The writers of modern Utopias in their detailed conception of what is desirable may speak only for themselves; but it is a sign of the common enthusiasm that they all attach so much importance to organization and to physical health. This indicates that we all, in every nation, look forward, however vaguely, to a society in which human life shall be less difficult for the majority to obtain. We speak sometimes of the redistribution of leisure—August Bebel made it one of the chief articles of his creed. But this as an ideal does not indicate any desire that the dock-labourer should have time to loaf in a club, or his wife time to play bridge, except in so far as time to loaf is an opportunity for some other employment than the mere struggle for food. There is nothing inevitable in a situation which makes the development of most of the human faculties a privilege of a few and an impossibility for the greater number. Nor is it correct to suppose that the half-starved and the ill-clothed should be satisfied with being 'virtuous', and leave it to others, possibly wicked and certainly far from simple, to cultivate art and science.
Nor again is it absurd to hope for a world in which all should have at least the opportunity for the development of any faculties they may possess. The social gain would be immense. It would be like the change from a harmony which is produced by a few amateurs to one of a full orchestra.
Thirdly, it is increasingly evident that no one state or nation can act effectively in social reform unless it acts in concert with others. Treaties of commerce, common prison legislation, and common measures for sanitation and medicine have proved effective because they are in the nature of things. They are necessary means for the desired prosperity even of the most selfish and segregated state.
But ignorance and prejudice and irrational violence spread as easily as disease or crime. Knowledge is not secure until it is widespread; and civilization perishes, which is segregated in a world of barbarism. Therefore education also, in its widest sense, must be contrived in common. Not merely school systems influenced by foreign ideas, but the very atmosphere of thought must change in harmony among all nations, if we are not to go toppling down into the abyss from which by painful centuries we have ascended.
This ideal of social reform then seems to be agreed upon between some men of all nations, that more common action should be taken. It is not a vague sentiment for the abolition of conflict between states; nor is it a pious aspiration for peace. It is the clear perception that the state cannot fulfil its functions in modern life if it continues to act as isolated or segregated. That for which the state itself stands cannot be attained even within the frontiers of one state by any state acting alone.
This is not the place to distinguish those subjects upon which states should act together from those on which they should act separately. That is simply the problem as to the limits of political regionalism. The fact which is sufficient for our argument here is that certain forces, chiefly economic, have come into existence in recent years, which disregard state boundaries. In concrete terms, these are international trusts and international labour interests. But it is increasingly evident that these cannot be effectively dealt with by any one state acting separately. The isolated sovereign state of earlier times is simply helpless before the elaborate world-system of economics; and control can only be secured by an established world-system of politics. The states, one supposes, exist for justice and liberty. Divided, they will perish or become mere playthings in the hands of non-moral economic 'interests'.
To save itself and all it stands for, the state must cease to pose as a possible opponent to any other state, and must deliberately co-operate in an increasing number of reforms.
It is better to put into the coldest terms a conception which has too often hitherto proved futile, because it arose rather from vague discontent, than from the perception of a definite evil. The fire of enthusiasm must indeed work upon that conception before any effective change can be made in the attitude of governments or of peoples. But enthusiasm will be wasted if we cannot pause to see against what we are contending.
We are struggling with the greatest of all obstacles to social reform when we attack the isolation of nations. Unless that is overcome we shall perhaps patch and prop; but, time and again, we shall be enslaved to the immensely powerful non-moral forces, in the midst of which humanity finds its way. I cannot speak more clearly—[Greek: bous epi glôssê]. The nations face each other in conflict, while death, disease, violence, bestial indolence and docility corrode every state.