workers should make themselves masters of the economic resources of society as the necessary preliminary of laying hold of the political power.[13] This may be a sound counsel of immediate strategy; but it is full of disaster if it is treated as a permanent principle of social practice. For it leaves us still within the vicious circle where the purely economic interests are paramount. Whensoever we consent to the statement that the one thing needful to society is a more equitable distribution of the wealth which its industry produces, we are still within the same hopeless universe of discourse. A more equitable distribution of wealth is needed; so much is obvious. But having secured it, what then? Will the City of God then come down from heaven? Or are we content with the hope of a redeemed society which goes no farther than a vision of a community of healthy and contented animals? It is certain that, so long as our thought of social regeneration moves chiefly within the existing framework of wealth production and wealth distribution, our effort will create a range of new social problems of an acute and probably less soluble kind. That we should labour to humanise and to socialise the existing commercial and industrial organisation goes without saying; but there is no certainty that after we have done so, the same economic pre-occupation will not still fill our minds. It is not enough to work for change that only transfers the power to produce and to enjoy wealth from the hands of a small minority to those of the great majority. That is indeed only change, and not necessarily progress. There will be fewer people with more butter on their bread than they need; and fewer people with less than they need; and that will be something gained. But it does not necessarily follow that we will not still be chiefly concerned about bread and butter, and whatever elaborations upon that simple theme that our enlarged resources may tempt us to seek. Footnote 13: This is not to be taken as meaning that the National Guild Movement is destitute of a spiritual outlook. On the contrary, see, for instance, the last chapter of S. G. Hobson’s _Guild Principles in War and Peace_.