course they decide to set up a fixed authority, disaster will be the inevitable result. In the first place, this authority will have to be given power wherewith to enforce its judgment in such matters. What will then take place? The answer is quite simple. Peeling it is a superior force, it will naturally in each case take to itself the best of what is disputed, and allot the rest to its friends.

What a strange question is this. It supposes that two people who meet on terms of equality and disagree could not be reasonable or just. But, on the other hand, it supposes that a third party, starting with an unfair advantage, and backed up by violence, will be the incarnation of justice itself. Commonsense should certainly warn us against such a supposition, and if we are lacking in this commodity, then we may learn the lesson by turning to the facts of life. There we see everywhere Authority standing by, and in the name of justice and fair play using its organised violence in order to take the lion's share of the world's wealth for the governmental class.

We can only say, then, in answer to such a question, that if people are going to be quarrelsome and constantly disagree, then, of course, no state of society will suit them, for they are unsocial animals. If they are only occasionally so, then each case must stand on its merits and be settled by those concerned.

No. 12.

Suppose one district wants to construct a railway to pass through a neighbouring community, which opposes it. How would you settle this?

It is curious that this question is not only asked by those who support the present system, but it is also frequently put by the Socialists. Yet surely it implies at once the aggressive spirit of Capitalism, for is it not the capitalist who talks of opening up the various countries of the world, and does he not do this in the very first instance by having a war in order that he may run his railways through, in spite of the local opposition by the natives? Now, if you have a country in which there are various communes, it stands to reason that the people in those communes will want facilities for travelling, and for receiving and sending their goods. That will not be much more true of one little community than of another. This, then, not only implies a local railway, but a continuous railway

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