one system is work-coupons for all; much as the Socialist would
have it. Only the legitimate members of the community--the workers--can
live in it--long. You should see the nonchalant way a clerk at the
government's Tivoli hotel charges a tourist a quarter for a cigar the
government sells for six cents in its commissaries. Mere money does not
rank high in Zone society. It's the labor-coupon that counts. They sell
cigarettes at the Y.M.C.A.; you are in that state where you would give
your ticket home for a smoke. Yet when you throw down good gold or
silver, black Sam behind the showcase looks up at you with that pitying
cold eye kept in stock for new-comers, and says wearily:

"Cahn't take no money heah, boss."

That surely is a sort of socialism where a slip of paper showing merely
that you have done your appointed task gets you the same meal wherever
you may drop in, a total stranger, yet without being identified,
without a word from any one, but merely thrusting your coupon-book at
the yellow West Indian at the door as you enter that he may snatch out
so many minutes of labor. Drop in anywhere there is a vacant bed and
you are perfectly at home. There is the shower-bath, the ice-water, the
veranda rocker--you knew exactly what was coming to you, just what kind
of bed, just what vegetables you would be served at dinner. It reminds
one of the Inca system of providing a home for every citizen, and
tambos along the way if he must travel.

But it IS the same meal. That is just the point. There is where you
begin to furrow your brow and look more closely at this splendid
system, and fall to wondering if that public kitchen of socialism would
not become in time an awful bore. There are some things in which we
want variety and originality and above all personality. A meal is a
meal, I suppose, as a cat is a cat; yet there are many subtle little
things that make the same things distinctly different. When it comes to
dinner you want a rosy fat German or a bulky French madame putting
thought and pride and attention into it; which they will do only if
they get good coin of the realm or similar material emolument out of it
in proportion. No one will ever fancy he has a "mission" to serve good
meals--to the public.

In the I.C.C. hotels we have a government steward who draws a good
salary and wears a nice white collar. But though he is sometimes a bit
different, and succeeds in making his hotel so, it is only in degree.
He is n