Page:Love's trilogy.djvu/280

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
270
'GOD'S PEACE'

attacking. Tired to death and feeling so indifferent in my heart, yet not daring to allow the slightest sign of this to appear in work or manner.

But most of all I am tired of the eternal struggle for money. Money which must be got by hook or by crook. Money to be slaved for, to be borrowed, to be paid interest on, to be repaid, always more and more money, and always more difficult to get—a constantly growing avalanche which daily becomes more threatening, more impossible to resist, which disturbs one's work during the day, destroys one's sleep at night.

Why wonder at the more or less evident support which Socialism gains amongst people outside the labouring classes? The explanation is near at hand. What have nine out of ten of us who belong to the middle classes to lose by a revolution, by a change of the existing economic laws and rules? We are, at least nine-tenths of us, proletariats fighting a hopeless battle to make the income the community allows us balance with the expenses the same community demands of us, if we are not to be left utterly out of the running. With a very few exceptions, we all live above our means, government officials, artists and scientists, tradesmen and clergymen, actors and officers, journalists, mayors and poets. What would we lose if suddenly the great explosion came, the explosion which would startle the community out of its accustomed groove, and make spills out of agreements, bills of exchange, and I O U's. Those who live from hand