ractical capacity, of honest and square living, and of mutual
help instead of mutual robbery, they will infallibly collapse, or pass
into strange and alien hands. Now is the critical moment when with the
enormous powers of production which we wield it may be possible to make
a new start, and base the social life of the future on a generous
recognition of the fellowship of all. How many times have the
civilizations of the past, ignoring this salvation, gone down into the
gulf! Can we find a better hope for our civilization to-day?

It is clear, I think, that any nation that wants to stand the shock of
events in the future, and to hold its own in the vast flux of racial and
political changes which is coming on the world, will have to found its
life, not on theories and views, or on the shifting sands of literature
and fashion, but on the solid rock of the real _material_ capability of
its citizens, and on their willingness, their readiness to help each
other--their ingrained instinct of mutual service. A conscript army,
forced upon us by a government and becoming inevitably a tool for the
use of a governing class, we do not want and we will not have; but a
nation of capable men and women, who know what life is and are prepared
to meet it at all points--who will in many cases make a free gift of
their capital and land for such purposes as I have just outlined--we
_must_ have. Personally I would not even here--though the need is a
crying one--advocate downright compulsion; but I would make these things
a part of the recognized system of education, with appropriate
regulations and the strongest recommendations and inducements to every
individual to fall in and co-operate with them. Thus in time an urgent
public opinion might be formed which would brand as disgraceful the
conduct of any person who refused to qualify himself for useful
service, or who, when qualified, deliberately refused to respond to the
call for such service, if needed. Under such conditions the question of
military defence would solve itself. Thousands and thousands of men
would of their own free choice at an early age and during a certain
period qualify themselves in military matters; other thousands, men and
women, would qualify in nursing or ambulance work; other millions,
again, would be prepared to aid in transport work, or in the production
of food, clothing, shelter, and the thousand and one necessaries of
life. No one would be called upon to do work