocation in peace. But how if your clothes are in rags and you have no purse? Well then, apart from all possible benefits from the poor law, you at least enjoy immunity from being knocked on the head as an unprofitable member of the tribe. The great difference between primitive and civilised societies is that the civilised recognise misfortune as a palliative to inefficiency, which the primitive cannot afford to do. We have still a right to say that a criminal is an inefficient citizen, but no longer that an inefficient citizen is a criminal; and this, for some of us, is a considerable gain. Even if the State gave us no more than this, we are everyone of us debtors for more than we can repay. But, in the most highly organised states of the present time, the tendency is that the community at large shall contribute more and more towards making men physically and mentally into efficient citizens and towards saving them from the consequences of misfortune, but in return shall claim from them more exacting duties. It would perhaps be historically more accurate to say that in some cases the duties came first and the benefits afterwards; but the point is that the principle of rights for duties and duties for rights has been faithfully observed. Thus in Germany the State has set up machinery for education, for insurance against misfortune, for provision against old age, claiming in return from able-bodied citizens two years of military training, with liability to be recalled to the colours up to a certain age in the event of war. There are other states in which the same or less is given or claimed; but there are few of importance in Europe in which free education is not the right, and military training the countervailing duty. And this system has been adopted in every case, not only from bitter experience of disastrous defeat in war, but because foreign statesmen read military history. The bond of a common duty, impartially imposed upon all classes from the highest to the lowest, tends to soften minor differences and discontents, and constitutes in itself a great moral force.