"What's going to stop 'em?" Sir James returned to his former question. "Nothing--until they've tried everything, and found they're wrong. And while they're finding out the simple fact that no employer can pay a guinea for a pound's worth of work the country will crash. We'll have anarchy, Vane--Bolshevism like Russia, unless a miracle saves us. . . . Financed by the Boche probably into the bargain." "Dear old Daddy," laughed Joan. "You're such an optimist, aren't you?" "It's no laughing matter, my dear," snorted her father. "There's a wave of madness over the world . . . absolute madness. The more you give into them--the more decently you treat 'em--the more they want. . . . People talk about the old order changing; what I want to know is what they're going to put in its place? When they've broken up the Empire and reduced England to a fifth-rate Power, they'll probably want the old order back. . . . It'll be too late to want then." "I gather, Sir James, that you are not exactly a Socialist," murmured Vane gravely, with a side glance at Joan. His host rose to the bait. "I--a Socialist--I! Why--why! . . ." he spluttered, and then he saw his daughter's face. She was dimpling with laughter, and suddenly Sir James laughed too. "You nearly had me then, my boy," he cried; "very nearly. But it's on that point, Vane, that I get so wild with these intellectual men--men who should know better. Men like Ramage, and Johnson and all that lot. They know themselves that Socialism is a wild impossibility; they know that equality is out of the question, and yet they preach it to men who have not got their brains. It's a dangerously attractive doctrine; the working man who sees a motor flash past him wouldn't be human if he didn't feel a tinge of envy. . . . But the Almighty has decreed that it should be so: and it's flying in His Face to try to change it." Vane looked thoughtfully at his host. "I fancy the Almighty's dictates are less likely to be questioned by the motor car owner than by the working man." "I agree with you, Vane," returned Sir James at once. "But that doesn't alter the principle of the thing. . . . By all means improve their conditions . . . give them better houses . . . stop sweated labour. That is our privilege and our duty. But if they continue on their present line, they'll soon find the difference. Things we did for 'em before, they'll have to whistle for in the future." "You're getting your money's worth this time, aren't you, Captain Vane?" said Joan demurely.