During the post-Victorian period--this short epoch of transition--there were therefore three separate sets of problems which between them absorbed the energies of public men and occupied the thoughts of all private persons, at home and in the Dominions, to whom the present and future well-being of their country was a matter of concern. The first of these problems was _Defence_: How might the British Commonwealth, which held so vast a portion of the habitable globe, and which was responsible for the government of a full quarter of all the people who dwelt thereon--how might it best secure itself against the dangers which threatened it from without? The second was the problem of _the Constitution_: How could we best develop, to what extent must we remake or remould, our ancient institutions, so as to fit them for those duties and responsibilities which new conditions required that they should be able to perform? Under this head we were faced with projects, not merely of local self-government, of 'Home Rule,' and of 'Federalism'; not merely with the working of the Parliament Act, with the composition, functions, and powers of the Second Chamber, with the Referendum, the Franchise, and {211} such like; but also with that vast and even more perplexing question--what were to be the future relations between the Mother Country and the self-governing Dominions on the one hand, and between these five democratic nations and the Indian Empire and the Dependencies upon the other? For the third set of problems no concise title has yet been found. _Social Reform_ does not cover it, though perhaps it comes nearer doing so than any other. The matters involved here were so multifarious and, apparently at least, so detached one from another--they presented themselves to different minds at so many different angles and under such different aspects--that no single word or phrase was altogether satisfactory. But briefly, what all men were engaged in searching after--the Labour party, no more and no less than the Radicals and the Tories--was how we could raise the character and material conditions of our people; how by better organisation we could root out needless misery of mind and body; how we could improve the health and the intelligence, stimulate the sense of duty and fellowship, the efficiency and the patriotism of the whole community. Of these three sets of problems with which the British race has recently been occupying itself, this, the third, is intrinsically by far the most important. [Sidenote: IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL REFORM]