Title: Gladstonian Ghosts
Author: Chesterton, Cecil
Language: English
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GLADSTONIAN GHOSTS,

By CECIL CHESTERTON.



  GLADSTONIAN GHOSTS.

  BY

  CECIL CHESTERTON.

  PRINTED BY THE LANTHORN
  PRESS, AND PUBLISHED IN
  LONDON BY S. C. BROWN
  LANGHAM & CO., LTD.



CONTENTS.


  DEDICATION                                  7

  I.     LIBERALISM AND THE ZEITGEIST        20

  II.    “WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID?”    34

  III.   NATIONAL PENRHYNISM                 51

  IV.    “MILITARISM AND AGGRESSION”         70

  V.     THE FETISH OF FREE TRADE            92

  VI.    TOWARDS ANARCHISM                  114

  VII.   OUR BRITISH MOSLEMS                142

  VIII.  “RETRENCHMENT AND REFORM”          159

  IX.    SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION              180

  X.     SOME MATERIALS AND A POSSIBILITY   211



DEDICATION

TO

EDGAR JEPSON.



DEDICATION.


  My dear Jepson,

If (with your permission) I dedicate this essay in political criticism
to you, it is because I know that, though you parade it less, your
interest in the science of politics is fully as keen as my own. In
point of fact there is no-one whose judgment in these matters I
would trust more readily than yours. You are a philosopher; and the
philosopher’s outlook in politics is always clear, practical and
realistic as contrasted with the thoroughly romantic illusions of
the typical party man. That, by the way, is why Mr. Balfour, the
philosopher, has in the domain of parliamentary and electoral strategy
hopelessly outwitted Mr. Chamberlain, the “man of business and busy
man”--to quote his own characteristically poetic phrase.

As a philosopher you are able to see what no “practical statesman” on
either side of the House seems likely to perceive--that social and
economic politics are the only kind of politics that really matter,
and that the “chicken-in-the-pot” ideal of Henri Quatre is after all
the primary aim of all statesmanship. Three centuries of anarchic
commercialism have left us a legacy of pauperism, disease, famine,
physical degeneracy and spiritual demoralization, which in another
century will infallibly destroy us altogether if we cannot in the mean
time destroy them. And I think you share my impatience when our Radical
friends insist on discussing Irish Home Rule, Church Disestablishment
and the abolition of the House of Lords, as if such frivolities could
really satisfy the human conscience faced with the appalling realities
of the slums.

When therefore I speak of your interest in politics I am not thinking
of that rather exciting parlour game which they play at Westminster
during the spring months. In this you probably take less interest than
I; for I must confess (not altogether without shame) that the sporting
aspect of politics has always fascinated me. You, on the other hand,
have _Bridge_ to amuse you; and, when you are brought to the bar of
the Nonconformist Conscience on this count, you may fairly plead that
any man who played _Bridge_ with the peculiar mixture of ignorance,
stupidity, criminal laziness and flagrant dishonesty with which the
Front Benches play the game of politics, would infallibly be turned out
of his club and probably cut by all his acquaintances.

It may seem surprising that, taking this view of contemporary party
warfare, I should have troubled to write a book in criticism of it.
To which I can only reply that the parliamentary bridge-players are
unfortunately staking on their pastime not their own money but my
country’s interests; so that the incidents of the game become important
despite the frivolity of the players, and it seems to me that we are
on the eve of a turn of luck which may prove not only important but
disastrous.

I suppose that we are not unlikely to have a General Election within
the forthcoming year; and many indications appear to point to the
probability of a sweeping Liberal victory. I want you to consider
carefully what a Liberal victory means for us and for all serious
reformers.

A Liberal victory means one of two things; either six years
of government by the Whigs or six years of government by the
Nonconformists. There is no third alternative, for neither the old
destructive Free-thinking Radicalism of the late Charles Bradlaugh
and the almost extinct Secular Society, nor the new sentimental High
Church Radicalism of my excellent friend C. F. G. Masterman and his
associates of the _Commonwealth_ has the slightest hold on any section
of the electorate that counts politically. If you doubt this, it is
because you did not follow Masterman’s campaign at Dulwich as closely
as I did. Vehement Catholic though he was, he was forced to accept
all the political shibboleths of Nonconformity on pain of certain
annihilation; yet, even after he had gone to the very verge of what
his conscience would permit to conciliate his sectarian masters, this
did not save him from a crushing defeat. An excellent candidate, an
eloquent and effective speaker with real civic enthusiasm, he met the
same fate which overtook Bernard Shaw at St. Pancras, when he stood for
the L.C.C. And that fate will continue to overtake all who rely on
Radical support without first making their full submission--political,
theological and moral--to the Vatican of Dissent.

The Radical wing of the Liberal Party has degenerated into a political
committee of the Free Church Councils; even the Liberal League cannot
get on without making some acknowledgement of Nonconformist authority.
But the “Imperialist” section is of course less absolutely under the
control of Salem Chapel than its rival; is it fundamentally any more
progressive?

It is pathetic in the light of subsequent events to read again the
admirable article (to which by the way I am indebted for the title of
this book) contributed by Mr. Webb to the _Nineteenth Century_ three
years ago. Mr. Webb was so simple-minded as to suppose that Lord
Rosebery’s talk about “national efficiency” really meant something,
and that “Liberal Imperialism” was a genuine attempt to form a
party of progress free of Gladstonian tradition. Sancta simplicitas!
We can see now clearly enough that the Liberal Imperialists were
for the most part mere squeezable opportunists with all the effete
prejudices of the Pro-Boers minus their sturdiness of conviction,
men who wished to snatch a share in the popularity of the South
African War, but had not the slightest intention of abandoning a
single Mid-Victorian nostrum, which could still be used to catch a
few votes. On the Education Bills, Tariff Reform and Licensing, they
have Gladstonised, Miallised, Cobdenised and Wilfred-Lawsonised with
the best. And now that the Fiscal Question seems likely to drive back
into the ranks of the Liberal “Right” such men as Lord Goschen and the
Duke of Devonshire--the very men who were frightened to death of Mr.
Chamberlain’s “Socialism” as far back as 1885--all hope of reform from
that quarter is at an end. A “Liberal Imperialist” government means
Lord Rosebery orating nobly about nothing in particular, Lord Goschen
and the Duke of Devonshire acting up to their self-constituted function
of “drags upon the wheel,” and Sir Henry Fowler once more sitting
heavily on all enlightened municipal enterprise in the interests of
piratical monopolists. I see that the Whigs are already crying out for
“Free Trade concentration,” which will I imagine prove an excellent
excuse for doing nothing for the next half decade.

And yet, I fear, we shall have to accept the Whigs as the lesser of
two evils. At least their offences will in the main be negative, while
the victory of the Nonconformists means a period of legislation so
disastrous that you and I and all advanced reformers will be obliged
to cling to the House of Lords as our only bulwark against the
appalling flood of reaction. For some time the Nonconformists have
been clamouring for the repeal of the admirable Education Acts of
1902-3. They have now begun to clamour for the repeal of the Licensing
Act as well. Now, quite apart from the merits of these measures, it
is as clear as daylight that all progress will be impossible if every
government devotes its time and energies to repealing the measures of
its predecessor. This disastrous precedent will be but the first-fruit
of a Dissent-driven ministry. Meanwhile our refreshments, our
amusements, even our religious observances will be subjected to silly
sectarian taboos. Social reform will be hopelessly neglected, while we
may have to face a revival of the foolish agitation in favour of Church
Disestablishment which even Mr. Chamberlain’s marvellous genius for
electioneering could not persuade the country to take very seriously in
the eighties.

“The Whigs are a class with all the selfish prejudices and all the
vices of a class; the Radicals are a sect with all the grinding tyranny
and all the debasing fanaticism of a sect.” Those words are as true
to-day as they were when Lord Randolph Churchill spoke them nearly
twenty years ago. Indeed all that has happened since has tended to
make the Whigs more selfishly “class-conscious” and the Radicals more
debasingly sectarian.

It may be retorted that the Tories are no better equipped for the
art of statesmanship. I assent; but I say that on the whole they are
less positively dangerous. For one thing the very cloudiness of their
political outlook renders them to a great extent amenable to skilful
and systematic pressure from genuine reformers. It is often possible
to get them to pass good measures without knowing it, as Mr. Webb and
Mr. Morant are supposed to have induced them to pass an Education
Bill which would have been rejected with unanimity by the Cabinet,
the Conservative Party, the House of Lords and all three Houses of
Convocation, had its real excellence been perceived by those bodies.
Also the Tories have not always in their pockets that dilapidated
bundle of red herrings (the Church, the Lords, etc), which the Radicals
produce periodically whenever the electorate has to be deluded. But,
when all has been said, it must be confessed that there is little to
be hoped from the Tories just now. They had their chance in 1895, when
they came into power on the cry of “Social Reform.” Had they fulfilled
their pledges then, we should never have had to face the terror of
a Gladstonian resurrection. But they failed; and the great Tory
revival which Randolph Churchill inaugurated has ended in a pageant of
fashionable incompetence above, and frivolous Jingoism (inexpressibly
disquieting to serious Imperialists) below, the wires being pulled
vigorously meanwhile by the unclean hands of Hebrew Finance--a sight
that would have made Churchill sick at heart.

There remains the Labour Party which I discuss fully elsewhere. Here
I will only say that, while I believe that the only hope for England
and the Empire is in Socialism, I confess that, if I am to trust to
Socialists as I see them at present (outside our own Fabian Society) I
feel the hope to be a slender one.

To conclude: if you and I vote (as I expect we shall) for Tory
candidates at the next election, it will not be from any admiration
for the present government, rather it will be from a very natural fear
lest a worse thing befall us. I have written this book for the same
reason; it may be taken among other things as a word of advise to my
fellow-citizens to weigh carefully, before recording their verdict on
their present rulers, the respective merits of the frying pan and the
fire.

The warning, I think you at least will agree with me, is by no means
superfluous.

  Yours sincerely,

        CECIL CHESTERTON.



LIBERALISM AND THE ZEITGEIST.


It was the custom of Macaulay and other representative writers of the
Dark Ages to speak of the mediæval era in Europe as one of savage and
unenlightened barbarism. There is something particularly amusing to the
twentieth century observer in the patronizing tone adopted by men, who
lived in what could hardly be called a community at all, in writing of
the splendid civilization which flourished under Frederick II. and St.
Louis. For it is becoming obvious to us all now that the great movement
of the world from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century was not a
movement towards civilization but a movement away from it. Civilization
does not imply a collection of mechanical contrivances brought to a
high state of perfection--it may or may not possess such contrivances.
But it does imply a _Civitas_, a commonwealth, a conscious organization
of society for certain ends. This the age of St. Louis had, and the
age of Cobden had not. The great movement which we roughly call
“Liberalism” may therefore be very properly described as a reaction
against civilization.

I do not say it was wrong. Let none suppose that I have any share in
the factitious dreams of the “Young England” enthusiasts or their
contemporary imitators. I know that Feudalism died in the fifteenth
century of its own rottenness, and that its revival is as hopeless and
undesirable as the revival of Druidism (much favoured I believe in
some literary quarters just now) would be. I recognise that Liberalism
in getting rid of its obsolete relics did good and necessary work
and cleared the way for better. I merely state the case historically
because it is impossible to understand the present position and
prospects of Liberalism without realizing that Liberalism is in its
essence destructive and in the strict sense of the word anti-social.

Look at the track of Liberalism across English history. It begins
practically with the Reformation and the Great Pillage, wherein it
showed its true character very vividly in the combination of a strictly
individualistic religion with the conversion of communal property into
private property for the benefit of the new “Reforming” oligarchs.
Then it appears in the Civil War, which we are beginning to understand
better than the Whig historians of the late century understood it. On
its economic side Puritanism was the seventeenth century counterpart
of Cobdenism--a middle-class movement striking at once at the old
aristocracy, whose lands it confiscated and divided, and at the
proletariat, whom it robbed of what was left of their common heritage
and to whom it denied their traditional holidays, avowedly on religious
grounds but practically in the interests of the employing class. One
could continue the story further if it were necessary. But all that
need be said is that in the middle of the nineteenth century we find
Liberalism everywhere dominant and victorious with the result that
Englishmen had practically ceased to form a community at all.

It is a common taunt in the mouths of Tariff Reformers just now that
Cobden and Bright opposed the Factory Acts; and Liberals, driven
into a corner on the subject, generally affect to regard this as an
unfortunate and unaccountable lapse from grace on the part of the two
Free Trade Apostles. Of course it was nothing of the sort: it was
the only possible line for them to take as honest men and consistent
political thinkers. The matter of the Factory Acts does not stand
alone: state education, when first proposed was met with Radical
opposition of a very similar kind. If anyone will look through the
speeches of the opponents of the early Factory Bills he will find that
they were attacked, just as the present government’s Education Bill
was attacked, not as revolutionary but as reactionary measures. They
were constantly compared to the Sumptuary Laws and to the statutes
regulating the position of apprentices which figure in mediæval
legislation. And the comparison is a perfectly fair one. Cobden and
Bright were fundamentally _right_ in their contention that Factory
Acts were contrary to the first principles of Liberalism. Such acts
were only passed, because the application of Liberal principles to
the questions involved had resulted in a welter of brutality, child
torture and racial deterioration, so horrible that no decently humane
man, no reasonable enlightened citizen could think of Lancashire and
its cotton trade without a shudder. When the Sovereign gave her assent
to the first effective Factory Bill she passed a prophetic sentence of
death on Liberalism and the Liberal Party.

Doubtless the execution of the sentence has been long deferred and
may yet be deferred longer. But the backbone had been taken out of
Liberalism as soon as that concession had been made. It could not claim
any longer to have a coherent or intelligible political philosophy.
For the arguments used by the Manchester School against import duties
were precisely the same as those used against factory legislation.
The two propositions were based upon the same axioms and postulates;
if one was wrong, why not the other? And if the worship of “doing as
one likes” were unsound in the region of economics what reason was
there for supposing it to be sound in the region of politics? If Free
Contract were an untenable foundation for society, what became of Free
Trade? And, if Free Trade were to go, might not the demand for a Free
Church have to follow? The fortress of Liberalism still looked imposing
enough, but the foundations were sapped and there were ominous cracks
and fissures in the walls.

Indeed the passing of the great Factory Acts marks the turning of
the tide. It was the public confession of the English nation that
Cobden’s and Bastiat’s Utopia of ‘economic harmonies’ was a foolish and
impossible one, based on bad economics and worse history. It was the
beginning of the reaction in favour of what I have called civilization,
that is of the conscious and deliberate regulation and control of
commerce in the public interest. Everything that has been done since
in the way of industrial reform--Housing Acts, Public Health Acts,
compulsory and free education, municipal ownership and municipal
trading--has proceeded in this direction. We are working towards what
Herbert Spencer called “The New Toryism,” that is back to civilization.

It is no matter for surprise that most of the measures mentioned above
have been the work of Tory governments. Doubtless the Tories are stupid
and ineffectual enough, doubtless they are too much controlled by
landed interests and capitalist rings, to deal with social evils very
courageously. But at least they have this great advantage over their
enemies, that they are not obliged to reconcile everything they do
with the exploded economic dogmas of Benthamism, so that the insight
and progressive instincts of their abler leaders have been able to
force them farther along the path of progress than the sheer pressure
of political necessity has been able to force the equally reluctant
Liberals. So long as social reform remains a matter of pickings, we
shall get the best pickings from the Tories.

But if, as I have suggested all meaning has long ago gone out of
Liberalism, how does it come about that Liberalism insists on
surviving? Are we not all expecting a big Liberal majority at the next
General Election, and would not such a majority prove that Liberalism
was very much alive? My answer is that it would not. Doubtless the
Liberals will win at the polls next year; probably they will get a good
majority. But this will prove nothing as to the spiritual vitality of
the thing they represent. It will prove that the people of this country
are annoyed with the present government and want a change. It will not
prove that they are in any real sense of the word Liberals; still less
that Liberalism has anything vital or valuable to say in relation to
current problems.

The fact is that a party which has parted with its convictions may
continue to exist for a long time by living on its prejudices. This
is the ordinary history of movements, whether political, social or
religious, during the period of their decadence, and it is briefly the
history of Liberalism during the last fifty years.

The Factory Acts, by their obvious necessity and their equally obvious
indefensibility from the Liberal standpoint, knocked the bottom out
of Liberalism and made a consistent Liberal philosophy impossible for
the future. But only new and growing movements require a philosophy.
When a movement has been going long enough to accumulate a fair number
of catch-words and a collection of common likes and dislikes, it can
make enormous use of these and even win great electoral triumphs on the
strength of them long after they have become completely separated from
the doctrines from which they originally sprang, and indeed long after
these doctrines have become so obsolete as to be universally incredible.

An almost exact parallel may be drawn between the recent history
of Liberalism and the recent history of Nonconformity. English
Nonconformity was founded on the doctrines of Calvin as English
Liberalism was on those of Lock and Adam Smith. Where are the doctrines
of Calvin now? I do not suppose there is one chapel in London--perhaps
in England--where the doctrine of Reprobation is taught in all its
infamous completeness. The ordinary London Nonconformist minister
at any rate is the mildest and vaguest of theologians, and talks
like the member of an Ethical Society about little but “Truth and
Righteousness.” So far from preaching Calvinism with its iron and
inflexible logic and its uncompromising cry of “Come out and be ye
separate!” he is the first to tell you that the age of dogma is gone by
and that modern religion must be “undenominational.” Yet, in spite of
the complete disappearance of its intellectual basis, Dissent remains
powerful enough to thwart the execution of great reforms and wreck
the careers of great statesmen. And if you ask what (if not a common
theology) holds the Nonconformists together and makes them so potent
a force, the answer will be a common stock of prejudices--a prejudice
against Catholic ritual, a prejudice against horse-racing, a prejudice
against established churches, a prejudice against public houses and
music halls, a prejudice in favour of Sunday observance. All these
(except in the case of church establishment where the prejudice is the
result of a political accident erected into a religious dogma) are
natural consequences of the Calvinist theology, but in that theology
the modern Dissenter does not believe. Nevertheless, the foundation
gone, the prejudice remains, and may be found strong enough among
other things to destroy the value of one of the most beneficent reforms
which the last thirty years have seen.

Now what has happened in the case of Nonconformity has happened also
in the case of Liberalism. The philosophy of Bastiat has followed
the philosophy of Calvin into the shades of incredibility. Yet the
prejudices born of that philosophy remain and can still be played
upon with considerable effect. They may briefly be summarized as
follows:--A prejudice against peers (though not against capitalists), a
prejudice against religious establishments, a prejudice against state
interference with _foreign_ trade (the case of home industry having
been conceded), a prejudice against Imperialism, a prejudice against
what is vaguely called “militarism”--that is to say against provision
for national defence. Add prejudices borrowed from the Nonconformists
against publicans and priests and you have the sum total of modern
Liberalism.

Now I regard all these prejudices as mere hindrances to progress. I
wish to show in the pages which are to follow that they are not, as
the enthusiastic Radical imagines, the very latest manifestations of
“progressive thought,” but that on the contrary they are the refuse
of a dead epoch and an exploded theory of politics, that considered
as a message for our age they are barren and impossible, that a party
dominated by them is unfitted for public trust, and that, unless newer
and more promising movements can emancipate themselves from their
influence, they are likely to share the same ultimate fate.

Peel is said to have caught the Whigs bathing and stolen their clothes.
But the present apparel of the Liberals is not such as to tempt any
self-respecting party to theft.



“WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID?”


