We have said that what differentiates membership of the state from that of other associations is its compulsory nature and the fact that all other organizations and activities within the frontiers of the State are, in the last resort, subordinate to it. The State issues directions and it also enforces them if necessary by employing armed force. "The modern State" says Laski "is a territorial society, divided into Government and subjects, claiming within its allotted physical area, supremacy over all other institutions." Sovereign is the most important constituent element of the State and there can be no State without a Sovereign power. "The basis of State sovereignty," to quote Laski again "is the contingent power to use the armed forces of the State to compel obedience to its will....And it is the possession of this legal right to resort to coercion which distinguishes the government of the state from the government of all other associations." How essential that control is to the State's effective power is one of the clearest lessons of history.