Approaching! Fears of approaching revolution! Why, we are
in the midst of this revolution, we are actually in the midst of the
most wonderful social revolution! People don't perceive it, simply
because the revolutionaries are not chopping off heads, as they did in
France. But it has begun, all the same, and it is going on around us
silently, swiftly, irresistibly. We are actually in the midst of
revolution. Everywhere the old order of things is slipping away;
everywhere things new and unexpected are asserting themselves. Let me
only point out a few things. We have become within the last twenty
years a nation of readers--we all read; most of us, it is true, read
only newspapers. But what newspapers? Why, exactly the same papers as
are read by the people of the highest position in the land. Perhaps
you have not thought of the significance, the extreme significance, of
this fact. Certainly those who continually talk of the ignorance of
the people have never thought of it! What does it mean? Why, that
every reasoning man in the country, whatever his social position,
reads the same news, the same debates, the same arguments as the
statesman, the scholar, the philosopher, the preacher, or the man of
science. He bases his opinions on the same reasoning and on the same
information as the Leader of the House of Commons, as my Lord
Chancellor, as my Lord Archbishop himself.
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