IV

POLITICS

3i9

I do not think that these matters should be leftentirely to the chances of private judgement andprivate profits, as they are at present.

My third example concerns Population. Thetime has already come when each country needsa considered national policy about what size ofPopulation, whether larger or smaller than atpresent or the same, is most expedient. Andhaving settled this policy, we must take stepsto carry it into operation. The time may arrivea little later when the community as a wholemust pay attention to the innate quality as wellas to the mere numbers of its future members.

These reflections have been directed towardspossible improvements in the technique ofmodern Capitalism by the agency of collectiveaction. There is nothing in them which isseriously incompatible with what seems to meto be the essential characteristic of Capitalism ,namely the dependence upon an intense appealto the money-making and money-loving in-stincts of individuals as the main motive forceof the economic machine. Nor must I, so nearto my end, stray towards other fields. Never-theless, I may do well to remind you, in con-clusion, that the fiercest contests and the mostdeeply felt divisions of opinion are likely to bewaged in the coming years not round technicalquestions, where the arguments on either sideare mainly economic, but round those which,for want of better words, may be called psycho-logical or, perhaps, moral.