ticity of his qualifying clause has the more significance because this greatest of socialist orators is reported to have said, as recently as 1906, in the Chamber of Deputies, that it was not possible to tell with certainty "Whether general expropriation of capitalistic property would be brought about with or without compensation." If his decision is finally against compensation, what torn shred would he leave to any arguing opponent begging the audience to adopt slower and more conservative measures?
Though Mr. Wells in his New Worlds for Old (p. 162) commits himself fervently to compensation and even insists that "property is not robbery," he has, like Jaurès, other moods. In his Misery of Boots he has this passage:
"And as for taking such property from the owners, why shouldn't we? The world has not only in the past taken slaves from their owners, with no compensation or with meager compensation; but in the history of mankind, dark as it is, there are innumerable cases of slave owners resigning their inhuman rights. . . . There are, no doubt, a number of dull, base, rich people who hate and dread socialism for purely selfish reasons; but it is quite possible to be a property owner and yet be anxious to see socialism come into its own. . . . Though I deny the right to compensation, I do not deny its probable advisability. So far as the question of method goes it is quite conceivable that we may partially compensate the property owners and make all sorts of mitigating arrangements to avoid cruelty to them in our attempt to end the wider cruelties of today."
