I know very well that
all men are not equal, and the professor's keenest logic cannot make
me see that point any more clearly than at present. But suppose that
one fine day some awkward leader of the people says, "You tell us,
professor, that we are wealthy, and that it is right that some men
should be gorged while we are bitten with famine. If Britain is so
wealthy, how is it that eleven million acres of good agricultural land
are now out of cultivation, while the people whom the land used to
feed are crushed in the slums of the towns in the case of labourers,
or gone beyond the sea in the case of the farmers?" I want to be
impartial, but freely own that I should not like to answer that
question, and I do not believe the professor could. The men who used
to supply our fighting force are now becoming extinct. If they go into
the town and pick up some kind of work, then the second generation are
weaklings and a burden to us; while, if they go abroad, they are still
removed from the Mother of Nations, who needs her sons of the soil,
even though she may feel proud of the gallant new States which they
are rearing. And, while rats and mice and obscure vermin are gradually
taking possession of the land on which Britons were bred, the signs of
bursting wealth are thick among us.
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