t the mark up again, and make them pay up their indemnity.

Another more popular school of thought holds to an entirely contrary
opinion. The whole trouble, they say, comes from the sad collapse of
Germany. These unhappy people, having been too busy for four years in
destroying valuable property in France and Belgium to pay attention to
their home affairs, now find themselves collapsed: it is our first duty
to pick them up again. The English should therefore take all the money
they can find and give it to the Germans. By this means German trade and
industry will revive to such an extent that the port of Hamburg will be
its old bright self again and German waiters will reappear in the London
hotels. After that everything will be all right.

Speaking with all the modesty of an outsider and a transient visitor,
I give it as my opinion that the trouble is elsewhere. The danger of
industrial collapse in England does not spring from what is happening in
Germany but from what is happening in England itself. England, like
most of the other countries in the world, is suffering from the
over-extension of government and the decline of individual self-help.
For six generations industry in England and America has flourished on
individual effort called out by the prospect of individual gain. Every
man acquired from his boyhood the idea that he must look after himself.
Morally, physically and financially that was the recognised way of
getting on. The desire to make a fortune was regarded as a laudable
ambition, a proper stimulus to effort. The ugly word "profiteer" had not
yet been coined. There was no income tax to turn a man's pockets inside
out and take away his savings. The world was to the strong.

Under the stimulus of this the wheels of industry hummed. Factories
covered the land. National production grew to a colossal size and the
whole outer world seemed laid under a tribute to the great industry. As
a system it was far from perfect. It contained in itself all kinds
of gross injustices, demands that were too great, wages that were
too small; in spite of the splendour of the foreground, poverty and
destitution hovered behind the scenes. But such as it was, the system
worked: and it was the only one that we knew.

Or turn to another aspect of this same principle of self-help. The way
to acquire knowledge in the early days was to buy a tallow candle
and read a book after one's day's work, as Benjamin Franklin read or
Lincoln: