g out their eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their
dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of
motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to please
their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as, together, they
plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer. Two or three hours you shall
have to yourselves, slaves, to think and love and play, if you be not
too tired to think, or love, or play. Then to your litter, that you may
be ready for the morrow's task.

The twilight deepens into dark; there comes back the woman of the
streets. As the shadows, she rounds the City's day. Work strikes its
tent. Evil creeps from its peering place.

So we labour, driven by the whip of necessity, an army of slaves. If we
do not our work, the whip descends upon us; only the pain we feel in our
stomach instead of on our back. And because of that, we call ourselves
free men.

Some few among us bravely struggle to be really free: they are our
tramps and outcasts. We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for the
wages of freedom in this world are vermin and starvation. We can live
lives worth living only by placing the collar round our neck.

There are times when one asks oneself: Why this endless labour? Why this
building of houses, this cooking of food, this making of clothes? Is the
ant so much more to be envied than the grasshopper, because she spends
her life in grubbing and storing, and can spare no time for singing?
Why this complex instinct, driving us to a thousand labours to satisfy
a thousand desires? We have turned the world into a workshop to provide
ourselves with toys. To purchase luxury we have sold our ease.

Oh, Children of Israel! why were ye not content in your wilderness? It
seems to have been a pattern wilderness. For you, a simple wholesome
food, ready cooked, was provided. You took no thought for rent and
taxes; you had no poor among you--no poor-rate collectors. You suffered
not from indigestion, nor the hundred ills that follow over-feeding; an
omer for every man was your portion, neither more nor less. You knew
not you had a liver. Doctors wearied you not with their theories, their
physics, and their bills. You were neither landowners nor leaseholders,
neither shareholders nor debenture holders. The weather and the market
reports troubled you not. The lawyer was unknown to you; you wanted no
advice; you had nought to quarrel about with your neighbour. No riches