WAI OF REDEMPTION ^1

employed by the day, on the ground that a mar, v,b? wcrk^ is
entitled to Ms Sabbath's rest and his daily bread \vith ::, <:.*:-
ever the logic of accountants n*ay sav.

It is an error in human mathematics to ar^:e that ,I:IT c:>ur*e
which creates contented citizens can be ecor/jrnicailv' ji>,"Lr..i.
Figures that prove anything so preposterous lie. A sat^ricl
community \\ill always find a way to exist. A:v,i a dis^:;§ncd
community ? however sound its balance sheet, T»v;II invaridblv ^d
in some social disaster—war, revolution, or r,^::cnal dt:iv—-
which will nullify all its figures and profits. However learnedly
accountants may reason that in a nation which locks after
the money the men will look after themselves, the final aca?uru
will always shatter their logic. Slums, social di^crrent, d>/e
queues and war lie at the end of their avenues of promise; r :;: •;:>
ntentum requiris, drcumspice! The truth, as Englar.d proved in
her earlier past, is that, only in a nation which looks after the
men, will the money look after itself.

Yet there are still some in this country who believe that
economic laissez-faire will survive the war. They have long
realised that a victory for the Dictators means the end of the right
of man to invest his money as he pleases and of the sanctity cf
private investments. They have therefore, on the assumption
that whatever the totalitarian states condemn must in itself be
good, assumed that a victory for Britain must necessarily involve
the re-consecration of the economic practice of the last century.
At the expense of millions of lives the clock is to be put back to
the paradisial'hour of 1927 or'even 1913.

Their system's inadequacy has once again
in the hour of testing. In 1917 Britain was, within, an ace
of starvation1 because her people, in pursuit of profits .from
foreign trade, had become dependent to an unbalanced degree
on foreign food. The same danger again threatens her
because, in the very years when, recognising the imminence
of a second war, she was spending £1,500,000,000 on
re-armament, no provision was made for an adequate
grain reserve for human and animal consumption, ap-
parently ..because its purchase would have interfered with the
customary profits of the middleman and speculator in

*At one time, when the German submarines were sinking half a milHoa torn of
shipping a month, there was lcss<than seventeen days* supply ol food ID the country.
—Lord Lymington Famine in England.