Xii PREFACE

the genius of Shakespeare and Newton and the London of
Wren. The present may still have something to learn from a
community that could achieve so much out of so little.

Its virtues sprang from nature, but also from conscious will.
The English were what they were because they had long wished
to be. Their tradition derived from the Catholic past of Europe.
Its purpose was to make Christian men—gentle, generous,
humble, valiant and chivalrous. Its ideals were justice, mercy
and charity. Shakespeare was not writing fantasy when he put
into the mouth of John of Gaunt his vision of a

"land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land:
Dear for her reputation through the world,"

He was merely defining the character of his country.

Her institutions were moulded to make it easier for her people
to attain that character. Within their framework they could live
Christian lives without denying human needs and without
constant conflict between their conscience and their circumstance.
A sqiAe or merchant who treated his neighbours with a sense of
responsibility could still prosper. As a result of long and un-
broken Christian usage, it became native to the English to live
and work in a society in which moral responsibility existed. And
when England broke with the Catholic past—partly out of a
critical sense of its human imperfections—she still cherished the
old ideal of a nation dedicated to the task of breeding just and
gentle men. All that was best in Puritanism was an attempt to
restate it. Without justice and charity there can be no England.
That is the historic and eternal English vision.

A nation, unlike a man who is subject to death, can get what it
wants if it wants it long and strongly enough. With her un-
broken island tradition, England more than any other Christian
nation consistently tried to make herself a land of decent men
and women esteeming justice, honesty and freedom. Her success
in the fulness of time brought her unparalleled prosperity. The
virtues of her people gave them opportunities of wealth and power
greater than, men had ever known before.

They were only human and they in part misused them. Their
very sense of the value of liberty and of the significance of the
individual for a time tempted them to condone selfishness and to
forget the historic purpose of their commonwealth. This book
is the story of what happened when they did so.