services provided by the community or by some foreign lender or debtor. We had ceased to borrow abroad and Germany had not begun to pay. It was not really possible for us all to be happy and prosperous by deciding not only to work shorter hours but also to work with much less enthusiasm during the time we spent at our job, and by also insisting on the restoration of many regulations and controls which before the war had hindered the output of industry. A system under which each worker, while making a smaller contribution to the general output, should at the same time receive a larger share of it in return for his lessened work was really too good to be true. These platitudes had to be brought home to the working-class community through a series of disastrous industrial disputes which very seriously hindered the economic recovery of the country.
Here, again, the accusations freely brought against the working classes of some special spice of villainy or of an abysmal ignorance of economic conditions are by no means justified. The inferences that they drew from their war experience were quite reasonable and natural. With the country engaged in a fearful and costly struggle, they had seen a very large number of the employing class amassing
