Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/279

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that three men might meet in the marketplace the one obeying the Roman law, another the customs of the Franks, and a third those of the Goths. So is it to-day in India with Hindu, and Mohammedan, and Christian. So was it not either in fourteenth-century Florence, or Periclean Athens, or Elizabethan England.

With too many of us, in our urban and suburban civilisation, that grand old word Neighbour has fallen almost into desuetude. It is for Neighbourhness that the world to-day calls aloud, and for a refusal to gad ever about—merely because of modern opportunities for communication. Let us recover possession of ourselves, lest we become the mere slaves of the world's geography, exploited by materialistic organisers. Neighbourliness or fraternal duty to those who are our fellow-dwellers, is the only sure foundation of a happy citizenship. Its consequences extend upward from the city through the province to the nation, and to the world league of nations. It is the cure alike of the slumdom of the poor and of the boredom of the rich, and of war between classes and war between nations.