the general plan of operations, so long as they have confidence in the quality and good will of their leading.  But British soldiers will of their loading.  But British soldiers will hiss a general when they think he is selfish, unfeeling, or a muff.  And the socialist propaganda has imported ideas of public service into private employment.  Labour in Britain has been growing increasingly impatient of bad or selfish industrial leadership.  Labour trouble in Great Britain turns wholly upon the idea crystallised in the one word “profiteer.”  Legislation and regulation of hours of labour, high wages, nothing will keep labour quiet in Great Britain if labour thinks it is being exploited for private gain.

Labour feels very suspicious of private gain.  For that suspicion a certain rather common type of employer is mainly to blame.  Labour believes that employers is mainly to blame.  Labour believes that employers as a class cheat workmen as a class, plan to cheat them of their full share in the common output, and drive hard bargains.  It believes that private employers are equally ready to sacrifice the welfare of the nation and the welfare of the workers for mere personal advantage.  It has a traditional experience to support these suspicions.

In no department of morals have ideas changed so completely during the last eight years as in relation to “profits”.  Eighty years ago everyone believed in the divine right of property to do what it pleased its advantages, a doctrine more disastrous socially than the divine right of kings.  There was no such sense of the immorality of “holding up” as pervades the public conscience to-day.  The worker was expected not only to work, but to be grateful for employment.  The property owner held his property and handed it out for use and development or not, just as he thought fit.  These ideas are not altogether extinct today.  Only a few days ago I met a magnificent old lady of seventy nine or eighty, who discoursed upon the wickedness of her gardener in demanding another shilling a week because of war prices.

She was a valiant and handsome personage.  A face that had still a healthy natural pinkness looked out from under blond curls, and an elegant and carefully tended hand tossed back some fine old lace to gesticulate more freely.  She had previously charmed her hearers by sweeping aside certain rumours that were drifting about.

“Germans invade Us!” she cried.  “Who’d let ’em, I’d like to know?  Who’d let ’em?”

And then she reverted to her grievance about the gardener.

“I told him that after the war he’d be glad enough to get anything.  Grateful!  They’ll all be coming back after the war—­all of ’em, glad enough to get anything.  Asking for another shilling indeed!”