nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilised life as the combination of men in society. ... It is in the cauldron of the State that the fusion takes place by which the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity of one portion of mankind may be communicated to another.... If we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those States are substantially the most perfect which, like the British and Austrian Empires, include various distinct nationalities without oppressing them." So wrote Lord Acton, the great Catholic historian, fifty years ago, when the watchwords of Nationality were on all men's lips, adding, in words that were prophetic of the failure of the Austrian and the progress of the British Commonwealth of Nations: "The coexistence of several nations under the same State _is a test_ as well as the best security _of its freedom_. It is also one of the chief instruments of civilisation; and, as such, it is in the natural and providential order, and indicates a state of greater advancement than the national unity which is the ideal of modern liberalism."[1] [Footnote 1: Essay on Nationality, in _The History of Freedom and other Essays_, pp. 290, 298.] Of the Great Powers which between them control the destinies of civilisation Great Britain is at once the freest, the largest, and the most various. If the State is a "cauldron" for mingling "the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity" of the portions of mankind--or if, to use an apter metaphor, it is a body whose perfection consists in the very variety of the functions of its several members--there has never been on the earth a political organism like the British Empire. Its 433 million inhabitants, from Great Britain to Polynesia, from India and Egypt to Central Africa, are drawn from every division of the human race. Cut a section through mankind, and in every layer there will be British citizens, living under the jurisdiction of British law. Here is something to hearten those who have looked in vain to the Hague. While international law has been brought to a standstill through the absence of a common will and a common executive, Great Britain has thrown a girdle of law around the globe. §7. _The Future of Civilisation_.--What hopes dare we cherish, in this hour of conflict, for the future of civilisation?