One can see from this anecdote that it would never do to return to ordeal by battle. And though individual fighting by violence to a.s.sert rights is out of date and not permissible, yet in the affairs of the collection of human beings known as nations the horrible waste of armaments and the menace of war are living evidence of the ultimate tribunal to which we still appeal.
No one really believes that force and violence are sane remedies for the evils of the world, and the whole history of mankind shows a gradual decline in the practice and use of them. In each succeeding generation our children will be nearer the truth than we are, and further on the journey towards the end when the rule of Love and Unselfishness will be the only law of the Universe, and will enforce itself without judges, juries, or policemen.
And lest anyone should say that all this is the mere vague raving of prophecy, let me set down a short, practical catalogue of what I expect the remedies of to-morrow to bring about in, say, two thousand years. In the first place, the disabilities of the poor that I have written about in these pages will all have been abolished and forgotten. Crime will be regarded as a disease, and it will be as inhuman to treat the criminal with harshness as it is to-day to torture lunatics after the methods of a hundred years ago.
Every citizen will have a right to sufficient food, clothing, housing, and entertainment in exchange for reasonable hours of work. The spirit of humanity will so greatly have been improved that it will be very little necessary to extort proper conditions for the lives of citizens or to protect the weak from exploitation by the strong. Litigation and war will be out of date and replaced by conciliation and arbitration. In a word, the reign of love and unselfishness will have commenced.
We may not even see my beautiful world from afar, but this need not dismay us, for we know it is there, and we know that every effort we make to serve the cause of the poor helps to clear the path through the desert along which the coming armies of victory will march in triumph. The cause of the poor has always been the greatest cause in the world, and the generation that has at length understood it, and fought for it and won it, will find itself standing at the open gates of the promised land.