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 on every side
by the onslaughts of a pitiless enemy. The rear-guard is encumbered