hope and promise. Think of the universal things it is so easy to
ignore; of the great and growing multitude, for example, of those who
may travel freely about the world, who may read freely, think freely,
speak freely! Think of the quite unprecedented numbers of well-ordered
homes and cared-for, wholesome, questioning children! And it is not
only that we have this increasing sea of mediocre well-being in which
the realities of the future are engendering, but in the matter of
sheer achievement I believe in my own time. It has been the cry of the
irresponsive man since criticism began, that his own generation
produced nothing; it is a cry that I hate and deny. When the dross has
been cleared away and comparison becomes possible, I am convinced it
will be admitted that in the aggregate, in philosophy and significant
literature, in architecture, painting and scientific research, in
engineering and industrial invention, in statecraft, humanity and
valiant deeds, the last thirty years of man's endeavours will bear
comparison with any other period of thirty years whatever in his
history.

And this is the result of effort; things get better because men mean
them to get better and try to bring betterment about; this progress
goes on because man, in spite of evil temper, blundering and vanity,
in spite of indolence and base desire, does also respond to Good Will
and display Good Will. You may declare that all the good things in
life are the result of causes over which man has no control, that in
pursuit of an "enlightened self-interest" he makes things better
inadvertently. But think of any good thing you know! Was it thus it
came?

Sec. 3.

And yet, let us not disguise it from ourselves, for all the progress
one can claim, life remains very evil; about the feet of all these
glories of our time lurk darknesses.

Let me take but one group of facts that cry out to all of us--and will
not cry in vain. I mean the lives of little children that are going on
now--as the reader sits with this book in his hand. Think, for
instance, of the little children who have been pursued and tormented
and butchered in the Congo Free State during the last year or so,
hands and feet chopped off, little bodies torn and thrown aside that
rubber might be cheap, the tyres of our cars run smoothly, and that
detestable product of political expediency, the King of the Belgians,
have his pleasures. Think too of the fear and violence, the dirt and
stre