"We are able to pay, and we do pay, without complaining. We are doing it without suffering very greatly, without hearing the cry of hunger going up from our congested areas as it has too often done in time of peace, and without the slightest apprehension that we are drawing near to the end of our strength.
"We shall be able to go on doing it for years if need be. The savings of the working classes have hardly yet been touched for national purposes, and if report speaks true there has been a not too creditable increase in the purchase of cheap luxuries—and luxuries not commonly accounted cheap, too, such as pianos—among a section of these, unskilled laborers especially. They are not unpatriotic, but is it to be wondered at that they should suddenly feel themselves well-to-do and fail to realize that war is economic wastage as well as wholesale murder?
"'Three pounds a week, and no 'usband!' a lady engaged in munition work is credited with saying—'Wy, it's 'eaven!' There is humor in the sentiment, one must confess, though it was not complimentary to the absent husband.
"We have withdrawn not less than four million men from productive occupations and set them to smash and kill instead.
"Think of it! And then remember that those men have to be equipped and maintained somehow or other by the rest of us, and that most of them are the very pick of the country's early manhood. And we can afford to do it! We can do it, and in the process make an end of destitution for the time being and secure to wage-earners a higher standard of comfort than they have ever enjoyed before.
"Will the electors of Great Britain, rich and poor, try to digest that fact and grasp its implications? The logic of it is that we can if and when we choose get rid forever of the crying disgrace of starvation and misery at one end of the social scale and senseless ostentation at the other.
"The thing is demonstrated now.
"The army as it exists to-day is a fine all-around leveller. A good many artificial prejudices and social distinctions are being swept away by the power of actual daily comradeship in the face of death. These four million citizen soldiers have votes. How will they use them when they come home?
"Let the lesson be driven well home. We can do all that is required if we want to do it. Behold the economic miracle of to-day, and consider what is possible to-morrow. There need never be another hungry mouth. No honest man ought to have to dread the loss of a job or to lower his self-respect by seeking the aid of the Poor law.
"It is all nonsense to say that the problem of destitution is unsolvable or that our resources will not bear the institution of a standard living wage for everybody and not for the aristocracy of labor only.