to consider how the progress of his own country may best be built up, or, at any rate, to consider and do away with what militates against it.

Even if we could see our way clearly as to realising the good of the country in the long run, we should not be justified in making it our sole aim. We must allow an equal liberty to other peoples. The industrial rivalry which is now apparent among the nations of the world would be a worse evil unless it is controlled; but it need not be mischievous for humanity, if the different nations shall consciously aim at co-operation for the common good rather than at competition. Trade was formerly regarded as a means by which each nation, after supplying its own wants, got rid of the surplus which nature provided from its products. But we have passed that stage; each nation is engaged in a competition for raw material and in endeavours to manufacture and sell goods such as every other industrial nation is prepared to manufacture and sell. This rivalry between nations is an evil, and especially evil if it gives rise to mutual recrimination, and to attempts to injure the progress of others and impose limits upon them. The progress of the world is compatible with the progress of each nation, and the progress of each nation with the welfare of the individuals who compose it. There is no need to impose a check on the increase of national productivity or national wealth: but there is

need to make every effort to use it rightly, and to see that it is employed, not in mere display, but in steadily improving the standard of life. The good citizen is concerned to see that the resources of his country are wisely developed so that there can be a constant improvement in the standard of life.

The aspiration after national progress must be kept in control by the recognition of the claims of humanity; but we must also remember that it can never be satisfied with proposals for redistributing the aggregate of individual wealth as it exists, and for thus readjusting the national dividend. The aim of promoting national progress is more far-reaching; the intellectualist may feel grave uncertainty and be restrained from any action by the fear of doing more harm than good, but the practical man cannot shirk responsibility by letting things alone; he feels it a duty to try and do his best. And the difficulties which beset the good citizen are at least diminished if he can look at these matters from the religious point of view, and consciously endeavour to carry out the purpose of God in the exercise of his share of sovereignty. He can make more sure of himself, and of his being uninfluenced in his public action by personal and corrupt motives, if he recognises his danger, and consciously endeavours to keep the conception of a trust before him, and to exercise his powers as a trust; it is the best safeguard against

the temptation to subordinate the common weal to personal advantage or class interest, and to keep alive the sense of doing his best for the country and for the improvement of the standard of life on the whole and in the long run.

He will be delivered, too, from the narrow patriotism which attempts to gain at the expense of other peoples, if he seeks to remember that they too are the offspring of God, and that it is well that they should have free play for attaining the best that is in them, so that they may make their best contribution to human life. For man to destroy or to waste anything that has been made seems inconsistent with the purpose of God in creation. It is the part of man everywhere to use and replenish the portion of the globe in his control; to destroy it is to acknowledge failure to use it as anything but an obstacle to orderly human life. In a similar fashion we seem to get the highest possible conception of the standard of life from the men of old time, who felt they were entrusted with the preservation and maintenance of the life of a people that was a witness to the rest of the world of the will of God for mankind.

Burden

We talk so much in these days about the brotherhood of nations and the family of nations that we have difficulty in remembering how very modern this sentiment is, and that in bygone times there was little feeling of any duty to offer a helping hand to another State, or to assist a backward people to advance. All through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages the Moslem barrier prevented the people of Europe from coming in contact with Eastern Christendom. The religious differences, and the hostilities to which they gave rise, affected any intercourse which took place, and though the existence of an international authority in the Papacy might sometimes give an excuse to an ambitious potentate for encroaching on his neighbours, as William of Normandy obtained the papal blessing for his invasion of England, on the whole it tended to limit the range of secular activities and diplomacy and to urge medieval Powers to mind their own business and attend to their own dominions. Traders desired to obtain exceptional privileges for themselves, and to live by their own customs within their own precincts, rather than to modify the habits of the people among whom they settled. It was with the disruption of Christendom, and the international

rivalries that arose, that national affinities and common dangers became accentuated, and drew peoples to be aware of common interests and of deep-seated antagonism.

The first sense of the White Man's Burden appears to have come home to certain Englishmen at that time. The Elizabethan sailors had a horror of Spain and all that Spain stood for, and they were bitterly averse to allowing the peoples of the New World to come under an influence that they feared and hated for themselves. There is a note of pity for the natives and regard for their development mingled with Raleigh's lifelong antagonism to Spain, and the same feeling comes out in the early history of Virginia and the story of Pocahontas. There is no indication of it before that time. From the earliest days of English colonisation there is some consciousness of the White Man's Burden. We see it put forward very definitely by William Penn in his effort to control the relations of the settlers with the Indians, and again in the efforts of Boyle and Bray and others, who were anxious to provide for the maintenance of religious ordinances overseas, and by whom the needs of the native population were not forgotten. The sense of public responsibility for the welfare of the natives was too weak to come to the aid of Bishop Berkeley and his scheme for the foundation of a college at the Bermudas. But public sympathy was more readily roused on