th and destruction.... There, I
think, is the overriding argument that will burst the proprietorships
and divisions and boundaries, the web of ineffectiveness that has held
the world so long. Labour returning from the trenches to its country and
demanding promptness, planning, generous and devoted leaderships and
organisation, demanding that the usurer and financier, the landlord and
lawyer shall, if need be, get themselves altogether out of the way, will
have behind its arguments the thought of the enemy still unsubdued,
still formidable, recovering. Both sides will feel that. This world is a
more illuminated world than 1816; a thousand questions between law and
duty have been discussed since then; beyond all comparison we know
better what we are doing. I think the broad side of John Smith (and Sir
John Smith and John Smith, K.C.) will get the better of his narrow
ends--and that so it will be with Jean Dupont and Hans Meyer and the
rest of them. There may be riots here and there; there may be some
pretty considerable rows; but I do not think there is going to be a
chaotic and merely destructive phase in Great Britain or any Western
European country. I cast my guess for reconstruction and not for revolt.

V. HOW FAR WILL EUROPE GO TOWARD SOCIALISM?

A number of people are saying that this war is to be the end of
Individualism. "Go as you please" has had its death-blow. Out of this
war, whatever else emerges, there will emerge a more highly organised
State than existed before--that is to say, a less individualistic and
more socialistic State. And there seems a heavy weight of probability on
the side of this view. But there are also a number of less obvious
countervailing considerations that may quite possibly modify or reverse
this tendency.

In this chapter an attempt is to be made to strike a balance between the
two systems of forces, and guess how much will be private and how much
public in Europe in 1930, or thereabouts.

The prophets who foretell the coming of Socialism base their case on
three sets of arguments. They point out, first, the failure of
individual enterprise to produce a national efficiency comparable to
the partial State Socialism of Germany, and the extraordinary, special
dangers inherent in private property that the war has brought to light;
secondly, to the scores of approaches to practical Socialism that have
been forced upon Great Britain--for example, by the needs of the war;
and, th