I look forward to the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labour, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit.  I do not think that Liberalism in any circumstances can cut itself off from this fertile field of social effort, and I would recommend you not to be scared in discussing any of these proposals, just because some old woman comes along and tells you they are Socialistic.  If you take my advice, you will judge each case on its merits.  Where you find that State enterprise is likely to be ineffective, then utilise private enterprises, and do not grudge them their profits.

The existing organisation of society is driven by one mainspring—­competitive selection.  It may be a very imperfect organisation of society, but it is all we have got between us and barbarism.  It is all we have been able to create through unnumbered centuries of effort and sacrifice.  It is the whole treasure which past generations have been able to secure, and which they have been able to bequeath; and great and numerous as are the evils of the existing condition of society in this country, the advantages and achievements of the social system are greater still.  Moreover, that system is one which offers an almost indefinite capacity for improvement.  We may progressively eliminate the evils; we may progressively augment the goods which it contains.  I do not want to see impaired the vigour of competition, but we can do much to mitigate the consequences of failure.  We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons to live and labour, yet above which they may compete with all the strength of their manhood.  We want to have free competition upwards; we decline to allow free competition to run downwards.  We do not want to pull down the structures of science and civilisation:  but to spread a net over the abyss; and I am sure that if the vision of a fair Utopia which cheers the hearts and lights the imagination of the toiling multitudes, should ever break into reality, it will be by developments through, and modifications in, and by improvements out of, the existing competitive organisation of society; and I believe that Liberalism mobilised, and active as it is to-day, will be a principal and indispensable factor in that noble evolution.

I have been for nearly six years, in rather a short life, trained as a soldier, and I will use a military metaphor.  There is no operation in war more dangerous or more important than the conduct of a rear-guard action and the extrication of a rear-guard from difficult and broken ground.  In the long war which humanity wages with the elements of nature the main body of the army has won its victory.  It has moved out into the open plain, into a pleasant camping ground by the water springs and in the sunshine, amid fair cities and fertile fields.  But the rear-guard is entangled in the defiles, the rear-guard is still struggling in mountainous country, attacked and assailed