Dad Tells Sonny. The Tale of the Twelve, (1917)

A Short Story from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“An inquisitive child soon demonstrates the shallowness of a parent’s knowledge.”

– Someone or other.

“What, are you reading, Dad?”

“Just a pamphlet some kind-hearted, benevolent soul has left for my enlightenment, my son.”

“And what does the design at the top mean with the two large letters N.S. either side?”

“The lady with the angel’s wings and the tea tray represents Victory, and the two mystic letters represent quite a number of things.”

“Such as—”

“Nettleford’s Screws, Never Sweat, Noodles Swindled — ”

“Yes, but, Dad, be serious. What do they say the letters stand for ?”

“The heading is National Service, my son.”

“And what does that mean ?”

“It means, mon enfant, that in punishing the wicked and unspeakable Hun for the unpardonable crime of getting his wack in first, thousands upon thousands of Englishmen have been battered into pulp. Further thousands are required to undergo the same delicate process, the idea being that in the human pulping competition, we can just about lick the horrid Hun. The residue will be an ‘After the War Problem.’ Now then, these potential thousands of sacrifices are at present shivering, with glassy eyes and clammy hands, in whatever shoes they have managed to get into, hoping against hope that Murder will overlook them. This is where N.S. comes in. N.S. will say to the Man in a Small Way, ‘put up the shutters, you’re unessential.’ The Man in a Small Way will say, ‘but what about my busi­ness ? It’s essential to me, anyhow.’ To which N.S. will answer, ‘No Sauce, and No Shirking. Your business, if there’s any left after the National Sweatshops, Ltd. have done with it, will be an After the War Problem. Then he and his porter, his ox and his ass, his manservant and his maidservant, are pushed into the service of some big fat brother, possibly a competitor ; or into ploughing, aeroplane construction, quarrying, or other similar soft jobs, for which they are as suitable as a pickaxe is for painting landscapes, the result being that more of the country’s youth is made available for gory pulp. See ?”

“Yes, Dad. But surely they don’t put it like that, do they? ”

“Listen ! ‘Twelve good reasons why every able-bodied man should enrol for National Service.’ And then in brackets, ‘Read these reasons carefully and see if you can deny any one of them.’ So you see, my son, they explicitly invite my opinion. They ask me if I can deny any one of them.”

“And can you, Dad ?”

“I can, but I’m not going through the whole dozen for you or anybody else. For one thing life’s too precious, and for another it’s past your bedtime.”

“Oh, come, Dad, don’t be mean. Have a go at some of them at any rate.”

“Well, number one says the war is reaching its climax. Right ! Leave it at that. Number two says victory will mean the preservation of of our homes, our lives, our liberties, and all we hold dear, while defeat means the opposite. Now, son, where is Jones the greengrocer’s son ? ”

“You know he was killed at Festubert, Dad.”

“And did he join the British Army as a free man ?”

“No, Dad ! As a conscript. He loathed the Army.”

“And what has become of his home ?”

“Why, his wife had to sell most of it and go and live with her mother.”

“So that his liberty was the first thing to go, his life next, followed by his home and all he held dear.”

“Yes, Dad. But supposing the Germans had got over here ?”

“Well, son, could much worse have happened to him ? And further, mine infant, do you have to deprive a person of liberty before he will fight for it ? Take an illustration. Do I first have to undress you in order to make you clothe yourself ? Silly, isn’t it ? Now, son, I could say much more to you under the heading of liberty, but one of the present British liberties is that I mustn’t say it. Now for number three. This starts thusly :

“‘Because—having passed laws to compel men of certain ages to fight—it is the bounden duty … of every man to see that the Army and the Navy are provided with every­thing they need to secure Victory.’

