By the Way. (1915)

The By The Way Column from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent issue of the “Daily Dispatch” a writer deals at some length with the M.P.’s who had the temerity to vote against the National Registration Bill. He says :

“It was a motley group which challenged a division on the Registration Bill last night, and its composition furnishes an interesting indication of the character of the opposition which the National Government will have to meet. . . . There were gathered together ‘all who were discontented,’ and it was a quaint collection of disappointed ex-ministers, radical purists, cranks and anti-British Socialists.”

The writer goes on to describe this “motley group” as “Strange Bed-fellows,” and makes the mistake of calling these labour fakers Socialists. Moreover, this gentleman overlooks another contributor to the same paper, Mr. H. M. Hyndman—the “Revolutionary Socialist”—holding the same views as avowedly capitalist writers to the ‘”Dispatch.” And what of the Liberal and Tory coalition with a mingling of Labourites !

Perhaps it would not be amiss in the circumstances to take a peep at the division list to which the “Dispatch” scribbler refers. We find that the ‘”Socialists” spoken of includes Messrs. W. C. Anderson, C. W. Bowerman, J. F. Jowett, J. R. MacDonald, P. Snowden, and J. H. Thomas. The remainder of that hotch potch known as the Labour Party voted for the Bill ! If the “Dispatch” derives any satisfaction from their reference to these “strange bedfellows,” it at least gives us the opportunity of repudiating the claim of these latter to the title they usurp whenever and wherever it suits their purpose to do so—the claim that they are Socialists. A careful study of the antics of those gentry in and out of the House of Commons will suffice to prove their worthlessness to the working class.

* * *

Lord Kitchener, in big speech at the Guildhall on July 9th, made a passing reference to the object of the National Register. He delivered himself as follows :

“When registration was completed they ‘would be able to note men between nineteen and forty not required for munitions and other necessary purposes, and therefore available, if physically fit, for the firing line. Steps would then be taken to approach them with a view to enlistment, unmarried men to be preferred.” “Reynold’s,” 11.7.15.

* * *

Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the “father of English Socialism,” recently contributed an article to the “Daily Dispatch” (7.7,15) on the subject of “National Registration and National Liberty,” in which he endeavoured to show how the first will safeguard the last. Throughout the article we find him mouthing the usual capitalist prattle, such as “many valuable ships of war have been sunk, and our mercantile marine is suffering from systematic piracy.” A little admonition is dealt out to “our rulers, who for months on end refused to recognise that we “were face to face with relentless enemies organised for the purpose of crushing our allies and ourselves.” He goes on to say that “such organisation, prepared and matured during at least forty years, can only be successfully encountered and overcome by equal organisation voluntarily accepted,” and “whatever may be urged against certain clauses of the War Munitions Act, no such criticism can be fairly levelled at a measure whose object is to put directly at the national disposal the whole of the power of the nation as represented by its entire population for work or for war.”

Doubtless the phrase “national disposal” should read the disposal of the master class, in whose interest the war is being waged, as the working class were not consulted in the signing of any treaties beforehand or the reasons for entering the war. Not a word do we find about “secret diplomacy” which led to war and used to be his pet hobby horse.

Mr. Hyndman further informs us that “nothing for which the masses of our people have ever striven is more important than that they and all of us should win in this tremendous war against the ruthless military caste—happily the last left on the planet (!)—that menaces the rights and freedom of mankind.” And again: “If the Kaiser succeeds in his great endeavour to dominate Europe what chance have we English, or any other nationality, of working out freely and peaceably our own economic and social salvation ?” So Socialism depends upon the whim of the Kaiser, eh ? It depends not on economic circumstance but on dynastic circumstance—according to this blind leader of the blind.

In conclusion he adds that it is “our duty to marshal our entire forces … to ensure safety for ourselves and security for our allies. If for the purpose of achieving this result we are all obliged to submit ourselves to national discipline . . . then the temporary sacrifice of personal liberty will be well rewarded in the end.” Mr. Hyndman at the same time points out that ‘this suppression of our individual liberty” should be “duly safeguarded against bureaucratic tyranny.” But who can guarantee this ?