The ordinary man conceives of a Socialist as a kind of very extreme
Liberal or Radical, a man who pushes Radical doctrines further than
most Radicals dare push them. Indeed many Socialists conceive so of
themselves. Yet it is obvious that, if there is any truth at all
in what I have just written, this must be regarded as a complete
misconception.

Socialism and Collectivism are names which we give to the extreme
development of that tendency in political thought which has proved so
fatal to Liberalism, which is indeed a reaction against Liberalism.
Karl Marx himself, revolutionary though he was, admitted that the
English Factory Acts were the first political expression of Socialism;
we have already seen that they were the death warrant of consistent
and philosophic Liberalism. Every piece of Socialistic legislation is
in its nature anti-Liberal. There is no getting away from the truth of
Herbert Spencer’s taunt when he called Socialism “The New Toryism.”
Epigrammatically expressed, that is an excellent and most complimentary
description of it. Socialism is an attempt to adapt the old Tory
conceptions of national unity, solidarity and order to new conditions.
Our case against Toryism is that its economic and political synthesis
is no longer possible for us. But we can have no kind of sympathy with
Liberalism which is the negation of all synthesis, the proclamation of
universal disruption.

It is therefore particularly disheartening to find that “Liberal
principles” are apparently as sacrosanct in the eyes of many Socialists
as in those of the Liberals themselves. That Socialists also denounce
the idea of a State Church, that Socialists also rail at Imperialism
and condemn “bloated armaments,” that Socialists also proclaim the
universal holiness and perfection of Free Trade--this is the really
extraordinary and disturbing fact.

This, though none seems to see it, is the real root of the difficulties
which beset every attempt to form an independent Socialist or Labour
Party. You cannot have an independent party with any real backbone in
it without independent thinking. And, omitting pious platitudes about
“the socialization of all the means of production, distribution and
exchange” there does not seem to me any perceptible difference between
the way in which the Independent Labour Party (for example) thinks
about current problems and the way in which the Liberals think about
them. They may think differently about economic abstractions, but
they do not think differently when it comes to practical politics.
Consequently whenever a question divides the Liberals and the Tories,
the I.L.P. always dashes into the Liberal camp at the firing of the
first shot without apparently waiting to consider for one moment
whether perhaps Socialism may not have an answer of its own to give
which will in the nature of things be neither the Liberal nor the
Tory answer. And then the I.L.P. and their allies of the Labour
Representation Committee boast proudly of their “independence” because
they are not allowed to speak on Liberal platforms. Of what avail is
that prohibition if the platform on which they themselves stand is in
its essence a Liberal platform.

A little while ago the leaders of the I.L.P. were extremely indignant
because three L.R.C. representatives were said to have spoken at a
by-election in support of Liberal candidates. The defence was that
the three leaders in question spoke, not in support of the Liberal
candidate, but in opposition to the Licensing Bill and other measures
of the Conservative Government. Now it seems to me that this puts the
whole question of Socialist and Labour independence in a nutshell. If
Socialists and other champions of labour have really nothing to say
on the Licensing Bill, Education, Tariff Reform, Chinese Labour and
other topics of the hour other than what all the Liberals are saying it
seems very difficult to understand why it is so very wicked of them to
support Liberal candidates. If on every question which is really before
the country they agree with the said Liberal candidates it would seem
the obvious thing to do. At any rate I feel quite certain that they
will go on doing it, directly or indirectly, in spite of all the waste
paper pledges and resolutions in the world, until they get a political
philosophy of their own, when they will realize that the Socialist (or
if you prefer it the “Labour”) view of the licensing question, the
fiscal question and the South African labour question is and must be
fundamentally different from the Liberal and Radical view.

And indeed for want of such realisation the rush of the Labour men
into the Liberal camp becomes more headlong every day. It began with
Radical Trade Unionists newly converted to the idea of independent
labour representation. But the Socialist wing has not shown itself a
whit steadier in its allegiance to the doctrine of real independence.
If you doubt this charge, turn to an article contributed by Mr. J.
Ramsay MacDonald to the _Speaker_ on the subject of the International
Socialist Congress at Amsterdam. The _Speaker_ if one of the ablest
is one of the most thoroughly obscurantist of Liberal papers, holding
fast and without shame by the traditions of Cobden and Gladstone. Mr.
MacDonald has been in the past one of the most uncompromising of the
leaders of the I.L.P. and is at this moment Secretary of the Labour
Representation Committee. He seems to claim, in the passage I am going
to quote, to speak for his party, and, as far as I am aware, none of
the leaders of that party have ventured to repudiate him.

This is what he says:--

“If, for instance, in the next Liberal Cabinet the Rosebery faction
were strongly represented, and if no satisfactory pledges were given
upon the Government’s intentions regarding Trade Union legislation,
the Labour Party would be perfectly justified in supporting a vote of
censure--or what would amount to that--on the first King’s Speech; but
on the other hand, if the Cabinet were anti-Imperialist, and were sound
on Trade Union legislation, the Labour Party would be justified in
giving it general support and in protecting it from defeat.”

It is hardly necessary to point out that here Mr. MacDonald gives the
whole I.L.P. case hopelessly away. None reading the above passage
could suppose for a moment that it was written by a Socialist.
Observe that the writer does not ask for a single item of socialist
or semi-socialist legislation. He is silent about Old Age Pensions,
about an Eight Hours Day or a Minimum Wage, about a Graduated Income
Tax, about Housing or Factory legislation--in a word about everything
that could by any possibility be called Socialistic. For what does he
ask? Firstly for anti-Imperialism? Now is anti-Imperialism the same as
Socialism? Is there any reason for supposing that the anti-Imperialist
wing of the Liberal party will do more for labour than the Imperialist
wing? Is Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman a Socialist or a Labourite? Is
Mr. John Morley, who for years has absolutely blocked the way in
regard to social reform, a Socialist or a Labourite? Why should the
Labour Party support the hopelessly outmoded rump of Little-England
Radicalism without at any rate making a very stringent bargain with
them? As to trade union legislation, every Socialist would doubtless
support it, but it is not in itself a Socialist measure; it is merely
what everyone supposed that the Unions had obtained thirty years ago
with the assent of Liberals and Tories alike. It therefore comes to
this--that Mr. MacDonald has declared himself as regards practical
issues not a Socialist at all, but an anti-Imperialist Radical who is
in favour of improving the legal position of trades unions. Then why,
in the name of heaven form an independent party at all? He and those
who follow him are clearly in their right place as an insignificant
section of the Radical “tail.” And that is how both Tories and Radicals
will in future regard them.

But there is one Socialist sect in England from which we might at
least expect freedom from Liberal tradition. The Social Democratic
Federation is never tired of boasting of its independence, its
“class-consciousness,” its stern Marxian inflexibility of purpose.
Yet, when it comes to practice, it is only a trifle less enslaved by
Liberal ideas than the I.L.P. itself. During the South African War the
S.D.F. went one better than the Liberals in its narrow pro-Boerism.
Its members rallied to the support of the late Mr. Kruger (surely the
strangest leader that Social Democracy ever boasted!) and backed up the
Radical Krugerites without apparently asking any questions as to their
policy on labour matters. Later, on the education question, they again
rallied to the Radical standard (the standard of 1870!) and, like so
many Liberal Nonconformists, broke into ecstatic worship of the “ad
hoc” principle, denouncing as “undemocratic” the socialistic policy
of municipalized education which the Tory government had borrowed from
the Fabian Society. Moreover, glancing at the S.D.F. programme I find
among the “palliatives” disestablishment of the church and abolition
of hereditary monarchy. How the economic condition of the people is
going to be “palliated” by these measures I do not profess to know; I
will only remark that the “palliation” does not seem very visible in
the United States at the present time. But what I want to insist upon
is the utter futility of playing thus into the hands of the champions
of capitalism by helping to impress workmen with the idea that their
misfortunes are wholly or in part due to those purely constitutional
causes concerning which Radicals and Conservatives are at war, while
all the time we at least know that they are due to the economic
structure of society which Radicals and Conservatives alike support.

I agree with the S.D.F. in thinking that a Labour party must have
some sort of doctrinal basis. An old party can live for a long while
on catchwords and prejudices, but you cannot build a new party up
without some definite political ideas. But these doctrines and ideas
must not be a mere re-hash of exploded Liberal doctrines and ideas
plus a theoretic belief in “the socialization of all the means,
etc.” The new party need not call itself Socialist,--perhaps had
better not do so,--but its attitude towards practical matters must
be effectively socialistic. It must stand for the rights of the
community as emphatically as the older Liberalism stood for the
rights of the individual. It must work for the state control and
regulation of industry as Liberalism worked for its liberation from
state interference. In a word, it must be Protectionist in a more
far-reaching sense than that in which the word is applicable to Mr.
Chamberlain or Mr. Chaplin. So that its political philosophy will be
emphatically anti-Liberal and may sometimes (though but accidentally)
have to be pro-Tory.

Moreover, even if a Labour party could be a Labour party and nothing
more, there would always be a tactical as well as a philosophic
reason for clearing our movement of all complicity with the ideas
of Liberalism. During the first half of the nineteenth century it
was always supposed that the working classes of this country were
generally, if not exclusively Radical. Possibly at that time they were,
but since their enfranchisement in 1867 they have proved themselves
overwhelmingly and unrepentantly Tory. The history of the decades
which have intervened since then has been the history of the gradual
capture by the Tories of all the great industrial districts where the
working-class vote is most powerful. Politicians of the ’forties spoke
of the “Conservative Working Man” as incredulously as men would speak
of a white negro. Yet events have proved not only that such a person
exists, but that he can by his vote control the politics of nearly
every great manufacturing town in England.

Now the Conservative working man has no fundamental objection to
Socialism. The word no doubt displeases him, partly because of its
foreign origin, partly from its vaguely revolutionary associations,
but on the practical application of Socialism he looks with very
decided favour. In fact it is not improbable that the conversion of
the labouring classes to Toryism was in part at least due to the fact
that during the sixties and seventies the Tories had for a leader Mr.
Disraeli, whose quick Hebraic imagination and insight made him perceive
the significance of the social problem, while the Liberals were led
by Mr. Gladstone, who regarded all social reform from the first with
supreme indifference which in his later days deepened into a hostility
so intense and deep-rooted that he was ready to shatter his party
and his own career over Home Rule, if by so doing he could stave off
economic questions. But to return to the Tory workman. I have said he
has no objection to applied Socialism. It would be a comparatively easy
matter to secure his support for a programme of advanced industrial
reform, were he not required to swallow first a number of Liberal
doctrines which have no relation to his class interests and to which
he really has a strong objection--anti-Imperialism, the reduction of
armaments, doctrinaire republicanism and Irish Home Rule. Once cut the
Labour party free from these things and the increase of its electoral
power will be enormous.

Before proceeding to a more detailed examination of the Liberal
attitude towards current problems and its relation to the genuinely
progressive attitude, let me sum up the conclusions already reached.

There is no philosophic ground for identifying Socialism with extreme
Liberalism or Radicalism. The philosophies of Liberalism and Socialism
are not merely different but directly antagonistic.

There is no historical ground for regarding the Liberal party as the
friend of the working classes. The Liberal party is historically an
essentially capitalist party; as a matter of fact the Tory party has
carried more drastic and valuable social reforms than its rival.

There is no tactical advantage to be gained by committing the new-born
Labour party to the specific doctrines of Liberalism. The working
classes of this country have no enthusiasm for any of these doctrines
and have a marked dislike for some of them.

Therefore the Labour party or Socialist party or whatever the new
movement cares to call itself must if it is to succeed fling all its
Liberal lumber overboard and start afresh. It is not enough that it
should be independent of Liberal money and Liberal organisation. All
this matters little. What is essential is that it should be independent
of Liberal ideas.



NATIONAL PENRHYNISM.


As I have already suggested the subservience of Socialists and
Labourites to the traditions of Liberalism, so far from showing any
signs of abating gets worse every day. It has been getting markedly
worse since the beginning of the new century. It was the South African
War more than anything else which captured the English Socialists and
swept them into the most reactionary wing of the broken forces of
Liberalism. Since then the Radicals have always been able by raising
the cry of “No Imperialism!” to bend the Socialists to their will.
Hence Mr. MacDonald’s amazing indiscretion quoted in my last chapter.

I think it was Mr. Ben Tillet who alluded to the owner of the Bethesda
Slate Quarries as “Kruger-Penrhyn.” I am not sure that Mr. Tillet or
indeed anyone else realised the full accuracy of this description. For
not only was there a very striking resemblance between the virtues
and faults of Mr. Kruger and those of Lord Penrhyn but there was an
even more remarkable analogy between the claims which the two men put
forward and the arguments by which those claims were attacked and
upheld.

The friends of the Welsh quarrymen said in effect to Lord
Penrhyn:--“You are conducting your business improperly; your narrow
obstinacy is dangerous to the community and an obstacle to progress;
your conduct towards your employees is unfair and oppressive. We demand
that you either mend your ways or go.” Similarly the British government
said in effect to Mr. Kruger “You are conducting the government of your
country badly; your narrow obstinacy is an obstacle to progress and is
creating a situation dangerous to the peace of the world; your conduct
towards your subjects is unfair and oppressive. We demand that you
either mend your ways or go.”

And the answer is in each case the same “Shall I not do what I will
with my own?” “Are not the quarries _mine_?” asks Lord Penrhyn: “Is not
the Transvaal _ours_?” demanded Mr. Kruger. “If my workmen do not like
my management they can leave,” said Lord Penrhyn; “If the Outlanders do
not like my government they need not come,” said Mr. Kruger.

Now, granting the premises of these two eminent men their conclusions
certainly follow. Indeed the popular case against both was clearly
untenable. From the Liberal point of view Lord Penrhyn was as right
as Mr. Kruger; from the Conservative point of view Mr. Kruger was
as right as Lord Penrhyn. It is only by assailing the fundamental
assumptions of both that we can make out any fair case against either.
The only possible answer to the positions stated above is the Socialist
answer:--“No; the quarries do not really belong to Lord Penrhyn; the
Transvaal does not really belong to Mr. Kruger or to the Boers. Their
title depends on the use they make of them. Private property, whether
of individuals or of nations is subject ultimately to the claims of
public necessity.”

I have dwelt on this point at some length because, as I have already
said, it was unquestionably the South African War which more than
anything else rivetted on our Socialist and Labour parties the chains
of Liberalism. It is perfectly natural that Liberals should champion
the “rights of nationalities,” since they are the chosen champions of
the rights of property. But what have Socialists to do with either
except to challenge them whenever they conflict with the general
well-being? How can Socialists accept the claim of a handful of
settlers to set up a ring-fence round a certain portion of the earth’s
surface and declare it _their_ property any more than the claim of a
landlord to enclose commons?

Note that I am not by any means saying that no Socialist could
consistently oppose the South African War. There are many plausible
grounds upon which he could oppose it. He could oppose it for example
on the ground that the two Republics would in course of time have been
peaceably absorbed into the Empire, and that the attempt to hurry the
process by war was in every way a disastrous blunder. Or again he could
take the ground that the war dangerously strengthened the already too
powerful financial interests of the Rand and paved the way for such
reactionary measures as the introduction of Chinese labour. I will not
discuss here whether such arguments are sound or unsound. I only say
that the particular ground of debate chosen, the inalienable “right” of
a people to do what it likes with its own, is one that no Socialist can
take without self-stultification.

The manner in which the leaders of the English Labour movement with a
few exceptions flung themselves recklessly into the most unintelligent
sort of pro-Krugerism is one example and one very disastrous in its
consequences of the extent to which they have allowed themselves to be
saturated with the Liberal theory of wholly irresponsible Nationalism.
But it is by no means the only one. The parallel case of Ireland is in
many ways even more curious.

In considering the eternal Irish question from a Socialist standpoint
there are four dominant facts to be kept always in mind. The first
is that Nationalism in the Irish sense is not a Socialist ideal in
any sense, but is merely a kind of very narrow parochial Jingoism.
The second that the Irish Nationalist party is preeminently a _Parti
bourgeois_ drawing its main strength from the middle orders--small
tradesmen, tenant farmers and publicans, and that its political and
economic ideas are those generally characteristic of that class--rigid
individualism, peasant proprietorship and the like. The third that it
is a clericalist Party, representing not the enlightened Catholicism of
the Continent but the narrowest kind of political Ultramontanism.[1]
The fourth that Mr. Gladstone’s adoption of the Home Rule cause was a
deliberate move on his part intended to stave off economic reforms in
this country.

Now in these circumstances it would seem almost incredible that
Socialists should feel any kind of sympathy with Irish Nationalism. Yet
apparently they do feel such sympathy. Mr. Gladstone indeed builded
better than he knew. He doubtless believed that by espousing Home
Rule he could “dish” Mr. Chamberlain and draw the attention of young
Liberals and Radicals away from social questions in which they were
beginning to take a languid interest; but he could hardly have expected
to effect this in the case of the Socialists and Labour leaders
themselves. Yet to a great extent his policy has achieved this, and we
actually find Socialists clamouring for the retention of Home Rule in
the Liberal programme, though they must know perfectly well that its
retention means the indefinite postponement of industrial matters.

There is no kind of excuse for the Nationalist partialities of
Socialists because they know or ought to know that the theory that
England oppresses Ireland is a radically false and untenable one.
That Ireland is oppressed one need not deny; but it is not England
that oppresses her. It is capitalism and landlordism that oppress
Ireland as they oppress England. If the S.D.F. means anything at all
by its “recognition of the Class War” it ought to recognise this. And
recognising it, it ought to set its face like flint against a policy of
disunion and racial antagonism and teach the proletarians of Ireland
and England to “unite” (that is to be Unionists) according to the old
Socialist formula instead of encouraging the proletarians of Ireland to
regard those of England as aliens and tyrants.

To say the truth I am a little tired of the wrongs of Ireland. I am
quite willing to admit that she is an “oppressed nationality” with the
proviso that this phrase is equally applicable to England, France,
Germany, Italy and the United States. But one is tempted to point out
that concessions have been made to the Irish peasantry such as no one
dreams of making to the workers of Great Britain. How much “fixity of
tenure” has the English labourer in the wretched hole which his masters
provide for him? Do we sign away millions of British money and British
credit to save _him_ from the oppression of his landlord? Not at all.
But then he does not shoot from behind hedges; nor has he as yet had
even the wisdom to organize a strong and independent political party
whose support is to be obtained for value received.

In a word I contend that the association of English Socialism and
Labourism with the aspirations of Irish Chauvinists is theoretically
meaningless and practically suicidal. It is our business to meet the
old Gladstonian cry that everything else must wait because “Ireland
blocks the way” with a counter-cry, “It is Ireland’s turn to wait;
Labour blocks the way.”

All this does not of course mean that no kind of devolution is
practicable or desirable. There is a sense in which I am myself a
convinced “Home Ruler.” I believe that a number of causes (quite
independent of Irish Jingoism) are combining to make a vast extension
of our system of local government imperative. Mr. H. G. Wells has shown
that the administrative areas of our local authorities are at present
much too small, and the authorities themselves are quickly finding this
out from practical experience. Parliament is overwhelmed with business
which intelligent local bodies could transact much better. Imperial
Federation, when it comes, will of necessity entail a large measure of
local autonomy. Altogether some scheme of provincial councils seems
less fantastic to-day than it did when Mr. Chamberlain outlined it
in the ’eighties. But there is no earthly reason for conceding to the
least trustworthy and most militantly provincial part of the United
Kingdom anything more than you give to the rest. Ireland should get
such autonomy as we might give to the north of England and no more.
Ireland is no more a Nation than Yorkshire, but there is every reason
why both Ireland and Yorkshire should be taught to manage their purely
internal affairs to the best of their ability.

