England to-day has adopted this "new policy"; she has responded to Mazzini's appeal by stepping into the arena and declaring herself ready to take part in "the organisation of the European task"; her sons are dying on the Continent in defence of the principle of nationality, in support of the rights of other nations to that liberty which her insular position has secured for herself for many centuries, the liberty "to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea." She is fighting, moreover, not only on behalf of the threatened freedom of Belgium, France, and Serbia, on behalf of the unborn freedom of Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, and the subject races of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, but also on her own behalf. It is not merely that she recognises that her Empire is in danger; she recognises also that she is unable to work out her own salvation, unable to carry on her industrial development and her schemes for the betterment of her people in security, while the Continent at her doors remains in constant peril of change. "The social idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever before this reorganisation of Europe is effected." §1. _Nation and Nationality_.--The social idea and the national idea have been for a century past the twin pivots of European development. The political structure of the Continent has oscillated this way and that according as these ideas have in turn assumed ascendancy over men's minds; and when, as in 1848, both claimed attention at the same time, the whole edifice was shaken to its very foundations. In England, on the other hand, it is the social idea alone which has been a motive force in the nineteenth century, although she has always had to reckon with the national idea across the St. George's Channel. Owing to her fortunate geographical situation, she acquired national unity many centuries ago and has always been able to defend it successfully against the danger of external aggression. The national idea, therefore, has long ceased to be an aspiration, and consequently a revolutionary force, among us; it has been realised in actual fact, we have grown as accustomed to it and as unconscious of it as of the air we breathe. Thus Englishmen, as their attitude towards Ireland has shown, find it difficult to understand exactly what the principle of nationality means to those who have never possessed national freedom or are in constant danger of losing it. This is perhaps especially true of the English working classes, who grew to the full stature of political consciousness some fifty years after the last serious threat to our national existence was made by Napoleon, and upon whom the burden of the social idea presses with peculiar weight. And yet, unless the significance of the principle of nationality and the part which it has played in the history of modern Europe be realised, it is impossible to