We must add to these the sincere man who will admit the domination of Industrial Capitalism because he honestly believes that, bad as it is, it is now become inevitable and that to tamper with it would bring the whole State into anarchy. "Such as it is," he would say, "the structure of our society now depends upon it. We may palliate its evils, we may try very gradually to transform its worst features. But in its essence it must remain as it is, or our last state will be worse than our first."
Of this kind are those who argue that any social experiment antagonistic to Industrial Capitalism, if pushed sufficiently far, would result in famine and chaos and even physical evils far worse than the physical evils which the mass of men have to suffer in the great towns which capitalism has produced.
Apart from these categories, the masses of men, I say, to-day are convinced that Industrial Capitalism is an evil, an evil of the grossest sort; an evil of a sort unknown to the greater part of human history and unknown to-day in the greater part of the human race; an evil which those peasant societies, or societies of well-divided property throughout Europe, are happy to have escaped; and an evil from which we, who are caught in it, are trying to escape as best we may.
In that modifying phrase "as best we may" lies the crux, for the great mass of Europeans feel that any attack on Industrial Capitalism which denies the nation its supreme place, or which impedes the superior task of keeping the nation strong and wealthy, is barred; they also feel instinctively that any attack which denies the general right of private property and the value of that institution to the healthy conduct of our affairs is also barred. The great mass of our race, when faced by the problem of Industrial Capitalism, feel that it has to be solved in some way that will neither destroy property nor the nation through which the individual alone can function.