“Notice, my little sonlet, there is still some little honour amongst politicians. ‘Having passed laws.’ Not ‘The nation having passed laws,’ or ‘The Forces of Fat having passed laws,’ or you ‘The Government having, etc.” So, for ought that appears to the contrary, we might say, ‘Mrs. Northcliffe having passed laws,’ or ‘The Forces of Fat having passed laws, it is the bounden duty of every man to do as he is told.’ Yours not to reason why ; yours but to do or die. In happier times we might permit ourselves to style this brazen effrontery, or we might give the faculty of wonder an airing by trying to reconcile the bringing of compulsion into a community revelling in liberty. But, my child, liberty is what you will know when you get older as an abstraction ; that is, it has no separate existence. That’s why it’s so popular in England, where the worship of the non-existent is as old as the hills.”

“That is a bit beyond me, Dad, but I suppose it’s all right. Now for the number four, old chap.”

“I told you before I’m not going to waste time on twelve chunks of fatuity when I might be reading Anatole France or sowing parsnip seed.”

“What does Anatole France say, Dad?”

“Oh, lots of things. For instance : ‘Wars are a hereditary evil and a lascivious return to savage life ; they are a criminal puerility.’ ‘Even now the white races communicate with the black and yellow ones only with the intention of subjecting or massacring them.’ ”

“He doesn’t flatter us, Dad, does he ?”

“No, son. This sounds prophetic, doesn’t it ? ‘The peace conference of the Hague, con­vened in the very midst of barbarism, contributed but little towards the maintenance of peace.’ ”

“When was that written ?” 

“I don’t know, but the volume in which I have it is five years old.”

“Hm ! I suppose ‘in the midst of barbarism ‘menus civilisation as we know it.”

“Got it. He says in another place: ‘what we call civilisation is nothing else than the present state of our customs and what we call barbarism is the state of the past.’ ”

“Dad, why are parsons exempted from Army Service ?”

“That’s nothing to do with Anatole France.”

“But doesn’t he say something that fits in anywhere ? ”

(After a search) “Well I’m jiggered ! Listen to this. ‘In telling the nations that one must suffer in this world in order to be happy in the next, religious tradition has obtained from them that pitiful resignation to all oppressions and iniquities.’ ”

“That seems to score a bull’s-eye, Dad.”

“Yes, pitiful resignation seems to fill the bill, exactly. Remember how the people took Conscription. Now the parsons are booming National Servitude.”

“I wonder what Anatole France would say if he had read the ‘Twelve Reasons.’ “

“I don’t know. Possibly, ‘it is his reasonable conversation which mostly frightens us in a madman.’ ”

“Dad, why did you say N.S. stood for Nettlefold’s Screws ?”

“Simply a passing fancy of mine, son. Nettlefold’s Screws are useful little articles and have provided several politicians with enough to keep them out of the Union.”

“What are they used for, Dad ? ”

“Oh, lots of purposes. But one use they have invariably.”

“And that is?”

“Screwing down corpses.”

“Good night, Dad !”

“Good night, son ! ”

Prospero.

Perverted History. The “Socialist” Countess’s Twaddle Exposed. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Little more than half a century has passed since in Japan the Samurai surrendered their privileges into the hands of the Mikado, and with their sacrifice the new Japan was born…. Suppose that our aristocracy, as a class, were to emulate the Samurai, that they were to place at the disposal of the State the Mother Earth that belongs to the State by right. They might reasonably accept a moderate recompense, something that would provide for them and their children on the scale of modest living that will become the rule when we begin to meet the price of war . . . How far fairer it would be for us to recognise and accept the truth and go as the Moors went from Spain, where they too had become an anachronism, though the beauty that made their sojourn remarkable lingers to this day. If we would make the supreme sacrifice of our traditions we could trust the common sense of our countrymen to see that no plutocrats stepped into the place we had vacated ; we could make our bargain with the State that it should be the supreme landlord spending the rent to make the lovely countryside at least as valuable to national life as the ugly town. We who came into the high places of Europe with the false halo of conquest would retire from them in the real halo of renunciation, and our act of supreme sacrifice would be a better memorial than the best of us could have hoped to gain.”

The above is from an article by the Countess of Warwick which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” of April 12th, 1917. The article is entitled “We Must Go.” The “We” is the “hereditary landowners,” to whom the appeal is made to hand over their land to the State, in the interests of greater productivity, and in justice to the workers, who have bled for it.

