Mankind may be preparing its own destruction, but in the city where I live it all means more and more employment. On Sunday mornings at all the Masses in our little church you can see scores and scores of new faces—young men, whole families too, from South Wales, from Lancashire, from Glasgow way, from Tyneside, from Ireland—all crowding into our big city (which is so much too big already) and mostly finding jobs in the thousand-and-one preparations to be made before Britannia can put on her armour again.

Don’t think that I am condemning the Government for rearming. It is hard to see what else any Government could do, in face of all the maniacs armed to the teeth who are swaggering round Europe now looking for trouble. What the Government might have done is to carry out its pledge that profiteering would be prevented. That pledge has not been kept, and the speculators are enjoying themselves thoroughly. One company—formed to produce fighting-planes—began in July, 1935, with a capital of £2,000,000, doubled this in May, 1936, and issued a bonus to shareholders, and then in November declared a 30 per cent dividend and made a further bonus share issue of one new share for every ten. As the ordinary shares were issued at 15/- each and by November had risen to 45/-, this bonus issue was worth nearly £900,000, on top of the £300,000 distributed in dividends.