To-day we in America are confronted by the amazing spread of Socialism; Socialism which the radicals preach, the reformers seek to establish, and the conservatives fear. We cannot evade its issues, for Socialism is something more than a political creed,—it is the modern expression of that same spirit of human progress which destroyed slavery in the ancient world, serfdom in the middle ages and, creating modern democracy, cannot rest until it has guaranteed to all men not only equal political rights but equal social rights. Two men, smoke-room companions of mine during a Pacific voyage, stand for the contending ideals of the feudal and the modern world. One was a noble earl, the other a British tea merchant; both were men of wealth,—the one of large but unproductive estates, the other of a great business giving employment to thousands of men. Of the two, the tea merchant, though lacking in fine manners, was the more important person; yet he would not have exchanged those hours of familiar gossip with the noble earl for more chests of tea than would fill the hold of the ship. And there was a reason for this feeling, because the Groom of the Bedchamber stood for that aristocracy of culture and good manners which has an important value in any society. Under the militant structure of society this value belonged to the few; in our present democracy it has become increasingly the privilege of the many. Public education, public libraries, public art galleries, the perfected art of printing have opened the highest culture to children of the humblest birth. May we not, then, look forward to the time when “the best that has anywhere been in the world shall be the lot of every man born into it”—that is to say, the lot of every man who desires the best?