Norfolk Water Supply Undertaking. A public meeting will be held on ... at the Norwich Auditorium, to announce and explain the purpose and plan of this Undertaking. Workers and Contributors will be enlisted on terms to be announced at this meeting. Qualification papers may be sent to the undersigned.... It is obvious that the “contributor” who places his savings at the disposal of the Undertaking must not only not lose them thereby, but must be compensated according to the risk he runs. In effect, he provides the manual worker with the food he requires to exert his strength, and he does so without any immediate benefit to himself. If, after the Undertaking had got to work, his “contribution” were simply refunded, he would receive no reward for his public service, a service which implied a reduction in his own resources. This would be unjust and would make his treatment worse than that of the wage-earner. To this simple plea a Communist would rejoin that nobody should be allowed to have savings or accumulated resources or private property of any kind. The absurdity of this contention is very easily demonstrated, but let us add a few hard cases to the usual arguments:―― (1) A tribe of shepherds requires water. There is one man who knows the location of a well. His knowledge is his private property, which he offers to sell for a number of cows. What should be done, if the man is (a) accessible and undefended; (b) inaccessible. (2) A girl has a beautiful head of hair, which could be sold abroad for a considerable sum. Whose property is it? (3) In a small and isolated town, 20 per cent. of the inhabitants have good sets of false teeth. Another 20 per cent. require false teeth, but have no means of getting them. What will be the action taken by the Communist municipality? * * * * * The workman going to his work has quite a respectable capital to accompany him on his way. He has clothes to keep him warm, boots to save his feet from wearing out, a set of tools, perhaps, and accumulated stores of food in every muscle of his body. Even if his stomach is empty, he is still capable of work, although it will probably be of inferior quality. There was a craze towards the end of last century for living without food, the idea being that the body was not nourished by food but by “vibrations” of some mysterious kind. The craze, for obvious reasons, did not last long, but some prodigies of fasting were performed while it lasted, and the leaders of the movement prided themselves on doing their daily work and business as usual. The truth was that, like the badger, they were living on their own fat and consuming their own tissues. In the end they were thinner and sadder, but little the worse otherwise.