WAY OF REDEMPTION 333

For a hundred years, in ever increasing measure, patriotism
for the common man has been presented as a mere emotional
affair of flag-wagging. That it has had anything to do with his
daily life, his skill in his craft, his love of home and his care
of bis children, has been obscured. Yet slums and under-nourished
men and women, verminous children and despairing dole queues
F^csTmuch the concern of the patriot as the battlefield. It is as
high a treason to undermine public morality and endanger the
safety of the commonwealth for the sake of profits as it is to
trade with the enemy or sell military secrets. In time of war
nothing can save the State but the character of its people. The
man who for selfish ends undermines it is the real fifth columnist
Her capacity for making profits by foreign trade impaired
by a continental blockade and her foreign investments mostly
evaporated or frozen, Britain to-day has still two supreme
assets—the character of her people and the lands of promise won
for her in the past Both have been neglected: both, despite
defective leadership and lack of human vision, survive. The one
is her guarantee of victory. The other is her opportunity for
fulfilling the English dream. In the past many pursuing that
vision have argued that it would be better if England ceased to
be a world commercial power and became again a little land like
Sweden or Holland, producing only for quality and the happiness
of her people. But a nation, which has allowed its population
to exceed its capacity for feeding it by more than half, cannot
exist within its own narrow compass. Starvation jmd nrin
for our densely populated millions have been the unthinkable
price threatened for every attempt to discard the servitude and
uncertainty of world laissez-faire trading conditions for a gender
and juster organisation of national life. Yet there remains an
alternative. Canada and Australia, New Zealand and the
Rhodesias are the life-line of the English future* There
lies the appeal for the British people from the slum, the dole and
the regimentation of the factory

• •*••••*
Nations like men must reap what they sow. The justice that
is visited upon the children's children is an inescapable law of
existence. Yet there is another eternal principle governing
the world. It is that of redemption. Man may learn ftom
his mistakes and, when he has made atonement, raise his
stature by self-regeneration. Here, also, he learns and acts