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officers. But the finance of the rebellion was furnished by rich industrialists and big land-owners, who felt their possessions to be menaced by the legalised plunder policy of a democracy. The Church gave a powerful spiritual and material backing to a movement which would safeguard its property and power. This was the natural alignment of conservative forces against the new claim of democracy to use its political and legal powers for a redistribution of property. So long as democracies confined themselves to securing an equal franchise and free opportunities for education and business enterprise, paying due regard to all existing rights of property, Western civilisation seemed to move consistently towards democratic rule. But as soon as democracy began to demand the extension of equality to the distribution of property, whether by public ownership or by social services, or by assistance to trade unionism, the propertied classes and their spiritual and intellectual allies everywhere began to plot against democracy, either displacing it by some definitely fascist rule or corrupting it by sentimental appeals of a nationalist or