“But Ronnie was always as mad as a hatter himself,” he thought sorrowfully as he buttonholed another friend, and displayed his Parisian-American paper.
“Ah, yes—frightful insanity!” said the newcomer. “I’ve just seen it in Truth. It was wired. Enough to make old Billy get up out of his grave, don’t you think? Sic transit gloria mundi.”
“Damned socialistic thing to do,” said a third who joined them and who also had seen Truth. “Horrible bad example! If property isn’t inviolate to your heirs, where are you? If there isn’t solidarity amongst the holders of property, what can keep back the nationalization of property?”
No one could say what would.
“This is what comes of young women reading Herbert Spencer and Goldwin Smith,” said a fourth.
“These men are not communists,” said the previous speaker. “This lady’s act is rank communism.”
“Can’t one do what one likes with one’s own?” asked another.
“Certainly not,” replied the gentleman who dreaded the nationalization of property. “We should first consider the effect of what we do on the world at large. This young woman (I never liked her) has said practically to the many millions of operatives all the world over that capital is a crime.”
“Capital, acquired as Billy’s was, is uncommonly near a crime,” murmured the first speaker.
“Capital by its mere consolidation becomes purified,” said the other angrily, “as carbon becomes by crystallization a diamond. This young woman has practically told every beggar throughout both hemispheres that he has a right to grind the diamonds into dust.”