to
enlist in the service of the commonwealth. But without it we perish.
Social betterment must depend at every stage on the force of public
spirit and public morality that inspires it.

So much for the case of those who are able and willing to work. There
remain still the uncounted thousands who by accident or illness, age or
infirmity, are unable to maintain themselves. For these people, under
the older dispensation, there was nothing but the poorhouse, the jail or
starvation by the roadside. The narrow individualism of the nineteenth
century refused to recognize the social duty of supporting somebody
else's grandmother. Such charity began, and ended, at home. But even
with the passing of the nineteenth century an awakened sense of the
collective responsibility of society towards its weaker members began to
impress itself upon public policy. Old age pension laws and national
insurance against illness and accident were already being built into the
legislative codes of the democratic countries. The experience of the war
has enormously increased this sense of social solidarity. It is clear
now that our fortunes are not in our individual keeping. We stand or
fall as a nation. And the nation which neglects the aged and infirm, or
which leaves a family to be shipwrecked as the result of a single
accident to a breadwinner, cannot survive as against a nation in which
the welfare of each is regarded as contributory to the safety of all.
Even the purest selfishness would dictate a policy of social insurance.

There is no need to discuss the particular way in which this policy can
best be carried out. It will vary with the circumstances of each
community. The action of the municipality, or of the state or province,
or of the central government itself may be called into play. But in one
form or another, the economic loss involved in illness and infirmity
must be shifted from the shoulders of the individual to those of
society at large. There was but little realization of this obligation in
the nineteenth century. Only in the sensational moments of famine, flood
or pestilence was a general social effort called forth. But in the
clearer view of the social bond which the war has given us we can see
that famine and pestilence are merely exaggerated forms of what is
happening every day in our midst.

We spoke much during the war of "man power." We suddenly realized that
after all the greatness and strength of a nation is made up of