And in truth if there was now no material fog, there was any amount
of mental and moral fog.  The whole industrial world symbolised
by London had reached a curious complication and confusion,
not easy to parallel in human history.  It is not a question
of controversies, but rather of cross-purposes. As I went
by Charing Cross my eye caught a poster about Labour politics,
with something about the threat of Direct Action and a demand
for Nationalisation.  And quite apart from the merits of the case,
it struck me that after all the direct action is very indirect,
and the thing demanded is many steps away from the thing desired.
It is all part of a sort of tangle, in which terms and things cut
across each other.  The employers talk about "private enterprise,"
as if there were anything private about modern enterprise.
Its combines are as big as many commonwealths; and things advertised
in large letters on the sky cannot plead the shy privileges of privacy.
Meanwhile the Labour men talk about the need to "nationalise" the mines
or the land, as if it were not the great difficulty in a plutocracy
to nationalise the Government, or even to nationalise the nation.
The Capitalists praise competition while they create monopoly;
the Socialists urge a strike to turn workmen into soldiers and
state officials; which is logically a strike against strikes.
I merely mention it as an example of the bewildering inconsistency,
and for no controversial purpose.  My own sympathies are
with the Socialists; in so far that there is something to be
said for Socialism, and nothing to be said for Capitalism.
But the point is that when there is something to be said for one thing,
it is now commonly said in support of the opposite thing.
Never since the mob called out, "Less bread!  More taxes!"
in the nonsense story, has there been so truly nonsensical
a situation as that in which the strikers demand Government
control and the Government denounces its own control as anarchy.
The mob howls before the palace gates, "Hateful tyrant, we demand that you
assume more despotic powers"; and the tyrant thunders from the balcony,
"Vile rebels, do you dare to suggest that my powers should be extended?"
There seems to be a little misunderstanding somewhere.