operation has displaced that of capitalist interest, especially as the younger generation takes the place of the older one, the moral impulse to do one's unstinted best comes into play and both the will to work and the habit to work are complete. When, finally, the workmen are in control of the workshop as I have already described, shirking will not "be paid for by employers," and will not be a fault in which fellow workmen believe they have no interest. The work undone by one will be seen to mean the poverty of all, and thus the economic pressure will come from fellow workmen, and the system will provide its own driving force. It is therefore not unreasonable to conclude that the Socialist system will provide the incentives to work which Capitalism can never command, but which are now required to take the place of the whip which irritates rather than spurs on.

PROPERTY AND LIBERTY

Capitalism has not only falsely appropriated the winning of property as its justification for its system of production, but also for its system of liberty. It argues quite rightly that liberty must have an economic foundation. The thorough-paced tramp who sleeps on the roadside or in a barn may declare that he enjoys liberty because he owns nothing, and conversely the man of much wealth may feel the imprisonment to which his property condemns him. And yet, the tramp is free because experience makes him confident that he can beg or steal the property of others, and be able to use it as though it were his own, whilst the imprisoned rich suffers from a superfluity which *This is a wrong idea, but is invited by the conditions of capitalist industry.

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deprives him of the liberty to use his wealth. free man must have command over things essential to his physical and intellectual life, and this is just what Capitalism denies to the great majority of the sons of men, and on the other hand he must not be so burdened by his possessions that they rob him of freedom. Some wealth is a treasure; much wealth is a burden. Capitalism, also, by enabling property to be acquired without service, or out of all proportion to service, exposes it to the critical intelligence and deprives it of moral support. Thus an attack upon property to-day may be repelled because the owners of property wield an influence upon opinion which enables them to defend their interests by the same means as a political party wins an election. But this is a precarious protection. The mass has no interest in property and no respect for it, but it can be swayed in obedience to the wires which property can pull, and the irrationalities which property can spread. The real security of property is when it is held by virtue of service. Then the tramp will become a workman because the charity on which he depends will not be given. He will then be known to be the creator of his own misfortunes. Nor will the property owner be imprisoned, because property thus acquired will never be sufficient to become a burden; and thus held will never be subject to attack, because it will be known to have no title deeds but those of services rendered. Property will be enough for its purpose-the liberation of the individual personality and its clothing in culture, and it will be secure. In its more accumulated forms it will be held in common as parks, libraries, picture galleries, museums are now, but representative parts of it into which personality can retire and be alone like gardens,

books, pictures, small but choice private collections, will be held for personal use and enjoyment. Thus property will be held in such a way as to fulfil its functions and receive the assent of the whole of Society. There will be no need of great embarrassing individual wealth; individual character will take its place. Industries will supply their own capital, the community will procure the rare and the beautiful things, the individual will not be threatened by undeserved poverty and hardship. Life will be the wealth that men will seek, and the considerate and affectionate parent will enrich the qualities of his children rather than endow them with the hazardous possession of things. Values will be changed and though sought after will not be material. And when the community so organized, consciously moulds the minds of the young and turns their faces towards desirable goals, as it can do in its education, it will put ideals of service and the communal spirit before them without the hesitation which must now be felt, because in a Society governed by materialism these finer minds are doomed to a life of unsatisfied strife, a prolonged existence of failure (as men see it), and a kicking against the pricks. Only a very courageous parent to-day will teach his children to pursue the things of the spirit and not those of the flesh, and he will do it somewhat in the frame of mind in which Abraham led Isaac up Mount Moriah.

By prolonging the tasks of toil until they absorb the whole of men's energies, Capitalism decrees that leisure has to be largely a satisfaction of the lower appetites and an exercise of the inane and sensuous; it condemns the toiler to a life but midway between that of the brute and the man, and makes him a credulous and unreflective believer, a

spectator in displays, a reader of snippets, and a patron of the most devastating melodrama (when it is no worse) in "the pictures " and on the stage. When it gives wealth it gives vulgarity, because, when the mind cannot use its possessions, the possessions have to be shown for their own sakes. Upper Society in a large industrial centre which I know with some intimacy is graded into sub-strata by the cost of its dinners, and I have heard families classified quite seriously into two or three-guinea sets. That is why Byzantinism is the first stage in the decay of nations. A nation becomes Byzantine when its riches are too raw or too plentiful for its mind to absorb, and when its material prosperity and interests crush down its spirit and culture.

So long as property is the reward of service it is both an expression of, and a medium for expressing, liberty. It was thus in the early stages of Capitalism. But when property becomes self perpetuating by affording the means for the holders to exact toll upon production, it destroys liberty and loses its social defence. When labour uses capital and pays it its market value, property is defensible; when capital uses labour and retains as its reward the maximum share in the product upon which it can keep its grip, property is devoid of a sure defence. Socialism rectifies this evil evolution of the powers of property from service to exploitation, and, restoring it to the performance of a social function, also restores it to being an aid to liberty and makes it conform to the reasons by which it is properly defended. Unless this is done property will continue to be the cause of social unsettlement and of class resentment; it will control labour and be regarded in consequence as an enemy; it will obstruct all

fundamental improvements in the industrial system; its rights will be social wrongs. Socialism, by relating property to social ends and values, does not destroy it but establishes it; it discriminates between the property held for pure exploitation and that held as the result of service and declines to mix up both in one class of thing as though they were one and the same, and as though the former could be defended by the same considerations as defend the latter. To talk of abolishing property is folly, and those who think that Socialists do so only betray an ignorance of the matter. But the "rights" of property have to be earned, and social utility is the only test. The Socialist system of property holding will come up to that test.

THE TRANSITION

A transition from the Capitalist State to the Socialist one must be beset by grave risks, and during it cautious guidance is required. The habits of the old stifle or pervert the growth of the new. The first won liberties and advantages have to be used by a generation brought up and starved by the old conditions, and the men who gain them naturally regard them as prizes wrested from a class who monopolized them. So, just as it is the most difficult thing in the world for a people passionate in their triumph after military victory to settle peace, because when the hated enemy has disappeared from the field he still devastates in their hearts, so it is difficult for a generation that has become possessed of liberty as a trophy of battle to use it positively for its own advantage. The strife and opposition by which it was won, the methods by which those who exclusively possessed it used it, are too dominant in the minds