How the latter can benefit in any way from the proposed surrender of lands is made no clearer by the Countess than by any of the Fabian or I.L.P. treatises on the same subject.

State ownership of land, or, indeed, of any of the means of wealth production, solves no problem for the working class. Only common ownership with democratic control can do that. State ownership, that is, collective ownership by the capitalist class, as with the Post Office, for instance, leaves the workers still wage-slaves. The introduction of labour-saving machinery would therefore have the same effect as it has to-day. The countess, like many another reformer, overlooks this fact, though it should be obvious. She says: “The country has great needs, and if it is to remain solvent the united work of one and all following the latest developments with the most complete equipment will be inevitable.”

This policy in the past has resulted in increased unemployment for the working class ; its extension, therefore, can only result in greater poverty, arising from still further increased unemployment. State ownership of the land excludes the working class from the soil, except in the capacity of wage-workers. They are mere subjects of exploitation to those who provide with their capital the “most complete equipment,” and the rent to be paid to the State for the use of the land.

The fallacy of State ownership, however, has been so often exposed in these columns that we can afford to leave it for the present and deal with the other fallacy contained in the first quotation—that a ruling class has ever in the past renounced, or is likely in the future to renounce, its privileges and power unless compelled to do so by superior force. There is no record in history of a ruling class abdicating in favour of a class weaker than itself. Nor is there any record of a ruling class so imbued with a moral sense of justice and consideration for the class it governed, that it would, knowingly and willingly, sacrifice the meanest of its privileges to assist that class to its emancipation. The ruling class in capitalist society is stronger in its determination to maintain its rule and possesses more powerful weapons than any previous class in history. Its barbarity, as every contest with the workers testifies, equals and its hypocrisy exceeds, that of any previous ruling class.

But, the reader will ask, does not the countess give actual examples from history where a dominant class voluntarily abdicated? Both these examples are misrepresentations of the actual facts. Take the case of Japan. In that country the system of society previous to 1868 was similar in its essential features to the Feudal system of European countries. The Samurai were the military class, composed of territorial nobles, called Daimios, and their vassals or retainers. Strictly speaking, however, the term Samurai applied to these latter only. They and their families were kept by the Daimios, or had lands assigned to them for which they drew the rent, as under the Feudal system in Europe. This applied to the Daimios as well, who numbered about 255, and whose incomes varied between 10,000 and 1,027,000 koku of rice per annum.

The revolution that abolished this system was not of the same sanguinary character as the bourgeois revolution in France in 1689, or the English revolution in the time of Charles the First. “The two parties,” says Arthur Diosy, “were too unevenly matched for the struggle to become a severe one.” Therein lies the secret of its relatively peaceful consummation. The Daimios were between the devil and the deep sea ; they submitted to the inevitable—on the best terms they could obtain. They received from the State an annual income equal to one-tenth of their former income, and were relieved of the responsibility of maintaining the Samurai, who were taken over by the Government to form the nucleus of the Army and Navy. Those who held hereditary incomes were given the opportunity to sell their rights to the Government for half cash and half Government bonds.

Unlike the revolution that broke up the Feudal system in Europe, the Japanese revolution was projected, or rather accelerated, from outside the nation. Attempts to establish trading relations by occidental powers, sometimes, as in the American expedition under Commander Perry, involving a display of naval forces, rudely awakened the ruling class from their feudal sleep. The Mikado and his nobles were forced to recognise that they must establish their rule on Western lines, or they would speedily become a vassal State to one or other of the great Powers that, with increasing impatience, knocked at her gates with wares for sale—and with heavy artillery to batter them down if their admittance was long delayed.

In these circumstances the Mikado and his nobles, after consultation, and not without military opposition from some of them, took the only possible course to maintain their independence as a nation. They proceeded to organise the nation on the model of their capitalist neighbours, their first care being to establish a fighting force on land and sea, capable of warning off belligerent intruders and guaranteeing a share in the world’s markets to Japanese capitalists.

