"The Christian Outeroos, my children, all think they are in the world by the special desire and fiat of God, and yet of all the civilised Outeroos, the Zelanians alone have had courage enough to demand standing room on a world where God had placed them. "They assume to think their deity made the world and then made them to people it, yet most of them have been persuaded that 'He made the world' for just a few of them, who are privileged to put up the notice 'Keep off the grass.' The Zelanians alone have removed the 'notice.' "While to us, my children, so far away, with so long a history behind us, even these measures seem but the cautious experiments of amateurs, they are the most advanced known to the Outeroos; and the Zelanians, in their numerical 'fewness,' their national youth, and their splendid isolation, are more courageously grappling with the difficulties that have baffled the noblest statesmanship of all the ages, than any other social group in the world's progressive history. "Zelania, my children, is the most unmitigated democracy ever known to the outer world of this planet, yet her people have just gained a glimpse, not a realisation, of human liberty. But the divine flame from the sacred torch is spreading, the public conscience is aroused, the public intellect is alert, and the social train is moving rapidly. "What the dreamers, the poets, and the academicians of other lands laud as social ideals, the tradesmen, the farmers, and the mechanics of Zelania discuss as every-day matters of practical politics. "'Touch not the Lord's anointed' hath saved the head of many a despot, and touching appeals for the observance of the 'sacred rights'--in hoary wrongs--hath larded the ribs of idleness for a very protracted season, but the Zelanians, in the exuberance of a novel situation, are indulging in mental gymnastics, and putting on grey matter--with results. "A shipwrecked mariner, tossed on a lone island, rich with food, and shelter, and material for raiment, may 'own' that little world--for a time. His rights are supreme. He has a 'vested interest.' He 'discovered' it. As a contribution to the world's wealth he had practically created that patch of dirt. It is his. But suppose the next morning another fellow from the same or some other ship is tossed on the island. Well, number one must 'divvy.' The social conditions have changed. 'Right' has a new definition--unless the first enslaves the other. "Definitions change. Right and wrong as expressing the various social theories, are fictions established by society for its own use, and if a rule established by society for the benefit of itself cannot be modified by society for the benefit of a larger social self, one man might own all the people who might be cast on the island--even if the island became a continent.