Doubtless these outpourings will obtain for this “oldest Social-Democrat in Great Britain” the “well done, thou good and faithful servant !” of the masters. (Italics mine.)

* * *

A series of questions were recently asked in the House of Commons touching the matter of whether it was not possible to grant the troops in the new armies facilities for visiting their homes for the purpose of bidding good-bye to their families. It was said that:

“The fare from Salisbury to Lancashire and Yorkshire was a sum beyond the means of many of these men to spare out of their pay ; and whether the Government would undertake that all who obtained leave before going abroad should be enabled to visit their homes free of cost ?”

And it was further asked :

“Whether the War Office would bear in mind that many of these men gave up remunerative posts in order to join the Army, and that their being prevented from seeing their relatives before going abroad through not being able to pay the fare would be a great hardship ?”

The official reply was that the question was being considered.

The remunerative nature of the positions that have been given up may be judged from the fact that those who have given them up have no reserve funds to pay their own railway fare home ; and on the other hand, what is to be said of the measliness of the country they are going to protect, that refuses to let them travel over the “Statized”‘ (temporarily) railways free ? Such paltry niggardness before the “happy warriors” have saved their masters’ bacon augurs well for the open-handed generosity of a traditionally “grateful country” when the maimed and battered remnants of “glorious humanity” are brought home after the struggle.

* * *

The Suffragettes are doing their best to keep their movement before the public. These people, who only a short time ago were busily engaged window smashing, church burning, and picture ripping, are now hailed as law-abiding citizens, whose services are to be used in order to free men from productive processes so that the latter may be driven into the trenches. These ladies, as they took very great care that all the world should know, recently organised a procession to send a deputation to Mr, Lloyd George to “demand the right to serve.” We are told that in the procession “peeresses walked shoulder to shoulder with shop girls and factory lasses.” The ulterior object is seen in the wording of a telegram received later by Mrs. Pankhurst from Mr. Hall Caine. It was given in the “Observer” (18.7.5) as follows :

“After to-day’s thrilling patriotic procession the Women’s Cause will triumph as surely as the sun will rise and the sea will flow.”

* * *

In all our (masters’) newspapers we are told to economise. Government organisations like the Parliamentary War Savings Committee take up the tale with all manner of blandishments. And now along comes Canon (I believe) H. D. Rawnsley pointing out that there is plenty of accommodation in the Lake District for holiday makers. He writes :

“It has come to my knowledge that some who were intending to come to the Lake District for their holiday have been put off by hearing that, in consequence of the war, the holiday makers who would otherwise have gone to the Continent or to the East Coast have thronged the district, and that accommodation is not to be had. I wish to give an emphatic contradiction to the rumour.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” 16.7.15.)

With Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and other great patriots urging Plunger Sniff the dustman and Sooty Sam the chimney sweep to economy, it is surely doing a disservice to the State on the part of Mr. Rawnsley to try to tempt them to find in the English Lake District a substitute for the lost charms of the Riviera and the pleasures of shove-ha’penny at Monte Carlo. For shame, sir ! You will not let our corduroy prodigals come to the rescue of their bleeding country through “retrenchment and reform” even when they want to.

* * *

At a time like the present, when we are hearing so much about our “liberty,” perhaps a few “rules” from a certain motor works would not come amiss. After having affixed his number and name on the front page the new wage-slave is informed that :

“Each employee must personally register in the time clock when he commences and ceases work.

“Employees ringing in late will be paid from the nearest half hour following the time rung in, and must begin work at once on entering the shop.

“The bell will ring in the morning, and after the luncheon hour two minutes before the time to commence work, so that all employees may have a chance to reach their respective places before the starting bell rings, when everyone must be in his place with his overalls on ready for work. Just entering the building on starting time will not be satisfactory.

“Receiving visitors, lunching, eating or reading is not permitted during working hours,

“Smoking or lighting cigars, pipes, etc., is absolutely prohibited.”

