ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

78

be almost meaningless; and the process ofwealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and alottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is nosubtler, no surer means of overturning theexisting basis of Society than to debauch thecurrency. The process engages all the hiddenforces of economic law on the side of destruc-tion, and does it in a manner which not oneman in a million is able to diagnose.

In the latter stages of the war all the belli-gerent Governments practised, from necessity orincompetence, what a Bolshevist might havedone from design. Even now, when the waris over, most of them continue out of weak-ness the same malpractices. But further, theGovernments of Europe , being many of themat this moment reckless in their methods aswell as weak, seek to direct on to a class knownas “profiteers” the popular indignation againstthe more obvious consequences of their viciousmethods. These “profiteers” are, broadlyspeaking, the entrepreneur class of capitalists,that is to say, the active and constructiveelement in the whole capitalist society, who in aperiod of rapidly rising prices cannot but getrich quick whether they wish it or desire itor not. If prices are continually rising, everytrader who has purchased for stock or ownsproperty and plant inevitably makes profits.By directing hatred against this class, therefore,the European Governments are carrying a stepfurther the fatal process which the subtle mind