which he had not chosen, no
one would be forced to take up an activity which was hateful to him, yet
all would feel that what they could do and did do would be helpful to
the other ranks and ranges, and would be _solidaire_ with the rest of
the nation. Such a nation would be sane and prosperous in time of peace,
and absolutely safe and impregnable in the hour of danger.

X

HOW SHALL THE PLAGUE BE STAYED?

_Christmas_, 1914.

People ask what new arrangements of diplomacy or revivals of
Christianity--what alliances, _ententes_, leagues of peace, Hague
tribunals, regulation of armaments, weeks of prayer, or tons of
Christmas puddings sent into the enemies' camps--will finally scotch
this pestilence of war. And there is no answer, because the answer is
too close at hand for us to see it.

Nothing but the general abandonment of the system of living on the
labour of others will avail. _There is no other way_. This, whether as
between individuals or as between nations, is--and has been since the
beginning of the world--the root-cause of war. Early and primitive wars
were for this--to raid crops and cattle, to carry off slaves on whose
toil the conquerors could subsist; and the latest wars are the same. To
acquire rubber concessions, gold-mines, diamond-mines, where coloured
labour may be exploited to its bitterest extreme; to secure colonies and
outlying lands, where giant capitalist enterprises (with either white or
coloured labour) may make huge dividends out of the raising of minerals
and other industrial products; to crush any other Power which stands in
the way of these greedy and inhuman ambitions--such are the objects of
wars to-day. And we do not see the cause of the sore because it is so
near to us, because it is in our blood. The whole private life of the
commercial and capitalist classes (who stand as the representatives of
the nations to-day) is founded on the same principle. As individuals our
one object is to find some worker or group of workers whose labour value
we can appropriate. Look at the endless columns of stock and share
quotations in the daily papers, and consider the armies of those who
scan these lists over their breakfast-tables with the one view of
finding some-where an industrial concern whose slave-driven toilers
will yield the shareholder 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 per cent, on his capital.
Undisguised and shameless parasitism is the order, or disorder, of our
days. The rapacity of beasts