Functional socialism

NO CHANGE YET 175

avowing what they call the romanticism of the prewar generation. It was pre-war romanticism that wrote this:

“Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown, The just Fate gives; Whoso takes the world’s life on him and his own lays down, He, dying so, lives.”

I have seen nothing quite like that in post-war verse.

After the war we were inundated with books, articles, speeches on reconstruction. Youth would show old-age how to do the trick. They would make the world safer for democracy. The years have flown past in swallow-herds. And now?

Curious, is it not, that in this year of grace we have twice as many unemployed as in 1914 and yet more actually in employment. No scarcity; and yet, oddly enough, no plenty. A glorious period of bank amalgamations with inflated share values. And half a dozen depressed areas, which depress wages in our prosperous areas and nobly, at great sacrifice, keep up the bank dividends. The only investments worth considering are in the luxury and amusement industries.

Not to labour the obvious, there is some powerful influence that grips us from behind and holds us back. Like the Knight who would enter the castle but could not because of an invisible curtain. After endless frustration it occurred to him to cut the