THE Feudal System, let it be repeated, was based upon the belief that "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." Even the King's ownership of the land over which he reigned was a tenancy under God, the real Owner. The meanest vassal, therefore, was associated in that universal service of God which was the sole office of Kings and nobles and priests.
There is no place in such a system for ownership without responsibility. There is, equally, no place for the socialistic conception of the "State" as a mutual-benefit trust. Mutual benefit implies the possession of rights ; Feudalism recognized only duties towards God and, under God, towards men.
A little consideration will show that the God System is, in fact, the only substitute for the Money System. Any other system is bound sooner or later, from its nature, to lead back to Money . It follows that the distresses of the world cannot be cured by any device, however subtle, but only by a return to faith upon which, in the beginning, European civilization was built. If men have really ceased to believe in God, they will remain the victims of Mammon, and no method of currency control or State economy will save them. Napoleon did not err when he declared that religion is the basis of Society.
It was the scepticism of the Eighteenth Century which prepared the way for the coming of the Money power. But that scepticism was no more than the revolt of honest minds against an abuse of privilege by both the spiritual and temporal authority. The trouble was not Feudalism, but the want of it. Had the Church remained in all things true to her Master, had the Kings and their nobles adhered to the rule Noblesse oblige, there would have been no occasion of doubt. A Church advancing ever in knowledge of God and His purpose, Thrones in which all men saw the pledge of service, would have suffered nothing from criticism or ribaldry. That the Throne in England possesses today the deepening confidence of men and women is a matter, therefore, of sincere rejoicing. Little by little the idea of individual ownership without responsibility—and also the idea of a common ownership without responsibility—is giving place to the idea of a stewardship. The mass of the people, in other words, remains true to the old ideals—as was shown during the War and again in 1931—and lacks nothing but knowledge of the Money System to make an end of it. The best service, therefore, which a man can render his fellows is to instruct them about the Money power and urge them to use their votes.
True Internationalism, let it be added, is friendship between nations, not a return to tribalism under the overlordship of International Finance. In its essence, it is the recognition by one nation of the God-thought of another nation and so an extension of man's knowledge of God. It is a meeting of two systems of service whereby God is recognized as the object of both, and men, in consequence, discover a common duty and a common brotherhood in duty. True Internationalism, therefore, like Nationalism, is a system of service deriving from Heaven and opposed wholly to the system of gain . The Money power can no more achieve such a union than it can achieve the welfare of any individual nation.
For the nation is a society the basis of which is spiritual and not material. A nation is not a commonwealth in which every citizen possesses an equal share, it is not a "State" the people of which enjoy the same rights ; the idea of natural right or birthright is foreign to its constitution. In its essence it is a lieutenancy of God, a part of His universe entrusted to one of His captains and existing solely for His good pleasure. The subjects of the King, like the King himself, have no right save that of obedience to the Divine Will, and can possess nothing except in so far as possession may be necessary to the performance of duty. If it is objected that such an idea partakes of the grotesque in this modern world, the answer may properly be made that it is not more, but less grotesque than the spectacle now presented by the Kingdoms of Mammon, wherein every new exhibition of man's power to make use of the resources of God is attended by fresh calamity and ruin, and where each addition to the wealth of humanity adds inevitably to the number of the destitute.