But, if exclusive Nationalism is essentially unsocialistic, what are
we to say of Imperialism? The answer is that there is nothing wrong
with Imperialism except the name which suggests Louis Bonaparte and
the dragooning of subject peoples. With the thing, in its British
sense, Socialists have no kind of quarrel. Indeed if Socialists would
only give up their vague invectives against “Empire,” which lead in
the long run to nothing more than the unmeaning backing of the effete
anti-imperialist, anti-socialist, anti-Church-and-State Radicalism
current fifty years ago, and seriously face the problems raised by
British expansion from an unswervingly Socialist standpoint, we might
get on a good deal faster. The problem of Imperialism (“Federationism”
would be a better word) may be briefly stated thus:--How can we
consolidate the widely scattered and variegated dominions which fly the
British flag into one vast Commonwealth of practically international
extent? Have Socialists any answer to this question? Or are they to be
content with the old Radical answer that this cannot or should not be
done?

That any Socialist should return such answer is to me I confess
astounding. To say that such a practically international commonwealth
is impossible is to say that _a fortiori_ the international
commonwealth of which Marx and Lassalles dreamed is impossible.
If the proletarians of England and Ireland, Australia and South Africa,
India and Canada cannot unite, what hope is there that those of France
and Germany, Russia and Japan will do so. Surely it is a curious way
of showing your enthusiasm for the Federation of the World to break
up all existing federations into smaller and smaller divisions. The
practical Socialist policy in relation to the Empire is clearly not to
destroy it, but to socialize it--that is to prevent its exploitation by
capitalist cliques and financial conspiracies, to organise it in the
interests of its inhabitants as a whole, and to use its power to check
the evil force and cunning of cosmopolitan finance.

For indeed the dark of deeds such finance can only, as we Socialists
believe, be checked by the political force of the community. And in
order to check it at all effectively the community must be operative
on a scale as large as its own. That is why the older Socialists were
internationalists; that is why so many of the more thoughtful of
modern Socialists are imperialists. Mr. Wells has pointed out at what
a serious disadvantage municipalities find themselves in dealing with
private monopolies since the latter can operate over any area that is
convenient to them, while the operations of the former are confined
within the narrow and arbitrary frontiers drawn by Acts of Parliament.
Exactly the same is true in international affairs. Mr. Beit and Mr.
Eckstein can safely snap their fingers at small nationalities, however
progressive. Against a Socialistic British Empire they would be utterly
powerless.

And as the organization of the Empire can be made the most powerful of
Socialist weapons if we can once get control of it, so the popular
sentiment of Imperialism can be used for the purposes of Socialist
propaganda if we know how to turn it to account. For we Socialists
alone possess the key to the problem--the key for which nonsocialist
Imperialists are looking. It is to be noted that as soon as the
ordinary Imperialist gets anywhere near the solution of an imperial
question he gets unconsciously on to the Socialist track, as for
instance in the growing demand for the imperialisation of our great
carrying lines. Even Mr. Chamberlain’s propaganda, though Socialists
cannot think it sufficient, is a sort of groping after the socialist
solution, an admission of the necessity of intervention by the
united British Commonwealth to check and regulate the disintegrating
anarchy of commercial competition. In fact our word to the stupid and
thoughtless Imperialism of the streets is in reality the word of St.
Paul to the Athenians:--“What ye ignorantly worship that declare we
unto you!”

The same general line of thought has its application to the problems
of foreign policy. The old Cobdenite doctrine of non-intervention in
the affairs of other nations had its origin in Cobden’s general view
of diplomacy as existing only to promote the interests of trade--by
which of course he meant the interests of the merchant, manufacturer
and capitalist. That cannot possibly be our view. For Socialists to
accept the Liberal doctrine of non-intervention would amount to a
denial of that human solidarity of which they have always considered
themselves the especial champions. In point of fact Palmerston is a
much better model for Socialists in regard to continental affairs
than Cobden or Bright or even Gladstone. For, though Gladstone was
certainly not a non-interventionist, his anti-Turkish monomania made
him blind to the evil power of Russia, whose existence is a standing
menace to liberty and progress, and whose power and vast resources
make her a more formidable enemy of all that we value than Turkey
could ever be if she tried. Socialists should press not merely for
the protection of our “proletarian” fishermen against the freaks of
tipsy or panic-stricken Russian admirals, but for a steady policy of
opposition to Russia all over the world and the support of any or every
nation, Japs, Finns, Poles, Afghans and even the “unspeakable” Turk
against her. During the perilous days through which we have recently
passed, it must have occurred to many that our position would have
been much stronger if we could have counted on the support of Turkey,
as we could have done had we never abandoned, in deference to Mr.
Gladstone’s theological animosities, the policy of Palmerston and Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe--the policy of first reforming Turkish rule and
then guaranteeing it against Muscovite aggression. The only difference
between our policy and Palmerston’s should be this, that while
Palmerston confined himself to the encouragement of political liberty,
we ought to aim at the promotion of economic liberty also. We should in
fact try to put England at the head of the Labour interest throughout
the world as Cromwell put her at the head of the Protestant interest,
and Palmerston of the Liberal interest. And in doing this we should be
prepared to make full use of those weapons which neither Cromwell nor
Palmerston would ever have hesitated to employ.



“MILITARISM AND AGGRESSION”


We are continually being told by Socialists of the hazier sort that
Labour has no concern with the question of national defence. We have
had recently a considerable ebullition of this particular form of
imbecility provoked by the efforts of one who has always seemed to
me quite the sanest and most far-sighted of English Socialists, Mr.
Robert Blatchford, to draw general attention to the importance of the
subject. Mr. Blatchford is in controversy very well able to take care
of himself, and in this instance he has overwhelmed his critics with
such a cannonade of satire, eloquence, indisputable logic and inspired
common-sense that it would be quite impertinent of me to offer him my
support. But the episode is so very typical of the ineffable silliness
of “advanced” persons that I cannot pass it by without comment.

As to the contention so much favoured by those who have been assailing
Mr. Blatchford’s “militarism” that England is not worth defending and
that a foreign invasion would be no evil to the bulk of the people,
the position has been so thoroughly dismantled by “Nunquam’s” heavy
artillery that I need hardly trouble about it here. As Mr. Blatchford
says, a few weeks of Prussian or Muscovite rule would probably be the
best cure for reformers of this type. But the whole argument is on the
face of it absurd. That your country is badly governed is an excellent
reason for changing your present rulers. But it is no reason at all for
welcoming (patriotism being for the moment set on one side) a cataclysm
which would destroy good and bad alike--the good more completely than
the bad--and would inevitably throw back all hope of reform for
at least a century. As well might a man say that, since London was
admittedly in many ways an ugly and horrible place, he proposed to vote
for the abolition of the fire-brigade.

So also with the very popular platitude which asserts that a peaceful
and unaggressive people need not fear attack, and that, if we refrain
from injuring our neighbours they will refrain from injuring us,
(unless presumably we happen to be North Sea fishermen). The obvious
controversial retort is that the people who maintain this doctrine
are for the most part the very same who a little while ago were never
tired of maintaining that the Boers were peaceful and unaggressive and
lamenting that in spite of this their country was attacked, conquered
and annexed by a powerful neighbour. Of course I do not accept this
account of the Boers, whom indeed I respect far too much to accuse
of Tolstoian proclivities. But the point is plainly unanswerable
for those who do accept it. In any case the whole of the above lofty
generalization is flatly contradicted by history and experience.
Indeed, if the strong will not wantonly attack the weak, then is our
preaching vain! Why are we Socialists? What is the good of Trade
Unionism? The humane capitalists will not attack us if we remain
“peaceful and unaggressive.” Perhaps not. As Mr. Hyndman (I think) once
said:--One does not muzzle sheep! But, if there is anything which the
whole history of human institutions proves, it is this, that the people
that does not know how to defend its liberties will lose them, and that
it is not the strong and aggressive nation but the weak and defenceless
nation that has cause to dread aggression from its neighbours.

In a word the doctrine of non-resistance and its consequence, the
abolition of armaments, is good Anarchism and may therefore in a sense
be called good Liberalism. But Socialism it is not and cannot be.

There is however, a position sometimes maintained by controversialists
rather saner than those dealt with above. It is suggested that, while
it may be admitted that an army of some sort is necessary, there
are plenty of people already concerned with the promotion of its
efficiency, and that Socialists, having other and more important work
to do, had much better leave the question alone, intervening only to
restrain the militarists when their demands become excessive.

Now to this contention there are as it seems to me three complete
answers. By far the most important objection to such a policy is
that it would make it permanently impossible for us to gain the
confidence of the electorate. The people of Great Britain (especially
the working classes) will always demand as the first condition of
supporting any government that it shall be able and willing to defend
the country against foreign aggression. No party which was not
thought to fulfil this condition would find it possible to achieve
or retain administrative power. And those of us whose desire is not
to sit in arm chairs and read Tolstoi and congratulate ourselves
on the non-conformity of our consciences, but to get some sort of
socialism put into bricks and mortar, must feel the urgent necessity of
convincing the voters that we are trustworthy in this respect.

Moreover if you leave the discussion of army reform to the
representatives of the landed and capitalist classes, such reforms
as we get will be carried out exclusively in the interests of those
classes. At present our military and naval forces are officered and
controlled by one class; they are an appendage of that class and will
always, so long as this is so, be employed successfully to protect its
interests. So long as the English people are asked to choose between
such class army and the risk of a German invasion, they will choose
the former, but it by no means follows that they would do so were a
practicable alternative placed before them.

And this brings me to my third point. It so happens that for
the purpose of formulating an alternative, Socialists are in an
exceptionally favoured position. Our army has by common consent
broken down. It is not even effective for the purposes for which the
capitalist classes want it. It is not only, as foolish people suppose,
the War Office that is decadent and inefficient; the army is decadent
and inefficient. Our soldiers are perhaps the best raw material in
the world, but the whole machinery of war and defence is eaten up by
a corruption which is all the worse for being largely careless and
unconscious. The two worst enemies of the British Army are the power of
money and the power of caste. These are our enemies also. We Socialists
alone are in a position to see what is really wrong. Would it not be
worth our while to bring our best brains to bear upon the subject and
see whether our Socialism cannot provide us with a remedy.

In spite of the unfortunate prevalence of the sort of sentimentalism
referred to above, there have always been in the socialist movement
witnesses to the common-sense view of militarism. Here and there
throughout this volume I have been obliged to criticize the attitude
of the Social Democratic Federation; I therefore admit the more gladly
that on this question that body has indubitably led the way. Its views
are obtainable in the form of a remarkably able pamphlet[2] from
the pen of Mr. Quelch, wherein the old Liberal Quakerism is thrown
completely overboard and the institution of universal citizen service
on something like the Swiss model put forward as the socialist solution
of the problem of national defence. The Fabians followed in “Fabianism
and the Empire,”[3] adopting a suggestion of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb’s
that the half-time age in factories and workshops should be raised to
21, and the time thus gained devoted to training in the use of modern
weapons. Finally there is Mr. Robert Blatchford, whose plan is too
elaborate to be detailed here--I refer my readers to his articles in
the _Clarion_ during July, August and September last year and to his
forthcoming book on the subject--but whose cardinal demand is for an
immense increase in the numbers and efficiency of the volunteers, who
are to form a citizen force of almost national dimensions. Of course
the Fabian programme and, I gather, Mr. Blatchford’s also imply the
existence of at any rate a small professional army in addition.

Now it seems to me that the one defect of the S.D.F. plan is that,
if I understand Mr. Quelch’s pamphlet rightly, it professes only to
provide a militia for the defence of these islands. That is to say it
does not provide for the defence of our possessions in different parts
of the world nor for any aggressive movement against the territory of
the power with which we chance to be at war; while even for purely
defensive purposes it is open to the grave military objections which
can always be urged against relying solely on irregular troops.

I have already discussed the question of Imperialism and I need not
go into it again. But I suppose that all but the most fanatical
Little-Englanders, whatever their views on expansion, would admit that
it is both our right and our duty to assist in the protection of our
fellow-citizens in other parts of the world against unprovoked attack.
If, for example, Germany were to make a wanton attack on Australia, or
Russia on India, or the United States on Canada, I suppose that every
sensible Englishman would admit that we ought to come to the assistance
of our fellow-countrymen. But in that case we shall want an army for
foreign service as well as for home defence.

The other point needs rather more explanation because it is constantly
misunderstood by people who will not try to comprehend the nature of
war. Such persons are always confusing aggression in the political
sense as the cause of war with aggression in the strategic sense as
a method of conducting it. A war may be waged solely for defensive
purposes, yet it may be the right course from a military point of
view to take the offensive. France found this in the wars of the
revolution; and Japan fighting (as I believe) for no other purpose than
the protection of her own independence against the lies of Russian
diplomacy and the brutalities of Russian power, has yet been obliged
to conquer Korea, invade Manchuria, and lay siege to Port Arthur.
Similarly we might easily find ourselves engaged in a purely defensive
war with France or Germany, in which it might be still the only safe
policy to raid the territory and seize the over-sea possessions and
especially the coaling-stations of our enemies.

As a matter of fact the distinction so often made between offensive and
defensive war is more theoretic than practical. It is seldom possible
to say in the case of a modern war that either side is unmistakably
attacking or defending. Which side was the aggressor in the Crimean
or Franco-German wars? Are the Japs aggressors because it was they who
actually declared war or are they only defending their country? The
real question to be asked is not which side is the aggressor, but which
nation is so situated that its triumph will be beneficial to mankind as
a whole.

Lastly there are the serious disadvantages from a military standpoint
of trusting to a citizen force alone. Experience seems to prove that
such a force is suitable only to a certain kind of warfare. The example
of the Boers to which Mr. Quelch appeals so confidently tells directly
against him. The Boers doubtless did wonders in the way of guerrilla
fighting and in the defence of strong positions, but they never
followed up their successes effectively, and they had to waste a great
deal of time, when time was of the utmost value to them, in sitting
down before Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking when a professional army
of the same size would have taken all three by assault.

It seems to me that we can get an excellent military policy for
Socialists by a judicious combination of the three suggestions to which
I have referred. Taking Mr. Webb’s plan first, let us by all means by a
modification of the Factory Acts (much needed for its own sake) train
the whole youthful population in the use of modern weapons--and not
in the use of modern weapons alone but in the best physical exercises
available and above all in discipline, endurance and the military
virtues. Then, following Mr. Quelch and the S.D.F. we might keep them
in training by periodic mobilizations on the Swiss pattern without
subjecting them to long periods of barrack life. From the large citizen
force so formed we ought to be able to pick by voluntary enlistment
a professional army which need not be very large, but which should
be well-paid, efficiently organised and prepared for any emergency.
Another and larger professional army would be needed for the defence of
distant dependencies such as India.

These forces must, of course, be constituted on a basis of equality of
opportunity, efficiency and reliability and capacity to command being
the only passports to promotion and no bar being placed between the
most capable soldier, whatever his origin and the highest posts in the
army. From the purely military point of view this would be an enormous
improvement on the present system. It is worth noting that the two
armies which, organised in an incredibly short space of time out of the
rawest of materials, broke in pieces every force which could be put
into the field against them, the army of Cromwell and the army of the
First Republic, were alike based on the principle of the “career open
to talent.” So the policy which I suggest would, I sincerely believe,
convert our impossible army into one of the best fighting machines in
the world. Not only would the officers under such a system be more
capable than some of the fashionable commanders, whose glorious defeats
and magnificent surrenders we were all eulogising five years ago, but
better chances and a higher rate of pay would attract to the ranks of
the professional army the very best type of man for the purpose, which
the present system can hardly be said to do.

Beyond this we want an effective General Staff and an Intelligence
Department not only alert but strong enough to enforce its demands on
the government, as well as a complete overhauling of our war-machine
both on its civil and military side. But there is no space for details
here; Socialists could hardly do better than leave them to Mr.
Blatchford to work out.[4]

No one who thinks seriously of the consequences of such a policy can
doubt that, if it could be carried out, it would effect a greater
transference of real power to the democracy than any Reform Bill. The
objection which most reformers instinctively feel to any proposal to
increase military establishments rests, I fancy, at bottom on their
sense that such establishments are organized by a class to protect its
narrow class interests. So it is that British troops are found useful
to British governments not only in Egypt and South Africa but also
at Featherstone and Bethesda. With such a military organisation as I
have suggested this menace would disappear. Nay, the weights would
be transferred to the other scale. Nothing, I conceive, is so likely
to put a little of the fear of God into the hearts of our Liberal
and Conservative rulers as the knowledge that they have to deal with
a democratic army and a democracy trained in arms. This, I know,
will sound shockingly heterodox to idealistic persons who are fond
of repeating (in defiance of universal human experience) the foolish
maxim of John Bright, the Quaker apologist for plutocratic Anarchism,
that “force is no remedy,” and the equally unhistorical statement that
“violence always injures the cause of those who use it.” But practical
men pay little attention to such talk, knowing that nothing helps a
strike so much as a little timely rioting and that the most important
reforms of the late century were only carried when it was known that
the mob of the great towns was “up.” As a matter of fact, force is
the _only_ remedy. If Socialism comes about, as I think it probably
will in this country, in the constitutional Fabian way, this will only
mean that the Socialists will themselves have captured the control of
the army and the police and will then use them against the possessing
classes, forcing them to disgorge at the bayonet’s point. And, if it
does not superficially wear this aspect, that will merely be because
the latter, seeing how invincible is the physical force arrayed against
them, may very likely surrender position after position at discretion
until they find that they have no longer anything to defend.[5]

It may be remarked incidentally that social reform would receive a
considerable impetus from such a policy. Not only would periodic
mobilizations take the workers for a time out of the foetid atmosphere
of their slums and factories and perhaps make them less contented to
return, but the heads of the army would themselves be compelled to
become social reformers and insist on some decent minimum of housing
and factory conditions in order to keep up the physical efficiency of
the material of which they would have to make soldiers. Herr Molkenbuhr
the German Social-Democrat pointed out to the Socialist Congress at
Amsterdam this year that this had happened in Germany even under an
undemocratic and often really oppressive form of conscription. An
immense impetus given to housing and factory legislation would be
among the by-products of Army Reform, if carried out on the right
lines.

I have left myself no space here to deal adequately with the Navy. I
will therefore pass it by here with the remark that an invincible navy
is absolutely essential to the welfare of the workers of this country,
whose food comes almost entirely from overseas, and that the navy has
never been like the Army a menace to popular liberties. It is generally
thought that our navy is in a much more efficient state than our army
is known to be in; but a thorough overhauling would do it no harm
and might expose weaknesses which we do not suspect. At any rate any
attempt to weaken our naval predominance should be resolutely opposed
by all Socialists as by all sensible men.

Of course an effective army and navy will cost money. But the Socialist
will be by no means so frightened of high estimates as the old Radical
who regarded all taxation as being of the nature of a compromise with
Satan. The Socialist knows that at least £600,000,000 a year goes at
present into the pockets of landlords and capitalists and shareholders
generally, and, until this is absorbed, the cry of “ruinous
expenditure” cannot be expected to appall him.



THE FETISH OF FREE TRADE.


Let it not be supposed that I propose to argue the eternal Fiscal
Question here. For the last twelve-month and more we have had quite
enough flinging backward and forward of childish platitudes, scraps
of obsolete economics, and masses of irrelevant and ill-digested
figures by both parties to the controversy. You are quite safe from
figure-shuffling as far as I am concerned, and you are equally safe
from bodiless _a priori_ economics. For me, indeed, the question is
not one that can ever be decided on general principles. To ask whether
nations ought to adopt Protection is exactly like asking whether men
ought to wear over-coats. Obviously in both instances the answer
depends on a number of attendant facts not stated--on the weather,
the constitution of the men, and the thickness of the coats in the one
case, on the character of the people, the distribution of their wealth,
the state of their commerce, and the character of the proposed tariff
in the other. Tell me that you wish in certain specified circumstances
to impose protective duties on certain specified imports, and I am
willing to examine the evidence and express an opinion. But so long
as you put the issue as one of abstract principle, I must ask to be
excused from indulging in what seems to me an utterly barren and
profitless exercise in immaterial logic.

