In our quieter moments, the Nation or Country forms the basic idea of society. We think vaguely of a loose population spreading over a certain geographical portion of the earth’s surface, speaking a common language, and living in a homogeneous civilization.
What is the State essentially? The more closely we examine it, the more mystical and personal it becomes.
The sanctity of the State is identified with the sanctity of the ruling class.
The State is the country acting as a political unit, it is the group acting as a repository of force, determiner of law, arbiter of justice. International politics is a power politics because it is a relation of States and that is what States infallibly and calamitously are, huge aggregations of human and industrial force that may be hurled against each other in war. When a country acts as a whole in relation to another country, or in imposing laws on its own inhabitants, or in coercing or punishing individuals or minorities, it is acting as a State.
In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves.
That the State is a mystical conception is something that must never be forgotten. Its glamor and its significance linger behind the framework of Government and direct its activities.
The ideal of the State is that within its territory its power and influence should be universal.
Wartime brings the ideal of the State out into very clear relief, and reveals attitudes and tendencies that were hidden. The State is the organization of the herd to act offensively or defensively against another herd similarly organized.
It is States that make wars and not nations, and the very thought and almost necessity of war is bound up with the ideal of the State.
Government … is synonymous with neither State nor Nation. It is the machinery by which the nation, organized as a State, carries out its State functions. Government is a framework of the administration of laws, and the carrying out of the public force. Government is the idea of the State put into practical operation in the hands of definite, concrete, fallible men. It is the visible sign of the invisible grace. Government is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is thus a legitimate object of criticism and even contempt.
Certain of the Administration measures were devised directly to increase the health of the State, such as the Conscription and the Espionage laws.