great Industrial Insurance schemes which are so detestable to the mass of the people. Action against these may arise any moment. If such action comes one may be certain that the individual attacked will be remembered in his capacity of international financier quite as much as in his capacity of a battener upon the lapsed premiums of the poor. Sooner or later the character of this monopoly, to which men of a lifetime ago were indifferent through ignorance but of which to-day all the educated part of the community is aware and deeply resents, will be appreciated and equally resented at a lower level still. When society is sufficiently filled with indignation against it, then the explosion will come. If that explosion only affected the rich Jews immediately concerned no one would much regret it. There would be little harm done. But the trouble is that it will almost certainly affect the whole nation to which those individuals belong.
I may be told that to put an end to this state of affairs is impossible so long as parliamentary government, with its profound corruption, endures; that the only force capable of dealing with the plutocratic evil of alien monopoly upon this scale is a king; and that a king we have not, among modern nations. To which I answer that the parliamentary system will not last for ever. It is already in active dissolution among ourselves, and badly hit elsewhere. The king may not be so far off as people think him to be.
At any rate, in one way or another the thing will cease, and will probably cease in violence. The danger is that if it ceases in violence a vast number of innocent will be involved with the guilty.
THE SPECIAL CAUSES OF FRICTION