And next, as to social reconstruction. Do Liberals realise that the individualist capitalist system is helpless _now_? It may be picked up unresistingly. It is stunned. A new economic order may be improvised and probably will in some manner be improvised in the next two or three years. What are the intentions of Liberalism? What will be the contribution of Liberalism? One poor Liberal, I perceive, is possessed, to the exclusion of every other consideration, by the idea that we were not _legally_ bound to fight for Belgium. A pretty point, but a petty one. Liberalism is something greater than unfavourable comment on the deeds of active men. Let us set about defining our intentions. Let us borrow a little from the rash vigour of the types that have contrived this disaster. Let us make a truce of our finer feelings and control our dissentient passions. Let us re-draw the map of Europe boldly, as we mean it to be re-drawn, and let us re-plan society as we mean it to be reconstructed. Let us get to work while there is still a little time left to us. Or while our futile fine intelligences are busy, each with its particular exquisitely-felt point, the Northcliffes and the diplomatists, the Welt-Politik whisperers, and the financiers, and militarists, the armaments interests, and the Cossack Tsar, terrified by the inevitable red dawn of leaderless social democracy, by the beginning of the stupendous stampede that will follow this great jar and displacement, will surely contrive some monstrous blundering settlement, and the latter state of this world will be worse than the former. Now is the opportunity to do fundamental things that will otherwise not get done for hundreds of years. If Liberals throughout the world—and in this matter the Liberalism of America is a stupendous possibility—will insist upon a World conference at the end of this conflict, if they refuse all partial settlements and merely European solutions, they may re-draw every frontier they choose, they may reduce a thousand chafing conflicts of race and language and government to a minimum, and set up a Peace League that will control the globe. The world will be ripe for it. And the world will be ripe, too, for the banishment of the private industry in armaments and all the vast corruption that entails from the earth for ever. It is possible now to make an end to Kruppism. It may never be possible again. Henceforth let us say weapons must be made by the State, and only by the State; there must be no more private profit in blood. That is the second great possibility for Liberalism, linked to the first. And, thirdly, we may turn our present social necessities to the most enduring social reorganization; with an absolute minimum of effort now, we may help to set going methods and machinery that will put the feeding and housing of the population and the administration of the land out of the reach of private greed and selfishness for ever.