I do not want to be taken as implying that violence is the inevitable end. I only argue that the irrefutable and inherent logic of a society where the gain of living is not proportioned to its toil is one of which violence is the inevitable end. We have never any choice in history except to follow reason wholly or, ultimately, to expect disaster; and as we approach that ultimate, the temper of the society will be what I have described. For the rule of reason in a community means that a special interest must always give way before the principles it discovers. And the rule of reason is the only kind of rule which can afford the luxury of freedom. That is, I think, because an admission that the claims of reason are paramount makes possible the emergence of a spirit of compromise. The basis of the society being just, men are not prepared for conflict over detail; but when the basis itself is unacceptable, conflict over detail is magnified into a fight over principle. In such a temper, men are always discussing with their backs on the edge of a precipice. Social discussion becomes Carlyle’s ultimate question of “Can I kill thee or canst thou kill me?” Every utterance is necessarily a challenge; and suppressed because so taken; every association is a conspiracy and attacked because so imagined. The only way to avoid so poisonous an atmosphere is to be prepared to surrender what you cannot prove it is reasonable to hold. But, human nature being what it is, men do not easily surrender what they have the power to retain; and they will pay the price of conflict if they think they can win. They do not remember that the price of conflict is the destruction of freedom and that with its loss there go the qualities which make for the humanity of men. IV I spoke a little earlier of the sense of national freedom; and these lectures would be even more incomplete than they are unless I sought to dwell briefly on what such freedom means. Let me take here as my text a sentence from John Stuart Mill which might well stand as the classic embodiment of one of the outstanding ideals of the nineteenth century. “It is” he wrote “in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.” I do not need to remind you of the commentary history has written upon that text. In its name were accomplished the unity of Italy and Germany, the breakup of the Turkish and Russian empires, the separation of the Baltic peoples from the domination of Russia. The economic motive apart, no principle has been more fruitful of war than the demand for national freedom. Even yet, the day of its power is far from ended; for every misapplication of Mill’s principle in the peace treaties of 1919 has raised problems of government which the world will find it difficult to solve without the bloody arbitrament of the sword.