The Servile State, properly understood, is not something that may come if somebody does something. It is something that is only too likely to come if nobody does anything. It is almost a negative thing, in the sense of being an unconscious drift of modern society. . . . The unconscious combination of our general desire to provide work and food for the poor, with our increasing impatience with strikes and labour quarrels, may lead to a compromise by which the working classes will be fed even when they are not working on condition that they are always ready to work. And if that compromise is enforced by law, it will be slavery, though it will not be called slavery. It will be the old pagan condition in which men are forced to serve certain masters and masters are expected to support certain men. . . . I am treating slavery as a bad thing; but I am not necessarily treating it as a brutal or abominably cruel thing. The temptation to it is human, and the use of it can often be humane. I know of only one real objection to slavery; and that is that it is not freedom (from ‘The Illustrated London News’, 1st September, 1923).