f democracy as universal justice, is free from the
jealousy of the theologians and great enough for men to unite upon
everywhere. I know how warily one must reckon with the spite of the
priest, but surely these ideas may call upon the teachers of all the
great world religions for their support. The world is full now of
confused propaganda, propaganda of national ideas, of traditions of
hate, of sentimental and degrading loyalties, of every sort of error
that divides and tortures and slays mankind. All human institutions are
made of propaganda, are sustained by propaganda and perish when it
ceases; they must be continually explained and re-explained to the young
and the negligent. And for this new world of democracy and the League of
Free Nations to which all reasonable men are looking, there must needs
be the greatest of all propagandas. For that cause every one must
become a teacher and a missionary. "Persuade to it and make the idea of
it and the necessity for it plain," that is the duty of every school
teacher, every tutor, every religious teacher, every writer, every
lecturer, every parent, every trusted friend throughout the world. For
it, too, every one must become a student, must go on with the task of
making vague intentions into definite intentions, of analyzing and
destroying obstacles, of mastering the ten thousand difficulties of
detail....

I am a man who looks now towards the end of life; fifty-one years have I
scratched off from my calendar, another slips by, and I cannot tell how
many more of the sparse remainder of possible years are really mine. I
live in days of hardship and privation, when it seems more natural to
feel ill than well; without holidays or rest or peace; friends and the
sons of my friends have been killed; death seems to be feeling always
now for those I most love; the newspapers that come in to my house tell
mostly of blood and disaster, of drownings and slaughterings, of
cruelties and base intrigues. Yet never have I been so sure that there
is a divinity in man and that a great order of human life, a reign of
justice and world-wide happiness, of plenty, power, hope, and gigantic
creative effort, lies close at hand. Even now we have the science and
the ability available for a universal welfare, though it is scattered
about the world like a handful of money dropped by a child; even now
there exists all the knowledge that is needed to make mankind
universally free and human life sweet an