conscription.

The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain
that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient
kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war
in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been
improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the
shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step
of nationalising shipping and coal. I doubt if they will be able to
stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if
the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited.
Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of Britain's
loyalty to her Allies.

The British shipowners, in particular, are reaping enormous but
precarious profits from the war. The blockade of Britain, by the British
shipowners is scarcely less effective than the blockade of Germany by
Britain. With an urgent need of every ship for the national supplies,
British ships, at the present moment of writing this, are still carrying
cheap American automobiles to Australia. They would carry munitions to
Germany if their owners thought they had a sporting chance of not
getting caught at it. These British shipowners are a pampered class with
great political and social influence, and no doubt as soon as the
accumulating strain of the struggle tells to the extent of any serious
restriction of their advantage and prospects, we shall see them shifting
to the side of the at present negligible group of British pacifists. I
do not think one can count on any limit to their selfishness and
treason.

I believe that the calculations of some of these extreme and apparently