practical
responsibilities forbid it to accept the elimination of private
enterprise and the assumption by the State of all the instruments of
production and distribution. Socialism has great power of emotional
and even religious appeal, of which it would be wise for Liberalism
to take account, and it is, on the whole, a beneficent force in
society. But as pure dogma it fits the spirit of man no more exactly
than the Shorter Catechism. As Mr. Churchill well says, both the
collectivist and the individualist principles have deep roots in human
life, and the statesman can ignore neither.

In the main, therefore, these speeches, with all their fresh
brilliancy of colouring and treatment, hold up the good old banner of
social progress, which we erect against reactionist and revolutionist
alike. The "old Liberal" will find the case for Free Trade, for peace,
for representative government, stated as powerfully and convincingly
as he could wish. Their actual newness consists in the fact that not
only do they open up to Liberalism what it always wants--a wide domain
of congenial thought and energy, but they offer it two propositions
which it can reject only at its peril. The first is that there can and
must be a deep, sharp abridgment of the sphere of industrial life
which has been marked out as hopeless, or as an inevitable part of the
social system.

Here the new Liberalism parts with _laissez-faire_, and those who
defend it. It assumes that the State must take in hand the problems
of industrial insecurity and unemployment, and must solve them. The
issue is vital. Protection has already made its bid. It will assure
the workman what is in his mind more than cheap food--namely, secure
wages; it affects to give him all his life, or nearly all his life, a
market for his labour so wide and so steady that the fear of forced
idleness will almost be banished from it. The promise is false.
Protection by itself has in no country annulled or seriously qualified
unemployment. But the need to which it appeals is absolutely real; for
the modern State it is a problem of the Sphinx, neither to be shirked
nor wrongly answered. And the alternative remedy offered in these
pages has already, as their author abundantly shows, succeeded even in
the very partial forms in which it has been applied. The labour market
can be steadied and equalised over a great industrial field. Part of
its surplus can be provided for. What Mr. Churchill calls "diseas