Of course, as I have already insisted, there is a sense in which every
Socialist is of necessity a Protectionist and Preferentialist. As Mr.
Bernard Shaw once expressed it, (I quote from memory) he believes
that the highest wisdom of governments is to know “what to protect
and what to prefer.” For him the Utopia of “economic harmonies” is a
foolish and mischievous dream. He knows that the commercial instinct
unless subjected to energetic and unsparing state supervision, is
certain to become a cause of ruinous social disorder. His whole mind
will be set to the task of regulating it, directing it, curbing its
excesses, and protecting the public interest against it. In a word the
advanced social reformer of the new school is necessarily an emphatic
Protectionist, only differing from Mr. Chamberlain and his supporters
in that he gives to the word “Protection” a wider scope and a fuller
meaning than they.

Now it inevitably follows that there is not and cannot be any kind of
objection from his point of view to a protective tariff on grounds
of principle. The theoretic objection which used to be urged against
such a tariff was founded on the assumption that Adam Smith, Bastiat
and others had demonstrated the futility and peril of all legislative
interference with commerce. Cobden put the whole case as he and his
party saw it in one phrase of one of his ablest speeches, when he
declared that you could not by legislation add anything to the wealth
of a nation. That is a doctrine which no one (save perhaps Mr. Auberon
Herbert) now holds; which no one who approves for instance of any kind
of factory legislation can possibly hold. And that doctrine once fairly
out of the way, the question becomes simply one of expediency and the
balance of utilities.

But, when we come to the balancing, another point of divergence
instantly arises. The Socialists’ conception of utilities differs in
essence from that of Free Traders and Protectionists alike. For Mr.
Chamberlain, for Mr. Morley, for the Tariff Reform League and for the
Cobden Club, the aim of commercial statesmanship is simply and solely
to increase the aggregate commercial wealth of the country. But this is
by no means what the Socialist is mainly concerned about. His object
is not so much to increase the sum total of such wealth as to secure
its better distribution and more socially profitable use. He sees that
the economic struggle between nations is by comparison a matter of
surface fluctuations, while the economic struggle between classes is an
enduring and essential feature of our social system. And whether or no
he likes the old Marxian phrase “Class War,” he is bound to recognise
the existence of a class antagonism cutting right across society as a
fact without the understanding of which the structure of capitalist
civilisation is unintelligible.

This implies that the Socialist, whether he be a “Free Trader” or
no, has to dismiss as untenable practically the whole of the old
economic case for Free Trade. Adam Smith did doubtless prove that
under a system of absolutely free exchange, every country would tend
to engage in those trades which were (for the moment at any rate)
most commercially profitable to it; but he never proved or attempted
to prove that these would be the trades which were most socially
beneficent. It might, for example, happen that the White Lead trade
proved the most commercially advantageous industry in which Englishmen
could engage. But would any modern reformer say that in that case it
would be well for us to abandon all our other industries and take to
the manufacture of white lead--with all its inevitable concomitants.
It may be urged that such a case is not likely to occur. But cases
differing from it only in degree may very well occur--have indeed
occurred already. Such a case is the decline of our agriculture and
the consequent flooding of the towns with cheap unskilled labour;
such also is the tendency already more than faintly visible for
small trades, largely unskilled and often sweated, to supplant our
staple industries. And these things, though they are the inevitable
consequence of unrestricted competition and though Cobden would have
regarded them with complete equanimity, are the very things against
which social reformers have for years been fighting a long and
apparently a hopeless battle. No Socialist can give them a moment’s
toleration. Whether Socialists will think Mr. Chamberlain’s remedy
adequate is another thing. For Mr. Chamberlain’s point of view--a
purely commercial one--is at bottom identical with that of his
Cobdenite opponents.

And it is just this that makes mere statistics of trade and comparisons
between imports and exports so barren and misleading. What we want to
know is not how much tribute the capitalist gets out of our foreign
trade, but what wages the labourer gets, what are the conditions under
which he works, and what is the amount of employment available. Thus
for instance foreign investments pay the capitalist as well as British
investments and are accordingly highly esteemed by the Cobdenites as
“invisible exports.” But they are not equally satisfactory to the
workman who loses his job and drifts into the ranks of the unemployed.
From this point of view Protection if it kept capital in the country
and even attracted foreign capital might be eminently beneficial to
the workers, even though the aggregate of national wealth were thereby
diminished.

Now we have reached two conclusions. Firstly that Socialists will
approach the tariff question with an open mind; secondly that they will
approach it mainly from the standpoint of its effect upon the social
condition of the people and upon the distribution of wealth.

That, I say, is what one would naturally expect Socialists to do.
What the English Socialists and the leaders of organised labour in
this country have actually done is to fling their Socialism and their
“class-consciousness” to the winds, to stampede once more into the
Liberal camp (as they did before over South African affairs), to sing
pious hymns in honour of the memories of Bright and Cobden, oblivious
of the former’s opposition to factory legislation and the latter’s
freely expressed detestation of trade unionism, to trot out for the
confusion of Mr. Chamberlain the very doctrines which Socialist
economists have spent the last fifty years in riddling with destructive
criticism, and generally to devote their energies to the hopeless task
of strengthening the ruined fortifications which protect Liberalism
from the attacks of the time-spirit.

When the Fiscal Question first began to agitate the minds of Englishmen
the new-born Labour Party was in an unusually strong position. It was
as yet uncommitted on the subject, and both sides would willingly
have paid a high price for its support. Nothing strikes one more in
Mr. Chamberlain’s early speeches than his evident anxiety to gain at
all costs the sympathy of Labour. And the Liberals were at that time
equally anxious. Had the leaders of British Trade Unionism followed the
excellent example set them by Mr. Redmond and the Irish Nationalists,
had they held their hands and said frankly to both combatants “What
social reforms will you give us as the price of our support?”--what
unprecedented pressure might they not have been able to exert! To Mr.
Chamberlain they might quite fairly have said “You say that ‘all is not
well with British Trade’: we agree with you, we have been saying so
for years. But before we accept your proposed remedies we want reliable
guarantees that the working classes shall not be the sufferers. Tack
on to your programme a maximum price for bread (or some system of
municipal bakeries which would achieve the same object) and a minimum
wage for labour, and we will consider them.” To the Liberals again
they could have said “You tell us that Mr. Chamberlain’s policy will
not remedy the evils to which he rightly draws attention; granted,
but what is your remedy? If we help you to resist these proposals
what drastic measures are you ready to propose for dealing with the
unemployed and kindred problems?” Had they taken this line, they might
have achieved much. But, having the game in their hands, the labour
leaders deliberately threw all their cards away. Directly the question
of fiscal reform was mooted, without waiting for any pledge from
either party, they began to violently espouse one side and violently
denounce the other. By this they fruitlessly abandoned their excellent
strategic position. Mr. Chamberlain, seeing that he had nothing to hope
from them, treated them as enemies and organised the Tariff Reform
movement frankly as a purely capitalist affair, leaving Labour out of
account in the formation of his celebrated Commission as completely as
Cobden himself left it out of account in the formation of the Anti-Corn
Law League. The Liberals on the other hand are not so foolish as to
give pledges to those who do not ask for them, so that the opposition
to Mr. Chamberlain is as completely capitalist-ridden as is his own
propaganda. Thus, instead of standing to win either way, Labour now
stands to lose either way. Should Mr. Chamberlain succeed, as he very
well may, if not at this election at the one after it, his tariff will
be framed by powerful organisations representing capital and finance,
who will naturally follow their own pecuniary interests. Should the
Opposition triumph they will come into power quite unpledged, save
to Lord Rosebery’s programme of “commercial repose” which is the
newest name for our old friend “laissez faire.” And we shall be unable
to make use of the stir made by Mr. Chamberlain’s agitation, as we
might well have done had we acted wisely, in order to get measures
which we really do want and which are in some sense of the nature
of counter-remedies--the nationalisation of railways, an imperial
shipping fleet with preferential rates, and the re-organisation of our
agriculture by state aid and state supervision.

But there are reasons other than tactical ones why Labour should have
refused to adopt the Liberal attitude of non-possumus in regard to
fiscal reform. Whether or no Mr. Chamberlain’s tariff scheme would
have been favourable to the interests of labour,[6] there are a great
many proposals which are clearly and unmistakeably in its interests
which are yet in their nature protectionist even in the narrow sense in
which that word is ordinarily used.

It is characteristic of the Liberal party that even when it has dropped
accidentally across a right conclusion it invariably seizes with great
eagerness upon the wrong reasons for supporting it. The most striking
example of this is to be found in the case of Chinese Labour. For
myself, I detest Chinese Labour, and am prepared to go, I fancy, a
good deal further than the Liberal front bench in fighting it. But
then I am a Protectionist; and I believe that a plentiful supply of
cheap labour is the worst curse with which a nation can be visited.
The Liberals and their Labour henchmen, precluded by reason of their
Free Trade orthodoxies from taking up this sane and tenable position,
have to devote their energies to denouncing the “slavery” involved in
the conditions of the Ordinance. Now no Socialist can be expected to
get very excited on this point. He hates slavery, but he recognises
that in one form or another it is an inherent part of the capitalist
system, and the difference between telling a man that he must work
for his master or be imprisoned and telling him that he must work for
his master or be starved, can hardly seem to him important enough to
make all this fuss about. Moreover “forced labour” is implicit in the
Socialist ideal, though most of us would prefer to begin by applying
it to the Rand shareholders. As a matter of fact the conditions of
the Ordinance are a mitigation of the evils resulting from Chinese
Labour, not an aggravation of them. They serve to circumscribe to some
extent the limits of the damage which the imported Chinaman can do. My
objection to them is that I do not for one moment believe that they
can be made effective. But the danger of denouncing the conditions
of importation instead of denouncing the importation itself, is that
one of these days our Hebrew masters will say to us:--“Very well. You
object to conditions; you shall have none. We will import Chinamen
freely and without restriction, and they shall supplant white men,
not in the mines only, but in every industry throughout South Africa.
We shall reap still larger dividends, and the danger of a white
proletariat will be still more remote. Now we hope you are satisfied.”
What will our Free Trade Labourites say then?

A less serious but more amusing example of the shifts to which trade
union leaders are sometimes reduced in their efforts to reconcile the
obvious interests of the workers with their holy and sacred “Free Trade
Principles” was afforded by an episode which took place at the Leeds
Trade Union Congress last year. It appears that in certain mines in
these islands the capitalists have taken to employing foreign unskilled
labour. Their motives are doubtless the same as those of the Rand
magnates, namely to bring down the price of labour all round by the
competition of indigent Poles and Italians with the fairly well-paid
workers of this country. It was a very natural thing for capitalists
to do; it was an equally natural thing for workmen to resist. They are
resisting and a resolution was proposed at the Congress condemning the
employment of foreign unskilled labour in the mines. So far so good;
but now comes the comedy of the situation. To exclude the foreigner
as a foreigner is clearly protection of the most bare-faced kind; and
the proposal had to be recommended to a body which had just declared
in favour of unmitigated Free Trade. Then some genius had an almost
miraculous inspiration. It was suggested that the foreigner ought
to be excluded, not because he was a foreigner, not even because
his labour was cheap, but because he could not read the Home Office
regulations which are hung up in the mines. The plea was eagerly
clutched at, and seems to have been received with all solemnity.
The correspondent of the _Daily News_ who had at first regarded the
resolution with natural suspicion felt all his scruples vanish, and
actually hailed the declaration as proof of the unflinching Cobdenism
of the workers. Now what I want to know is--does anyone, does the
_Daily News_ correspondent himself really believe in the sincerity of
this ridiculous excuse? Would the British miners have been satisfied
if the regulations were printed in Polish or Italian? Or, supposing
this to be impossible, would they be satisfied if the immigrants learnt
enough English to read them? Of course they would not. The objection
to foreign unskilled labour is a purely protectionist objection, as
inconsistent with Free Trade as anything proposed by Mr. Chamberlain. I
may add that it has my entire sympathy.

Very soon, much sooner I think than they suppose, the leaders of
organised labour will be forced by the sheer pressure of events to
throw “free trade principles” over-board and find another foundation
for their economic faith. For buying in the cheapest market clearly
implies buying labour in the cheapest market; and the capitalists will
not be slow to grasp its consequences at a time when the expansion
of European civilisation is every day throwing new drafts of cheap
labour on the market. Less developed races with a lower standard of
life are exceedingly useful weapons to the hand of the capitalist
eager to force down wages. Already the appearance of the Chinaman in
South Africa is parallelled on the other side of the Atlantic by the
employment of negro blacklegs to defeat the Colorado strikers. What
has happened in Africa and America may happen--is indeed beginning to
happen here. Are the labour leaders prepared to go on defending Free
Trade, if Free Trade should prove to mean the free importation of great
masses of cheap blackleg labour from Poland, Italy and China? And, if
they so far abandon Free Trade as to shut out such labour, what about
the goods which it produces? Suppose the capitalist, forbidden to bring
the Chinaman here, take to exploiting him in his own country, relying
on our policy of free imports to secure the admission of his sweated
goods. Will not the champions of labour begin to regard the question of
free imports in a different light? The slope is steep and slippery and
the end is--Protection!

Yes the Labour party will have in the end to become protectionist.
Already progressive municipalities do not buy in the cheapest market
but in the best market, regard being had to the remote social
consequences of the purchase. And since the home market is the only
one where they can exercise any real or effective supervision over the
conditions of production, we have the curious spectacle of local bodies
with a big Liberal majority forced into what is in effect a policy of
Protection by the protests of unimpeachable Free Trade Labourites such
as Mr. Steadman. Of course the new Protectionism will not be that of
Lord George Bentinck or even of Mr. Chamberlain. It will “protect”
not the landlord or the capitalist but the labourer and if to this end
import duties are found useful it will make no more fuss about imposing
them than any other necessary piece of state intervention.



TOWARDS ANARCHISM.


There is an entertaining story told (I know not with exactly how much
accuracy) of a well-known Liberal trade unionist, who has recently
become a Member of Parliament. He is a typical labour leader of the
last generation, a Liberal in politics, a Nonconformist in religion,
a deacon (I understand) of his native chapel, a veritable pillar of
proletarian respectability, and an unflinching opponent of Socialism in
every shape and form. Once it was his duty to attend an international
congress of the representatives of his trade, where he found, I should
suppose, the revolutionary trade unionism of the Continent little to
his taste. However, that may have been, a resolution was proposed at
the congress in question demanding a statutary eight hours day. This
reputable and independent Briton rose to oppose it, and in so doing
made a characteristic Liberal speech, recommending the workmen to
rely on themselves, not to appeal to governments, to win what they
desired by their own efforts, and so on. Somewhat to his own surprise,
the speech on being translated was greeted with no inconsiderable
applause--applause which at the conclusion of his fine peroration
became thunderous, and was mingled with enthusiastic shouts of “Vive
J---- et l’Anarchie!” He had unfortunately succeeded in conveying the
impression that by such phrases as “rely upon your own efforts” he
meant to indicate the throwing of bombs!

This story gains considerably in point by the events of the last two
years. For, during that period, the kinship (always innate) between
Liberalism and Anarchism has been made apparent to the whole world in a
most startling manner; and we have seen the Nonconformist section of
the Liberal party, a section which above all others has always claimed
an almost hypochondriac tenderness of conscience, trying to affect the
repeal of a measure to which it takes exception, by means of a campaign
which involves nothing less than a cynical repudiation of the duties of
citizenship and an anarchic war against human society.

Anyone who possesses a temperament sardonic enough to enable him
to take pleasure in tracing the moral _débacle_ of what was once a
great party can hardly amuse himself better than by following the
history of the campaign against the Education Acts both before and
after they became law. No one burdened with much moral or social
enthusiasm will be able to do so with sufficient calm, for I venture
to assert that a more disgraceful debauch of cant, hypocrisy, flagrant
misrepresentation amounting sometimes to flat lying, sectarian venom,
the prostitution of religious excitement to base ends, all exploited
with an utterly shameless disregard of the public interest, cannot be
found in the records of English politics for the last century or more.

That is a strong statement; to support it let me recall the facts
of the case. First I would ask a fair-minded man to glance through
some of the innumerable letters and articles which have flooded the
Nonconformist and Radical press from the first introduction of the
Education Bill down to the present time, and I would ask such a man
to say what, taking his impressions from this source alone, he would
have supposed the purport of that Bill to be. I think I may say without
the slightest exaggeration that he would imagine that its effect must
be (1) to hand over _all_ elementary schools to the Church of England
to be disposed of at her pleasure, (2) to impose on all teachers in
such schools a new and stringent religious test, whose effect would
be to prevent any but Anglican (and perhaps Roman Catholic) teachers
from obtaining employment. I do not think there is any exaggeration in
the above plain summary. On every side one still hears phrases like
“handing over the schools of the nation to the Church,” “imposing a
religious test on teachers,” “giving the People’s property to the
Priest,” “establishing clericalism in the public schools,” etc., which
can have no other rational meaning than that stated above. Now it is
not a matter of argument but one of simple fact that the Education
Act did nothing of the kind,--that nothing of the kind has ever been
proposed in the whole course of the controversy. What the Act did
do was (1) to give effect in denominational schools (already mainly
supported out of public funds) to an enormously increased measure of
public control, where before clerical control had been unbridled (2)
to mitigate largely the effect of such religious “tests” as can in any
sense be said to have existed in such schools. No new “test” of any
sort or kind was imposed, and the Provided or Board Schools remain of
course entirely unaffected except as to their transference from one
publicly elected and unsectarian body to another and far more efficient
one.

Consider for one moment the state of affairs which prevailed before
the passing of the Act. There were then two kinds of public elementary
school recognised by the State--the Board School and the Voluntary
School. Schools of the former type were under the control of School
Boards, bodies of irregular distribution and greatly varying
importance. It must always be remembered that throughout more than
half of England there were no School Boards at all. In the big towns
you had doubtless often enough large and efficient Boards administering
elementary education over the areas of great cities like London,
Glasgow and Birmingham. In the country districts when they existed at
all, the Boards were often elected to govern ridiculously small areas
(sometimes with only one school in a whole district) and were most
commonly inefficient and reactionary.

Such was the situation of the Board Schools: that of the Voluntary
Schools was still more impossible. These schools, founded originally
on denominational lines, were controlled despotically by a private
board of clerical or clerically-minded managers. No effective public
control was insisted upon. Even where a voluntary school was situated
within a school board area, the School Board had no shadow of authority
over it. And, as I have already mentioned, rather less than half of
England possessed School Boards at all. The only pretence of public
supervision then existing in the case of voluntary schools was to be
found in the infrequent visits of notoriously complacent inspectors
from Whitehall. Indeed the inspectors had to be complacent, for few
voluntary schools had the means to make themselves educationally
efficient even though they might wish to do so. Though more than two
thirds of the money spent on their upkeep came out of the public
exchequer in the form of government grants, the remaining third had
to be raised by private subscription, that is to say had to be begged
vigorously from the most incongruous people, from Churchmen anxious to
preserve definite theological teaching and from rich ratepayers and
even Railway Companies anxious to avoid the incidence of a School Board
rate. As a natural consequence the schools which, be it remembered,
were reckoned as part of the national machinery for education, were
counted in the statistics of school accommodation, and were indeed the
only schools available for a considerable part of the child population,
were in a state of chronic and hopeless beggary, and dragged on a
miserable existence,--starved, irresponsible, notoriously inefficient,
yet practically safe from public intervention.

