of other nations. Therefore you must base national organisation on provincial communities. But if your province is to have any sufficient power of satisfying local aspirations it must, except for the federal reservations, have its own complete and balanced life. That is precisely what the real Freedom of Men requires—scope for a full life in their own locality. The organisation by nationwide classes and interests is the outcome of conflict, but it cannot satisfy, for it removes the larger careers away to the metropolis. Moreover the slums, and most other material afflictions of the people, are the outcome of impotence of local life, for they all result from offences against the principle of keeping that life complete and balanced.
Provinces of complete life, of course, imply federal system. It is not a mere decentralisation which is contemplated, but decentralisation of the different social functions to the same local units. Undoubtedly that is the tendency at the present time, in the Anglo-Saxon world, in regard to the administration of Government. The United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa are all, in greater or less degree, federal, and in Britain we seem to be not very far from becoming so. Only the Irish question blocks the way, but
