which enables us to go on putting
the rights of Tom, Dick, and Harry before the rights of the race. It
is only our stupidity which makes us believe that, while it is right
that superfluous wealth should be taxed a shilling in the pound for
the good of all, it would be robbery to tax it ten shillings in the
pound for the good of all. The first statesman who levied the first
tax thereby announced the dual ownership of property between the
citizen and the State. He vindicated the right of the State,
representing the common good, as against the individual, representing
only his private good, to a first share in property. The income-tax
stands for exactly the same principle in regard to State rights as
would the nationalisation of the land or the railways. As we grow less
stupid, we shall gradually awake to the fact that there is no right to
food and shelter and State benevolence that we possess which our
neighbours ought not also in justice to possess. We shall gradually
understand, for instance, that it is not worth while that a thousand
children should be brought up in the gutters of misery in order that a
few dozen young gentlemen may sup on plovers' eggs. It has already
dawned upon us that, if pensions are good for field-marshals, they
cannot be so very bad for linen-lappers. Perhaps we shall yet come to
see that a pension is a very good thing to begin life with as well as
to end life with. In the meantime, most of us are either too
comfortable or too miserable to think about such things. Our
stupidity, at least, keeps conscience or revolution from destroying
the peace of our meals.

X

WASTE

When Mr Churchill referred in Manchester to the piling up of armaments
as so much misdirected human energy, he said something with which men
of all parties will agree, except those few romantic souls who believe
that it is a bracing thing to shed the blood of a foreigner every now
and then. Obviously, if two men live beside one another, and if each
of them is so afraid of the other's climbing secretly into his back
garden that he hires a watchman to walk up and down the garden path
all day and night with a six-shooter in his hand, he is wasting on his
fears a great deal of energy that might be expended on cabbages.
Again, if there is a stream running between the gardens, and if each
of the householders is always preparing for the day when the other may
question his right to use the water, he will have to hire other st