During this war our heroism has jibbed at Liquor. That jovial monster looms nearly as large as ever. We shall have a National Debt after the war of three or four thousand millions, perhaps more. And yet the cheapest thing that could possibly be done, in the long run, would be to increase it and buy up the Liquor Trade; achieve that dream of Joseph Chamberlain, “the total and absolute elimination of any idea of private gain in the retail sale of liquor”; convert drink into food to the tune of some eighty millions a year; and vastly diminish the number of children that require State nourishment, and the number of underfed men and women. In 1911, £162,797,229 was the drink bill of the nation; of which it is estimated that about £110,000,000 was spent by the working class. The working classes are no more inclined to liquor than the rest of the population, but they have obviously less to spare for the indulgence of their inclination. With proper control of the liquor traffic they will perhaps spend half what they spend now, extracting therefrom just as much enjoyment, and most of the other half will go into the bodies of themselves and their children in the form of food. Before the war one-tenth of our people were getting too little food; two-tenths more just balanced on a knife-edge of bare sufficiency. And the great majority of this third of our population were too closely or too badly housed for health. What is it going to be—_after_—unless our measures in regard to food, to housing, and to drink, are heroic? For heroic measures we shall need a keener sense of justice, a larger humanity, than we have ever had. Though the war may conceivably not diminish humane feeling in those who fight, it blunts the sensibilities of those who do not see its horrors at first-hand. Tales of others’ sufferings have become the daily fodder of the brain; narratives of death and misery the companions of every hour. Alongside the brutalities and agonies of the war, the injustice and cruelties of normal civil live seem pale and tame. Man has only a certain capacity for feeling; one expects callousness now towards civil inhumanities. But must that callousness last after peace has come? If so, we are in a bad way. What is it that our modern State is reaching after? Presumably health, and balance. And what are these qualities built on, if not on Justice? At the back of all social inhumanities will be found a lack of reasonable freedom and opportunity for some people, and the possession in other people of too much freedom and opportunity. And for the swift redress of social cruelties, the thorough attainment of social justice, we have at present not only to contend with human nature, but with an admitted deficiency in our legislative machinery.