THE CALL OF THE LAND 



and that, therefore, all productive property 

 and occupations without exception ought to 

 be in state hands Fabianism denies. What 

 is unfortunate in Fabianism is that it seems 

 to look upon state economic activity as 

 rather the normal order, to be departed 

 from or not insisted on only when personal 

 initiative is clearly better. I should urge 

 just the reverse that individualism ought 

 to be the standing presumption, to be reso- 

 lutely trenched on when it fails, provided 

 public functioning is certain to do better, 

 but always to be preserved and acted upon 

 as the normal. I deem this difference in 

 points of view rather important; but public 

 ownership has not yet gone so far that a 

 Fabianist policy and a rational individual- 

 ism need at present clash. 



Here at least, I fear, I for one must part 

 company with socialism, that mode of 

 thought in its orthodox form seeming to me 

 to proceed upon presuppositions wholly un- 

 scientific. 



One of these is the assumption that the 

 estate of the human species on this earth 



.294 



