Essays 657 



precludes the possibility of any representation of the ether in the general relativity 

 theory. And the ether is the very foundation of the Faraday-Maxwell electrical 

 theory, and the present completion and extension of this theory is due to the 

 concept of the electron, the only possible meaning of which, as far as the physicist 

 of to-day can see, is as a structure in the ether. The thorough-going relativist 

 who regards the theory of relativity, not merely as a promising mathematical aid 

 in elucidating and reconstructing defective portions of the older theory, but as 

 destined to replace it, constantly finds himself driven back upon such unsatisfactory 

 concepts as, e.g. the retardation of a moving electron by the reaction of its own 

 electromagnetic field, adopted by Leigh Page in one of the most powerful 

 of recent contributions to the relativity representation of electromagnetic 

 phenomena. 



DRY-ROT IN GOVERNMENT HOUSING SCHEMES (Lord 

 Leverhulme) 



Shall our future housing schemes "lean" on Government and our houses be 

 erected on the quicksands of doles and grants, or shall they be built plumb 

 and true and resting on the solid rock of citizen self-reliance? The man or 

 woman who is an optimist on the possibility of any permanent solution of our 

 housing problem by means of Government doles and grants in aid of approved 

 housing schemes, and who is a pessimist as to the possibility of the full and 

 complete final solution of our housing problem on the lines of individual private 

 enterprise, is going to get a rude shock and awakening within the next quarter- 

 century. Our Government by their housing schemes would treat certain citizens 

 as if they required spoon-feeding or as if they could not earn sufficient money 

 under the British flag and within the United Kingdom by their industry and 

 intelligently directed labour to pay a reasonable self-supporting return on the 

 cost of their homes, but for those working in the United Kingdom under the waving 

 expanse of the Union Jack the Home Government must make grants of sops and 

 doles to provide houses, whilst our fellow citizens in Canada, Australasia, and 

 South Africa can provide their own houses and pay higher rentals than would 

 be the economic rent in the United Kingdom. Britons, we shout, never, never 

 shall be slaves, but there is no slave so fettered as the British citizen who cannot 

 provide out of his wages his own home. 



Let our British Government bear in mind that the American Government 

 does not require to give, and does not propose to give, doles and sops to 

 the working men of the United States towards the cost of his home. Are 

 we to undermine the independent British spirit of self-reliance of our British 

 citizens whilst the American Government cultivate to the full a spirit of self- 

 reliance in American citizens? If so, will not the final result be that English- 

 speaking peoples in the United States will become a strong virile race whilst 

 we in the Motherland will become less and less self-reliant and virile until 

 finally the sceptre of Empire falls from our palsied hands? Our newspapers 

 are to-day crowded with columns of articles on schemes for the solution ot 

 housing problems, and the stereotyped headline adjective is "Generous." Is it 

 the province of a Government to be "generous"? Is it not rather the province of 

 a Government to be just? It is very easy for a Government to be "generous" 

 with other people's money— the money it takes from the pockets of one set of citizen 

 taxpayers to hand over to another set of citizens— but does a Government achieve 

 anything of permanent good by these methods and cannot public requirements be 



