SOME OTHER REMEDIES 239 



fellow-countrymen should be quite ignorant 

 of the meaning of current political terms. I 

 well remember a group of educated men and 

 women laughing heartily at a definition of a 

 " Protestant " given by a Spanish peasant as 

 a man who " shut himself up in a room with a 

 Crucifix and flogged it." But there is less 

 excuse for the current failure on the part of 

 well-to-do men and women in our clubs 

 and drawing-rooms to even understand the 

 elementary meaning of such a political theory 

 as Socialism. 



Persons who protest against land-national- 

 ization on the grounds that it is novel and 

 " Socialistic," seem oblivious to the fact that 

 even at present and through the agency of 

 successive Governments of both parties they 

 are living to a large extent in a Socialist 

 environment. The English State sends our 

 letters, telephones, telegrams, educates and, 

 in some cases, feeds the nation's children, 

 pensions off our old citizens and insures our 

 workers against sickness and unemployment. 

 In the eyes, therefore, of thoughtful citizens 

 who rejoice in the beneficent exercise of the 

 State management already experienced there 

 can be no sound a priori reason against the 

 collective ownership and control of the 

 nation's land or the nation's railways. The 