I will not not extend the list any further, sufficient being quoted to discover the need for a microscope to reveal our much-vaunted liberty.

The Scout.

“A Whiff of Grape.” (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the face of such a predicament as faces our lords and masters at the present moment the so-called labour problem assumes a visage that to the Socialist is both significant and humorous. The “patriotic” masters, in spite of the great need of the State for the good-will of their slaves, at least in the workshops, mines, factories and other and suchlike places where the slaves assume any importance at all, adhere with the tenacity of limpets to their old and natural policy of grinding the faces of those they have on the economic grindstone. However dire the need of the country that really, in substance and in fact, is theirs may be, their leech-like proclivities are only unleech-like in that they cannot gorge themselves to satiety.

The Welsh coal owners provide a typical example. In spite of the fact that, as Mr. Lloyd George says, “coal is everything for ‘us,’ and we want more of it to win victory.” “It bends, it moulds, it fills the weapons of war” ; in spite of the fact that their war fleet depends for its very life upon Welsh coal, the owners of the Welsh mines would not release in the smallest degree their clutch upon the throats of their wage-slaves. They could not realise, it seemed, that the whip which had driven the miners into the pits under the pre-war terms and conditions no longer had the power that it had in those days. The needs of the master class were too great and too urgent to permit of a resort to the old dodge of trying to starve the miners into submission. But the mine owners either were blind to this, or they counted upon the “patriotism” of the men to take the place of the whip of starvation. Anyhow, they drove the miners beyond the limits of patience before they abdicated, only showing their patriotism by placing themselves in the hands of the Government when they had lost the move.

This sort of thing has been going on all over the place. Everywhere the workers, faced with an increase of some fifty per cent. in the cost of living, have had to struggle bitterly to gain an advance of wages equal to but a fraction of the increased cost of living. And when they have been compelled to resort to the final step—the strike, what a howl of astonishment, indignation, and righteous (!) wrath has gone up from our masters’ Press !

Who does not remember what an “indelible stain” besmirched the “patriotism” of the Clyde shipyard men when they were guilty of refusing to let their masters have their labour-power on their own terms ? Who forgets what scoundrels the L.C.C. tramwaymen were for daring to put forward demands and taking the only action that counts for much in the way of supporting those demands ? And now it is the turn of the miners to be upheld as men who broke pledges—pledges which they had not given ; who had disobeyed their leaders—leaders whom the men pay to obey them ; who were murdering their comrades in the trenches—as if it were miners and not the masters who had sent them there.

Of course it could not be expected that the prostitute scribblers of the prostitute Press should remember that there are two sides to a disagreement as well as to an agreement. That the masters had deliberately chosen to sacrifice the efficiency of their own fleet and imperil their own forces in Flanders rather than relax a little the hard terms upon which their slaves could go down into the pits and tussel with Death for coal, was a facet of the position that the capitalist penmen would not be expected to have eyes for. Holders of any other commodity—any of the multitudinous products of labour—were to be permitted to push up the prices of their goods to the highest limit the unique situation gave them the opportunity to, and, no matter how necessary those commodities were, or how much misery their dearness brought upon immense numbers—of the people who don’t count, the working people—no word of stricture fell upon them. In the early days of the war, when it was claimed that only State control of the drink traffic could solve the problem of the shirker, the Government attempted to secure such control, but the brewers and distillers and other gentlemen of The Trade kicked up such a rumpus that the Asquithian courage oozed out and the project fell through—yet of all those newspapers who had shouted from the housetops that drink was lessening the output of munitions and killing the men in the trenches, not one ever applied to the brewers and distillers who refused to permit the drink to be placed beyond the reach of the “drinkers and shirkers” (and not, be it said, out of any love of the liberty of these latter) even the least of the filthy epithets they showered upon the men who had dared to claim a larger share of the wealth which they and they alone produced.