This action, taken in defence of their independence and based on a compromise or bargain between the nobles and their legitimate ruler, is what the countess describes as a sacrifice.

So much for the first example quoted by the Socialist (!) countess ; now for the second. The Moors entered Spain in 711 A.D., and in three years had “conquered the whole country, except the almost inaccessible regions of the North-West.” The Spaniards, according to their historians, waged almost uninterrupted warfare against them for nearly eight centuries. They gained the upper hand late in the fifteenth century, and then commenced a long period of religious persecution against the Moors, who were finally all converted to Christianity by burning, torturing and other methods approved by the Inquisition.

But their religious opinions were suspected by the clergy under Phillip III, who ordered their expulsion from Spain. “How far fairer it would be for us to recognise the truth and go as the Moors went from Spain, where they too had become an anachronism” says the countess, as though their going was a voluntary act of abdication.

They went, “about one million of the most industrious inhabitants of Spain,” says Buckle, “were hunted like wild beasts. Many were slain as they approached the coast, others were beaten and plundered, and the majority, in the most wretched plight, sailed for Africa. During the passage, the crew, in many of the ships, rose upon them, butchered the men, ravished the women, and threw the children into the sea. Those who escaped this fate landed on the coast of Barbary, where they were attacked by the Bedouins and many of them put to the sword. Others made their way into the desert, and perished from famine.”

The Moors ruled in Spain with the same arrogance that characterises every ruling class. Their rule became “an anachronism” because their power was broken and for no other reason. What childish nonsense, what a wilful perversion of history, to pretend that theirs was a voluntary act of renunciation. Yet it is on statements such as these that capitalist tools, wearing the Phrygian cap and waving the red flag of Socialism, gravely inform the workers that the shuffling, grabbing and hypocritical capitalist class will lead the working class, step by step, to its emancipation.

As in Japan, so in every European country—feudalism succumbed before the revolutionary power of the capitalist class. The fact that a compromise was afterwards effected, by means of which, feudal traditions and lineage were preserved, made no difference to the ultimate nature of society. Capital alone had voice. Was it not by means of capital that the wealth-producing class was exploited, and the national exchequer provided with the funds that maintained the fighting forces ? Lords and Barons might flaunt their heraldry, but the capitalist built his State on physical force and allotted monarchy and aristocracy their places in the capitalist State. The aristocracy were absorbed ; they became capitalists themselves and henceforth their interests were identical with those who had accomplished a revolution against them. For all practical purposes landowners and industrial capitalists form but one class—there is no serious friction between them. They control the executive power in the full determination—rarely expressed because so well understood—to maintain the existing system of society, and neither the prayers of morbid countesses nor the groans of their millions of starving victims will ever shake their resolve.

Only the organised might of the working class can break the power of capitalism and bring emancipation. If the capitalist class were imbued with the moral and sympathetic qualities they profess, the poverty and the toll of lives under their system, even in peace times, should have been sufficient incentive for them to exercise those qualities. Not so, however. Their efforts were always in the opposite direction—how to intensify exploitation.

Even the tragedy and devastation of their latest crime, with all the added misery it brings in its train for the working class, has never once caused the question to be raised—except by the Socialist—”Is not the system itself wrong ?”

And let the workers make no mistake, though every capitalist nation took sides and fought to the last man, till every vestige of civilisation were destroyed, the ruling class would never raise that question.

That question must be asked and answered by the working class. At present they are exploited, dragooned, bluffed, trained and educated to the status of wage-slavery. Thus with their intelligence warped, though the largest in numbers, they are the weakest. Let them strip themselves of the capitalist shroud which envelops their minds and they will at once become the strongest class in society. The capitalist class will then lose the opportunity, which they have never shown the slightest inclination to embrace, to win a “halo of renunciation” because working-class emancipation will be accomplished by the working class itself.

F. Foan

Editorial: The Russian Situation. (1917)

Editorial from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in tragic days, but days brim full of interest. During the past month the interest has certainly been most largely supplied by Russia. The spectacle of the whole capitalist world awaiting with tense anxiety the development of events in Russia, is one full of meaning to those who understand something of what is going on behind the curtain with which our masters in their wisdom try to obscure our view. On the one hand the Central Powers see in the Russian tangle great possibilities of advantage, while on the other hand the “Allies” see in the same turmoil all their chances of an effective offensive this Summer and Autumn vanishing into thin air.

