us, she has been by no means so unsuccessful in--for
example--Spain. At the present time the thought and feeling of the
Spanish speaking world is being _educated_ against the Allies. The
Spanish mind has been sold by its custodians into German control.

Muddle and venality do not, however, exhaust the demonstrated vices of
individualism. Individualism encourages desertion and treason.
Individualism permits base private people to abscond with the national
resources and squeeze a profit out of national suffering. In the early
stages of the war some bright minds conceived the idea of a corner in
drugs. It is not illegal; it is quite the sort of thing that appeals to
the individualistic frame of mind as entirely meritorious. As the _New
Statesman_ put it recently: "The happy owners of the world's available
stock of a few indispensable drugs did not refrain from making, not only
the various Governments, but also all the sick people of the world pay
double, and even tenfold, prices for what was essential to relieve pain
and save life. What fortunes were thus made we shall probably never
know, any more than we shall know the tale of the men and women and
children who suffered and died because of their inability to pay, not
the cost of production of what would have saved them, but the
unnecessarily enhanced price that the chances of the market enabled the
owners to exact."

And another bright instance of the value of individualism is the selling
of British shipping to neutral buyers just when the country is in the
most urgent need of every ship it can get, and the deliberate transfer
to America of a number of British businesses to evade paying a proper
share of the national bill in taxation. The English who have gone to
America at different times have been of very different qualities; at the
head of the list are the English who went over in the _Mayflower_; at
the bottom will be the rich accessions of this war....

And perhaps a still more impressive testimony to the rottenness of these
"business men," upon whom certain eccentric voices call so amazingly to
come and govern us, is the incurable distrust they have sown in the
minds of labour. Never was an atmosphere of discipline more lamentable
than that which has grown up in the factories, workshops, and great
privately owned public services of America and Western Europe. The men,
it is evident, _expect_ to be robbed and cheated at every turn. I can
only explain their state o