Nor only is there nothing new under the sun, but in New York I find the same views, opinions, and conclusions that I had heard to the point of weariness even in Ekfrid. The transmission of news and the diffusion of propagandas have reduced the world to the same mental level. For instance: a friend placed his car at my disposal so that I could go about the city comfortably and expeditiously. Being full of questions I took my seat beside the chauffeur and invited information. He proved to be a skilled mechanic who had left productive work to drive a car in the city. He had been through the Spanish-American War, but had avoided the Great War, being past the age limit of the earlier drafts. He had had all he wanted of war. "War is simply a scheme by which the big men and the profiteers put it over the plain people. The plain people get all the knocks of war and pay the cost of it besides, while the big men get all the glory and the crooks get the profits."

Nothing new about that. I have heard the same talk in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and even on farms. The plain people of one country are like the plain people of any other country. They feel that whoever won the war they did not win it. And they don't want any more of it. What they want is to square accounts with the men who made profits from the war, and then go through the rest of their lives without doing anything in particular on which others can make a profit. They even seem to think that they might live out their day on the profits that others have accumulated—if they could only have justice properly administered. Anyway, this business of working hard and letting others have a profit on your work is something that belongs to the old, stupid days before the war, when men were not awake to their rights and privileges.

This is really the philosophy of the Lotus-Eaters, and possibly it is a natural reaction after the war.

Perhaps there is even a biological necessity for the aversion to old-fashioned work that is apparent under all flags. Possibly we might find analogies in nature that would cast a light on the subject. Let us consider the case of the bees—which moralists persist in pointing to for our emulation. Every bee-keeper knows that when a hive of bees takes to robbing other hives its usefulness is ended. Robber bees, that have once learned the ease and delight of plundering the accumulated stores of other hives, will never go back to the drudgery of gathering their food from the flowers. They will go on robbing until they are destroyed in battle by hives that are able to protect themselves or until they have starved in the midst of plenty because they refused to work. I do not know whether Fabre or Maeterlinck has studied the degeneracy and downfall of a hive of bees that has taken to robbing, but it would be worth their while.

But people will protest at once that the Great War was not a war of plunder. It was a war to fight back the nation that had started out to plunder the world. Blind! Every nation engaged in the war plundered itself even though it did not plunder others. All our reserves of wealth, food materials, and resources were of necessity thrown into the war and were as certainly destroyed or plundered as if we had been overrun by the enemy. When the armistice was declared we should have faced the future as nations that had been defeated rather than as victors. Unless we do that without further delay the defeat of civilization may be complete.

At this point my meditations were interrupted by my mild and pleasant-voiced chauffeur. He glared back over my shoulder with a real fighting face.

"What's the matter?" I asked in alarm.

"That driver back there gave me a look and I was giving him one back." I admitted that he certainly was giving him a look.

"Some fellows think they own the streets," he grumbled. "That fellow tried to edge me out of my place and when he found he couldn't do it he was sore. A fellow like that makes me want to get back to the primitive with him." He glared back once more, but the other driver had disappeared in the traffic.

But his phrase stuck and it seems significant—"Get back to the primitive."

I wonder if my chauffeur originated it—or is it a gem from some propaganda that I will meet with when I resume my travels? Anyway, it is most excellent good. Getting back to the primitive is about the most natural thing that human beings do just now. For long and dark ages the world was ruled by big biceps rather than by big brains—and everything was primitive. And during the Great War we went back to the primitive with scientific thoroughness. The ape and tiger were not only given a new lease of life, but were trained and equipped for their work by the best brains of the world. To the ferocity of the primitive we added the magic of science—but it is doubtful if science has enough magic left to recapture and cage the ape and tiger. The primitive man is proud of himself and conscious of his power. Indeed, he even feels benevolent toward a world that he feels competent to manage and control. And that serene kindly, capable attitude is the most dangerous aspect of the revolutionary mood of mankind. The anarchists and agitators we understand to some extent and can deal with. They are a natural reaction in a world of ruthless enterprise. But these placid, altruistic world-wreckers raise goose-flesh on me. They give me a grue. During the past thirty years I have met many anarchists and have not contended with them, for they know the wrong side of every subject so exhaustively that they can down any one in an argument. Though all of them talked violently, most of them were too human to do anything reckless. I have in mind at the present moment a tender-hearted anarchist whose whole soul revolted against the injustice and cruelty of organized society. In theory he would have torn down governments, burned cities, and assassinated kings and plutocrats. On the platform and in the Red press he was terrible.