It was the sycophant claim of our masters’ Press that the miners should have continued to work while still negotiating ; but those who best know the master class in general and the mine-owners in particular, know very well that had they adopted this course they might have followed it to the end of the war—when the dispute would probably have been settled with the aid of policemen’s truncheons, as in the pre­-war days. But as a matter of fact the men had tried this plan of negotiating while continuing to work, like men who were afraid to fight for what they were demanding. They had had a bellyful. Their leaders had played into the masters’ hands and were treacherously advising the men to accept their exploiters’ terms. In any case where procrastination means that the the masters are escaping, even if only for the moment the heart-rending necessity of having to part with a share of their plunder, negotiation is the slowest coach upon the road ; but when the masters have get the men’s leaders on their side, then, indeed, the coach properly breaks down.

Those people who talk so glibly about negotiation seem to base their contention upon the pretention that all the employers want in order to induce them to meet the men’s demands is to have their ears tickled with sweet reasonable­ness. They know, however, that this is entirely false. They know that the only argument that ever touches the masters as such is the argument of force. There is no other effective appeal either to their reason or to their feeling. So long as they thought that the patriotic fervour of the men or the cajolery of the leaders would avert a strike negotiations brought the men no nearer the satisfaction of their demands. But look at the effect that was produced by the positive action of ceasing to work !

At once the Government, who showed a very mild interest in the terms and conditions under which coal came out of the mines so long as it did come out, was galvanised into the most acute interest and vigorous action ; at once the masters, finding themselves, in the absence of an army of blacklegs to fall back upon, utterly licked, retired from the contest, left the matter in tie hands of the Government, and expressed a very patriotic willingness to do whatever the Government told them. In a week the men were back at work again, in the enjoyment of the substance of pretty well all they demanded, if not the shadow, instead of the usual reward of negotiation, the capture of the shadow with the merest integument of the substance, or none.

This result was the fullest justification of the action the miners bad taken. This fact, however, did not save them from almost universal abuse, amongst which not the least venomous was that of their (so-called) leaders. These men, of course, who had struggled so hard to make them submit to the terms of the mine-owners, found that the victory, gained without their help, against their advice, in opposition, even, to their endeavours, placed them in a peculiar and unenviable position. That they fully appreciated this is amply shown by the utterances of one of their number, Mr. Vernon Hartshorn, as reported in “Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper” for July 25th. According to this report Mr. Hartshorn said :

“I am guilty of no exaggeration when I say that last week-end the very existence of the federation as a trade union organisation hung in the balance. Public opinion was against it because of the refusal to give the Government a little more time. It stood abandoned by the whole of the labour movement of the country. The occasion was a unique opportunity for a bold, bloodthirsty reaction.

“Public opinion, rendered nervous, savage, and ruthless by the present national dangers, would have approved the course taken, and, apart from sentimental resentment, the organised labour movement in the country would, perhaps, have acquiesced. I say emphatically that no leader has a moral right to lead his organisation into such a perilous impasse, and no leader with a proper conception of industrial strategy or of the tremendous powers which can be arrayed against labour when it makes a tactical slip would dream of doing.

“A few more days of restraint would have given the Government the chance to rectify its undoubted errors, and would have immensely strengthened the position of the federation with the public. But the opportunity was not given, and last week-end the sword of destruction, though the men as a body did not knew it, was banging over the federation.

“During those critical days the Government were tempted—there is no doubt about it—to deal with this isolated and sectional problem by the savage and crude old method of a whiff of grape shot, which has in many of the troubled periods of history destroyed the rising hopes of democracy and heralded a long reign of reaction and repression.

“What saved us and the country from such a disaster ? It is only fair to acknowledge, without reservation, that we were saved from that disaster not by any strength of our own but by the wisdom, generosity, and restraint, with which the ultimate crisis was dealt with, the Coalition Government.”

These, it is quite easy to see by anyone who has a fair knowledge of the facts of the case, are the words of a man who is under the necessity of rehabilitating himself in the eyes of those with whom it is important that he should stand well. The implication, however, that the fools who rushed in where such angels as Mr. Vernon Hartshorn dared to tread brought the miners so near to such dire perils as indicated is quite without foundation. A whiff of grapeshot, indeed ! The sword of destruction, by gosh ! It would be interesting to have Mr. Hartshorn’s authority for these statements.

