lf-starved wretches
struggling with the impossible stint of oakum in a casual ward, they
too are free! The nimble footman is free, the crushed porter between
the trucks is free, the woman in the mill, the child in the mine. Ask
them! They will tell you how free they are. They have happened to
choose these ways of living--that is all. No doubt the piquancy of the
life attracts them in many such cases.

Let us be frank; a form of Socialism might conceivably exist without
much freedom, with hardly more freedom than that of a British worker
to-day. A State Socialism tyrannized over by officials who might be
almost as bad at times as uncontrolled small employers, is so far
possible that in Germany it is practically half-existent now. A
bureaucratic Socialism might conceivably be a state of affairs
scarcely less detestable than our own. I will not deny there is a
clear necessity of certain addenda to the wider formulae of Socialism
if we are to be safeguarded effectually from the official. We need
free speech, free discussion, free publication, as essentials for a
wholesome Socialist State. How they may be maintained I shall discuss
in a later chapter. But these admissions do not justify the present
system. Socialism, though it failed to give us freedom, would not
destroy anything that we have in this way. We want freedom now, and we
have it not. We speak of freedom of speech, but to-day, in innumerable
positions, Socialist _employes_ who declared their opinions openly
would be dismissed. Then again in religious questions there is an
immense amount of intolerance and suppression of social and religious
discussion to-day, especially in our English villages. As for freedom
of action, most of us, from fourteen to the grave, are chased from
even the leisure to require freedom by the necessity of earning a
living....

Socialism, as I have stated it thus far, and as it is commonly stated,
would give economic liberty to men and women alike, it would save them
from the cruel urgency of need, and so far it would enormously enlarge
freedom, but it does not guarantee them political or intellectual
liberty. That I frankly admit, and accept as one of the
incompletenesses of contemporary Socialism. I conceive, therefore, as
I shall explain at length in a later chapter, that it is necessary to
supplement such Socialism as is currently received by certain new
propositions. But to admit that Socialism does not guarantee freedom,
is not to