to business and pleasure, he has, he says, no hours to spare for these idealistic luxuries. Yet a moment’s serious reflection would show us that the sole aim of these “faddists” is to make life less crowded and laborious, to lighten our business and add to our pleasure, to introduce common-sense into a large part of our conduct. To such strange contradictions and absurdities does this resolve to resist innovation bring us.
Most people are, perhaps,—if they ever give a thought to the matter,—under the impression that it is a mountainous and impracticable task to introduce such a reform into the life of the world. It is, on the contrary, one of the simplest and most practicable reforms to which men could set their hands. It is even less controversial a measure than the abolition of war. There are few prejudices of our time which have not attracted the ingenuity of some faddist or other; but this is one of the few. More emphatically here than in the case of war, all that we need is the will of the majority to change our anachronistic practice. When one regards the entirely uncontroversial nature of the reform and the immense economy it will entail, it is hardly unreasonable to hope that this will of the majority may soon be secured.
I assume that, when we agree to direct our “Governments” to carry out this elementary improvement of international life, they will summon an international commission of philologists, educators, and commercial men, whose business it will be to