Meanwhile technical education, unnaturally divorced from elementary,
was confided to the care of the County and Borough Councils. Secondary
education was nobody’s business. It would have been entirely neglected
had not some progressive School Boards stretched the term “elementary”
to cover as much as they could until sharply pulled up by the Cockerton
judgment, while some of the more progressive Councils stretched the
term “technical” in much the same way, and would probably, but for the
intervention of the Act, have met with the same fate.

Now what did the Education Acts do? The first and by far the most
important change which they made was to transfer all education to the
County and Borough Councils.[7] The effect of this was to provide that
in future there should be everywhere throughout England one popularly
elected local authority responsible for every kind and grade of
education within its administrative area, and that this body should
be that responsible for local government as a whole. Thus they made
possible for the first time the co-ordination of all forms of education
and the co-ordination of education with other municipal and local
services.

This change had of course the effect of sweeping away the old system of
electing educational authorities _ad hoc_. This seems to have struck
many people as a flagrant piece of injustice, an impudent repudiation
of democracy, and a shameless invasion of popular rights. It is
difficult to understand why. A County or Borough Council is fully as
democratic a body as a School Board, if democratic be taken to mean
elected by popular suffrages. And if it is seriously contended that
a body ought to be specially elected to deal with education alone,
because the issues at a general municipal election may be confused,
why not carry the principle further and have _ad hoc_ bodies for each
branch of local activity? Indeed why should the principle be applied
only to local affairs? Why not elect a separate Parliament to deal with
foreign affairs, another to deal with Colonial matters, another to deal
with social reform and so on? The fact is that the much vaunted _ad
hoc_ principle never had any real existence. It is not contained, as
Nonconformists and Radicals seem to imagine either in the Bible or in
Magna Charta; it is no part of the Natural Rights of Man or the Social
Contract or even of the British Constitution. It is nothing but the
last relic of a thoroughly discredited system of local government.
The framers of the Education Act of 1870 themselves knew of no such
principle. They created _ad hoc_ bodies to deal with education, simply
because government was then so undeveloped in this country that there
was no other body to which it could be entrusted. County Councils
did not then exist; the Local Government Act of 1889, which like the
Education Act of 1902 we owe to a Tory government, had not yet been
passed. Over the greater part of England there was no democratic local
government at all. Therefore it was necessary to create a stop-gap
authority to deal with education. Similarly there were in the earlier
part of the century innumerable other _ad hoc_ bodies, entrusted with
the duties of lighting the streets, making public improvements, etc.,
but they have all been swept away and their powers absorbed by county,
borough, town, district or parish council. In course of time it was
inevitable that the obsolete School Boards should follow them into the
limbo of rejected experiments. It now only remains for Parliament to
complete its work by abolishing our hopeless and discredited Boards of
Guardians.

I suppose I ought in passing to refer to the contention that the
administrative machinery of the Acts is undemocratic because the
Councils are to govern through Committees. The absurdity of such a
view will be obvious to anyone acquainted with the machinery of local
government. All local bodies act through committees in educational and
other matters. The Committee is a purely executive body, absolutely
subject to the authority which creates it; and in this respect there is
no essential difference between the Education Committee and that which
controls the trams, the parks or the music halls.

To return to the other provisions of the Acts of 1902-3. The second
effect which they have is to give to the local authority complete
control over the “Voluntary” Schools--now called Non-Provided
Schools--in all matters relating to secular education. This, I know
well, will sound an audacious statement in the ears of those who
have taken their views from the declarations of the Liberal press. I
can only recommend such people to buy a copy of the Act and read it
for themselves. They will find that the managers of the non-provided
schools are expressly compelled to carry out any instructions of the
local education authority in regard to secular education, that in the
event of failure to do so they can by a single stroke be deprived of
all the benefits of the Act, and that the authority has two nominated
representatives on the board of managers who are responsible to the
public alone and can at once appeal to the public authority should
their denominational colleagues show symptoms of recalcitrance.

Lastly all the cost of maintaining these schools (except for the upkeep
of the buildings) is to come from public funds, the balance once borne
by private subscriptions now coming out of the rates (bear in mind that
already two thirds of their income was derived from taxes) so that a
great nation is no longer placed in the humiliating position of having
to rely on private charity in order to meet its educational needs,
while denominational schools will no longer be able to plead beggary as
an excuse for inefficiency.

That in plain English is what the Education Act of 1902 and the
London Education Act of 1903 have effected. I defy any Liberal
or Nonconformist opponent of the measure to show that I have
misrepresented their purport in any particular.

But no sooner was the first draft of the Bill before the country than
the campaign of unscrupulous mis-statement began. The loudest and most
popular cry was that the Bill “imposed” a religious test on teachers.
I remember once at a public debate asking a gentleman who urged this
with great rhetorical effect to point out to me the Clause of the Bill
which imposed such a test. There upon I experienced the keen pleasure
of watching my antagonists struggle through a copy of the Bill in the
hopeless endeavour to find such a clause. Of course he did not find it
for the same reason which prevented Tilburina from seeing the Spanish
Fleet. There is no religious test imposed by the Act. Its sole effect
in this respect is firstly to introduce an elective and nonsectarian
element into the body which appoints the teacher and secondly to allow
that body to over-ride any religious test imposed upon assistant
teachers by the Trust-deeds of the school.

Then came the cry that the “People’s Schools” were being “handed over
to the Priest.” What this meant I cannot conceive. The reference could
hardly be to the denominational schools which before the passing of
the Act were absolutely under the control of the “Priest” while under
the Act his control is to say the least of a very shadowy and much
mitigated character. I am therefore forced to the conclusion that those
who used the phrase really supposed--or at any rate wished others to
suppose--that the Board Schools were handed over to the Church, which
is of course so monstrously untrue, so devoid of even the faintest
shadow of foundation in fact, that it is difficult to put it on paper
without laughing.

There is, so far as I can see, no escape from one of these conclusions.
Either the Nonconformists who made use of these catch-words and of
many others like them had never read the Education Acts, or they were
incapable of understanding the plainest English, or, having read the
Acts and knowing their purport they deliberately misrepresented them.
Take which ever explanation you choose:--are they men whom we can
safely trust with political power?

Later the agitation passed through another phase. After flagrant
misrepresentation came nauseous cant and fantastic casuistry. I believe
that the English Nonconformists profess a great horror of Jesuits. But
nothing attributed to the latter in the fiercest of Pascal’s satires
can equal the extraordinary casuistical _tour de force_ whereby the
former tried to find a distinction between the payment of rates and
the payment of taxes. With one voice the Nonconformists declared that
it would sear their consciences as with a hot iron if they had to pay
a penny towards the support of schools where “Romanising” teaching was
given. Whereto sensible men replied by pointing out that for years the
Nonconformists had been paying for the cost of such schools out of the
taxes. Then it was that the new ethical principle was discovered. It
appears to be as follows:--_It is not wrong to pay money to a national
body to meet the cost of supporting Denominational Schools but it
is wrong to pay money to a local body for the same purpose._ I will
not attempt to follow the various lines of argument by which this
remarkable conclusion is reached. I merely set down the conclusion
itself for the amusement of my readers.

It should be remembered moreover that all the time that they were
ranting about “Rome on the Rates” and the wickedness of compelling
Dissenters to pay for teaching in which they did not believe the
Nonconformists were themselves forcing on the provided schools and
endeavouring to force on all schools a form of religious instruction
notoriously abhorrent to Anglicans (at any rate of the Catholic type),
Romanists, Agnostics and Jews. Could sanctified hypocrisy go further?

Yes, it could and did! No sooner was the Education Bill law than the
leaders of Nonconformity with Dr. Clifford at their head entered upon
the _Opera Bouffe_ rebellion (mischievous enough despite its silliness)
known as “Passive Resistance.” That is to say that, fortified by
the magnificent ethical principle italicised above, they considered
themselves justified in repudiating their plain duties as citizens in
the hope that by so doing they might injure the educational machinery
of the country. The form which their very prudent insurrection took was
that of refusing to pay their rates and compelling the community to
distrain on their goods.

With the manifold humours of the movement, with the sale of Dr.
Clifford’s trowels and the sad fate of his bust of Cromwell, with the
evident eagerness of our Nonconformist martyrs to part with their
Bibles at the earliest possible moment, with the diurnal letters of Dr.
Clifford to the _Daily News_, with his just anger against the brutal
authorities who let a “resister” out of prison, with the even more
delicious letters of minor lights of Dissent, with the fear expressed
by one of these lest his heroic action should be supposed by the
cold world to be merely an economic distraint for rent,[8] with the
olympian wrath of those aspirants for the martyr’s crown who found
their hopes blighted by the baseness of some unknown person who had
cruelly paid their rates for them--with none of these do I propose to
deal. Doubtless the proceedings of these brave martyr-rebels, whose
motto, like that of the conspirators in one of Mr. Gilbert’s operas,
“is Revenge without Anxiety--that is without unnecessary Risk,” are
delightful, if regarded from the standpoint of humour. It is to be
regretted that we cannot altogether afford so to regard them. No
Christian can free himself from a sense of shame at seeing Christian
bodies sink so low, nor can any patriotic Englishman, whatever his
creed, watch the signs of the times without anxiety when he sees what
was once a great English party flatter such men and condone such a
policy.

Seriously considered the “Passive Resistance” campaign proved
two things. The immense impetus which it has gained among the
Nonconformists is a symptom of that utter disregard of the public
interest which has in all ages been characteristic of political
sectaries. The toleration, if not encouragement, of it by the bulk
of the Liberal party shows how superficial is the conversion of
Liberals from their former anarchic view of civic duty. For “Passive
Resistance” cannot be justified except the philosophic doctrines and
assumptions of Anarchism be first accepted. Mr. Auberon Herbert might
be a passive resister without inconsistency, for he regards taxation as
a mere subscription sent by the subscriber to an organisation of his
own choice and to be used only for such purposes as he may approve.
He therefore maintains that all taxes should be voluntary and, were
he to “resist” at all, would doubtless resist in the case of all
state expenditure which he may think undesirable,--armaments, wars,
state ceremonial, and even municipal enterprise. Now this theory,
if once accepted, will tell much more against the progressive side
than against the reactionaries. The Nonconformists are as likely as
not, I imagine, to “resist” the payment of money required to start a
municipal public house; taking example from them, other persons may
resist payment of taxes needed to furnish old age pensions on the
ground that their consciences forbid them to allow their money to be
used for the discouragement of the virtue of thrift. In a word the
only logical conclusion of the “passive resistance” policy is complete
Anarchism--Anarchism from which the Liberal ideal sprang and in which
it will end.

For us Collectivists, of course, the problem does not arise at all.
From our point of view it is not Dr. Clifford’s money that is going
to support Roman Catholic schools, but some of the money which the
community allows Dr. Clifford to handle subject to certain conditions,
one of which is that he should pay his contribution towards the general
expenses of government. If he does not like the use made of it, he has
his vote as a citizen and such influence as his abilities may command,
and that is all he is entitled to. That is the case against Passive
Resistance, and I can only say that, if it is invalid, the whole case
for taxation is invalid also.

Finally what strikes one most about this propaganda is its utterly
cruel and cynical carelessness of the interests of the children. At
a time, when education is so necessary to our national existence, it
is no light thing when a deliberate attempt is made by responsible
citizens to wreck our educational machinery in the interest of a
group of sects. This is no exaggeration. We are told explicitly that
the object of the agitation is to make the Education Act unworkable,
that is to say to make it impossible to educate the children properly.
How far in this direction the leaders of the movement are prepared to
go may be seen from the case of Wales, where they are dominant and
can act as they please. There they have formulated a policy whereby
the deliberate ruin of Welsh education will be brought about by Welsh
“patriots,” the object being to defeat what they are pleased to call
the “Welsh Coercion Act,” which of course is not a Coercion Act at all,
but merely an Act making provision for the upkeep of the children’s
schools in cases where local authorities neglect their duties and leave
the unfortunate children fireless and bookless. I could wish that the
Nonconformist leaders, who are so fond of the “Open Bible” would
devote a little attention to Matthew XVIII 6.

Where it will all end no-one can say. Given favourable circumstances
and a fair and firm administration of the law, I believe “Passive
Resistance” in all its forms would soon die of its own inanity. The
Dissenting Anarchists failed to capture the L.C.C. thanks to the
patriotism and good sense of the Progressives at whom they have been
snarling ever since; and it hardly seems as if, outside Wales, they
would achieve much in the arena of municipal politics. In Wales, where
they have perhaps a slightly stronger case, some compromise might
be effective,--the proposals of the Bishop of St. Asaphs might form
a basis for discussion. But, of course, the whole situation would
be profoundly changed, were a Parliament dominated by Dissent to be
returned at the General Election. In that case the settlement of
1902 would be upset, whole question would be flung once more into
the melting pot, and our educational system would be fought for by
Churchmen and Dissenters, as two ill-tempered dogs fight for a bone.
That is what is quite likely to happen if we are not very careful, and
serious educationalists can only look to the future with anxiety and
disquiet. Though perhaps in the last resort we can rely on the House of
Lords!



OUR BRITISH MOSLEMS.


I have no wish to say anything disrespectful of the religion of Islam.
In many respects it is a very good religion; without doubt it is a
great one and one of the most vigorous in the world. It is said still
to make more converts annually than any other. It reigns unchallenged
from Morocco to Persia, it is dominant throughout a large part of
India, and is spreading more and more every year amongst the wild
tribes of Central Africa and the islanders of the Malay Peninsular. In
this country the orthodox Mohammedan creed has made but little headway;
nevertheless a number of more or less heretical Moslem sects, among
which the Wesleyans, the Baptists, and the Congregationalists are
perhaps the most important, flourish there exceedingly and, if not on
the increase, are at least fairly holding their ground.

One of the basic moral tenets of the Moslem faith is, as everyone
knows, the prohibition of alcohol, and this tenet, despite doctrinal
variations, is held with equal firmness by the English sects above
mentioned. The analogy is not a fanciful one; I express it in this
way because I wish to emphasize the fact that the objection of the
_Daily News_ and of those whose views it represents to beer and
spirit drinking is an objection not to the social evils inseparable
from alcoholic excess, nor to the many corruptions connected with the
private drink trade, but simply and emphatically to the thing, itself.
It is, in fact, a religious tapu. I can respect it as such, and I can
respect the Samoan _tapus_ described by Stevenson, but it is necessary
to recognise its nature, if we wish to understand its relation to what
plain men mean by the temperance problem.

It may reasonably be deduced that the demand so constantly made that
temperance reformers of all schools should unite on a common programme
is utterly impracticable. They cannot unite, because they do not want
the same things. There is no point of contact possible between those
who think beer so bad a thing that they are angry that anyone should be
supplied with it and those that think it so good a thing that they are
angry that it should not be supplied in a pure state and under decent
conditions; between those who object to the modern public house because
they think it at once evil and seductive and those who object to it
because they think it demoralisingly ugly and uncomfortable. In short
there is no possible community of interest between those for whom the
liquour problem is how to _supply_ alcoholic liquors with the greatest
social profit and the least social damage and those for whom the
problem is how to prevent such liquours from being supplied at all.

“The average man” says Mr. Edward R. Pease “wants beer.” This
remarkable discovery is alone sufficient to place Mr. Pease at the
head of all our temperance reformers, for he is the only one of them
who seems to have realised its incontestable truth and importance. His
admirable book “The Case for Municipal Drink,”[9] which I strongly
advise all my readers interested in the question to obtain and study,
is the most perfect presentation I know of the position of those who
wish to know how best to supply drink, not how best not to supply
it. Contrast it with the views constantly set forth in the _Daily
News_--views which may be taken to represent those espoused by at least
a large section of the Liberal Party--and you have something like a
clear issue.

Now if we could only get these two contradictory conceptions of
temperance reform clearly defined and separated, the drink question
would be a much easier thing to discuss than it is. Unfortunately
they have got almost indissolubly tangled by reason of the fact that
so many who secretly hold the dogmatic teetotal view will not avow
it frankly, while many others (practically the whole Liberal and
Progressive parties for example) hastily adopt measures which have no
_raison d’etre_ save in this view without thinking seriously about
their nature. If the teetotal enthusiasts would say frankly (as some
but by no means all of them do) that they want absolute and unqualified
Prohibition and only support Local Veto and the much-vaunted Temperance
Policy of the London County Council as steps towards Prohibition--then
at least we should know where we were. But when the _Daily News_ itself
was plainly and publicly challenged by the Rev. Stewart Headlam to
say whether it meant that or not, it pointedly evaded the question.
The fact is, of course that if this policy were frankly explained its
supporters would be snowed under at the next election even more finally
than the supporters of Local Veto were in 1895. So they do not avow it,
but try to get essentially prohibitionist legislation through under
cover of vague phrases like “temperance reform” to which we are all
urged to rally.

Take Local Veto for example. What was the main proposal involved in
Sir William Harcourt’s famous measure. It proposed that every ward
(the smallest area known to English local government) should have the
right by a two-thirds majority to veto all licenses within its area or
by a bare majority to reduce them by one fourth. Now was this measure
intended to lead to Prohibition or was it not? If it was, then the
English people who did not want Prohibition did well to reject it;
but if it was not, and its supporters generally insist that it was
not, whither was it intended to lead. Its obvious effect in practice,
as Mr. Pease has justly pointed out, would be that the rich districts,
where public houses are few and cannot in any sense be regarded as a
social evil, would probably expel them as derogatory to the interests
of property and the “character of the neighbourhood,” while all the
drinking would be concentrated in the worst slum areas, where public
houses, not of the best type, are already dangerously numerous and
crowded, and where prohibition would have no chance whatever. This is
clearly not a temperance reform in any sense of the word. It could
have been framed only in the interests of men who regard alcohol as so
positively a devilish thing that they rejoice at the destruction of any
place defiled by its presence regardless of the ulterior consequences
to temperance itself.

The Temperance Policy of the London County Council is at least as
strong a case in point. What is this much-trumpetted policy? It is
this; that when the County Council has to acquire the license of a
public house in the course of making some street improvement, it
first pays huge compensation to the publican and then abandons the
license, thus practically throwing the ratepayer’s money into the sea.
That is all. In the course of its distinguished career the L.C.C. has
spent more than £300,000 in this wise and beneficent manner.

Now what does the County Council suppose that it is doing? For a
systematic reduction of drink licenses in certain districts there is
doubtless much to be said, though I am inclined to think that the
importance of this as a factor in the temperance problem is grossly
exaggerated. But, if that is to be effected, the whole licensing
system must be brought under review and houses suppressed according
to a well-considered plan. Care would for example be taken that the
worse kind of houses were suppressed and the better retained. The
Council suppresses them on no plan whatever--simply where it happens
to be making a street improvement. The result is, of course, that
the gain to temperance is absolutely nil. A street is to be widened;
the public houses on one side of the street are pulled down, their
licenses purchased and abandoned; those on the other side remain. The
people who used to drink on the one side go over and drink on the
other. The suppressed publican (or the brewer he represents) gets ample
compensation; the unsuppressed publican gets his neighbour’s trade in
addition to his own without paying one farthing for it. And the public?
What does the public get? The satisfaction of knowing that the workman
may have to cross the road in order to refresh himself.

The fact is that the Progressive party, dangerously subject to
intimidation by the Nonconformist chapels, has adopted a policy
entirely meaningless from the standpoint of enlightened temperance,
in obedience to the irrational demands of those who think that the
destruction of any public house must be a righteous act.

