e the poor for boozing less than I blame the rich for
"jazzing." If I had to live the lives which millions of working men
and women lead, and amid the same surroundings, and with the same
hopeless future--I would booze with the booziest. You can't expect the
poor to respect themselves when the rich do not respect them. Without
any feeling of human responsibility in the wealthier classes, you
cannot expect to find any human responsibility in the lower orders.
And by human responsibility I do not mean some vague thing like
"Government for the People," or subscriptions to hospitals, or bazaars
for the indigent blind, or anything of that sort--though these things
are excellent in themselves. I mean something more practical than
that. Hospitals should be state-owned, and the indigent blind should
be pensioned by the state. These things should not be left to private
enterprises, since they are human responsibilities and should be borne
by humanity. I mean that all owners of wealth should be made to
realise their moral responsibilities to their own workmen--the men and
women who help to create their wealth--and that with poverty there
should not go dirt and drudgery and that total lack of beauty and
encouragement to a cleaner, finer life without which existence on earth
is Hell--Hell being preached at from above.

_The Government of the Future_

The worst of government by the people is that the moment the people put
them into power they are gracefully forgotten. The only _real_
government by the people comes through the people themselves in the
form of disturbances and strikes and revolutions. Then, alas, the tiny
craft of Progress is borne towards the ocean on a river of bad
blood--which means waste and unnecessary suffering, and leaves a whole
desert of anger and revenge behind it. The most crying need of the
times is the very last to be heard by governments. They are so
engrossed in the financial prosperity of the country that they forget
the social and moral prosperity altogether--and financial prosperity
without social and moral progress is but the beginning of bankruptcy
after all. A government, to be a real government and so to represent
authority in the eyes of the people, has not only to nurse and to
harbour, but also to _rebuild_. It does something more than govern.
It has been placed there _by the people_ in order that it may help
rebuild the lives _of the people_--so that, besides helping capita