The position as we conceive it is as follows. The capitalists of Russia, long squirming under the irksome restrictions placed upon their expansion by the feudal nobles, found in the conditions arising out of the war, a situation full of promise and they proceeded to exploit it. The Russian Army, they calculated, essentially an army in arms under duress, could have no love for the powers that drove them to the shambles, while the people at large, groaning under the misery of the universal chaos, would accept the overthrow of the nobility with acclamation. So far they appear to have calculated correctly. They accomplished their coup d’état.

Having got safely so far, of course, the Russian capitalists were greeted with the applause of their fellow capitalists the world over. Bat, as the history of many revolutions shows, the job is only half complete largely upon a disaffected army and people ― an army and people writhing under the torture of this cruellest of wars, naturally find it no easy matter to keep the war machine a fit and efficient instrument for further prosecuting the war.

The simple Russian soldier, once the hand of the militarist bully relaxed its grip upon his throat, gave expression to his real feelings with regard to the war by fraternising with the “enemy” by battalions, and by deserting in myriads. The simple Russian peasants, to whom “Russian aspirations in the Straits” was a meaningless phrase, and the pan-Slav question empty vapouring ; to whom the enemy was the now deposed authority who had directed usurious taxation against them, holding their ungrown crops in mortgage to force them, broken and destitute, from their lands, offered no force moral or physical, to restrain the “unpatriotic” to the path of duty. Hence we find the Provisional Government engaged in the task of hunting around for some force wherewith to compel obedience to their commands, while the capitalist world looks on, its heart torn with anxious fears, wondering if they will find it

And now be it noted where the Russian master class, so lately revolutionary yet so soon reactionary, but yesterday so imbued with the spirit of sacrifice and freedom and equality, and so lavish of amnesty, yet this morning so hungering and thirsting after a force for coercion, turn first for an instrument to smooth their path and pluck the thorns from their bed of roses.

As in England and France and Germany the capitalist class have turned to the pseudo-Socialist and other labour fakers to aid them to their bloody victory, so in Russia the enemies of the working class find their agents in the ranks of the working-class leaders. Who fitter than a “Socialist” to harangue an undisciplined army? Who fitter than a “rebel” to lure other rebels from their rebellious ways ? Who fitter than a “leader” of “democracy” to represent the shadow of democracy as the substance, and to inflame the “democratic” passions to the defence of liberties which do not exist ? So they made a usurper of the Socialist name Minister for War, and sent him, hot-foot, to do work which no Socialist, in any country, could or would do.

So, having secured this agent to divide the workers, the Russian capitalists feel that they are strong enough for a bolder move, and have announced their intention of establishing a sort of travelling Courts with soldiers to execute their orders, though for the moment fear of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates Committees constrain them to hold their hands. Meanwhile they are straining every nerve to create a force, both of public opinion and military, powerful enough to strike at those who dare to challenge their right to rule, and when they have secured this, then the butchery will commence — the real bloodshed of this revolution start.

In the effort to re-establish tyranny in Russia let it be remembered what part is being played by the pseudo-Socialists and labour fakers of this country. Geographical difficulties and the exigencies of the war prevent Russia’s gallant allies from offering her armed forces to maintain “law and order,” so they are sending men of the Thorne and Sanders type, under the lying pretence that they represent Labour and Socialist opinion in this country. In thus helping to create a situation which a few battalions of Cossacks may bring to consummation, these men amply justify the worst we have said of them, and more also.

