"It's not bad at all. It's absolutely plain commonsense. I wonder who the fool was who first talked of commonsense? My experience teaches me that sense is the most uncommon thing in the world. Most men are so at home with folly that nothing is so likely to alarm them as the irruption of real rational sense." "I wish you would tell me all about it," said Arthur earnestly. "Do you?" said Vickars, with an ironic smile. "Well, I don't know about that. You see, at heart I am a fanatic, and, like all fanatics, I should expect you to agree with me. If you didn't, I might not--like you. And then there's Elizabeth. I rather think she agrees with me. And she might not--like you." "Oh no, father," Elizabeth began, and then flushed and dropped her eyes. "Oh yes," he retorted. "Why, don't you know that the one great divisive force in society is opinion? I like the man who agrees with me, and I dislike the man who doesn't; and although I may accuse myself of intolerance, and persuade myself that he possesses all kinds of virtues, I shall still go on disliking him, because I think him stupid. And he will dislike me for the same reason--he will think me stupid." He rose from his writing-table, lit a pipe, and stood with his hands behind him, with that whimsical smile upon his face which Arthur knew so well. "No," he continued, with a sudden flash of passion, "I don't suppose I shall get heard. The nearer truth you come in your writing, the less likely are you to get heard, for above all things men hate truth. They crucified truth two thousand years ago on Calvary; and they have been doing it ever since. Yet truth is the most obvious thing in the world, to any one who is sincere enough to discern it. You want to know what I think, what I have been writing about. Well, I will tell you. I have simply put down in plain English a series of facts which are all indisputable. That war is folly, to begin with, and if the cost of armies and navies were removed, the prosperity of Europe would be instantly doubled. That the reckless growth of cities is folly, and if you could make the people stay upon the land by giving them land on equitable terms, three-fourths of the poverty would disappear. That unlimited commercial competition is folly, and that if you could make nations act as a great co-operative trust, only producing what each nation is best fitted to produce, and only as much of any commodity as was really needed, you would cure all the ills of labour. And I say all this is absolutely obvious. Every one knows it, though every one ignores it. It is so obvious that if God would make me sole dictator of the world for a single year, I would guarantee to make the world a Paradise. I wonder God doesn't do it Himself, instead of letting man go on age after age mismanaging everything, with the result that a few are rich and not happy, and the multitude are poor--and miserable. So now you know just the sort of man I am.