to argue the matter further. Now that Mr. Chesterton agrees that the coal-mines will have to be nationalized he will be led by the same pressure of facts to agree to the nationalization of everything else.
I have to allow for the pressure of facts because, as a playwright, I think of all problems in terms of actual men and women. Mr. Chesterton lets himself idealize them sometimes as virtuous peasant proprietors and self-managing petty capitalists.
The capitalist and the landlord have their own particular ways of robbing the poor; but their legal rights are quite different. It is a very direct way on the part of the landlord. He may do exactly what he likes with the land he owns. If I own a large part of Scotland I can turn the people off the land practically into the sea, or across the sea. I can take women in child-bearing and throw then into the snow and leave them there. That has been done. I can do it for no better reason than that I think it is better to shoot deer on the land than allow people to live on it. They might frighten the deer.
But now compare that with the ownership of my umbrella. As a matter of fact the