goods and services, be lightened. This
expectation is very generally entertained, and I can see little reason
against it. The intensely stupid or dishonest "labour" press, however,
which in the interests of the common enemy misrepresents socialism and
seeks to misguide labour in Great Britain, ignores these considerations,
and positively holds out this prospect of rising prices as an alarming
one to the more credulous and ignorant of its readers.

But now comes the second way of meeting the after-the-war obligations.
This second way is by increasing the wealth of the state and by
increasing the national production to such an extent that the payment of
the _rentier_ class will not be an overwhelming burthen. Rising prices
bilk the creditor. Increased production will check the rise in prices
and get him a real payment. The outlook for the national creditor seems
to be that he will be partly bilked and partly paid; how far he will be
bilked and how far depends almost entirely upon this possible increase
in production; and there is consequently a very keen and quite
unprecedented desire very widely diffused among intelligent and active
people, holding War Loan scrip and the like, in all the belligerent
countries, to see bold and hopeful schemes for state enrichment pushed
forward. The movement towards socialism is receiving an impulse from a
new and unexpected quarter, there is now a _rentier_ socialism, and it
is interesting to note that while the London _Times_ is full of schemes
of great state enterprises, for the exploitation of Colonial state
lands, for the state purchase and wholesaling of food and many natural
products, and for the syndication of shipping and the great staple
industries into vast trusts into which not only the British but the
French and Italian governments may enter as partners, the so-called
socialist press of Great Britain is chiefly busy about the draughts in
the cell of Mr. Fenner Brockway and the refusal of Private Scott
Duckers to put on his khaki trousers. _The New Statesman_ and the Fabian
Society, however, display a wider intelligence.

There is a great variety of suggestions for this increase of public
wealth and production. Many of them have an extreme reasonableness. The
extent to which they will be adopted depends, no doubt, very largely
upon the politician and permanent official, and both these classes are
prone to panic in the presence of reality. In spite of its own interests
in rest