Naturally a living society will require a living fellowship in the ordering of its public affairs; and it is true that the arrest and corruption of democracy—wheresoever those ills have befallen it—are due more to the ignorance and the indifference of the mass of the people in respect of their common affairs than to any other single cause. This is ever the opportunity of the demagogue and the spoilsman. Where there is no vision, said the ancient scribe, the people perish; but the people perish no less certainly where there is no common thought. The mental indolence and inertia of the public and the incompetency of public criticism is the danger of the statesman, and the very life of the carpet-bagging politician. The extent of this ignorance and apathy—beyond the narrow limits where our pockets are concerned—is appalling. Especially in regard to the external relationships of their respective states, the common people have lived in the past in great darkness, and as the war has shown, in the shadow of death. If the masses of the European peoples had been in 1914, as well-informed concerning their neighbours as they are to-day (and this does not say very much), the war might well have never happened; and it is well that we should remember that the democratic control of foreign policy, of which we justly hope much, will prove a vain thing without systematic education of the people in the matters which are gathered up in the expression “foreign policy.” And, indeed, the main root of indifference is ignorance; for we are vitally interested in nothing of which we do not know something. It is to education that we must look for our main remedy. Some gleams of light have indeed already begun to pierce our darkness. We have commenced to educate school children in the rudiments of civic obligation; and there is no reason why history and geography should not be taught, not as at present to stimulate national pride or commercial efficiency, but to generate a sympathetic and comprehensive outlook upon human relationships. To this subject we shall need to turn in more detail presently; here all we need is to premise that the stimulation and mobilisation of common thought requires an education which shall equip the citizen with a system of knowledge and ideas which will enable him to respond to the challenge of the problems of common life and approach them with intelligence and sympathy. No one who is familiar with the proceedings of parliaments and congresses will require proof of the existence of this need.