stayed.[23]

FOOTNOTES:

[23] When these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men return home
after the war is over, do we expect them to go meekly back to the
idiotic slavery of dingy offices and dirty workshops? If we do I trust
that we shall be disappointed. These men who have fought so nobly for
their land, and who have tasted, even under the most trying conditions,
something of the largeness and gladness of a free open-air life, will, I
hope, refuse to knuckle down again to the old commercialism. Now at last
arises the opportunity for our outworn Civilization to make a fresh
start. Now comes the chance to establish great self-supporting Colonies
in our own countrysides and co-operative concerns where real Goods may
be manufactured and Agriculture carried on in free and glad and healthy
industry.




XI


COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY THE PROSPERITY OF A CLASS

The economics of the statement that "commercial prosperity means little
more than the prosperity of a _class_"[24] may be roughly indicated by
the following considerations: International trade means division of
labour among the nations. There is certainly a gain in such division, a
margin of advantage in production; and that gain, that margin, is