Now the same spirit which revealed in the Local Veto Bill and still
shows itself in the County Council policy has been to a great extent
responsible for the opposition encountered by the government’s
Licensing Act. I do not say that this Act could not be fairly
criticised upon other grounds. The terms accorded to the Trade are
certainly high--in my view too high--and of the compensation granted
too much seems likely (in the case of a tied house) to go to the
brewer and too little to the publican. But that is not the ground
chosen by the most vehement enemies of the measure. The ground
explicitly chosen by them is that the publican is an enemy, a wicked
man, whom we ought to punish for his misdeeds. If it were the case
of any other trade, would anybody venture to deny that a man whose
livelihood is taken away by the arbitrary act of the governing powers
through no fault of his own is entitled, whatever be his strict
legal position, to some measure of relief. To which the only answer
vouchsafed by the teetotal faction consists in windy abuse of the
publican as a “vampire.” I think that private monopoly in the Drink
Trade is a great evil; so is private monopoly everywhere else. But
to abuse the man who merely sells what the public demands and the
community instructs him to supply is fanaticism and not statesmanship.

Now if, leaving this foolish cult, whose voting power is by no means
in proportion to the noise it makes, we ask ourselves what kind of
temperance reform sensible reformers really want, we shall not find it
difficult to answer.

First and foremost then we want good liquour and especially good beer.
Everyone who frequents public houses knows how hard this often is to
obtain. Yet beer is our national drink, of which we ought to be proud.
Properly manufactured it does no one any harm, though when made of
chemical “substitutes” instead of sound malt and hops it is as noxious
as any other adulterated concoction. Beer-drinking, within reasonable
limits, and provided the beer be sound liquour, is a national habit
which no wise ruler would attempt to suppress. For it is the best
prophylactic against the inordinate consumption of cheap and bad
spirits which really is a national curse in Scotland and elsewhere.

Secondly we want decent surroundings. It is a most unfortunate thing
that few temperance reformers have any personal acquaintance with
public houses or with alcoholic drinking. For if they had they would
know that a man is much more likely to brutalise himself if he is
compelled to drink “perpendicularly” in a dirty, ugly, and gloomy bar
than if he can sit down comfortably, talk to his friends, play cards
and listen, perhaps, to a little music. That is why another phase of
the L.C.C. “temperance” policy, the refusal of drink licenses to music
halls, is so manifestly absurd. A man who drinks at a music hall, where
he is being amused in other ways, is much less likely to get drunk than
one who drinks in a public house bar (as such bars are now conducted)
where there is nothing to do but to go on drinking. As Mr. Headlam has
excellently expressed it, it would be a great deal better policy to
turn every public house into a music hall than to turn every music
hall into a teetotal institution. The second thing we want then is a
humanised public house.

Thirdly we want to get rid of the private commercial monopoly which
exploits the drink trade, whereby vast fortunes are made at the expense
of the community. These immense profits are the direct result of the
monopoly granted by the community to private traders in return for a
nominal fee. To grant away what is practically public money in this
way is monstrous. It is satisfactory to find that something like High
License is foreshadowed in this year’s Licensing Act. But High License
is not enough.

The sensible remedy is the municipalization of the liquour traffic
which would fulfil all the above conditions. The municipal public
house would refuse to sell any but the best liquors, and it would
supply these with humanising instead of demoralising surroundings. The
profits which the public are entitled to the public would receive.
And let me say here that there is no reason whatever why we should
wait for a municipal monopoly--which means waiting till Doomsday. The
idea that municipal houses must not compete with privately owned ones
rests ultimately upon the mischievous notion already examined that
the drinking of alcohol is in itself an evil thing upon which the
state ought to frown if it cannot actually suppress it. The typical
British workman (whatever “democratic” politicians may say) does not
go into the public house in order to get drunk but in order to refresh
himself. If the municipality gives him better drink under more pleasant
conditions than the publican he will frequent its houses without
demanding that drunkenness shall be either encouraged or connived at.
And the competition of the municipal house will infallibly raise the
standard of those houses that remain in private hands.

Why does not the London County Council abandon its “Settled Temperance
Policy” and go as straight for municipal public houses as it has gone
for municipal trams? The common answer is that the Council has no power
to run public houses; but this is no answer at all. Till this year it
had no power to run steamers on the Thames. But it wanted the power,
it agitated for it, embodied it in its Bills and eventually forced a
Tory House of Commons to concede it. Has it ever asked for power to
run public houses? Not once. Moreover, even as things stand, it could
if it pleased get to work on the right lines instead of on the wrong
ones. Instead of abandoning licenses it could retain them and lease the
new houses to publicans at pretty high ground rents and on stringent
conditions such as would insure that the house should be of the best
type possible under private management. Besides there is Earl Grey’s
Trust, an organisation founded expressly to anticipate most of the
results of municipalism. They could easily have let the Trust take over
the licenses, but they have persistently refused to do so. The fact is
that the London Progressives do not want to municipalise the retail
liquour trade. They do not want to do it, because they dread the power
of the Nonconformist chapel and the forces which find their political
rallying ground in the local P.S.A., forces of which the guiding
principle is not temperance, but a hatred of alcohol _per se_. But
surely it is possible to make a last appeal to the Progressive leaders.
After all they have pricked that bubble once. To their eternal credit
they have defied and bitterly offended the chapels over the education
question, and no very dire consequences have followed. Will they not
take their courage in their hands and defy them on the drink question
also?



“RETRENCHMENT AND REFORM.”


Who could have believed five years ago that we should ever have heard
again, from any quarter more deserving of notice than the foolish and
impotent Cobden Club, the almost forgotten cry of “Peace, Retrenchment
and Reform.” That it has become once more the rallying cry of the
whole Liberal party is significant, as nothing else could be, of the
extent to which that party has moved backwards during the last decade
or so. So far from the Liberal party having been “permeated” with
Socialism since 1885, everything that has happened since then has
tended to weaken the progressive collectivist element in its ranks and
to strengthen the reactionary individualist element. We hear nothing
now of the well-meant if somewhat amateurish attempts at social
reform which were popular with the followers of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain
twenty years ago,--nothing of “ransom” or of “three acres and a cow.”
As little do we hear or see of the Collectivist-Radical ideals of the
early nineties, of which the _Star_ and the old _Daily Chronicle_ were
once such vigorous exponents. Not only do the leaders of Liberalism
care for none of these things, but those who professed such enthusiasm
for them speak of them less and less. Mr. Massingham now-a-days appears
to have eyes and ears for nothing but the diabolical wickedness of
Imperialism. Dr. Clifford, once the rising hope of collectivist
Dissent, is now too busy promoting sectarian anarchism to pay any
perceptible attention to the “condition-of-the-people” question. It
used at one time to be said that Mr. Gladstone’s stupendous authority
made it difficult for the party to become definitely Collectivist
while he led it; but when he retired the new era was to begin. Well,
Mr. Gladstone is dead; but where is the new era? Mr. Gladstone’s
place has been taken by men who have inherited all his obsolete
prejudices--only lacking his abilities; the “left wing” of the Liberal
party on which so many hopes were built is weaker and less disposed
to a forward movement than ever. The consequence is that since 1895
we have seen nothing but Ghosts--ghosts of dead things which everyone
thought to have been nicely nailed down and buried long ago. The South
African War raised the ghost of Gladstone with his anti-imperial bias
and his narrow nationalist philosophy. Then the Education controversy
brought up the ghost of Miall with all the Dissidence of Dissent and
all the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion. Lastly with the
Fiscal Question has come to light the yet older and mouldier ghost of
Cobden from whose shadowy lips issue the once famous formula--“Peace,
Retrenchment and Reform.”

Since this dilapidated Manchester sign-post has now become the
meeting point of all sections of the Liberal party, Radical and Whig,
Imperialist and Little Englander, and since some of the leaders of
Labour and even (strange to say) some of the Socialists are taking up
their places in the shadow, it becomes imperative to ask what meaning
exactly the words are intended to convey. With “Peace” I have dealt
fully already, and have endeavoured to define the Socialist attitude
towards it. But “Retrenchment and Reform” demand further examination.

No surer proof of the utter emptiness of what is called “Liberal
Imperialism” can be advanced than the manner in which its leaders have
joined in the demand for retrenchment. I can understand the position
of those who manfully opposed the South African War; I can understand
the position of those who manfully supported it. Both are honest and
consistent and worthy of all respect. But surely there never was a
meaner spectacle than this of eminent and influential politicians
shouting vigorously with the Mafficking crowd while war is popular,
and then, when the brief season of ultra-patriotic excitement is over,
grumbling and whining when presented with the inevitable bill of costs.
It is equally absurd and unworthy. If we want an Empire, if we want
a strong foreign policy, if we want vigour and efficiency--we must
be prepared to pay for it. If we think the price too high, then, in
heaven’s name, let us be honest and admit that the Little Englanders
were in the right all along. Do not let us court an easy but most
contemptible popularity by swaggering as Imperialists, when what we
really want is all the sweets of Empire but none of the burdens. That
is what “Liberal Imperialism” seems to mean. Indeed Liberal Imperialism
has proved nothing better than a fizzle. Three years ago we thought
that there might be something in it. So far-sighted a reformer as Mr.
Sidney Webb celebrated in a memorable magazine article “Lord Rosebery’s
Exodus from Houndsditch,” expressing the hope then widely entertained
that the Liberal Imperialist movement meant the final laying of
Gladstonian Ghosts and the creation of a Progressive party alive to
the needs of the new time. That hope is at an end. Lord Rosebery and
his retainers have re-entered Hounds ditch with triumphal pomp and
ceremony, and are now distinguishable from their frankly Gladstonian
colleagues only by the greater fluidity of their convictions.

But expenditure on offensive and defensive armaments, though a most
necessary item, is by no means the only item in our national accounts.
We spend a great deal of money on education; we ought to spend more. We
spend a great deal of money on Home Office matters--factory inspectors
and the like; again we ought to spend more. We want to spend money
in a variety of other ways upon the improvement of the condition
of the people. We want Old Age Pensions, we want free meals for
school-children, we want some sort of provision for the unemployed, we
want grants in aid of housing and other forms of local activity. How
are we to get these things and yet retrench. Will not better education
cost money? Will not more efficient factory inspection cost money?
Will not Free Feeding cost money? Does not almost every kind of social
reform mean increased expenditure? It is significant that the demand
for “retrenchment,” which is the Liberal cry in national affairs, is
in local affairs the cry of the “Moderates,” that is of the magnates
and monopolists who wish to exploit the public. But Liberal or Moderate
it is always a reactionary cry. If we are to do our duty by the people,
we cannot retrench.

And indeed why should we want to retrench--we I mean who profess
ourselves Socialists? Our complaint is not that too much of the
national revenue goes into the coffers of the state, but that too
little finds its way thither. Too much of it goes to swell the incomes
and maintain the status of a wealthy class of idle parasites. The more
we can get hold of and use for public purposes the better. And the more
we pile on taxation (always supposing we pile it on in the right place)
the nearer we approach to the Socialist ideal. Retrenchment of public
expenditure and the reduction of taxation to a minimum is essentially
an individualist policy. The socialist policy is to pool the rents and
profits of industry and devote the revenue so obtained to useful public
work.

But, if retrenchment is an inadmissible policy for Socialists, what
about reform? I can only say that I wish all such words as “reform,”
“progress,” “advanced” etc. were at the bottom of the sea. They are
mischievous because they lend colour to the vague idea which exists in
the minds of so many “moderns” that if we keep on moving fast enough
we are sure to be all right. It never seems to occur to people that
something depends on the direction. What I want to know about a man
is not whether he is “progressive” or “advanced” or “modern” or “a
reformer,” but whether he wants to do the same things that I want
to do. If he wants to do the exact opposite the less “advanced” and
“progressive” he is the better. When therefore amiably muddy-minded
people talk about “Reform” all we have to ask them is, “What reform?”
What did Cobden and Gladstone mean by “reform?” What do the present-day
Liberals and Radicals mean by it? One thing is certain; neither has
ever meant social reform--the only kind that seems to me to matter; or,
if the thought of social questions ever crossed their minds at all,
at least neither has ever meant collectivist social reform--the only
kind that in my view can ever be effective. What the Liberals meant and
mean, so far as they now mean anything at all, was and is political
reform and political reform along certain defined lines.

The old Radical programme of political change is worn so threadbare
that it is hardly worth discussing at this time of day. As however,
in the general resurrection of Gladstonian Ghosts, which we are now
witnessing, a very attenuated spectre of the Old Radical-Republican
propaganda of the ’sixties seems disposed to put in an appearance, it
may be worth while to say a word or two about it.

As to Republicanism itself it hardly demands attention in the twentieth
century. No-one except Mr. John M. Robertson even professes to think
it important. The S.D.F., it is true, still puts the abolition of
monarchy in its programme of palliatives, but that I imagine is merely
a comparatively harmless concession to revolutionary tradition.
Doubtless hereditary monarchy is theoretically illogical; but the
time has gone by when men deduced perfect theories of government _a
priori_ from the Social Contract or the Natural Rights of Man. What we
now ask concerning an institution is--does it obstruct the execution
of necessary reforms? Now no one can seriously maintain that the
British Monarchy obstructs anything. The power of the Crown, such
as it is, has, since the accession of the present Sovereign at any
rate, been used almost entirely in the interests of genuine progress.
Hereditary monarchy supplies us on the whole with a very convenient
method of obtaining a representative of the nation who shall not, like
a President, be the nominee of a political party. A great deal of
national veneration and sentiment has grown up round the Throne, and
it would be foolish to waste time in attacking an immensely popular
institution which does no harm and has its decided advantages.

The old outcry against Royal Grants so dear to the heart of Mr. Henry
Labouchere may be similarly dismissed. It was never likely to be
popular with a people averse above all things to the suspicion of
meanness; and it has now become hopelessly obsolete, partly because
of the general collapse of republican sentiment, and partly because
people have begun to realise that it is a little ridiculous to get
violently excited because the King is given a few thousands in return
for certain services, some of which are decidedly important and all
of which the nation really desires him to perform, while we allow
landlords, capitalists and financiers to pocket many hundred times as
much in return for no services whatsoever.

The question of the House of Lords appears at first sight a more
serious one. But, when examined closely its importance is seen to be
much exaggerated. In order to make out a case strong enough to induce
us to turn aside from our more urgent tasks and spend weary years in
agitating for the disestablishment of the Upper House, Radicals must
show that the Lords are in the habit of rejecting measures of great
intrinsic importance to the people at large and really demanded by
them. Can they show this? I think not. The only measure of importance
which the Lords have rejected during the last thirty years has been
the Home Rule Bill, and a subsequent appeal to the people proved
conclusively that the Lords were right in so rejecting it--that the
people of Great Britain were not as a whole really in favour of it, in
fact that there was no such effective demand as there ought clearly to
be before so great a change is made in the constitution of the realm.
Even if the Radicals had the solid democracy at their back (as they
certainly have not and are not in the least likely to have) it would
still take some ten years to disestablish the Lords. On the other hand,
if we have the democracy at our back in support of any particular
reform that we want, it will not take much more than ten weeks to
intimidate or circumvent them. The Lords are too acute and too careful
of their own interests to resist for any length of time measures upon
which Englishmen have once made up their minds firmly. As a matter of
fact the objection to the House of Lords is not a reformer’s objection
but a Liberal partizan’s objection. The existence of the Second
Chamber, as at present constituted, undoubtedly hampers the Liberal
party in its competition with the Tories, because the Tories can get
more drastic measures of reform through the Upper House than they can.
But with us to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference by which
party reforms are carried this consideration need not weigh.

It cannot of course be denied that the present constitution of the
Upper House is a flagrant anachronism. The structure of our society
is no longer feudal, and government by a hereditary territorial
aristocracy is therefore out of date. Moreover there are practical
disadvantages in the present system, since, though the Lords do not
reject anything which the people really want, they do sometimes
mutilate valuable measures in the interest of property owners. If
therefore it be found possible without wasting too much valuable
energy to introduce new elements into the composition of the Second
Chamber, one would not refuse to consider the idea. This is in fact
almost certain, to be done some day--probably by the Tories anxious to
strengthen the Upper House. The inclusion of elected representatives
from the Colonies might be a very good way to begin.

With the Disestablishment of the Church the case is rather different.
The abolition of hereditary aristocracy, though difficult and
not particularly urgent, might be a good thing in itself. Church
Disestablishment on the other hand would, I am convinced, be not only a
waste of time and energy, but a most undesirable and retrograde step.
Surely it is not for us Socialists to agitate for the desocialisation
of national religion and for the transfer of what is now in effect
national property to private and irresponsible hands. Moreover the
denationalisation of the Church would be from a tactical point of
view a most fatal step. I say this without reference to the question
(upon which Socialists will hold all sorts of divergent opinions) of
the truth of the doctrines of the Church of England or indeed of any
form of Christianity or Theism. It has been often pointed out that
the Church has shown itself more easily permeable by the Socialist
movement than have any of the Dissenting bodies. Many reasons have
been suggested to account for this, and no doubt there is an element
of truth in all of them. Without doubt the Catholic and Sacramental
system of theology blends more easily with Socialism than the
Evangelical theology does. It is also unquestionably true that the
feudal traditions which still linger in the English Church are more
akin to the ideas of Socialism than are the Liberal and Individualist
traditions of Dissent. But one of the most important causes of the
more sympathetic attitude of the clergy of the Established Church
is surely this, that the Church, being established and endowed, is
responsible to the people and to the people alone, while the “Free”
Churches are bound hand and foot to the wealthy deacons and elders on
whose subscription they are forced to rely. Disestablish the Church
and the rich subscriber will rule her with a rod of iron. Democratic
priests will be hampered and harassed as democratic ministers are now.
This, it seems to me, is not a result to which (whatever our religious
views) we can look forward without anxiety. Whether “priestcraft” be
a good or a bad force, it is without doubt an extremely powerful one;
and it is clearly the business of Socialists, whether Christian or
Secularist, to see that, so far as is possible, it shall be exercised
on their side. The sound Socialist policy is not to disestablish the
Church of England, but to establish concurrently all religious bodies
of sufficient magnitude and importance to count. Had this been done
in Ireland thirty years ago, as Matthew Arnold recommended, had we,
instead of disestablishing the Anglican Church there, established and
endowed the Roman Catholic Church along side of her, how much less
serious might our difficulties in that country have been!

As to the elective franchise and kindred questions they can hardly be
regarded as any longer pressing. It would be a good thing, I do not
deny, if our conditions of registration were simplified, but that is
not a question upon which the people feel or can be expected to feel
very keenly. No class is now intentionally disfranchised,--it is only a
matter of individuals. In other words, though there are anomalies and
inconveniences in our electoral system, there is no longer any specific
grievance. Women might perhaps have a grievance if any large number
of them demanded the right to vote, but until this is so politicians
cannot be expected to pay much attention to the matter. There is
a stronger case for redistribution, but this (owing to the gross
over-representation of Ireland) is generally regarded as a Conservative
rather than a Liberal measure.

The only political reform that seems at all worth fighting for is
the payment of members. This is really desirable and important, and
should be pushed to the front when political questions are under
discussion. For not only would it open Parliament more freely to the
representatives of the workers, but it would also make the position
of an M.P., a more responsible one. A paid representative, it may
reasonably be supposed, would take his profession more seriously,
and would at the same time be looked after more sharply by his
constituents. We have on the whole quite enough gentlemanly and
well-meaning amateurs in politics to whom legislation is a harmless
hobby, and who are readily enough outwitted and captured by the keen
and energetic representatives of finance who do take their business
seriously and mean to win. Therefore if we are to have any political
changes at all let us go straight for payment of members.



SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION.


In previous chapters I have generally begun by criticising the Liberal
policy in relation to the matter to be discussed. It would seem natural
in this chapter to deal with the Liberal policy in relation to social
reform. But in that case the essay would be an exceedingly short one.
There is no Liberal policy in relation to social reform.

The nearest thing to a least common denominator which I can find after
searching diligently the speeches of the Liberal leaders and their
backers is that most of them are in favour of doing something to
the “land monopoly.” Exactly what they propose to do to it I cannot
quite discover. “Overthrowing the land monopoly” may mean Leasehold
Enfranchisement; it may mean the Taxation of Land Values; it may
mean Small Holdings, Free Sale or the Nationalisation of Land. The
last suggestion may be dismissed; we are certainly no more likely to
get that from the Liberals than from the Tories. Small Holdings are
excellent things, but the principle has been conceded, and we are as
likely to get a further extension of it from the Tories as from the
Liberals, in any case this policy does not touch the essence of the
social question. Leasehold Enfranchisement, Free Sale, etc., are sham
reforms of middle-class origin of which we now hear little. There
remains the Taxation of Land Values.

The Taxation of Land Values is very popular with the Liberals just
now. Whether it would be equally popular with them were they in office
is perhaps a matter for legitimate speculation. It will be remembered
that it was part of their programme in 1892, and is to this day faintly
discernable on the newly cleaned slate of the party. As however it is
re-emerging into prominence it maybe well to say something in reference
to it.

A good deal of confusion is inevitable concerning this particular
proposal, arising from the fact that it may be regarded in two entirely
different lights. It may be considered simply as one way among many
others of raising revenue to meet necessary public expenditure, or it
may be regarded as a practical application of the economic doctrines
associated with the name of Henry George, who taught that all revenue
should be raised by a single tax (or more properly rent) on the site
value of land. Now Georgian economics have made practically no headway
in this country; their _a priori_ logic, their reliance on abstract
assumptions rather than on history and practical experiment, their
rigidity and inflexibility of application, are exasperating to a people
naturally impatient of metaphysics but keenly alive to immediate
social needs. People who begin their economic speculations, as the
Georgites generally do, by discussing what are the natural rights of
man and deducing from this an ideally perfect system of taxation and
government put themselves out of court with practical men. There are
no natural rights of man; there is no abstractly perfect economic
or political system; we are painfully struggling by means of many
experiments and many failures towards something like a decently
workable one.

But, though Georgism is a horse so dead that to flog it would be
profitless malignity, the taxation of land values, conceived not as
the _only_ means of raising revenue, but as an _additional_ means of
doing so, is very much in favour both with some of the leaders and
with the whole rank and file of the Opposition. Nor is the reason far
to seek. The misery and waste produced by our present social system
are so patent and terrible that a vague feeling that “something must
be done” has been spreading rapidly through all classes, and even
Liberals have caught the infection. Most drastic reforms however
are impossible for them because such reforms would clash with the
interests of the capitalists and traders who form the backbone of the
party. To them therefore the proposal to tax land values comes as a
special interposition of Providence to succour them in their need.
It professes to do something for the poor,--exactly what they might
find some difficulty in saying. But a certain amount of ill-digested
Georgism can be exploited in support of their case, while at the same
time a loud and definite appeal can be made to the Liberal capitalists
and the Liberal bourgeoise to share in the plunder of the land-owners.
Unfortunately the cock will not fight. The working classes, not
believing in Georgian economics, are, because of the hardness of
their hearts, supremely indifferent to the taxation of land values.
Neither the ingenuity of eccentric economists nor the eloquence of
Liberal capitalists can induce them to take the slightest interest in
the subject. No Trades Union Congress can be persuaded to take it up;
no Labour candidate will make it a prominent plank in his platform.
The workers may not be expert economists, but they are not quite so
easily deluded as the Liberals suppose. They have a very shrewd eye to
their own interests, and are quite acute enough to know that it is the
capitalist and not the landlord who is the most active and dangerous
enemy of the labourer, and to perceive that the talk about “the land
monopoly” is merely a clever if somewhat transparent dodge on the part
of the former to divert public indignation from himself to his sleeping
partner in exploitation.

I am for getting the last farthing of unearned increment wherever
it can be got. But I can see no earthly reason for taxing unearned
increment from land more than any other kind. What we really want is
a heavily graduated income tax with a discrimination against unearned
incomes. This would hit the landlord and the capitalist equally hard,
and is therefore not likely to find favour with the Liberal party.

But even if the taxation of land values were as perfect a method of
raising revenue for public purposes as its advocates assert, it would
still be necessary to insist that no alteration in the incidence of
taxation will ever solve the problem of poverty. Suppose that you have
got every penny of unearned increment into the public treasury, the
question then arises--What are you going to do with it? If you keep
it locked up in a box, the last state of the people will be worse
than the first. If it is to be of benefit to anybody this revenue
must be used by the State as industrial capital. That is to say the
socialisation of industry must go hand in hand with the reform of
taxation.

Now what the Labour party really wants just now is two or three genuine
installments of Socialism on which to concentrate its energies. A party
without a programme is always an absurdity; a labour party without
a programme is an absurdity passing the just limits of farce. It is
futile to think that you can keep a party together much less build up a
new one, with no common basis save the desire to amend trade union law,
which appears to be the only demand on which the L.R.C. is united at
present.

And the programme of the Labour party must, for reasons already cited,
be a Socialist and not a Liberal programme. I do not mean that the
whole party should call itself Socialist or should be committed
to Socialism as that term is understood by the S.D.F. We have been
surfeited in the past with abstract resolutions in favour of “the
socialisation of all the means of production, distribution and
exchange.” But I do maintain that the programme must be collectivist in
tendency and must have the organisation of industry by the state and
the abolition of industrial parasitism as its ultimate goal. Also it
must as far as possible appeal directly to the interests of the people
for with all his great qualities the British workman is constitutionary
defective in the capacity for seeing far before his nose, and will not
readily grow enthusiastic about the soundest economic measure which
does not obviously improve the position of his class. At the same
time the labour party would do well to avoid too much narrowness of
outlook, since there are, as we shall see, some measures which do not
appear at first sight to benefit the worker directly, but which are
indispensable conditions of his ultimate emancipation. Such measures
should therefore be put along side of the more patently beneficial one
and their connection with these as far as possible made plain to the
electorate.

The greatest strides which applied Socialism has made during the last
twenty years have been made in connection with the municipalities. The
best proof that can be given of the immense and salutary growth of
municipal activity in recent years is to be found in the angry panic
which this growth has produced among the financial exploiters of public
needs. The latter, having at their back boundless wealth and influence,
a powerful and lavishly endowed organisation, a vast army of lecturers
and pamphleteers, and the greatest and most weighty of British
newspapers, opened a year or so ago a fierce campaign against what
they called “Municipal Socialism.” Never did so potent an army suffer
so humiliating a reverse. On the progress of municipal trading the
attack made no impression whatsoever. The public at large saw through
the game and gave the public-spirited authorities their generous and
energetic support. The municipal movement has received no check; it
has gone on more triumphantly than ever. Energetic local bodies have
pushed their activities further and taken the satisfaction of public
needs more and more out of the hands of private speculators, vesting
it in those of responsible public officials. But the opponents of
municipalism are still active, clever and unscrupulous; and we cannot
afford to leave the public interest at any disadvantage in dealing with
them. It is unquestionably at such a disadvantage at present, partly
on account of the inconveniently restricted boundaries of local areas,
partly because of the anti-progressive bias of the Local Government
Board, and partly because of the state of the law in regard to the
powers of local authorities. The first point has been discussed so
excellently by Mr. H. G. Wells and others that I need do no more than
allude to it here; with the second I shall deal later. But the third is
of special importance.

In the present state of the law a private individual or a collection of
private individuals may do anything which the law does not expressly
forbid; but a municipality or local body of any kind may only do
what the law expressly permits. Thus for instance the London County
Council has by law the power to run trams, but when it attempted to
run an omnibus line to and from its tram terminus, the private omnibus
companies successfully invoked the law against it. This is absurd;
it is intolerable that a public authority should not be permitted
to supply what its constituents definitely demand without going to
a largely indifferent and largely hostile parliament for permission
to do so. Broadly speaking County and Borough Councils at any rate
should have power to do anything that the nation through the national
legislature does not definitely prohibit. It would be well for the
Labour party in Parliament to demand a free hand for progressive
municipalities such as can only be secured by legislation on these
lines.

The Housing Question connects itself closely with this matter, for its
only possible solution will be found to be along the lines of municipal
activity. But, in addition to a free hand for municipalities to build
houses when and where they like, it would be well to consider whether
in the face of the present house famine it is wise to raise our local
revenues by what is in effect a heavy tax on houses. The payment of say
half the rates on well-built and sanitary working-class dwellings out
of the proceeds of government grants would give a much needed impetus
to both municipal and private enterprise in this direction.

Meanwhile the Labour men on municipal bodies should make the fullest
use of such powers as they already possess and push forward vigorously
with their campaign of municipal socialism in such a manner that the
workman may perceive its direct benefits. His Housing should be visibly
cheaper and better, his trams visibly quicker, less expensive and more
comfortable, his gas and water supply visibly improved on account
of their transfer to a public body. At the same time of course the
labour employed by the municipality in conducting these industries
should receive what we may call (to borrow a phrase from diplomacy)
“most favoured employé” treatment. It may be remarked that it is not
desirable that municipal undertakings should aim at large profits.
Theoretically this is indefensible for it means that the consumer pays
more than his fair share of the rates; practically it is undesirable,
since it tends to obscure the real benefits of municipal enterprise.

In national affairs the progress of definite socialism cannot
perhaps be so rapid. But the Labour party might well press for the
nationalisation of mines, especially of coal fields (already demanded
by the Trade Union Congress), the state regulation and ultimate
nationalisation of railways, canals and other means of transit, and
should insist on government departments doing their own work wherever
possible and paying not less than the standard rate of wages.[10]

But legislation of this kind has only an indirect effect upon the
real problem that confronts the people of this country,--the people
of all countries which have developed along the lines of industrial
civilisation. With the appalling evidences of physical degeneration
confronting us, we cannot, whether we are Socialists or Labourites or
only decently humane and patriotic Englishmen, do without a social
policy. In the last resort, all progress, all empire, all efficiency
depends upon the kind of race we breed. If we are breeding the people
badly neither the most perfect constitution nor the most skilful
diplomacy will save us from shipwreck.

What are we to do with the great masses of unskilled, unorganised
labour in our big towns? That is the question which intelligent
thinkers are now asking themselves; and, as Carlyle said “England
will answer it, or on the whole England will perish.” We have drained
our country side and destroyed our agriculture to a great extent
deliberately in order to obtain this vast city proletariat. Its
condition is appalling; it is starved at school, over-worked when it
is just growing into manhood, and afterwards drifts into the ghastly
back-waters of our towns, now sweated, now unemployed, always an open
sore, a contamination, a menace to our national life. That is what
fifty years of applied Liberalism have made of about a third of the
English people.

Well, the first thing we must do is to try to save the next generation
if we cannot save this one. The child at any rate must be protected.
One of the first and most urgent of the social reforms needed is the
feeding of children in public elementary schools. To teach unfed
or underfed children is a sheer piece of profitless brutality.
Compulsory and free feeding is as necessary to us as compulsory and
free teaching--more necessary in fact for more could in the long run
be made of an ignorant people that was fit and healthy physically
than of a race of white-faced cripples, whom society had crammed with
book-learning to satisfy its theories as barbarously as it crams geese
with food to satisfy its palate. We are entitled therefore to demand
the free feeding of all children attending Public Elementary Schools.
Of course all sorts of less drastic proposals will be made--proposals
for feeding destitute children only, or for making a charge, or for
recovering the cost of the meals from the parents. Some of these
proposals will be better than others, and we must take the best we can
get. But none of them will solve the problem. Nor will the problem be
solved by any merely permissive legislation, giving local authorities
the _power_ to feed children without compelling them to use it. A local
authority has no more right to underfeed its children than a parent
has. All local authorities must be held responsible for the proper
feeding of school children with their areas of administration, as they
are already held responsible for their proper instruction.

At the same time another policy might be adopted the results of which
would indirectly be of perhaps still greater value. I suggest that
while these experiments are proceeding there should be a periodical
physical examination of all the children in the elementary schools
by duly authorised medical officers. This would be a good test of
the success of the new feeding policy and might form the basis for
an extension of the principle of grants in aid to encourage those
municipalities which were most zealous in looking after the physical
well-being of the children. But its usefulness would not end there; it
would provide us with what we most want a really reliable collection of
sociological data upon which future reforms could be based.

But when the child leaves school the need of protection by no means
ceases. Our factory code already recognises that the setting of
children to hard commercial work before their minds and bodies have had
time to develop is as wasteful (from a national point of view) as it is
inhuman. But the application of the principle is still half-hearted.
Children over eleven can in some parts of the Kingdom be employed in
factories provided that they put in one school attendance per day; the
age at which even this provision ceases to operate is fourteen, after
which the children are held to become “young persons,” and may work
sixty hours or more per week. This is clearly very little security
for the physical and moral development of the race. No child should,
under any circumstances whatever, be allowed to work for wages until
he or she is--say fourteen. From fourteen to twenty the “half-time”
arrangement might be made to apply, and, as has already been
suggested, we could use the time so gained in order to give the young
people effective technical, and, in their latter years, also military
training, thereby immensely improving their physique and at the same
time forming a national reserve of almost invincible strength.

But after all most social problems come back in the end to the wages
problem. If the workers received better wages many of the questions
which now perplex us would solve themselves. And here we are brought
directly to what Mr. Sidney Webb has called “the policy of the National
Minimum.” The principle of the national minimum has been long ago
embodied in legislation, and is in reality the root idea of factory
acts, public health acts, restrictions on over-crowding and most other
social reforms of the last century. But its possibilities are by no
means exhausted. We must develop it further along the same lines until
it gives us what we most want, a statutary minimum wage for labour.
This has been partially established in a few of the most prosperous of
our staple industries by the development of Trade Unionism. Its much
needed application to the unskilled trades where the rankest sweating
abounds can only be made possible by the exertion of state authority.
To those who are soaked in the Liberal tradition of “free contract” of
course the legal minimum wage will seem a piece of odious tyranny, but
there is, as it seems to me, no essential difference between the fixing
of maximum hours by law and the fixing of minimum wages. It is at least
as important to the community that its citizens should not be underpaid
as that they should not be overworked.

The Trade Unions to which we owe nearly all that betterment of the
condition of the workers which Liberals absurdly attribute to Free
Trade, cannot possibly be allowed to remain in the impossible position
in which recent legal decisions have placed them. But that is no
reason for agitating for what is called the _status quo ante_, which
is neither practicable nor desirable. The sound demand is that the
law should be made clear; that it should put single employés and
combinations of workmen on an equal footing; that legal disabilities of
Trade Unions should be removed; and that the liability of Trade Unions
should be definitely confined to those authorised acts of its servants
or agents for which a corporate body may fairly be held responsible.
This on the face of it is reasonable, and should be applicable to
employers’ associations also, so that when the time comes for the
enactment of a Compulsory Arbitration Law (as in Australia)--that is
when the trade unionists themselves recognise the desirability of such
a measure, the machinery for its execution will be available.

Then there is the perennial and apparently impenetrable problem of the
Unemployed. This is one of the problems which in all probability cannot
be finally solved except by a complete reorganization of society. But,
wisely handled, it can be palliated and reduced to more manageable
proportions. In discussing this question a distinction must always
be made between the temporary unemployment to which all workmen are
liable, and the permanent or chronic unemployment of the great masses
of the unfit which our social system is always throwing off. These poor
wretches are no more to be blamed for their idleness and worthlessness
(from the social standpoint) than the rich shareholder is to be blamed
for his. But their presence unquestionably complicates the problem and
their treatment must inevitably be different. The first thing to do is
to get at the facts. For this purpose there should be a Labour Bureau
in connection with every considerable local authority which should
keep a record of the state of the labour market from time to time.
These bureaus should be in constant communication with a Department
of Labour at Westminster, which is one of the most pressing needs of
the hour. As to relief works, Mr. Long’s farm colonies are good so
far as they go; schemes for re-afforestation and the reclamation of
fore-shores are perhaps even better. But it is well to keep in mind
that the great aim of all social reformers should be to eliminate the
“unemployable” class altogether. Mr. Webb’s “national minimum” policy
if carried out in all its branches would practically do this.

The question of employment is closely connected with the whole question
of our Poor Law, which badly wants re-modelling. Such a process should
include the abolition of the Poor Law Guardians (the last relic of the
_ad hoc_ principle and a far more indefensible one than the School
Boards) and the transfer of their powers to the local authority best
fitted to deal with them,--probably the County and Borough Councils. It
should also of course include the establishment of universal Old Age
Pensions, a measure whose popularity is as manifest as its justice, as
was proved in 1895, when it contributed enormously to swell the Tory
majority. The fact is that our present Poor Law was the first product
of middle class Liberalism, flushed with its stupendous victory of
1832. It is founded unmistakeably on the principles of that creed,
which, believing in the eternal justice of “economic harmonies,”
regarded the fact of a poor man being out of work as convincing proof
of his worthlessness and criminality. It is as impossible for us, as
the old Poor Law was for them.

Less obvious but not less certain is the connection between all these
problems and the decline of our agriculture. It is the decline of
agriculture which has driven into the towns the masses of unskilled
labour with which we have to deal. Indeed the Liberals foresaw and
deliberately planned this, when, first by the Poor Law and afterwards
by the Repeal of the Corn Laws, they drove labour off the land in
order to obtain it cheaply in the great industrial centres. And that
is how the situation has worked out, so that it is important, no less
in the interest of the town proletariat than in that of the country,
that we should re-organise the first and most necessary of our staple
industries. The idea apparently entertained in some Liberal circles
that this can be done by the taxation of land values is, as Mr.
Brougham Villiers has pointed out in “The Opportunity of Liberalism”
(not altogether I should suppose to the gratification of his Liberal
friends), on the face of it absurd. The end at which we are aiming is
not that the state should own the ground rents but that it should own
the land and the capital used to develop it, and it is towards this end
that our policy should be directed. To this end we want an energetic
system of state aid to farmers such as that already inaugurated by
Sir Horace Plunkett and others in Ireland. We want loans to farmers
on state security and experiments in cooperative farming under state
supervision and with state encouragement; we want increased powers for
local authorities in rural districts to buy and develop land; above
all we want light railways, cheap and rapid transit, an agricultural
parcels post (as proposed by Mr. Rider Haggard); and finally we want an
end put to the monstrous system whereby Railway Companies charge higher
rates to British than to foreign producers. When this policy has been
fairly tried we shall see whether we also want a protective tariff.
We do not want a tariff which will merely raise the landlord’s rent,
but, as I have already pointed out, Socialists have no theoretic bias
against such a tariff if it can be shown to be necessary to the public
interest.

