calm. There is a simplicity that is pleasing, and a simplicity that is hideous. Leaving aside the social importance of good clothes and good furniture, there is, in downright ugliness, a power to fret the soul, a power to lessen the. power to work. But we will neglect, for the moment, the æsthetic side of it. In the matter of food we will willingly simplify. In the matter of adornment, whether of our persons or of our houses, we shall have to simplify, and we can only hope that our simplification can be conducted more along quantitative than along qualitative lines. We shall try to omit rather than commit; to be austere rather than cheap.

The matter of servants is going to hit us harder; for only with "help"-in the quite literal sense-can we manage to get any peace or any time, in the hours left free by our wage-earning, for reading, for contemplation, for conversation. The "general houseworker" has tended to disappear; which is an acknowledgment that when a great many different things have to be done, one human being cannot stand the strain. Only by her being helped out by the family, only by some features of household service being scanted or ill done, could the general houseworker ever manage to keep outside her job. The good cook could not also be the perfect parlor-maid and the perfect child's nurse. Neither can the good physician, the good lawyer, the good clergyman, also be

the perfect choreman, the perfect gardener, and the perfect butler-with hours of casual bookkeeping, plumbing, and carpentering. Even if he had the talent, he would not have the time; for the physician, the lawyer, and the clergyman are not safeguarded by an "eighthour day." His wife, moreover, even if she has no private intellectual interests, cannot suffice to all the modern domestic tasks any more than can the general houseworker, who has faded out of existence precisely because she could not. We shall modify as we can; shall have our food sent in from outside where that is possible; shall buy vacuum cleaners (on the instalment plan); shall win occasional hours of freedom by hiring some safe person to come in and watch over the children while they sleep. Hospitality will, of necessity, be much curtailed. Our personal freedom-in any familiar sense of the term-will be almost nil. We might defy our house, our garden, our table, our door-bell, to shackle us; but we cannot defy our children to shackle us.

In these ways, we shall probably intrigue for the life of the spirit, the life of the intellect. But, still, they are expensive. Education-good education-is, in the first place, expensive. I do not know how much it costs to make a man a good plumber or a good coal-miner or a good carpenter; but I am sure it does not cost so much as it does to make him a good doctor or

a good clergyman. It takes seven years after the "prep" school or the high school to start the professional man on his road, costing fairly heavily all the time. That is why I said that skilled labor is overpaid-it gets an exorbitant return for its expenditure. Most of us hope to have college for our boys, even if they do not take up a profession-just because we think that education is going to matter to a man, all his life, no matter in what field he works. The joys of travel, as I intimated, are going to be cut out for most of us; the opera and the play will become infrequent blessings. But we shall have to have some books-even if we do not start the furnace until December. Indeed, the books we have ourselves are perhaps going to be our best guarantee of our children's being educated at all. To be sure, we shall be taxed on them, with increasing heaviness; but then, the coal-miner will (let us hope) be taxed on his motor-car.

It may be that we shall come to stateendowed motherhood, and all the rest. But the trouble is that all these socialistic schemes are based on a lower-class demand on life. State endowment of motherhood will perhaps have to come; but what does it guarantee except the child born under decent conditions? The health of the mother, and through her of the child, is to be safeguarded. Very well. Et après? Pure milk may be provided at municipal sta

tions; there will be a day nursery and then a public kindergarten. There will follow-if modern "educators" have their way- the whole desolating career in the public schools, where real education is reduced to a minimum, and "vocational" training is substituted. The child will, in time, be graduated into the ranks of skilled labor, and perhaps will eventually have his motor-car and his tiled bathroom and his "movie" every night.

Yet for some of us this is not a supremely cheering prospect, because it is a wholly materialistic vision. Certainly it is a good thing to start with health as a requisite. Certainly everything that can be done to insure a healthy childhood, in every case where it is physically possible, should be done. But the great mistake of the reformers is to believe that life begins and ends with health, and that happiness begins and ends with a full stomach and the power to enjoy physical pleasures, even of the finer kind. It may be that the enormous expense of guaranteeing health to all children born in our vast American community will take all the money that the community has. It may be that no one will ever be free to devote his health to pursuing the life of the mind and the spiritto the purposes, that is, of civilization not purely physical. But we have not come to that yet; and the war is there to remind us that we really do not know precisely what will come.

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,

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