an be made use of at all, it only means
about a pound of butter extra per head of the population.

The economic superiority of the Western powers, however, goes on
growing, inasmuch as to all appearance they are getting to work
seriously to establish the new economy (which we have buried) in the
form of State Socialism. A healthy, or what is to-day the same thing,
a victorious economy, does not leap over any of its stages; it will
work gradually through the apparently longer, but constant, movement
from Capitalism to State Socialism and thence to full Socialism; while
we, it seems, want to take a shortcut, and to miss out the intervening
stage. And we lose so much time and energy in restless fluctuations
forward and backward, hither and thither, that this leap in advance
may fall short.

If anything could be more stupid and calamitous than the war itself it
was the time when it broke out. There was one thing which the big
capitalism of the world was formed to supply, which it was able to
supply, and, in fact, was supplying: the thing which not only
justified capitalism, but showed it to be an absolutely necessary
stage in the development of a denser population. This was the
enrichment of the peoples, the rapid, and even anticipatory
restoration of equilibrium between the growing population and the
indispensable increase in the means of production; in other words,
general well-being. The unbroken progress of America, and the almost
unbroken progress of England will demonstrate that in one, or at most
two, generations the power of work and the output of mechanism would
have risen to such a pitch that we could have done anything we liked
in the direction of lightening human labour and reconciling social
antagonisms.

Alas, it was in vain! The rapid advance to prosperity of the people of
Central Europe, who had been accustomed to thrift and economy, went to
their heads; they fell victims to the poison of capitalism and of
mechanism; they were unable, like America in its youthful strength, to
make their new circumstances deepen their sense of responsibility; in
their greedy desire to store as much as possible of the heavenly manna
in their private barns they abandoned their destinies to a
superannuated, outworn feudal class and to aspiring magnates of the
bourgeoisie; they would not be taught by political catastrophes, and
at last, in the catastrophe of the war, they lost at once their
imaginary hopes, their traditional