The Genesis of the “Great Man”. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most commonly held of the many erroneous, and therefore misleading, theories regarding history and the movements of human society is that which frequently goes by the name of the “Great Man Theory.” From its point of view those individuals who achieve prominence in any event or movement are the prime factors and forces behind it, and the real social forces which underlie them are entirely unappreciated. Thus the personality of Napoleon is looked upon as the cause of the wars associated with his name, Wat Tyler is regarded as the author of the Peasants’ Revolt, the evolution theory is thought to be due to the genius of men like Spencer and Darwin, Karl Marx is credited with being the generator of modern Socialism, and to Cecil Rhodes is attributed the Cape to Cairo Railway.

The influence of this theory upon the working class is baneful because under it many are deluded into looking to “leaders” and “intellectuals,” instead of to themselves, for their salvation, while some are led to embrace the vagaries and absurdities of Anarchism. It is quite easy to see that political assasination must appear a really sound and sensible procedure to those who, holding this point of view, wish to abolish social evils. Experience, however, shows that such action rarely, if ever, has the desired effect. And why ? Because the social conditions obtaining at any time are not dependent upon the existence of any individual, however prominent, but are decreed by the material conditions under which men live. So long as these remain unchanged, so long will the resultant social forms remain, and they will not be appreciably affected by the removal of any individual whatever.

To say this is not, of course, to deny the existence of great men, for to do so would be just as foolish as going to the other extreme. Every “great man” is the outcome of two main factors. One is biological and internal. No one will deny that the mental or physical capacity of an Alexander or an Aristotle, a Marx, a Darwin or a Napoleon, is vastly superior to that of the majority of men. The case is one of variations like unto those which occur in all living creatures. But this capacity alone is not sufficient to make a “great man.” Charles Peace would never be included among such, yet his genius was probably as pronounced as that of many who would be so designated.

This brings us to the second factor: the historical and external one. Every person is born into surroundings or environment conditions which have grown out of different preceding conditions, this movement itself being part of a continuous process of change and growth.

We may broadly classify the changing forms of environment into three mutually pervading and interdependent divisions or phases, material, social, and intellectual. That these are interlinked is easily shown when it is remembered that societies are forms of group relationships between material things, e.g., human beings ; that all ideas are based upon the perception of material phenomena and the relations between them, through the medium of the sense organs and the nervous system, themselves material in structure ; that the mind perceives among other things social conditions, and that ideas can aid in bringing about both social changes and fresh material things into existence.

But that the above classification is justifiable and useful enough can be shown by contrasting two different environments in their several phases. In England about the twelfth century the face of the country presented an aspect very different in many respects to its present one. Great belts of virgin forest and open fen remained of the great primaeval wild. There existed nothing of the network of hedges which to-day cuts up the country like a monster chess board. Wild animals were much more varied and plentiful. The towns were small and few and far between. There were no railways, few roads, and few brick buildings.

Social relations were just as different. There were practically no wage-workers. A large serf population existed—men unable to leave the village of their birth ; conditionally holding land and rendering compulsory service to a lord. The prices of merchandise were regulated largely by Guild associations and not by competition as to-day. In the intellectual field the contrast is just as marked. The majority of the population were then unable to read or write. Everyone, aristocrat or peasant, was deeply superstitious, believing in personal gods, devils, saints, and witches. Little or nothing was known of natural laws. There was no geology, no biology, nothing of the modern conception of universal evolution, and no social science. Religion dominated men’s theories, science was embryonic.

Returning now, after this digression, to “great men,” it is evident that everyone’s activities are moulded by the conditions of the age. No one, however clever, can transcend the possibilities of his time. Even the most profound thinkers and men of action must use the material to hand and must build upon the past labours of others. It is this inheritance of the accumulated experience of mankind’s past, in each generation, which makes all cultural and social progress possible. Were it possible for a child of highly civilised parents to develop in isolation amid natural surroundings, it would grow up not only illiterate but almost speechless, and with intelligence woefully stunted from lack of opportunity to develop it.

Real greatness consists of making the most of the material available, in reaching to the very outposts of the possible, in seeing things only just perceptible and hidden from the commonality of men.

