On His Seventieth Birthday

Of late years the public have been trying to tackle me in every way they possibly can, and failing to make anything of it they have turned to treating me as a great man. This is a dreadful fate to overtake anybody. There has been a distinct attempt to do it again now, and for that reason I absolutely decline to say anything about the celebration of my seventieth birthday. But when the Labor Party, my old friends the Labor Party, invited me here I knew that l should be all right.

A man who holds public property must hold it on the pub1ic condition on which, for instance, I carry my walking stick. I am not allowed to do what I like with it. I must not knock you on the head with it. We say that if distribution goes wrong, everything else goes wrong-religion, morals, government.

And we say, therefore, we must begin with distribution and take all the necessary steps. I think we are keeping it in our minds because our business is to take care of the distribution of wealth in the worId and I tell you, as I have told you before, that I don't think there are two men, or perhaps one man, in our 47 000 000 who approves of the existing distribution of wealth.

I will go even further and say that you will not find a single person in the whole of the civilized world who agrees with the existing system of the distribution of wealth. It has been reduced to a blank absurdity. I think the day will come when we will be able to make the distinction between us and the capitalists.

We must get certain leading ideas before the people. We should announce that we are not going in for what was the old-fashioned idea of redistribution, but the redistribution of income. Let it always be a question of income. I have been very happy here tonight. I entirely understand the distinction made by our Chairman tonight when he said you hold me in social esteem and a certain amount of personal affection.

I am not a sentimental man, but l am not sensible to all that. I know the value of all that, and it gives me, now that I have come to the age of seventy (it will not occur again and I am saying it for the first time), a great feeling of pleasure that l can say what a good many people can't say.