Even Russia, in some sort the antipodes of Geneva, has appeared there at Disarmament Conferences; and even granted the rigour of the premises upon which her life is built, she cannot remain unrelated to the structure of a world-order.

I believe, accordingly, that we can retain all that is essential to the freedom of national life, and yet fully admit the implications of the international community.

We can leave to England, for instance, her full cultural independence, her characteristic internal institutions, her special contacts with the Dominions she has begotten; to sacrifice the predominance of her navy, her right, by its means…

France would be not the less France if the gold policy of her bank were set by an international authority, if she gave up her zeal for a conscript army, if she built her frontiers upon the impalpable solidity of friendship rather than the…

I can see that a nation might feel an international authority to be oppressive if it sought, say, by an immigration policy seriously to alter the mores of a national life; it should not impose Japanese immigration on California any more…

A society built upon economic inequality cannot attempt that sort of measure.

Consciously or unconsciously, it starts from the assumption that there is a greater right in some claims than in others.

The nature of economic inequality is a compulsion to respond to effective demand, and this pays no regard to science on the one hand, or to need upon the other.

It thinks only of the presence of purchasing power and not of its connotation in terms of social purpose.

The whole productive scheme is thereby tilted to the favour of those who possess the power to make their wants effective.

There is cake for some before there is bread for all.

And those who find that their wants do not secure attention are, inevitably, tempted to an examination of the moral foundations of such a society.

Liberty means, in such a context, the power continuously to exercise initiative in social reconstruction.

I do not need to remind you that most observers who have sought to estimate the significance of the democratic movement have seen that equality is the key to its understanding.

They realized, first, that in any society where power is gravely unequal, the character and intelligence of those at the base is unnaturally depressed.

The energy and capacity of which it might make use are not released for action; and the concentration of effective power in a few hands means that the wishes, opinions, needs, of the majority do not receive sufficient consideration.

An aristocracy, whether of birth, or creed, or wealth, always suffers from self-sufficiency.

It tends to think them unimportant if they are urged tactfully, and dangerous if they are urged with vigour.

It is so accustomed to the idea of its own superiority, that it is resentful of considerations which inquire into the validity of that assumption.

It may be generous, charitable, kind; but the surrounding principle of those qualities is always their exercise as of grace and not in justice.

An aristocracy, in a word, is the prisoner of its own power, and that the most completely when men begin to question its authority.

It does not know how to act wisely at the very moment when it most requires wise action.

Its depression of the people has the dangerous effect of persuading the latter of its necessary inferiority.

It develops a sense of indignation because its interests are neglected; but it does not know how to attach its indignation to the right objects or, when so attached, how to remedy the ills from which it suffers.

An aristocracy, in a word, deprives its subjects of character and responsibility; and as the revolutions of 1848 so clearly demonstrated, while they can destroy, they have never been taught how to create.