The spirit—­the tone of mind in which the work of reconstruction is approached—­will count for much.  First of all, it is essential to have hope—­a real expectation not only that by strenuous effort and wise foresight the country will meet and overcome the trials which are inevitable, and the perils which threaten after as well as during the War, but also that a better and brighter future is in store.  Plans must be framed and action taken under the inspiration of a firm trust that the ideals we aim at are to be realised, that the “things hoped for” have a potential actuality.  Fatalism in politics—­we use the term in the original sense including ethics—­is deadly, whether it is the fatalism due to a sloppy optimism which is satisfied that somehow things will come right whatever we do or leave undone, or to a paralysing pessimism which in cowardly despair accepts the triumph of evil as ordained and gives up the struggle when the prospects of victory seem dark.  It would be folly not to recognise that not only now, but for years to come there will be enormous difficulties and terrible dangers to be faced; but it is possible for our hearts and minds to be filled too much with the contemplation of them instead of looking to the goal we aim at, and the steps we must take one by one to reach it.

    Be not over-exquisite
    To cast the fashion of uncertain evils. 
    What need a man forestall his date of grief
    And run to meet what he would most avoid?

There may be rocks and breakers—­“a ferment of revolution”—­ahead, but the task of the pilot and the crew is to keep their eyes on the channel through them, and to work the ship in its course to the haven where they would be.

Secondly, there must be a faith to inspire action, based on a belief in an essential goodness of human nature and in its capacity for improvement.  Unless such a belief were well founded, democracy would be a thing to be dreaded and resisted by every means in our power.  As ground for his belief in a better day, Bright speaks—­and his language is prophetic—­of the people “sublime in their resolution.”  It is that resolution which, in spite of our unprepared condition and of all the mistakes that have been made, as well as of disasters that could not have been foreseen, and of a power in the enemy far greater and a wickedness more diabolical than anyone dreamed of, will “bring victory home.”

To have watched the action of the electorate during the last fifty years leads to the conclusion that in spite of apparent vacillations it has been characterised by good sense and good feeling, and that its judgment, so far as conditions from time to time permitted of its true expression, has been sound.  To go about the country now and see what earnest and useful work is being quietly done, what loss and suffering bravely borne, confirms and renews the trust in our fellow-countrymen which might be shaken if we listened only to the utterances in the Press and in Parliament.