... 25,937 42,832 40,503
Duisburg-Muehlheim 33,934 31,559 34,187
Saarbruecken...... 25,108 24,228 4,157
Bochum........... 42,257 37,650 64,833

I cite this example because it seems as though the growth of socialism
in Germany were in direct contradiction to my argument that they are a
soft, an impressionable, an amenable, and easily led and governed
people.

State socialism as thus far put into practice in Germany is, in a
nutshell, the decision on the part of the state or the rulers that the
individual is not competent to spend his own money, to choose his own
calling, to use his own time as he will, or to provide himself for his
own future and for the various emergencies of life. And by the minute
state control, they are rapidly bringing the whole population to an
enfeebled social and political condition, where they can do nothing
for themselves.

They have been knocked about and dragooned by their own rulers and, be
it said and emphasized, they have received certain compensations and
gained certain advantages, if nothing else an orderliness, safety, and
care for the people by the state unequalled elsewhere in the world.
But there is no gainsaying, on the other hand, that they have lost the
fruits that are plucked by the nations of more individualistic
training.

They have clean streets, cheap music and drama, and a veritable mesh
of national education with interstices so small that no one can
escape, and they are coddled in every direction; but they have no
stuff for colonizers, and they have been not infrequently wofully
lacking in stalwart statesmen, and leaders.

To deprive the worker of his choice of expenditure, by taking all but
a pittance of it in taxation, is a dangerous deprivation of moral
exercise. To be able to choose for oneself is a vitally necessary
appliance in the moral gymnasium, even if here and there one chooses
wrong. It is a curious trend of thought of the day, which proposes to
cure social evils always by weakening, rather than by strengthening
the individual.

Socialism is merely a moral form of putting a sharper bit in
humanity's mouth; when of course the highest aim, the optimistic view,
is to train people to go as fast and straight and far as possible,
with the least possible hampering of their natural powers by
legislation. "Some men are by nature free, others slaves," writes
A