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A correspondent has written me an able and interesting letter in the matter of some allusions of mine to the subject of communal kitchens. He defendscommunal kitchens very lucidly from the standpoint of the calculatingcollectivist; but, like many of his school, he cannot apparently grasp that there isanother test of the whole matter, with which such calculation has nothing at allto do. He knows it would be cheaper if a number of us ate at the same time, so asto use the same table. So it would. It would also be cheaper if a number of usslept at different times, so as to use the same pair of trousers. But the question isnot how cheap are we buying a thing, but what are we buying? It is cheap to owna slave. And it is cheaper still to be a slave.

My correspondent also says that the habit of dining out in restaurants, etc., isgrowing. So, I believe, is the habit of committing suicide. I do not desire toconnect the two facts together. It seems fairly clear that a man could not dine at arestaurant because he had just committed suicide; and it would be extreme,

perhaps, to suggest that he commits suicide because he has just dined at arestaurant. But the two cases, when put side by side, are enough to indicate thefalsity and poltroonery of this eternal modern argument from what is in fashion.The question for brave men is not whether a certain thing is increasing; thequestion is whether we are increasing it. I dine very often in restaurants becausethe nature of my trade makes it convenient: but if I thought that by dining inrestaurants I was working for the creation of communal meals, I would neverenter a restaurant again; I would carry bread and cheese in my pocket or eat chocolate out of automatic machines. For the personal element in some things issacred. I heard Mr. Will Crooks put it perfectly the other day: "The most sacredthing is to be able to shut your own door."

My correspondent says, "Would not our women be spared the drudgery of cooking and all its attendant worries, leaving them free for higher culture?" Thefirst thing that occurs to me to say about this is very simple, and is, I imagine, apart of all our experience. If my correspondent can find any way of preventingwomen from worrying, he will indeed be a remarkable man. I think the matter isa much deeper one. First of all, my correspondent overlooks a distinction whichis elementary in our human nature. Theoretically, I suppose, every one wouldlike to be freed from worries. But nobody in the world would always like to befreed from worrying occupations. I should very much like (as far as my feelingsat the moment go) to be free from the consuming nuisance of writing this article.But it does not follow that I should like to be free from the consuming nuisanceof being a journalist. Because we are worried about a thing, it does not followthat we are not interested in it. The truth is the other way. If we are not interested, why on earth should we be worried? Women are worried about housekeeping, but those that are most interested are the most worried. Womenare still more worried about their husbands and their children. And I suppose if we strangled the children and poleaxed the husbands it would leave women freefor higher culture. That is, it would leave them free to begin to worry about that.For women would worry about higher culture as much as they worry about everything else.

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I believe this way of talking about women and their higher culture is almost entirely a growth of the classes which (unlike the journalistic class to which Ibelong) have always a reasonable amount of money. One odd thing I speciallynotice. Those who write like this seem entirely to forget the existence of theworking and wage-earning classes. They say eternally, like my correspondent,that the ordinary woman is always a drudge. And what, in the name of the NineGods, is the ordinary man? These people seem to think that the ordinary man is aCabinet Minister. They are always talking about man going forth to wield power,to carve his own way, to stamp his individuality on the world, to command andto be obeyed. This may be true of a certain class. Dukes, perhaps, are not drudges; but, then, neither are Duchesses. The Ladies and Gentlemen of theSmart Set are quite free for the higher culture, which consists chiefly of motoringand Bridge. But the ordinary man who typifies and constitutes the millions that make up our civilisation is no more free for the higher culture than his wife is.

Indeed, he is not so free. Of the two sexes the woman is in the more powerfulposition. For the average woman is at the head of something with which she cando as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else. He hasto put one dull brick on another dull brick, and do nothing else; he has to add onedull figure to another dull figure, and do nothing else. The woman's world is asmall one, perhaps, but she can alter it. The woman can tell the tradesman withwhom she deals some realistic things about himself. The clerk who does this tothe manager generally gets the sack, or shall we say (to avoid the vulgarism),finds himself free for higher culture. Above all, as I said in my previous article,the woman does work which is in some small degree creative and individual. Shecan put the flowers or the furniture in fancy arrangements of her own. I fear the

bricklayer cannot put the bricks in fancy arrangements of his own, without disaster to himself and others. If the woman is only putting a patch into a carpet,she can choose the thing with regard to colour. I fear it would not do for theoffice boy dispatching a parcel to choose his stamps with a view to colour; toprefer the tender mauve of the sixpenny to the crude scarlet of the penny stamp.A woman cooking may not always cook artistically; still she can cook artistically.She can introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration into the compositionof a soup. The clerk is not encouraged to introduce a personal and imperceptiblealteration into the figures in a ledger.

The trouble is that the real question I raised is not discussed. It is argued as aproblem in pennies, not as a problem in people. It is not the proposals of thesereformers that I feel to be false so much as their temper and their arguments. Iam not nearly so certain that communal kitchens are wrong as I am that thedefenders of communal kitchens are wrong. Of course, for one thing, there is avast difference between the communal kitchens of which I spoke and thecommunal meal (_monstrum horrendum, informe_) which the darker and wildermind of my correspondent diabolically calls up. But in both the trouble is that their defenders will not defend them humanly as human institutions. They willnot interest themselves in the staring psychological fact that there are somethings that a man or a woman, as the case may be, wishes to do for himself or

herself. He or she must do it inventively, creatively, artistically, individually--in aword, badly. Choosing your wife (say) is one of these things. Is choosing your

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husband's dinner one of these things? That is the whole question: it is neverasked.

And then the higher culture. I know that culture. I would not set any man free forit if I could help it. The effect of it on the rich men who are free for it is sohorrible that it is worse than any of the other amusements of the millionaire--worse than gambling, worse even than philanthropy. It means thinking thesmallest poet in Belgium greater than the greatest poet of England. It meanslosing every democratic sympathy. It means being unable to talk to a navvyabout sport, or about beer, or about the Bible, or about the Derby, or about patriotism, or about anything whatever that he, the navvy, wants to talk about. It means taking literature seriously, a very amateurish thing to do. It meanspardoning indecency only when it is gloomy indecency. Its disciples will call aspade a spade; but only when it is a grave-digger's spade. The higher culture issad, cheap, impudent, unkind, without honesty and without ease. In short, it is"high." That abominable word (also applied to game) admirably describes it.

No; if you were setting women free for something else, I might be more melted. If you can assure me, privately and gravely, that you are setting women free todance on the mountains like maenads, or to worship some monstrous goddess, Iwill make a note of your request. If you are quite sure that the ladies in Brixton,the moment they give up cooking, will beat great gongs and blow horns toMumbo-Jumbo, then I will agree that the occupation is at least human and ismore or less entertaining. Women have been set free to be Bacchantes; they havebeen set free to be Virgin Martyrs; they have been set free to be Witches. Do not ask them now to sink so low as the higher culture.

I have my own little notions of the possible emancipation of women; but Isuppose I should not be taken very seriously if I propounded them. I shouldfavour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of womenand their creative action in their own homes. The average woman, as I have said,is a despot; the average man is a serf. I am for any scheme that any one cansuggest that will make the average woman more of a despot. So far from wishingher to get her cooked meals from outside, I should like her to cook more wildlyand at her own will than she does. So far from getting always the same mealsfrom the same place, let her invent, if she likes, a new dish every day of her life.Let woman be more of a maker, not less. We are right to talk about "Woman;"only blackguards talk about women. Yet all men talk about men, and that is thewhole difference. Men represent the deliberative and democratic element in life.Woman represents the despotic.