The fact is that the whiff of grapeshot and the sword of destruction were quite “outside the range of practical politics,” as the capitalist critics so fondly say of Socialism. The mere fact that the mine owners recognised that the game was up and retired behind the Government shows this. If it is ever true that Governments take the line of least resistance, it is true at the moment when they have got more than enough trouble on hand in other directions. The line of least resistance was certainly not the line that might be cleared by whiffs of grapeshot. Mr. Hartshorn, even, had not the courage to state that the organised labour movement in the country “would have acquiesced” in the grapeshot treatment without that saving “perhaps.”

When Mr. Lloyd George took his “silver tongue” to Wales it was to talk a good face on the matter from the Government point of view. A certain prestige had to be maintained if possible. The “organised labour movement in the country” was not to get the idea that it had only to cease working in order to be granted anything that it wanted. The face of labour leaders, who had promised that, in return for being left out of the Munitions Act there should be lamb-like submission in the Welsh minefields, had to be saved as far as possible. So the miners were penalised by being brought under the Act which is absurdly useless as against two or three hundred thousand miners, though, it may suffice to deal with a couple of score of coppersmiths. The “silver tongue” had only the task of persuading the men to swallow this “bitter” pill, of disguising the completeness of the men’s victory, and throwing over the affair just that appearance of “wisdom, generosity and restraint” which their hack, Mr, Hartshorn, attributes to the Coalition Government. But as for whiffs of grape and swords of destruction, they are the mere invention of a discredited labour leader, of a would-be trade union boss who aspires to ambitious heights under the patronage of the workers’ enemies by assuming the role of dictator, and who is mortified in spirit by being flouted by those he would control, and jeopardised in fortune by the success of a course taken in defiance of leaders.

Let the workers understand their own affairs, shake off their “leaders,” and victory is theirs.

A. E. Jacomb

Book Review: Is Revolution ahead? (1915)

Book Review from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Social Problem by Chas. A. Ellwood, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology in the University of Minnesota. New York: Macmillan Co. 235 pp. 5/6 net.

“Nothing can prevent a war throughout Western civilization between the possessors and the dispossessed—a war infinitely more horrible than the present one—nothing except the dominance in the mass of individuals, or at least in the leaders of both classes, of intelligence and of the ideals of peace and brotherhood.” (p. 223.)

This is the burden of the book in a nutshell. The “Social Problem” according to the author, is to harmonise the warring factors that are wrecking civilization. Of these factors he claims that the one to be relied upon is the “spiritual.” He says:

“If the governing class will keep in touch with all classes; if those in authority in law, in industry, in education, in religion will seek first the public good ; if all classes will seek to keep open the means of understanding and sympathy with all other classes, there will be no more need of revolution as a means of social progress than there is of children’s diseases in individual development.” (p. 231.)

We have it, on the best authority that there is much virtue in your “if.” And the professor has by no means exhausted its possibilities. For example, if———, But why go on? The labouring man is learning in bitterness how utterly futile is the expectation that those in authority in industry, law and all the rest, will ever “seek first the public good.” Therefore from the facts upon which the learned professor bases his case we know that revolution is inevitable. Not only is it inevitable, but the professor himself tells us that it is also justifiable, for he says (p. 100) :

“The sacrifice of life through industrial accidents and disease, through overwork and underpay, through unsanitary dwellings, through commercialized pandering to men’s vicious appetites, we must cease to tolerate among us if we are to progress either morally or physically. The evils of war are great, but they are no greater than these evils of peace which we have tolerated too long.”

