the shop windows, that every one knows to be
waste. We need not trouble ourselves about the fact that art will seem
waste to the philistine and not to the artist. We must allow for
differences on that point as on most others. Some things that might
have been waste to Samuel Smiles would have been to Morris a symptom of
well-being. But he knew, and often said, that we cannot have the beauty
which was to him a symptom of well-being unless we end the waste of
labour on trash. Of luxury he said:--

By those who know of nothing better it has even been taken for
art, the divine solace of human labour, the romance of each
day's hard practice of the difficult art of living. But I say,
art cannot live beside it nor self-respect in any class of
life. Effeminacy and brutality are its companions on the right
hand and the left.

There is, we have all discovered now, only a certain amount of labour in
the country, in the world. Even the most ignorant are aware at last that
money does not create labour but only commands it, and may command it to
do what will or will not benefit us all. We were, for the purposes of
the war, much more of a fellowship than we had ever been before. We
acknowledged a duty to each other, the duty of commanding labour to the
common good. We asked with every sovereign we spent whether it would
help or hinder us in the war. Morris would have us ask also whether it
will help or hinder us in the advance towards a general happiness.

And he put a further question, which in time of war unfortunately we
could not put, a question not only about the work but about the workman.
Are we, with our money, forcing him to work that is for him worth doing;
are we, to use an old phrase, considering the good of his soul? Morris
insisted on our duty to the workman more even than on our duty to
society. He saw that where great masses of men do work that they know to
be futile there must be a low standard of work and incessant discontent.
The workman may not even know the cause of his discontent. He may think
he is angry with the rich because they are rich; but the real source of
his anger is the work that they set him to do with their riches. And no
class war, no redistribution of wealth, will end that discontent if the
same waste of labour continues. Double the wages of every workman in the
country, and if he spends the increase on trash no one will be any
better off in mind or body. There will