Now I cannot help thinking that if those who aspire to govern men, and even to lay claim to the title of statesmen, were to study military history, they might learn enough about the moral force of nations and armies to set them thinking very seriously. It is a force that is very difficult to build up and not very difficult to destroy; and yet politicians of all parties trifle with it as though it were an insignificant matter. It is impossible to devise a form of Government or to collect an administration which will satisfy all men; but, though everyone recognises the fact in theory, few make allowances for it in practice. It is sufficient for politicians of all ways of thinking in these days to say solemnly that the will of the majority must prevail. But why must it prevail? Because the majority is more likely to be right than the minority? Far from it: if we could believe that this were the rule, the government of the world would be much easier than it is. No, the will of the majority must prevail because it can be enforced on the minority, which is only another way of saying that Might is Right. See how in this world of cant the terrible maxim, which men think applicable to war only, is daily in force all round us. Wise men therefore will be always moderate in their dealing with honest and respectable minorities, whether they differ from the majority in matters of religious, political or social faith, provided always that their dissent is not merely a cloak for evading the obligations of ordinary morality. Yet such moderation, though of the last importance towards amity and good understanding in a community and therefore towards its moral force in the event of war, is little more common to-day than at other periods of human history. There is really only one political or social principle which has any permanent worth, and it is expressed in the homely proverb "Give and take."
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.