If real socialism-as distinguished from our temporary utilization of certain socialistic methods-comes, we shall inevitably turn our backs on civilization for a time. Successful socialism depends on the perfectibility of man. Unless all, or nearly all, men are high-minded and clear-sighted, it is bound to be a rotten failure in any but a physical sense. Even though it is altruism, socialism means materialism. You can guarantee the things of the body to every one, but you cannot guarantee the things of the spirit to every one; you can guarantee only that the opportunity to seek them shall not be denied to any one who chooses to seek them. And socialism, believing as it must (to hold its head high) in the spiritual as well as the political equality of men, is not going to create special opportunities for the special case. "To hell with the special case" is implicit in the socialist slogan. Do you see any majority, anywhere, in this imperfect and irreligious world, admitting that the minority is precious? That any minority is precious? Is there any evidence whatever that the socialist is less avid of personal political power, less averse to demagogic methods, than the other person? Does he himself go far to prove his perfectionism? A good many socialists are calling other socialists names because they put nationality before internationality; though any one with any sense could have told them beforehand that they would,

because human beings are-fortunately or unfortunately -like that. Lenin and Trotzky are disappointed because the German socialists do not rise to betray their rulers; and some socialists are disappointed because Lenin and Trotzky appear to be selling Russia out to Germany in order to keep themselves-two individuals—in places of power. Every one is calling names all round; and if socialism were anything in particular, it would (one would think) be very sorry for itself.

What is clear is this: that the socialization of governments places vast power in the hands of the skilled laborer. It is only in order that labor shall produce as fast and as furiously as possible that we have socialized our national organization. We need, chiefly for war's sake, certain physical things-food, munitions, coal, khaki clothing, and transportation for the same. We are calling for Y. M. C. A. men, and K. of C., and chaplains; but what we really expect of them, more than anything else, is to go under fire, if necessary, to give the soldiers tobacco and hot chocolate. The newspapers lay eager and delighted stress on the unclerical nature of the services these gentlemen find themselves cheerfully performing. War, you see, is a physical business. Of the spiritual side of it I am not going to speak. No one really can speak of it in terms of actual achievement until the armies have come home

and we see what manner of men they are. You cannot tell from the straws you see which way the great last wind of all is going to blow. Some wise people doubt whether the veterans of this war are going to spiritualize the world. Many of them will have had, at this or that supreme moment, something akin to a spiritual revelation. But the spiritual adventure is a desperately and exclusively personal thing; you cannot socialize it. It is incommunicable, and for the most part inexpressible. The attempt to socialize a spiritual experience ends in the camp-meeting; it goes no farther. Like all mental ecstasies, it cannot be felt simultaneously by millions of people. I fancy that the opinions the veterans are going to express at the polls are quite unforeknowable. We are all willingly kow-towing to the materialists for the sake of the armies. Whether the armies will wish to kow-tow to them when the war is over is a question more difficult of present solution than the Balkan boundaries. Certainly, if the armies have developed an esprit de corps and a philosophy of their own, they will be listened to. We shall inevitably be very sentimental about them. Whether we shall continue to be sentimental about the man who selected this moment to hold up his country and his compatriots for exorbitant pay, and demonstrated his patriotism by earning it, I do not know. We can deal only with the present situation.

What, the present outlook being what it is, can we count on for our children? We shall be practically aided, in time, as I have said, by all sorts of co-operative schemes-invented for the use of the very poor, and adapted and expanded, of necessity, for the not quite so poor. Some of the amenities of life, some of the space and the privacy, will have gone irretrievably. After considerations of health come considerations of education. We shall not be able, probably, to afford private schools for our children; and our sole comfort must be that most private schools are not much good, anyhow. They are a little safer gamble, in most communities, than the public schools. That is all. We, the parents, must supplement the bad teaching as best we can, must keep at least some spark of intelligent interest in the universe alive by the gas-log. It may well become our painful and subversive duty to inform our children, from the beginning, that what is being offered them by the state as education is not really education at all; and that teaching a boy how to make bookshelves is in no sense a substitute for teaching him to read and appreciate Latin. (Better not mention Greek!) It is very desirable, if not absolutely necessary, for our daughter to know how to cook; but we must not permit her to consider that domestic science is education, in the proper sense. We must keep the fact before ourselves and before

the next generation that the training of the mind does not mean quite the same thing as the training of the muscles. Time was when a cobbler-and I do not mean anything so remote and legendary as Hans Sachs-found philosophy a very natural complement to cobbling. I knew a cobbler in my childhood who was much in demand among the intellectuals, as being one of the few people who could expound Emerson's transcendentalism in a completely satisfactory way. He went aboutI can still recall the spun snow of his hair, the canny saintliness of his much-modelled face, the thin figure under the long black cloak-to philosophical conferences, to discuss metaphysics with the metaphysicians; and returned to sit in his little shop and cobble shoes. But one has yet to hear of philosophy's coming from a member of the lasters' union. Machinery means specialization; and it is an old story that there is no mental comfort or development in repeating the same gesture for eight hours a day, even if one has time and a half for overtime. The single gesture is not educative. When you saw the shoe as an entity, when it grew under your hands and you built up the whole consciously from the related parts; even when you were a mere cobbler, a physician to sick shoes, and had to know the whole shoe-organismthere was something in that humblest, most physical of tasks which demanded a conception