itude towards social reform is a tendency to co-operation between
nations. We have seen that this has already had effect in various
details of law and administration; and there is every reason to suppose
that the method will be carried further.

But the problem cannot be left there. Co-operation as a word is a mere
charm, like Evolution. There has been, and there may be co-operation in
doing wrong. That action has become common does not prove that it is
right; and an ideal implies at least some ethical judgement. Therefore,
in every nation there are some few who are convinced of the necessity
for more deliberately moral action in common between men of different
races. If there can be so much co-operation in the making of armaments
or the defrauding of shareholders, there may yet be more co-operation in
the elimination of disease and poverty. And not only may there be such
co-operation, but it must be. The situation no longer exists in which
most of the effects of an evil regime are confined within frontiers. The
social distress of European nations must be dealt with as a whole
because it is a whole. Therefore whatever militates against the unity of
western civilization destroys the possibility of social reform.

Many times before it has been seen that there are nobler conflicts than
the struggle for markets or for the political domination of one clique
or one nation. Many times before it has been felt, at least by a few,
that man is deceived when he imagines that man is his enemy. And many
times when the deliverance seemed near we have been enslaved again by an
evil magic. A hundred years ago, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the
dreamers imagined that humanity would have done with its false prophets
and lay the ghosts which have haunted it since it began to shake off the
manners of the beasts. But a dismal succession of new falsehoods and new
blind guides appeared. And now, in this so advanced age, we have to face
the same possibility. There is much to excuse a despair; from which
nothing can free us but a new enthusiasm. The evil magic must be
overcome by magic of another kind, and how acute the crisis seems it is
hardly possible to indicate.

The quality of our age was its expectancy. For that reason men of every
nation were moved to desire a transformed society. But perhaps that
quality of expectancy was the quality of youth. For the first time in
history, in the early twentieth century, age was giving place to y