Thwarted life, and sweated labour, those have been the makings of the "social evil," so called; and they lie at the door of an impure system which has made its money savings at the cost of a great waste of life.
That particular instance, which I refer to merely in passing, has to do with our ordinary application of the word purity. But I want to show how all social purity really hangs together, and how, unless you have a great fundamental social principle pure throughout, corruption will carry infection from one department to the other, making useless or impracticable any ideal of purity which you try to set up in one particular direction. If you do—to put it plainly and colloquially—the doctrine won't wash; honest minds will find out that the part is inconsistent with the whole.
What, then, is the whole social ideal which lies at the root of the modern State? Is it pure, or is it impure? Is it the true "Salt of the Earth" which, if equally applied, will benefit all nations and all peoples alike: those to whom, in President Wilson's phrase, we wish to be just, and those to whom we do not wish to be just? Does any modern State really present within its own borders, and in its treatment of all classes and interests, an example which, if extended, would make the world safe for Internationalism—an end which I am inclined to think is more important than making it safe for Democracy?
