Dis aliter visum: the millennium is not for our
time. The great moment has passed, and for ourselves
it is again the distant hope that must inspire
us, not the immediate breathless looking for the
deliverance.[56] But we have seen what might have been,
and we know that great possibilities do arise in times
of crisis. In some such sense as this, it may well
be true that the Socialist revolution is the road to
universal peace, and that when it has been traversed
all the other conditions for the cessation of
wars will grow of themselves out of the changed
mental and moral atmosphere.
[56] This was written in March, 1918, almost the darkest
moment of the war.
There is a certain class of difficulties which surrounds
the sober idealist in all speculations about the
not too distant future. These are the cases where
the solution believed by most idealists to be universally
applicable is for some reason impossible, and is,
at the same time, objected to for base or interested
motives by all upholders of existing inequalities. The
case of Tropical Africa will illustrate what I mean.
It would be difficult seriously to advocate the immediate
introduction of parliamentary government for
the natives of this part of the world, even if it were
accompanied by women's suffrage and proportional
representation.
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