NOTE. 
In these post-war years all accepted political doctrines 
are undergoing challenge, and a vast number of intelli- 
gent people have lost the anchorage of political principle, 
and are drifting in bewilderment on a sea of conflicting 
ideas. 
The pamphlets of which this is one are designed as a 
contribution towards clarifying this confusion. They 
are issued under the auspices of the Council of the 
Liberal Summer Schools. But they are not intended 
to preach a rigid party orthodoxy. Their aim is 
constructive study and enquiry rather than dogmatic 
assertion or acrid denunciation. Some of the writers 
are not even professed adherents of the Liberal party. 
But all have been invited to write because they have given 
special study to the subjects with which they have to deal. 
And all are united by two beliefs : the first, a deep 
dissatisfaction with many aspects of the existing order, 
at home and abroad ; the second, a conviction that these 
evils cannot be cured by the glib repetition of sweeping 
formule, or by violence or class-conjlict, or by mere 
destruction, but only by hard thinking and good will.