It lies, if you think of it, behind this war. What was at the back of Germany’s dream of world-wide conquest? Was it not the expansion of her commerce? Was it not her envy of other nations’ wealth that drove her to seek a first place among the nations? She wanted to extend her borders, to enlarge her trade, to increase her wealth. End this amazing of private fortunes and you will end this constant fighting and intriguing for power and position. America’s worship of the almighty dollar influences her attitude to-day. I wonder shall we ever find a substitute for money which will reduce its value. The value of money is the curse of life; it leads to wars, it creates half the intrigues in Court and political life, it provokes senseless luxury. But I am talking of a Utopia, and we live in an age of greed and personal aggrandisement, however sure to those who look beneath the surface are the signs of coming reform. One good thing the war will leave in its train is a recurrence of simplicity. It cannot but be that the awful costliness of it all will reduce the means left for wastefulness in living. I wish the larger nations--and especially England and America--would study the life of the Scandinavian towns and see how much preferable is their simpler life, how much happier folk are when there is not this greed for gold, which takes up all one’s time and makes men forget the joy and the meaning of life while they are earning and cheating and hoarding. There should be a law preventing great possessions. I don’t mean that the genius in his business or profession should not be able to earn enough to give him greater comforts than those who have not succeeded so well as he--probably because they have not tried so hard. To give the industrious and the indolent an equal reward, to be sure, would set a premium on laziness, and much of the world’s work would go undone. But there ought to be a limit to what a man can own, or what one company can earn, especially when there are so many quite deserving poor who are poor not because of indolence but through lack of opportunity. This is a part of Socialism, and I know in England Socialism is a bad word to use. Socialism is unfortunate in its champions in England; Socialism has come to mean, in the popular, thoughtless sense of the word, strikes and demands for improved wages and conditions. No doubt Socialism would so revolutionise industry that the present wages and conditions would then seem antiquated to the point of mediævalism, but I think your wise men of England are those who carry on the work of social reformation and leave the word Socialism alone. Mr. Lloyd George has the right idea; I call him a Socialist, though perhaps he wouldn’t agree with the designation. Will the new era which follows the close of this European holocaust be one of social advancement? If so, the war will not have been in vain. And everything points that way.