But this dismal sketch of the future of countries that let themselves become dependent on the labor of other countries and settle down into a comfortable and ladylike parasitism is really much too favorable. If all our factory foremen could be turned into headwaiters with a touch of Cinderella’s godmother’s wand, neither they nor their wives might object. But this is not what happens. The factory foreman may bring up his son to be a waiter; but he himself becomes an unemployed man. If he is not fit for any of the new jobs, and too old to learn, and his trade is not merely going through one of the usual periods of depression but has left the country for good, he becomes a permanently unemployed man, and consequently a starving man. Now a starving man is a dangerous man, no matter how respectable his political opinions may be. A man who has had his dinner is never a revolutionist: his politics are all talk. But hungry men, rather than die of starvation, will, when there are enough of them to overpower the police, begin by rioting, and end by plundering and burning rich men’s houses, upsetting the government, and destroying civilization. And the women, sooner than see their children starve, will make the men do it, small blame to them. Consequently the capitalists, when they have sent their capital abroad instead of giving continuous employment with it at home, and are confronted at home with masses of desperate men for whom they can find no suitable jobs, must either feed them for nothing or face a revolution. And so you get what we call the dole. Now small as the dole may be it must be sufficient to live on; and if two or three in one household put their doles together, they grow less keen on finding employment, and develop a taste for living like ladies and gentlemen: that is, amusing themselves at the expense of others instead of earning anything. We used to moralize over this sort of thing as part of the decline and fall of ancient Rome; but we have been heading straight for it ourselves for a long while past, and the war has plunged us into it head over ears. For it was after the war that the capitalists failed to find employment for no less than two million demobilized soldiers who had for four years been not only well fed and clothed, but trained in the handling of weapons whilst occupied in slaughtering, burning, destroying, and facing terrible risks of being themselves destroyed. If these men had not been given money to live on they would have taken it by violence. Accordingly the Government had to take millions of spare money from the capitalists and give it to the demobilized men; and they are still doing so, with the grudged consent of the capitalists themselves, who complain bitterly, but fear that if they refuse they will lose everything.