in some measure of the discipline of Christian ideas to which the French, in common with the other European peoples, had been subjected.  That discipline had, as has already been observed, increased men’s capacity for fruitful association one with another.  It had stimulated a social relationship much superior to the prevailing political relationship.  It had enabled them to believe in an idea and to fight devotedly on its behalf.  It is no accident, consequently, that the national resistance took on a religious character, and in Jeanne d’Arc gave birth to one of the most fragrant figures in human history.  Thus the French national resistance, and the national bond thereby created, was one political expression of the power of cooeperation developed in the people of Europe by the acceptance of a common religious bond.  On the other hand, the use which the English had made of their precocious national organization weakened its foundations.  The aggressive exercise of military force abroad for an object which it was incompetent to achieve disturbed the domestic balance of power on which the national organization of the English people rested.  English political efficiency was dependent partly upon its responsible exercise; and it could not survive the disregard of domestic responsibilities entailed by the expense in men and money of futile external aggression.

The history of Europe as it emerged from the Middle Ages affords a continuous illustration of the truth that the increasing political efficiency of the several states was proportioned to the exercise of their powers in a responsible manner.  The national development of the several states was complicated in the beginning by the religious wars; but those peoples suffered least from the wars of religion who did not in the end allow them to interfere with their primary political responsibilities.  Spain, for instance, whose centuries of fighting with the Moors had enormously developed her military efficiency, used this military power solely for the purpose of pursuing political and religious objects antagonistic or irrelevant to the responsibilities of the Spanish kings towards their own subjects.  The Spanish monarchy proclaimed as its dominant political object the maintenance by force of the Catholic faith throughout Europe; and for three generations it wasted the superb military strength and the economic resources of the Spanish people in an attempt to crush out Protestantism in Holland and England and to reinforce militant Catholicism in France.  Upon Germany, divided into a number of petty states, partly Protestant, and partly Catholic, but with the Imperial power exerted on behalf of a Catholic and anti-national interest, the religious wars laid a heavy hand.  Her lack of political cohesion made her the prey of neighboring countries whose population was numerically smaller, but which were better organized; and the end of the Thirty Years’ War left her both despoiled and exhausted, because