But the poor man suffered from a handicap that rendered him futile. He had a wife whom he loved and children whom he adored. If he did his duty and hurled bombs at the oppressors, what would become of his family? He could not do anything that might cause them distress or suffering. He had given hostages to fortune. But if he had been a free man—The conflict between his radical brain and his kindly heart furnished the most tragic comedy that has ever come within my experience.

But these serene altruists, often well-read and thoughtful, are much more dangerous than the most raving Reds. They are so sure of the economic soundness of their views and so kindly in their intentions that one almost feels ashamed to oppose them or laugh at them. They are not parlor Bolshevists, but men who might be described as super-sane—men who are too rational for a mad world.

My first experience with this class was on the Western prairies, just before the Winnipeg strike. I was travelling on a branch railroad, and not being willing to wait for an express train I found accommodation in the caboose of a freight. Being thrown into the company of the conductor and trainmen I cultivated their society and induced them to talk. What amazed me was their satisfied certainty that the world was to be made over at once without a struggle. Capital, the great robber of labor, was to be eliminated. Government was to be taken over by the workers and all profits would go to those who earned them. As to the management of affairs—wasn't that all done already by hard-worked, under-paid clerks while highly paid officials took all the credit? Take President Beatty, of the C. P. R. What did he do but sit at a flat-topped desk in a luxuriously appointed office and draw a big salary while others did the work? They were not angry about it. They were merely ashamed that the matter had not been settled long ago. It was all so simple.

In Edmonton I met with more of these men who were about to shatter organized society and "remould it nearer to the heart's desire." One in particular impressed me curiously. He had the appearance of a man accustomed to hard labor who was taking a rest and meditating on world problems. His aspect was dreamy but kindly. I found him in the office of the Honorable Frank Oliver, and he was trying to induce that hardheaded statesman of the old rÉgime to publish in his paper a prospectus for the new world. According to the new plan all the people from the farms of Alberta were to move into the cities, where they could get proper shelter when the big hotels and the homes of the rich would be taken over by the men whose labor had built them and had made them possible. I wish I had a copy of the document, but one phrase that stuck in my memory will give a taste of its quality. The ingenuous dreamer proposed a method of dealing with the crops needed to supply food that struck me as unique. He proposed that when seeding-time came round, "joyous bands" would go out from the cities and put in the crops. Having some experience of the drudgery of farm work that phrase impressed me. Similar bands would go out at harvest-time and garner the grain. Mr. Oliver was so dazed that he didn't say a word. He passed over the document and waited for my opinion. I had nothing to say. And yet neither of us is without a certain command of language.

The cumulative effect of this contact with the new altruism was that, when I started for home from Winnipeg, I reminded myself of the soul of Stephen Leacock's Melpomenus Jones, which escaped from its earthly tenement "like a hunted cat over the back-yard fence." I hoped devoutly that my kindly friend of the prairie freight would not succeed President Beatty at the flat-topped desk until we had been travelling for at least twenty-four hours. If we got through the rocky district and reached old Ontario, I could walk the rest of the way home.

Because of such experiences I am not unduly surprised at the kind of talk I hear among the advanced and kindly thinkers of labor circles. I hope to pick up a few more phrases as delightful as "joyous bands" and "get back to the primitive."

Surely, oh, surely it is high time that some one turned light and laughter on this muddle. Canada and the United States are alike in their need of a solution for this problem. They have more important matters pressing for attention than the question of who won the Great War. And, in concluding this chapter, let me record the astounding fact that as yet no one has assured me that the United States won the war.