It is the most important because it is an end in itself whereas the other two are only the means for achieving this end. Security against foreign attack is a desirable and worthy object only in order to enable us to approach this goal. A strong and flexible constitution is an advantage only because we believe it will enable us to achieve our objects, better and more quickly, than if we are compelled to go on working {212} under a system which has become at once rigid and rickety. But while we were bound to realise the superior nature of the third set of problems, we should have been careful at the same time to distinguish between two things which are very apt to be confused in political discussions--_ultimate importance_ and _immediate urgency_. We ought to have taken into our reckoning both the present state of the world and the permanent nature of man--all the stuff that dreams and wars are made on. We desired peace. We needed peace. Peace was a matter of life and death to all our hopes. If defeat should once break into the ring of our commonwealth--scattered as it is all over the world, kept together only by the finest and most delicate attachments--it must be broken irreparably. Our most immediate interest was therefore to keep defeat, and if possible, war, from bursting into our sphere--as Dutchmen by centuries of laborious vigilance have kept back the sea with dikes. The numbers of our people in themselves were no security; nor our riches; nor even the fact that we entertained no aggressive designs. For as it was said long ago, 'it never troubles a wolf how many the sheep be.' They find no salvation in their heavy fleeces and their fat haunches; nor even in the meekness of their hearts, and in their innocence of all evil intentions. The characteristic of this period may be summed up in one short sentence; the vast majority of the British people were bent and determined--as they had never been bent and determined before--upon leaving their country better than they had found it. {213} To some this statement will seem a paradox. "Was there ever a time," they may ask, "when there had been so many evidences of popular unrest, discontent, bitterness and anger; or when there had ever appeared to be so great an inclination, on the one hand to apathy and cynicism, on the other hand to despair?" [Sidenote: THE RESULTS OF CONFUSION]