82 SCIENCE IN BONDAGE" 



most with the freedom of the subject. Thus, in 

 these islands, we were recently living under a 

 Defence of the Realm Act with which no 

 reasonable person quarrelled. Yet it forbad 

 many things not only harmless in themselves but 

 habitually permitted in times of peace. We were 

 subject to penalties if we showed lighted windows : 

 they must be shuttered or provided with heavy 

 curtains. We might not travel in railway 

 carriages at night with the blinds undrawn. The 

 papers might not publish, nor we say in public, 

 things which in time of peace would go un- 

 noticed. There were a host of other matters to 

 which allusion need not be made. Enough has 

 been said to show that the State has and exerts 

 the right to control the actions of those who 

 belong to it, and that in time of stress it can and 

 does very greatly intensify that control and does 

 so without arousing any real or widespread dis- 

 content. Of course we all grumble, but then 

 everybody, except its own members, always does 

 more or less grumble at anything done by any 

 government : that is the ordinary state of affairs. 

 But at any rate we submit ourselves, more or less 

 gracefully, to this restraint because we persuade 

 ourselves or are persuaded that it is for the good 

 of the State and thus for the good of ourselves, 

 both as private individuals and as members of the 

 State. 



And many of us, at any rate, comfort ourselves 

 with the thought that a great many of the regula- 

 tions which appear to be most tyrannical and 

 most to interfere with the natural liberty of 