It appears, however, that it is not so much the evils of today which move the professor, as the fear of revolution. He indicates with apprehension (p. 83) that the industrial system generates class antagonism ; that class conflicts increase ; that class interest has become a war cry ; that class hatred grows ; and that a gulf, in social conditions as well as in feeling, develops between the fortunate and the less fortunate: “a gulf which the sympathy and understanding necessary for social solidarity finds it difficult to bridge,”

And how does the author set about his diffi­cult task ? In the first place by defining the social problem as “the problem of humans living together.” The definition is significant. It implies that a means is to be found of softening the antagonisms so that capitalist and labourer can peacefully live together. It leads him naturally to a gospel of social harmony by means of reform and mutual concession. Above all he abhors revolution. It is the end of all things. Like practically all of capitalism’s salaried intellectuals, he fears the working class far more than he dislikes his present masters ; and there is nothing he dreads more than a working-class dictatorship. Like most of his brethren, also, he agrees with all progressive thought—to a certain extent, and there are few advanced movements that do not get a kind word from him. But what he thinks the world really needs is a “new soul,” even more than a new economic system.

On the professor’s own showing, however there is little hope for his solution. He acknowledges that the gulf between the classes widens ; that the rulers are deaf to humanity ; and that the workers are without “soul.” He laments that the machinery for national and social peace inevitably breaks down, Yet he hopes by religion, by moral education, and by social reform to reform that growing social antagonism which these things have not only failed to arrest, but have tended to foster.

He grants that material conditions mould at least the framework of “our” civilization, and that these conditions tend to sharpen social contrasts and defeat his aims ; yet he claims, in effect, that out cf the minds of trained leaders, despite the hostile influences of economic forces as a whole, an intellectual force will be made to flow which will check these dangerous influences and divert them into harmonious streams.

Thus Professor Ellwood finds it necessary to reject the materialist conception of history and seek help from a dualism which relies mainly on the idea of free will, the immortal soul, and that god-given moral force by which any man can rise superior to, and dominate, his circumstances whenever he cares to exercise the will to do so. In short, the writer of the book takes sides with the priest, the Christian-scientist, the charlatan, the ignoramus and the metaphysician, on this important issue. Since, however, few will take up a logical position on that side owing to the very obviousness of most of the facts against them, a refuge is sought in a catholic eclecticism, the confusion of which makes it extremely difficult to nail down the basic error.

The professor is, nevertheless, for all his eclecticism, clear-headed enough to see where the chief danger to his position lies. He devotes considerable space to a discussion of the materialist conception of history. He admits practically all that is contended for in that philosophy ; but since he must find some way of escape, he does so by misunderstanding or misrepresentation. He

“cordially acknowledges the complete dependence of civilized man upon the economic system under which he lives ”

and goes on to say that

“the dependence of man upon economic conditions increases as civilization advances “But,” he adds, “when we have conceded that modern industry has shaped the main outlines of our civilization, that is not sufficient warrant for concluding that our industrial system determines every thing in our social life. On the contrary, it needs but little investigation to show that there are many intimate personal relations which are very far from being determined by the economic system under which we live. Men still think and feel and act in these intimate relations not so differently from what they did long before the present economic system was born. Many of the ideas, ideals and values by which men live, in other words, far antedate our present economic system, and will probably survive it long after it is dead. It is not true, therefore, that the spiritual elements in life, and especially not those contained in moral, religious and artistic ideas and ideals, are determined by methods of producing and distributing wealth.”

In other words, because all men’s ideas and acts are not entirely explicable from the present economic system alone, therefore the materialist conception of history is an error. The professor’s misrepresentation is obvious. Whence come those ideas for which the present system cannot account ? They do not come from God. They cannot be uncaused. We know them to be accounted for by past social conditions. Many intimate acts and relations of men antedate all historical forms of society, They are the outcome of the primitive struggle for survival over other animals. Other customs and ideas originate at various economic stages in mankind’s advance towards what is called civilization. It has never been said that the existing system alone accounted for everything in man’s ideas and acts. That is a fiction of the professor’s, and shows to what he is reduced in order to make a case. Ideas that are the outcome of past social conditions tend to persist, and are altered or modified where they come into conflict with succeeding social orders. This is notoriously the case, as shown in the pamphlet published by the Socialist Party, in the matter of religion to which the professor refers. The modifications that have taken place in this phase of ideology reflect in an obvious way the changing needs of changing social conditions.

