bor may have somewhat diminished our
productivity. But it should not be too much to hope that this is a
feature of transition, and no due who is acquainted with the British
workingman can doubt that, if it suits him, and if he is in sympathy and
reasonable contentment with the conditions of his life, he can produce
at least as much in a shorter working day as he did in the longer hours
which prevailed formerly. The most serious problems for England have
been brought to a head by the war, but are in their origins more
fundamental. The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course
and are exhausted. The economic motives and ideals of that generation no
longer satisfy us: we must find a new way and must suffer again the
_malaise_, and finally the pangs, of a new industrial birth. This is one
element. The other is that on which I have enlarged in Chapter II.;--the
increase in the real cost of food and the diminishing response of nature
to any further increase in the population of the world, a tendency which
must be especially injurious to the greatest of all industrial
countries and the most dependent on imported supplies of food.

But these secular problems are such as no age is free from. They are of
an altogether different order from those which may afflict the peoples
of Central Europe. Those readers who, chiefly mindful of the British
conditions with which they are familiar, are apt to indulge their
optimism, and still more those whose immediate environment is American,
must cast their minds to Russia, Turkey, Hungary, or Austria, where the
most dreadful material evils which men can suffer--famine, cold,
disease, war, murder, and anarchy--are an actual present experience, if
they are to apprehend the character of the misfortunes against the
further extension of which it must surely be our duty to seek the
remedy, if there is one.

What then is to be done? The tentative suggestions of this chapter may
appear to the reader inadequate. But the opportunity was missed at Paris
during the six months which followed the Armistice, and nothing we can
do now can repair the mischief wrought at that time. Great privation and
great risks to society have become unavoidable. All that is now open to
us is to redirect, so far as lies in our power, the fundamental economic
tendencies which underlie the events of the hour, so that they promote
the re-establishment of prosperity and order, instead of leading us
deeper into misfo