It was the programme of Socialism that had weakened the foundations of the British Empire and paved the way for the troublous times that followed. Cajoled by noisy agitators and the shallow arguments of Labour leaders and Socialists, the working man lost sight of the fact that his living depended on working up raw material into manufactured goods, and thus earning a wage that enabled him to pay for food and shelter. The middle-class had proved not less supine. So long as Britannia ruled the waves, and the butcher and baker were in a position to supply the Briton's daily needs, all went well. But when a family could get only one loaf, instead of four; and two pounds of meat when it wanted five, it necessarily followed that a good many people grew hungry. Hungry people are apt to lose their tempers, their moral sense of right and wrong, and all those nice distinctions between _meum et tuum_ on which the foundations of society so largely depend. Moral chaos becomes painfully accentuated when, as the result of a naval defeat and an incipient panic, the price of bread bounds up to eighteenpence per quartern loaf, with a near prospect of being unprocurable even for its weight in gold. All this had happened in these once favoured isles, because the masses, encouraged by self-seeking and parochially-minded leaders, had been more intent on making war upon the classes than on securing their subsistence through the agency of British shipping, protected by the British Navy at a height of power that could keep all other navies at a distance. In olden time, when the earth was corrupt and filled with violence, the word came from on high: "Make thee an ark of gopher wood." And Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark, to the saving of his house. But while the ark was a-preparing, the people went about their business, marrying and giving in marriage, making small account of the shipbuilder and his craze. It had been pretty much the same in the twentieth century, when the British people were warned that another sort of flood was coming, and that they, too, would need an ark, of material considerably stronger than gopher wood. They refused to believe in the flood. But it came. It was bound to come.