impressed by what we have seen, and I can tell you
to-day, speaking as a man of business to men of business, that
the fact that in these three countries there is communal
effort--that is to say, that the State in money and in credit
for the benefit of the national trade--has brought to those
three countries enormous, almost incalculable, benefits; and I
think that any man, any intelligent man, who studies this
matter as I have studied it for a great many years, will come
the conclusion, as I have come very clearly and decidedly,
that the old policy which we have adopted for generations of
leaving all public works to private enterprise--the old
policy, so called, of _laissez faire_--is played out
completely, and I am of opinion, very firmly, that, if we mean
to hold our own in matters of trade, we must learn to follow
the example that has been set us not only by France, Belgium,
and Germany, but by the United States and by every one of the
Colonies of our Empire. Everywhere do you find that trade is
helped by the effort of the community, by the force of the
State, and I shall be very heartily pleased if those who hear
me will think the matter over and decide for themselves
whether or not we as business people--preeminently the
business people of the world--are to maintain the old policy
of leaving everything to private enterprise, or whether we are
to act together for the good of all in this important matter
of the national trade."

CHAPTER IX

SOME COMMON OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM

Sec. 1.

In the preceding eight chapters I have sought to give as plain and
full an account of the great generalizations of Socialism as I can,
and to make it clear exactly what these generalizations convey, and
how far they go in this direction and that. Before we go on to a brief
historical and anticipatory account of the actual Socialist movement,
it may be worth while to take up and consider compactly the chief
objections that are urged against the general propositions of
Socialism in popular discussion.

Now a very large proportion of these arise out of the commonest vice
of the human mind, its disposition to see everything as "yes" or "no,"
as "black" or "white," its impatience, its incapacity for a fine
discrimination of intermediate shades.[14] The queer old scholastic
logic still prevails remarkably in our modern world; you