With a couple of chance acquaintances I was discussing everyday activities as reported in the daily papers. A quiet man with a poker face was listening to our talk. Suddenly he contributed a remark:

"This country is going to hell for lack of leadership."

That sounded familiar. It occurred to me that I had heard the remark before. I had heard it even in Canada. Shortly afterwards I learned that the man who had made the remark was a millionaire. Consequently his pontifical utterance did not surprise me. Monied men really feel deeply on the matter—but they expect some one else to give the leadership they so earnestly want. If you listen to their talk you will find that they give about every reason for the lack but the true one. The people lack leadership because they are not candid about where they want to go. There is a lot of talk about social justice, but justice is about the last thing that many people want. In fact, they seem to be afraid that they are going to get it. During the war, when the soldiers were fighting, dying, and passing through hell generally, those who stayed at home enjoyed a prosperity that never was known before. Capital made such profits as never were known before; Labor got such wages as never were known before; farmers, miners, fishermen, lumbermen—men of all classes enjoyed such prosperity as never was known before. And now they are clamoring for leaders who will enable them to keep the blood-bought riches and profits and the wages they got in the world's time of anguish. They are horrified to find that the bloated, unhealthy profits of war are losing their value through the operation of laws of compensation more inexorable than any ever devised by man. Although the Great War revealed the heroism and spirit of self-sacrifice in many, it aroused the selfishness of still more. That manufacturer blurted out a very prevalent conviction when he said, "Any man who didn't make money during the war must have had something wrong with him." And now these people are clamoring for leaders who will protect them in their selfishness. They want to be led into a beatific era, where each will get more than his share of the good things of life. It is a mistake to think that the big profiteers are the only ones who are to blame for existing conditions. There are shoals and swarms of little profiteers who are just as selfish and rapacious as the big ones. All they lack is capacity and opportunity, like the little devils described by Kipling. They

Humanity will look in vain for true leadership until it is cleansed of its selfishness.

There are many who are suffering through no fault of their own—many who gave, toiled, and sacrificed so that freedom might endure, but they are not the ones whose voices are the loudest to-day. They believed that an era of justice and brotherly love would follow victory. To-day they are bewildered and stunned to find that their sacrifices were apparently made in vain. Many of the returned soldiers with whom I have talked are as homesick as they were in France for the conditions they left behind four or five years ago. This home land of insolent wealth and noisy grumblings—of strife and turmoil—is not the land for whose freedom they fought. They find it hard to realize that while they were offering their lives to save the world, the world went money-mad. Can they be blamed if they are touched with discouragement and disgust?

At the present time there is much in the papers about the reËducation of soldiers to fit them for a place in civil life. Here is another case where we are in danger of making a grievous mistake. There is need of reËducation, of course, but the soldiers are not the only ones who need to be reËducated. The present idea seems to be that the soldiers must be reËducated so as to enable them to follow some occupation in our social organization as it now stands. That will not do, my masters! It is not good enough! The military training these men have had educated them to sacrifice everything for the good of humanity—for the protection of their wives and families and for our protection. Now we propose to reËducate them so that they may try to compete with us in a struggle for existence that taxes the strength and resourcefulness of those whose strength is unwounded and who have made no sacrifices. Just think about it for a minute. What chance would our reËducated soldiers have against men who are already over-educated along these lines, and whose careers have not been interrupted by the need of making sacrifices for their country? Practically none, and it will be a poor reward to offer them for what they have done, and are doing, to push them into such an unequal struggle.

Every day it is becoming more apparent that the world cannot go on as it was. Unless we rid ourselves of some of our selfishness, we shall be forced to face more grievous problems than we are facing just now. The soldier element in our population and in the population of the world will be too great to be absorbed readily into an unchanged civil life. Our old god, Profits, will be dethroned, no matter how devotedly we worship him. The menace of a food shortage is making many people think more clearly than ever before, and with the possibility of world-hunger before us Prudhon's assertion that "profit is theft" does not look nearly so anarchistic as it did. We see that every man should be rewarded for his services, but the thought that any man should make profits when all are struggling to bear up under accumulated burdens is already beginning to provoke rage. We admit every man's right to make a living, but doubt his right to make a fortune. Our reËducation has begun, and we must see to it that it goes through properly. We must learn that success should depend on public service rather than on private greed. Not until we have learned that can we expect our soldiers to reËnter civil life, and submit to its workaday burdens. And there will be no place in a reËducated world for parasites or people who will expect to live through a claim on the services of others. Though the subject is serious enough, one of Edward Lear's mocking limericks pops into my head as a symbolical description of the new state of affairs that seems inevitable:

I am afraid that the people who expect to get their living simply by ringing a bell will do more than get white hair.