[54] The New Statesman, May 22, 1915.
[55] See above, p. 47, note 4. Some illuminating details are given in the Nation, May 22, 1915, concerning the unscrupulous plea of Government work in order to excuse the employment of children.
[56] The Saturday Review, September 18, 1915.
[57] "The shortage" too was a permanent excuse just as good for holding prices up as for holding wages down. Cf. a correspondent in The Times, May 17, 1916: "This position of affairs makes one doubt if the shortage in these articles (bottles, jars, tins, boxes, etc.) is as stated, or that the shortage pays better and the various trades do not wish the tension to be in any way relieved."
[58] I hope it will not soon be forgotten that Punch was not ashamed to endorse this charge.
[59] Cf. Mr. Emil Davies in the New Statesman, April 8, 1916: "My impression is that the annoyance of Clyde manufacturers at the present labour troubles is not wholly free from a certain grim satisfaction. They are not anxious to see carried out the pledge that shop conditions should go back to the pre-war basis, and, they argue, if the men are discredited with the public, it will be all to the good of the employers in the big industrial struggle they look upon as inevitable after the war. They regard this struggle without anxiety and are accumulating funds; some of them talk of special funds being created for the purpose by the employers in association. These are the impressions gained from conversations with prominent members of the Glasgow business world."
[60] The Great Illusion, passim.
[61] This is not necessarily inconsistent with H. N. Brailsford's similar remark (The War of Steel and Gold, p. 163): "War is a folly from the standpoint of national self-interest; it may none the less be perfectly rational from the standpoint of a small but powerful governing class."
[62] Reviewing a work on South America in The Nation, November 6, 1915.
[63] This process is further accelerated by the fact that the War is being paid for very largely by means of Loans, subscribed naturally by the richer classes; in future the richer classes will be receiving the interest on these loans. But in order to pay this interest the State will have to resort to taxation, some part of which will fall presumably on the poor. See Professor Pigou's Economy and Finance of the War.