The conditions for Darwin’s “Origin of Species” were laid before a line of it was penned. Darwin was obviously dependent upon the developed arts of writing and printing, on tho orderly classification of living things such as had been performed by Linnaeus. In his dedication to the “Voyage of the Beagle” Darwin pays a tribute to Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” as forming an essential preliminary to all his works. The point is clinched when it is remembered how many minds independently approached the theory of natural selection about the same time (see the historical note to the “Origin”), and it is well known how tho eminent naturalist, A. Russel Wallace, came to identical conclusions on his own accord.

The same phenomenon is apparent right through the history of science. Marius, Jansen, and Lippershey simultaneously invented the telescope. Both Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune. Marx, Engels, and Morgan, by different routes, reached “Historical Materialism.” After decades of failures, Peary, Amundsen, and Scott reached the earth’s poles within a very brief period of each other. The recent development of aviation is equally instructive.

In political or social movements generally, conditions are somewhat different, for the action once taken, it cannot as a rule be repeated, and verification such as that possible in intellectual evolution is here impossible. But a little examination will always reveal the conditions prepared before any movement is realised. Alexander’s empire was made possible by the weakened and disorganised state of the older Greek powers, due to internal corruption and the ravages of the Peloponnesian War, together with the rotten organisation of the Persian empire already revealed by the notorious retreat of “the ten thousand.” The Macedonian spear and the efficient phalanx military formation were the deciding forces and Alexander the pinnacle of a whole system of favourable conditions. In like manner Napoleon as Emperor without the French Revolution as a preparation is quite unthinkable.

In conclusion it may be mentioned that there are always sufficient men of genius to satisfy all requirements. A “great man” never fails to sprout when the environment is favourable. Scores of men with the internal potentialities of greatness must be “wasted” by their labours being suffocated in unfruitful channels. In a sentence, we find that the greatest of men are the creatures and not the creators of their age.

H.

By The Way. (1917)

The By The Way Column from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly three years ago now, when the present international slaughter of the world’s workers commenced, we were informed that this was the “war to end war.” From that time onwards many have iterated the same silly phrase. Many have taken up the cudgels on behalf of the capitalist class and gone out of their way to inform the unwary that this war is different in its origin to past wars, that this time it is in order to put down “Prussianism” that they are called upon to give their services and, if necessary, their lives.

Slowly but surely numbers of our class are beginning to open their eyes and to realise that they have been deceived, and in order to facilitate this larger outlook I propose giving one or two quotations which possibly may help them in their search for truth and knowledge.

From a German source, quoted in a paper the proprietor of which is a keen supporter of the Lloyd Georgian (English-Prussian) Government, we read that General von Stein, Minister of War, said:

“I do not entertain the hope that the war will be followed by international peace. So long as the interests of nations conflict there will be wars. The prospects of an eternal peace are not very brilliant just now when two great peoples which hitherto did not think of maintaining large armies are beginning to create them. Consequently after the war it will be our duty to safeguard ourselves and preserve for our descendants what we have fought for.”—”Weekly Dispatch,” May 6th, 1917.

In order to obviate the retort that might be put forward by some, that the previous spokesman was a German, and, therefore, what he says does not count, let me adduce the evidence of an Englishman who is a Liberal M.P., and as such must necessarily be possessed of all the virtues. Addressing the Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders in the British Westinghouse Co., Ltd., Mr. J. Annan Bryce said :

“It seems to be assumed by some well-meaning people that when peace is declared there will be an end of economic war also, and they deprecate any measures tending to perpetuate it. It is forgotten that this war is as much a war for commercial and industrials for military domination, and that there were no more enthusiastic advocates of it than the heads of the great German industries and financial establishments. It is forgotten that the military war is only the complement of the economic war which started half a century ago.”

Here we have supporters of the holy trinity of Rent, Interest, and Profit, or in other words, defenders of capitalist society, coolly admitting that this war is the result of an antagonism of capitalist interests.

The only war that will end war is the class war. Join, then, with us and assist in waging war for the abolition of classes and winning “The World for the Workers.”

* * *

An announcement recently appeared in the Press informing the public that “last year the British Board of Films Censors passed for universal exhibition 4,430 subjects and 904 for public exhibition.” It was further stated that among the grounds for the rejection of over 500 films were:

Impersonation of the King.