For the rest, as the author of the book under review rightly surmises, revolution is inevitable in the event of the failure of his panacea. Neither in the working class nor in the ruling class can the soulful humanitarian ideals upon which he relies become dominant. Our social circumstances destroy them. Present economic conditions sow hate, not love. Figs cannot grow on thistles. If it were necessary to wait for a complete moral regeneration of the working class ; if the mass had first to overflow with love and charity for our oppressors, our case as well as the professor’s, would be utterly helpless. Fortunately it is not so. Economic development is with us. On it our essential case rests. The propaganda of revolutionary socialism is a direct effect of existing social conditions. Capitalist conditions indelibly stamp the ruling class with the selfish, cruel and hypocritical qualities of the exploiter ; and we know what a little part sentiment plays in the struggle. Therefore are we undismayed, even at the prospect of a ruthless and hate-inflamed proletariat battling desperately for the destruction of the present hellish system in order to make at last possible that development of society which shall, through social co-operation and mutuality of interest make realisable for the first time since primitive communism, the ideals of social harmony and human brotherhood.

F, C. Watts

Book Review: Ropes of Sand. (1915)

Book Review from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A way to Prevent War,” by Allan L. Benson. 180 pp. Cloth, 1 dollar. Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, U.S.A.

“If the people were in favour of war, the way to end war would be to convert the people to peace. This book is devoted to the task of showing that since the people are opposed to war the logical way to end it is to take the power to declare war from minorities who misuse it and vest it in the people who may be depended upon not to use it at all.” Thus does the author of the volume under review open his preface.

The busy reviewer who takes up a book for the purpose of criticism, and finds the key to his labours in the first paragraph, is a lucky man. “Since the people are opposed to war” ! “What an assumption to build up a 180 page tome upon ! Had the writer lived in England in August 1914; had he taken part in the perils of our outdoor propaganda soon after the outbreak of hostilities ; had he mounted the public platform in any of the belligerent countries last autumn, when the British bulldog was a gnashing of his teeth, and the French poodle and the Russian bear were tying themselves up in true lovers’ knots in their patriotic frenzy, and the German two-headed eagle was doing the porcupine act with his neck feathers, and only the Dutch cheese maintained his customary sanity (because he wasn’t a belligerent)—had he, the author of “A way to Prevent War,” taken the platform then and tried to tell the people that they “are opposed to war,” he would have experienced experiences that might have prevented him rushing into print on such a flimsy ground as the conception that the people would never use the power to declare war at all.

Mr. Churchill has told us that there are worse things than bloodshed, and it is true. Mr. Churchill, of course, meant that there are worse things than the shedding of other people’s blood, and thus put even fewer dissentients will raise voice against the statement. But if we are to believe Mr. Benson, there are no conceivable circumstances, no wrongs and oppression, which could urge the people to resort to arms if the option of peace and war lay with them.

Well, I for one say not so, and fervently hope not so. Bad, indeed, as this welter of blood is—and its horror vibrates not less strongly through the Socialist fibres of the reviewer than through the reformist fabric of his author—it is not so bad. by a very long chalk, as that the working class, if the power to make war was vested in them, could “be depended upon never to use it at all”—merely because, under Mr. Benson’s scheme, those who voted for war would be the first to be sent to the front.

The present futile and deplorable struggle, with all its appalling waste of life and all its stupendous agony and suffering, is not so bad as that other condition because it indicates that the workers are not lacking in the “animal” courage necessary for the achievement of their emancipation from wage-slavery, while on the other hand, if they would never resort to armed conflict at all under the condition that those who voted for war would be the first to be called upon to serve, that would simply indicate that they have not the courage to strike the blow which they must strike in order to set themselves free.

Mr. Benson says : “The world is tired of war.” This may be true enough now ; and anyway it is pretty certain to be true before the war is finished. That does not mean, however, that in a decade or so the world would decline to resort to force of arms again should circumstances similar to those which caused the present conflagration then obtain. No one, in all probability, will be more heartily tired of the war before it is finished than the capitalist class, who have got to pay for it ; yet even our author would not deny that it would be idle to expect the capitalist class to abolish war. Anyway he says that his program “will not be installed by the capitalist class,” (Page 4.)

