premature to call ourselves a Free Nation? Is any Nation really free till it has found itself on peace and good-will to all?
Now I have put before you these sorry spectacles to show that where the true social ideal of brotherhood and goodwill breaks down, you arrive at some ethical absurdity of which you have to be ashamed—you find yourself driven into inconsistency, into impurity. And the only thing that is consistent and is pure (once you have started with the social idea) is that we are all one brotherhood—and that harm to one member of the community is harm to all. And when you have once got a nation that has really taken that idea to heart and made a practice of it, such a nation will never rest content till there is a Society of Nations of like mind extending over all the world.
I referred just now to the Sermon on the Mount. To most of the world its teachings sound impracticable. They are the extreme statement of an ideal; and it is hard in this world to live ideally. But that statement has about it this merit of commonsense—it is pure, it is consistent—it is a united whole; and it is based on something of which we have never yet really allowed ourselves the luxury—a trust in human nature. A belief that if you set yourself whole-heartedly to do good to others—to do good even to your enemies—human nature will respond.
We cannot all love our neighbours as ourself—that individual emotion is beyond us. But
