rivately ourselves. They only mean that we privately hire somebody
else to do it. In other words, they are usually a violation of the
private citizenship of somebody else. Consequently, though we enjoy
helping in the wastefulness of it all as a puppy enjoys tearing a
book, we do not feel justified in elevating our tastes into an ethical
system. We are simply grabbers of the corn supply. Probably, even in a
hundred years, people will look back on our present west-European
society and marvel at the common habit of prosperous men in sitting
down to a table where there are far more dishes and elegancies than
they can ever absorb, while men, women and children walk the streets
empty. I seldom sit down to dinner in a hotel without a sense that I
am being offered three people's food. No, a society that gives three
people's food to one man and one man's portion of food--or less--to
three people must be the laughing-stock of angels. The social waste
that results from railway monopolies and battleship programmes and the
warren of small shops in every city is as nothing to this. Except,
perhaps, in so far as it is the cause of this. On the whole, however,
the problem of waste goes deeper than battleships, which are but toys
and which will disappear as soon as the nations grow up and cease
making faces at each other. It is a problem on the same level with
lust, which, indeed, is a form of waste. It is one of the great
problems of egoism, which is more concerned with mastery than with
truth or common-sense or gentleness. Not mastery of oneself--just
gimcrack, made-in-Birmingham mastery. This is the Mammon of our
conceit upon whose altars we are willing to offer up the sacrifice of
the wasted earth.

XI

ON CHRISTMAS

There is a cant of Christmas, and there is a cant of anti-Christmas.
There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply
because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle
you simply because it is Christmas. Thus, between those who appreciate
and those who depreciate Christmas, it is difficult for an ordinary
man to escape bruises. As I grow older, I confess, I accept Christmas
more philosophically than I used to do. There was a time when it
seemed a dangerous institution, like home life or going to church. One
felt that in undermining its joys one was making a breach in the
defences of an ancient hypocrisy. Still more, one resented the steady
boredom of the day--the boredom