What better reason has Mr, Benson for maintaining that the people (by whom he seems to mean the working class) need but the referendum on war in order to abolish war ?

The bottom of the argument is knocked out by the author’s own admission (p, 77) that “It is unfortunately true that scheming diploma­tists and jingo journalists have the power so to inflame peoples that they desire war.” What, then, is the use of talking about giving the people the “direct vote on tha war” ? To bam­boozle them into desiring war is to bamboozle them into voting war ; and to lay the voter under the penalty of having to fight if he votes for fighting is simply to challenge his courage. These things are patent to everyone save the crank who thinks he has discovered a short cut to the millenium.

The very fact that it is true that “scheming diplomatists and jingo journalists have the power to so inflame peoples that they desire war” shows that it is not so much the referendum on war that the people need as knowledge. Knowledge alone can save them from the wiles of the “scheming diplomatists and jingo journalists” interested in stirring up race hatred and exploiting the cowardice of those who have not the courage to face the charge of the white feather lancers. Granted that Mr. Benson, as a part of his scheme, provides the same penalty for those who advocate war through the Press or on the platform as for those who vote for it in the ballot, but the capitalists, with their unlimited means of inducing men and women to take personal risks (as witness the system of espionage existing in all capitalist countries) would find this very little deterrent to the people being so inflamed as to desire war.

Knowledge is the only safeguard against the workers being dragged into wars that do not concern them—knowledge that is, which has found its consummation in the capture of the machinery of government. This knowledge must be Socialist knowledge. It must be knowledge of the unity of interest of the workers of all countries, and the antagonism between that interest and the interest of the capitalists of all lands.

And mark this, that knowledge itself, while it precludes the possibility of the workers being inflamed for capitalist war, must on the other hand inflame them against the capitalists in the bitterest of all wars—the class war. As opposing interests are the cause of all wars, unity of interest is the only absolute safeguard against war. The Socialist recognises this and acts accordingly ; the pseudo-Socialist does not recognise it, and he acts accordingly also.

Hence we find Mr. Benson telling us (p. 101) “The advocates of the war referendum plan declare that if diplomacy were democratized and the war-making power vested in themselves, no war could be begun for which the people had not voted”—which, of course, is not less fatuous because it is true, if the people can be inflamed to desire war.

And hence also we find Mr. Benson arguing the question (p. 102) “whether the Socialist plan of ending poverty and war or the war-referendum plan is, in its nature, most likely to lead in mak­ing its way into the public understanding” and deciding (as a Socialist !) against the Socialist plan.

Another mistake of the author which residence in any of the belligerent countries might possibly have prevented him from making is the claim that women, if given the vote, “would vote overwhelmingly against war.” One who proclaims that “We Socialists take nothing for granted” might at least have spent some pains upon substantiating this claim. He might have endeavoured to show that the Socialist theory of the domination of material interests over human actions applies only to the male sex.

There are many other points of error in Mr. Benson’s book, only one particularly grave one can be mentioned here. This is the statement that the power for peace and war rests solely in the hands of a few politicians. Says our author: “134 men in Congress and one man in the White House have all of the power . .” (p. 11). This exposes a lamentable ignorance of the true facts of the case. The politicians are the servants of the master class, acting in their interests under such cloaks of hypocrisy and cant as they can devise.

The book is not without one merit. It brings before the public notice many of the wiles with which the diplomatists and politicians have carried out their masters’ work. The Bismarckian instances are very interesting reading though not altogether new to English readers. The events leading up to the Spanish American War are also worth perusal, and in particular the story of the “Maine.” How the American Government resisted for ten long years every demand to have the sunken warship raised from the slime of Havannah Harbour, and how it was eventually raised, taken out to sea, and sunk in order to destroy for ever the evidence of the falsity of the pretext for war which ten years previously it had provided, tell their own tale of Cultur, as unmistakably as certain other incidents related tell theirs of Culture and Kultur.

A. E. Jacomb