ght for youth, and for youth principally and almost alone. You
cannot found the New World in a day, but if the youthful citizen is taken
in hand, educated, inspired, and given all possible advantages both for
intellectual improvement and bodily health, this New World will come
without resistance, inevitably, and of its own accord and free will. To
a certain extent the ideals of the British Empire succeed only for the
socialistic "vision" which inspires it. But the chief fault of this
"vision" is that it is so busy making black men clean and "Christian"
that it has no vigour left to clean up and "Christianise" the dirt and
heathenism at home. It would rather, metaphorically speaking (I had
vowed never to use that expression again in the New Year, but--well,
there it is!), bring the ideals of Western civilisation into the jungles
of Darkest Africa than tackle the problems of the slums of Manchester.
And this, not so much because a "civilised" Darkest Africa will have
money in it, as because in tackling the problem of the slums it will have
to fight drastically the rich and poor heathens at home--with all the
tradition and prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness with which they are
bolstered up and deluded with the cry of "Freedom" and "Liberty," and
that still greater illusion--Legal "Justice."
_Education_
Education of the mind, education of the body--to stop at the very
beginning that tragic waste of human material, both physical, mental, and
spiritual, which forces youth into blind-alley occupations or into
occupations unworthy of physically fit men and women--that is the first
stone in the foundation of the New World--a step far more important than
the confiscation of capital, which seems to be the loudest cry of those
who, in their ignorance, claim to be Socialists. Socialism is
_constructive_ not _destructive_--but the construction must have the
vision of the future always before its eyes, and that future must be
prepared for--drastically, if need be.
_The Inane and Unimaginative_
In every mixed crowd there always seems such a large percentage of the
unimaginative and the inane that I am never surprised that the silliest
superstitions still flourish, "the Thing" is rampant, and that, in
every progress towards real civilisation, the very longest way round is
taken with the very feeblest results. It is not that this percentage
is wicked, nor is it strikingly good, neither is it necessarily
feebl
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