TR UISMS AND ABS URDITIES 7 5 



to-day, the same claim might be advanced by any Book i 

 weaker nation which, after a series of battles, Chapter 3 

 succumbs finally to the stronger. In the Franco- 

 German War the French might have said to the 

 Germans, "You acquired by fighting with us, the 

 faculties which have enabled you to conquer us. 

 Your strength therefore, in reality, belongs to us, 

 not you ; and hence justice requires that you should 

 give us back Alsace." In the same way it might 

 be urged that all the idle apprentices of the past 

 have, by the warning they afforded, stimulated the 

 industry of the industrious, and therefore in abstract 

 justice had a claim on their earnings. 



Let us now take Mr. Webb's reasoning so far as For if the great 



, 1 i 11 r i i workers owe 



it concerns the present, and we shall rind that it their greatness 



results in similar fantastic puerilities. If the great J^ 

 man of to-day owes his greatness to society as a 1 ??!" 611 * 110 



* * shirk work owe 



whole, it is to society as a whole that the idle man their idleness to 



i 11 i -i i -i- . it ; and if the 



owes his idleness, the stupid man his stupidity, the former deserve 



... 1-1-1 i r i no reward, the 



dishonest man his dishonesty ; and it the great man latter deserve 

 who produces an exceptional amount of wealth can, U^ 1 " 

 with justice, claim no more than the average man 

 who produces little, the man who is so idle that he 

 shirks producing anything may with equal justice 

 claim as much wealth as either. His constitutional 

 fault, and his constitutional disinclination to mend 

 it, are both due to society, and society, not he, must 

 suffer. And the same thing holds good of every 

 form of economic incompetence. 



The absurdity of Mr. Webb's position will be 

 seen yet more clearly when we see how it looks 



