replace those
things. For all London will be yours, a city to serve indeed, and a
sense of fellowship that is, if you could but realize it, better than
respect. The common people will not be common under Socialism. That is
a very important thing for you to remember. But better than those
thoughts is this, that you will own yourself too, more than you do
now. All that state, all that prominence of yours--do you never feel
how it stands between you and life?

So I appeal from your wealth to your nobility, to help us to
impoverish your class a little relatively and make all the world
infinitely richer by that impoverishment. And I am sure that to some
of you I shall not appeal in vain....

Sec. 6.

And lastly, perhaps you are chiefly a patriot and you are concerned
for the flag and country with which your emotions have interwoven. You
find that the Socialist talks constantly of internationalism and the
World State, and that presents itself to your imagination as a very
vague and colourless substitute for a warm and living reality of
England or "these States" or the Empire. Well, your patriotism will
have suffered a change, but I do not think it need starve under
Socialist conditions. It may be that war will have ceased, but the
comparison and competition and pride of communities will not have
ceased. Philadelphia and Chicago, Boston and New York are at peace, in
all probability for ever at peace, so far as guns and slaughter go,
but each perpetually criticizes, goads and tries to outshine the
other. And the civic pride and rivalry of to-day will be nothing to
that pride and rivalry when every man's business is the city and the
city's honour and well-being is his own. You will have, therefore,
first this civic patriotism, your ancient pride in your city, a city
which will be like the city of the ancient Athenian's, or the mediaeval
Italian's, the centre of a system of territories and the property and
chief interest of its citizens. I, for instance, should love and
serve, even as I love to-day, my London and my Cinque Ports, these
Home Counties about London, the great lap of the Thames valley and the
Weald and Downland, my own country in which all my life has been
spent; for you the city may be Ulster or Northumbria, or Wales or East
or West Belgium, or Finland or Burgundy, or Berne or Berlin, or
Venetia, Pekin, Calcutta, Queensland or San Francisco. And keeping the
immediate peace between these vigorous giant municipa