We have come to the end of our long survey. Some of you may feel that I have fetched too wide a compass and given too wide an extension to the meaning of government. But if I have sinned I have sinned of set purpose. I refuse to confine government within the limits of what is ordinarily called politics, or to discuss the association called the State in isolation from other sides of man's community life. To do so, I feel, is to lay oneself open to one of two opposite errors: the error of those for whom the State is the Almighty, and who invest it with a superhuman morality and authority of its own; and the error of those who draw in their skirts in horror from the touch of what Nietzsche called this 'cold monster' and take refuge in monastic detachment from the political responsibilities of their time. We must be able to see politics as a part of life before we can see it steadily and see it whole. We must be able to see it in relation to the general ordering of the world and to connect it once more, as in the Middle Ages, with religion and morality. No thinking man can live through such a time as this and preserve his faith unless he is sustained by the belief that the clash of States which is darkening our generation is not a mere blind collision of forces, but has spiritual bearings which affect each individual living soul born or to be born in the world. It is not for us to anticipate the verdict of history. But what we can do is to bear ourselves worthily, in thought and speech, like our soldiers in action, of the times in which we live--to testify, as it were, in our own lives, to that for which so many of our friends have laid down theirs. We are met at a culminating moment of human fate--when, so far as human judgement can discern, the political destinies of this planet are being settled for many generations to come--perhaps for good. If the task of leadership in the arts of government remains with us, let us face the responsibility conscious of the vast spiritual issues which it involves, and let us so plan and act that history, looking back on these years of blood, may date from them a new birth of freedom and progress, not for ourselves in this country alone but throughout that kingdom of Man which must one day, as we believe, become in very truth the kingdom of God. BOOKS FOR REFERENCE 1. _Man's Control over Nature_: Ray Lankester, _The Kingdom of Man_, and other essays. 1912. Demolins, _Comment la route cree le type social_. Curtis (ed. by), _The Commonwealth of Nations_. Vol. i, 1916. Murphy, _The Basis of Ascendancy_. 1909. _Introduction to the Study of International Relations_ (Greenwood and others). 1916. 2. _Political Ideals_: _The Jews_: Todd, _Politics and Religion in Ancient Israel_. 1904. _Greece_: _Aristotle's Politics_, translated by B. Jowett. 1908. Dickinson, _The Greek View of Life_. 1909. Barker, _The Political thought of Plato and Aristotle_. 1908.