But there is one question to which Socialists ought to devote a great
deal more attention than they show any signs of devoting at present.
Lord Randolph Churchill, the ablest and most far-sighted of modern
party leaders, saw its importance twenty years ago, and put it in the
fore-front of his programme. That question is the reform of government
departments. Until this is honestly faced and dealt with, the
Individualist will always have a powerful controversial weapon against
Socialist propaganda. When the Socialist demands that the state shall
undertake more duties, his opponent has only to point to the duties it
has already undertaken and ask if he wants any more duties performed
like that! A national system of transit run as the War Office is run
would hardly be an unqualified blessing and would probably produce
a reaction of the most damaging kind. The only answer is to reform
the government departments and make them workmanlike and efficient
bodies. Until this is done we shall be checked at every point every
time we want a measure involving state ownership carried. Moreover
we shall find it impossible to give effect to our policy of state
regulation. The War Office has on the whole been most unfairly treated
in being gibbetted as the supreme type of red tape and inefficiency.
In neither respect is it really worse than most other branches of our
administration--not so bad for example as the Local Government Board,
which is so hopelessly understaffed and so miserably ineffective that
it is obliged from mere instinct of self-preservation to oppose every
forward movement in municipal politics lest it should be overburdened
still further. It matters little who is its representative in the
Cabinet. It is the Board itself and not its President for the time
being that obstructs progress. Yet an efficient Local Government Board,
encouraging progressive local bodies and harrying up backward ones, is
an essential part of the “national minimum” policy. From every point
of view therefore it is essential that our departments of state should
be put on a new and better footing. A businesslike Home Office and a
businesslike Local Government Board would do more for social reform
than many acts of Parliament.



SOME MATERIALS AND A POSSIBILITY.


Successive Reform Acts have so widened the basis of the franchise
in this country that the working man has now the issue of the great
majority of elections in his hands. By the working man I here mean
the manual labourer who earns weekly wages; the definition is not
scientific, but it is I think effectively descriptive. It is difficult
to define a working man, but people know him when they see him, as
Mr. Morley said of a Jingo. The manual labourer then is master of the
situation; and it becomes a matter of primary importance for any party
which wishes for a parliamentary majority to consider what manner of
man he is, and what kind of policy is likely to receive his favour.

Now I have no sympathy at all with the contemptuous tone adopted by
most Socialists towards the working man. This scorn of the average
artisan or labourer may be regarded as the connecting bond between all
schools of modern Socialism in this country, the one sentiment common
to Mr. Hyndman and to Mr. Bernard Shaw. Were that scorn just, its
expression would be imprudent; for John Smith of Oldham, however stupid
he may be, is, as Mr. Blatchford has remarked “very numerous,” and in
a country ruled by the counting of heads it would be good policy to
treat him with respect and good humour. But it is not just. As a matter
of fact, the working man is by no means the slavish imbecile that some
Socialists seem to think him. The fact that he has built up with iron
resolution, in the face of stupendous difficulties, and at the cost of
terrible sacrifices, the Trade Union system of this country--perhaps
the noblest monument of the great qualities of the British character
that the century has seen--might well protect him from the sarcasms of
wealthy idealists. If he is not a Socialist, is that altogether his
fault? Or is it by any chance partly ours?

The British workman is not, as I have said, by any means a fool. He
does not enjoy being sweated; he is not in love with long hours and
low wages; he does not clamour for bad housing or dear transit. On
the contrary, when sufficiently skilled and educated to be capable of
effective organisation, he is a keen trade unionist, ready to stand
up promptly and with conspicuous success for the rights and interests
of his class; and he has shown himself able and willing to support
legislation for his own benefit and that of his fellows. The Socialists
have in him excellent raw material of which a most effective fighting
force could be made. How do they use him?

The first thing that a Socialist of the old school does, when brought
face to face with a working class audience, is deliberately to insult
it. I heard of one Socialist orator who began his address to an East
End meeting with the sentence--“What are you? Dogs!” I suggest that
this is not the way to placate the unbeliever or to allay the suspicion
with which his conservative instincts lead him to regard a new idea.
Moreover it is not true. The working man knows perfectly well that he
and his class are not “dogs”; and he rightly concludes that a man so
profoundly ignorant of his condition is not the man to improve it.
However, having collectively and individually insulted those whom he
seeks to convert, the preacher launches joyously into the abysses
and whirlpools of German philosophy and economics, calls his hearers
“proletarians” (to their intense astonishment), tells them that they
are being robbed of “surplus value,” discusses abstruse matters
concerning the relations between “exchange value” and “labour power,”
and generally leads them through mazes of foreign scientific jargon
from which they eventually emerge gasping for breath. Now I submit
that this is an absurd way of going to work. Not so did Cobden and his
allies act, when they set out to convert the middle classes to the
dogmas of Adam Smith. They had a systematic theory of economics as
elaborate as that of the Marxian, but they did not pelt miscellaneous
popular gatherings with its technicalities. They crystallised it into
one simple, effective and intelligible phrase,--“To buy in the cheapest
market and to sell in the dearest.” I will not disguise my personal
conviction that this maxim is of and from the Devil. But (perhaps for
that reason) it is lucid and unmistakeable and makes a definite and
persuasive appeal to the instincts and prejudices of the commercial
classes. I fear I cannot say as much for the crystallizations favoured
by Socialist propagandists. “The Abolition of the Wages System” and
“Production for Use and not for Profit” convey to the workman, I
imagine, no clearer meaning than they convey to me.

I am aware that there has been of late in Socialist circles something
of a reaction against this sort of thing, as also against the futile
Marxian prophecies to the effect that “economic forces” would produce
a “Crisis” which would have the effect of abolishing the capitalist
system whether anyone wanted it abolished or no. But the reaction
has taken an entirely wrong turn. It has resulted so far in nothing
better than an outburst of sheer sentimentalism as unacceptable to
the hard conservative common-sense of the workers as the doctrinaire
revolutionism that preceded it. The chief expression of this
sentimentalism may be found in the repudiation of the Class War by
the leaders of the I.L.P. and the substitution of vague talk about
Universal Love and the Brotherhood of Man. Now here the I.L.P. leaders
have got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick. The existence of
the class war is a fact of common observation. A short walk down any
street with your eyes open will show it to you. Indeed it is obvious
that there is and must be a permanent antagonism between the buyers
and sellers of labour--or if our hyper-economic critics prefer it of
“labour-power.” And moreover this fact of the class war is a fact,
which every workman (as also every capitalist) recognises in practice,
if not in theory. All trade unionism is built upon his recognition of
it; so is the demand for a labour party. The error of the S.D.F. did
not lie here.

The Marxians were not wrong in saying that there was a class war;
there is a class war. They were not wrong in saying that the worker
ought to be educated in class-consciousness; they ought to be so
educated for their class-consciousness is the best foundation for our
propaganda. Where the Marxians were wrong in regard to the class war
was in their tacit assumption that “class-consciousness” was identical
with Socialism. It is not. Socialists and Trade Unionists are alike in
their _recognition_ of the class war, but they differ widely in their
attitude towards it. The Socialist wishes so to organise society as
to bring the Class War to an end; the Trade Unionist wants the war to
go on, but he wants his own class to get better chances in it than
they get at present. As regards practical matters the path of the two
is for the present largely identical. Extended factory legislation,
old age pensions, housing, the municipalisation of monopolies are
desired by Socialists and Trade Unionists alike, though not entirely
for the same reasons. Here and there, on Trade Union Law, on Compulsory
Arbitration in industrial disputes, in some instances on Child Labour,
the attitude of the two may appear different, but it only requires the
better economic education of the unions to bring them into line with
the Socialists on these points. Nevertheless, the distinction as well
as the relation between the two must be kept constantly in mind, if
the attitude of the typical manual worker towards Socialism is to be
understood.

I confess that it strikes me as a little absurd that the very wing of
the Socialist army which most enthusiastically defends the obviously
sensible policy of forming an alliance with the Unions without asking
its allies to swallow imposing Socialist formulae, should be the one
to throw over the one effective link between Socialism and Trade
Unionism,--the recognition of the Class War. The result of this
repudiation and of the high-sounding humanitarian rhetoric with which
it is accompanied has been to hopelessly estrange the I.L.P. from the
Trade Union movement, so that it is now hardly more influential in that
direction than the S.D.F. itself. The I.L.P. does indeed to some degree
enlarge its boundaries, but the type of man it now principally attracts
is not the trade unionist or the labourer. The sort of person who finds
the I.L.P. creed as mirrored in the utterance of Messrs. Keir Hardie
and Bruce Glasier exactly to his taste is the wavering Nonconformist in
process of ceasing to believe in God who is looking about for something
“undenominational” to believe in. Universal Love, Brotherhood,
Righteousness--all that sort of thing suits him down to the ground. The
phenomenon is no new one in history. Just the same kind of sentiment
underlays the political propaganda of Isaac Butt, of Vergniaud, of Sir
Harry Vane. Its track is across history; its name is Girondism, and
its end has always been futility and disaster. The pious Girondins
were shocked at Danton’s declaration “terror is the order of the day,”
just as the I.L.P. rhetoricians are shocked at the recognition of the
Class War, because it contradicted their sentimental assumptions. But
Terror was the order of the day, and it was only because Terror was the
order of the day that France was saved from foreign conquerors and the
Revolution became an accomplished fact.

But, if the worker really does recognise the class war and if the
path of Socialism is for the present along the lines of the class
war, why does the worker distrust the Socialist? I have hinted at my
answer in a previous chapter, but I will take the present opportunity
of elaborating it a little. When Socialists of either of the above
types leave German dialect and Girondin declamation, which he does
not understand and come to practical business which he does, they
give the working man very little that he values and much that is
profoundly distasteful to him. When for example they touch on war and
foreign politics they give him, under a veil of specious rhetoric
which does not convince him, the general impression that they want
to see England “licked.” He does not like this, and he expresses his
dislike vehemently and not always very peaceably. Doubtless he often
vents his anger on people whose patriotism is as real as his own, and
who merely differ from him as to the merits of some particular war or
expedition. But on the whole the astonishingly shrewd instincts of
the workers do not mislead them. They are right in feeling that there
is in the Socialist movement a strong under-current of unmistakeable
anti-patriotism, a genuine hatred and contempt for England and her
honour. If anyone doubts this, I do not think he has spent so much time
in Socialist clubs as I have.

If all this anti-patriotic sentiment, which disgusts and repels the
workers so much, were an essential part of Socialism we might have to
accept our unpopularity as the inevitable penalty of our convictions
and make the best of it. But, if I have not proved that it is nothing
of the sort, this book has been written in vain. Anti-patriotism,
anti-imperialism, anti-militarism, these are not Socialist doctrines
but the faded relics of a particularly debased form of Liberalism.
There is nothing in Socialism to prevent us from appealing to the
passionate patriotism of the masses; there is much in it to give point
to such an appeal.

The workman is a Tory by instinct and tradition. He is a Jingo--a
much healthier and more reputable Jingo than his brother of the
stock-exchange,--but still a Jingo in the most emphatic sense. I am
moreover convinced that he is at heart a protectionist. He dislikes
the idea of a tax on bread, especially as Mr. Chamberlain gives
him no really convincing guarantee of better industrial conditions
to follow; but I believe, and I note that I have the support of so
irreproachable a Liberal and Free Trader as Mr. Brougham Villiers in
this belief, that, if at any time during the last quarter of a century
the protection of manufactures alone had been offered to the working
classes, they would have accepted it with the utmost eagerness. It is
noticeable that as soon as the workman goes to the Colonies he becomes
an out and out Protectionist. This would hardly happen if he had
imbibed the pure milk of Cobdenism with as much relish as the Liberals
would have us believe.

Here then is your Tory Jingo Protectionist working man. What are you
going to do with him? It is easy enough to abuse him, but he is your
only possible electoral material, he is the man by whose vote you have
got to establish Socialism if it is to be established at all. There are
much fewer Liberals than Tories among the workers and such as there
are will much less readily join you, for they represent generally the
uncompromising individualist Radicalism which spread from the middle
orders down through the upper ranks of the artisans during the dark
days of Manchester ascendancy. It is from the Tory much more than from
the Liberal worker that the Labour party gets its votes,[11] even now,
while its still burdened with a dead weight of senseless Liberal
traditions. How much greater would its expansive force become if once
this burden was removed.

What deduction must we draw from these things? Surely this; that we
must appeal to the working classes on a double programme of practical
and immediate industrial reform at home and at the same time of
imperial federation, a spirited foreign policy and adequate provision
for national defence. I believe this experiment would succeed, at any
rate it has never yet been effectively tried. When Mr. Bernard Shaw
taunts the workers with their steady Tory voting, one feels disposed to
ask him what he expects. Surely he would not have them vote Liberal?
And if he replies that they should vote Socialist, one may throw down
this direct challenge--Would Mr. Shaw himself (the most brilliant,
the most acute and the most sincere of English Socialists) vote for a
good many of the Socialist and “Labour” candidates who have from time
to time presented themselves before the British electorate? Would he
not himself often prefer a Tory? But is there any reason to suppose
that if a leader came to us with the specific talent and temperament
of the demagogue (the value of which to a politician Mr. Shaw knows as
well and regards as highly as I do) and made his appeal on the Fabian
programme plus a vigorous and intelligent Imperialism, the people of
England would refuse to return him? I think not.

If the Labour party could only be persuaded to make such an appeal it
might yet redeem its mistakes and become a dominant force in politics.
If not, if we go on as we have been going on in the past,--if
the S.D.F. goes on pelting the “class-conscious proletariat” with
multi-syllabled German metaphysics, if the I.L.P. continues to give
altruistic and humanitarian commonplaces to those who ask for bread,
if some of the brilliant _intellectuels_ of middle class Socialism
continue to treat the working classes as if they did not matter and
could be trapped into Socialism against their will,--if in a word
we go on insulting and bewildering those whom we wish to convert,
addressing them in all the unintelligible tongues of Babel and forcing
down their throats doctrines which they detest, then we shall never
lead the workers. And if we do not lead them someone else will. Yes
someday we shall be faced in this country by the appearance of a man
who understands the working classes and can make them follow him. All
parties will look at him askance the Labour party most of all. He will
be called “Jingo,” “Reactionist,” “Taker of Tory Gold.” But he will
have the people of England behind him, because he will comprehend them
and believe in them, desire what they desire, feel as they feel. And if
he does what such a man did once in this country, when the “Girondin”
Vanes and Sydneys were babbling about “democratic ideals” as we are
babbling now, if he drives our talkative and incompetent Commons from
their House and establishes a popular Caesarism on the ruins of our
polity,--the blame will not be his. The blame will be ours. It will be
ours because we, whose mission it was to lead the people could only
find time to despise the people,--because we could not and would not
understand!



FOOTNOTES:

[1] Note for example the action of the Irish Members in securing the
exclusion of Convent Laundries from the operation of the Factory
Acts--action of which every enlightened Roman Catholic, to whom I have
spoken of it, has expressed strong disapproval.

[2] Social Democracy and the Armed Nation, Twentieth Century Press, 37a
Clerkenwell Green, E.C. 1d.

[3] Fabianism and the Empire, edited by Bernard Shaw, the Fabian
Society, 3, Clements Inn, W.C. 3d.

[4] There is one of Mr. Blatchford’s proposals to which I feel the
strongest possible objection; that is the suggestion that those who do
not volunteer for his citizen force should pay extra taxation. This
sounds fair enough, no doubt, but its effect would clearly be that
the rich could escape service and the poor could not--which is hardly
a Socialist ideal. Surely it is sounder policy to make such citizen
training as you give compulsory for all able-bodied citizens.

[5] Since these pages were sent to the press a striking confirmation
of my view has been furnished by recent occurrences in Russia. There,
it will be remembered, the populace (acting on strictly Tolstoian
principles) marched _unarmed_ to lay their grievances before their
Sovereign. We all know what happened. They were shot down and cut to
pieces by Cossacks. One hopes that the survivors will be less faithful
to Count Tolstoi’s gospel in the future, and will perhaps realise that
“moral force” is an exceedingly poor protection against bullets and
bayonets.

[6] Lest I should be accused of “sitting on the fence” (a phrase much
beloved by those who always want to have judgment first and evidence
afterwards) I may as well state definitely that in my opinion a
protective tariff, if framed by genuine reformers solely in the public
interest, would be decidedly advantageous to Labour.

[7] I omit mention of the proviso whereby certain Non-County Boroughs
and Urban District Councils have authority over Elementary but not over
Higher Education. The concession was a most unfortunate one, but it
does not affect the general drift of my argument.

[8] The gentleman in question announced, if I remember rightly that he
proposed to avoid this misunderstanding by showing in his front garden
a placard with the inscription--

“MY GOODS ARE BEING SOLD TO PROMOTE RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.”

--a remarkably candid confession!

[9] _The Case for Municipal Drink_ by E. R. Pease (King & Son).

[10] The Labour Party might also take up the question of the
development of Crown Lands (especially those containing minerals), to
which Mr. Sheridan Jones has lately been drawing public attention.

[11] A good illustration of this may be obtained by comparing the two
by-elections which have taken place since the present parliament was
elected, in North-East Lanarkshire. In both cases a typical orthodox
Unionist and a typical orthodox Labourite were in the field. But the
Liberal candidates were of a very different type in the two cases. In
September 1901 (while the South African War was still in progress)
the Liberal candidate was Mr. Cecil Harmsworth, of the “Daily Mail,”
an Imperialist of so pronounced a kind that all the organs of the
Anti-Imperialist press and many of the Leaders of Anti-Imperialist
Liberalism advised the electors to vote for the Labour candidate. This
year on the other hand the Liberal candidate was a strictly orthodox
Liberal who succeeded in uniting all sections of the party. I give the
figures for both elections.

       By-election 26/9/01.

  Sir W. Rattigan (U)         5673

  Mr. C. Harmsworth (L)       4769

  Mr. R. Smillie (Lab)        2900

       By-election 10/5/04.

  Mr. Finlay (L)              5619

  Mr. Touch (U)               4677

  Mr. Robertson (Lab)         3984

The noticeable thing about these figures is the enormous increase in
the Labour poll. It may reasonably be supposed that the fulminations
of a large section of representative Liberal opinion against Mr.
Harmsworth produced some effect on the voting, and one may therefore
take it that a fair number of electors, who voted for Mr. Smillie in
1901, voted for Mr. Finlay in 1904. Yet Mr. Robertson’s gain is far
greater than Mr. Finlay’s. This can only mean that a large number
of working men, who, in time of war voted for the Tory Imperialist
candidate, voted for the Labour candidate in time of peace.



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE


This eBook makes the following corrections to the original text:

    Pg 23 “pratically” changed to “practically”
    Pg 47 comma added after “origin”
    Pg 53 comma added after “leave”
    Pg 57 “Ultramonanism” changed to “Ultramontanism”
    Pg 63 “inpossible” changed to “impossible”
    Pg 64 period added after “divisions”
    Pg 70 “ebulition” changed to “ebullition”
    Pg 72 comma added after “attacked”
    Pg 77 period added after “unconscious”
    Pg 84 comma changed to period after “system”
    Pg 95 period added to “Mr Chamberlain”
    Pg 107 period removed before colon
    Pg 116 “repudition” changed to “repudiation”
    Pg 119 period added after “Voluntary School”
    Pg 124 period added after “ad hoc”
    Pg 124 comma added after “foreign affairs”
    Pg 131 “nausious” changed to “nauseous”
    Pg 144 “shold” changed to “should”
    Pg 147 “couse” changed to “course”
    Pg 149 “abandon the the” changed to “abandons the”
    Pg 150 period added after “for it”
    Pg 152 period added after “statesmanship”
    Pg 156 period added after “surroundings”
    Pg 167 “inadmissable” changed to “inadmissible”
    Pg 168 “attentuated” changed to “attenuated”
    Pg 182 comma added after “a priori logic”
    Pg 183 “economic of political” changed to “economic or political”
    Pg 198 “socialogical” changed to “sociological”
    Pg 199 “develope” changed to “develop”
    Pg 209 period added after “kind”
    Pg 218 “to-wards” changed to “towards”
    Pg 202 “employées” changed to “employés”
    Pg 225 “artizans” changed to “artisans”
    Pg 230 comma changed to period after “Gold”



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