themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but
hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the
slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely
free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted
the new state of things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in
the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was
killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the
Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of
feudalism.

It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For
while under the present system a very large number of people can
lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and
happiness, under an industrial-barrack system, or a system of
economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom at
all. It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should
be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by
enslaving the entire community is childish. Every man must be left
quite free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion must be
exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for
him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others.
And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.

I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously
propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house
to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight
hours. Humanity has got beyond that stage, and reserves such a
form of life for the people whom, in a very arbitrary manner, it
chooses to call criminals. But I confess that many of the
socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to be tainted