Irreverent treatment of death.

Nude figures.

Excessively passionate love scenes.

Scenes purporting to illustrate “night life.”

References to controversial or international politics.

Antagonistic relations of capital and labour.

Scenes tending to disparage public characters and to create public alarm.

Vampire women ; the drug habit ; white slave traffic.

Materialisation of the conventional figure of Christ.

Scenes depicting the realistic horrors of warfare.

Incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy.

Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies or to disturb friendly relations wkh them.

Scenes holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule.

Propaganda films of German origin.

—”Daily Chronicle,” April 3rd, 1917.

How carefully the agents of our masters choose what subjects their slaves shall see when they journey to the picture palace. The references to the “antagonistic relations of capital and labour” and the “realistic horrors of war” are distinctly good.

* * *

A study in directive ability ! Engineer for the cows. Mr. J. A. Morris Bew told the Westhampnett Tribunal at Chichester of the case of a farmer who applied to the military authorities for help.

“A man was sent to the farm on Friday night, but he left on Saturday morning.

“He was sent as a cowman, stockman, and milker, and turned out to be an electrical engineer who had never worked on a farm.”—”Star,” April 10th, 1917. Who said Business as usual?

* * *

In aid of soldiers blinded in the war a bazaar was a short time ago held at the Royal Albert Hall. Now functions of this order are not arranged for we wage slaves. No, indeed not ! Were we to absent ourselves from work, even on such an occasion as this when royalty were in attendance, doubtless we should be confronted with a notice informing us that in this time of crisis and national emergency it is highly unpatriotic to leave our masters’ business and that such a serious dereliction of duty was punishable under the D.O.R.A. And so it came to pass on the appointed day that many of the parasites of society did foregather in order to raise the wind for “our heroes blinded in the war” and whom a grateful country will ne’er forget (?) 

Now let me quote :

“Many Royal ladies are to assist in the selling. Princess Victoria has valuable lace and a wonderful fan worth £30 to offer, Princess Louise will sell Peking loot, coloured glass, a Chinese shawl, and an inlaid escritoire, Princess Beatrice presides over children’s garments, while the Princess Royal and her daughter, Princess Maud, will sell lingerie of the most lovely description. The great attraction at the Duchess of Somerset’s stall is potatoes.”

—”Daily Chronicle,” May 7th, 1917.

“Loot,” Ikey, my boy, “Loot” ! Now “loot,” according to the lexicographers is: “booty; plunder ; especially such as is taken in a sacked city.” If the purveyor of this said “loot” had been the Crown Prince, whose thieving activities we have heard so much about of late, one could understand this reference; but one shudders at the mention of Princess Louise.

* * *

The “Daily Chronicle” (8.5.17) had an editorial article on Food Rationing, and towards the close it dealt with the subject of the destruction of the house sparrow, advocated by the Board of Agriculture. By deleting the words “house sparrow” from the sentence and substituting the word “capitalist” we obtain a fine definition of that type of individual. It would then read as follows :

“The capitalist is undoubtedly a pest; he has few virtues ; he is virtually a parasite on man ; like a true parasite, he purloins much and serves us little; and all the characteristics which he has developed in the course of his denaturalised existence—his harsh voice, his quarrelsome manners, his filthy and untidy nest—mark his degeneration from the standards of true social (text wild-bird) life.”

We Socialists claim that the capitalist is unnecessary. To-day we have social production with individual ownership of the means of producing wealth and the product of our toil resulting therefrom. We suggest, therefore, the elimination of this parasite by an intelligent working class understanding its position in society, and working for the complete overthrow of the existing order of things through the conquest of political power, and the conversion of these individually owned means of wealth production into socially owned for the well being of all. Then we can commence the era of peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

* * *

The “glories of war” : Potatoe queues ; sugar queues ; margarine queues. The question of sugar is an interesting theme and affords a good object lesson of the methods of our “Business Government.” From the Northcliffe organ I cull the following :

“In certain shops—”The Evening News” has the name of one where it occurred last night—no sugar fit to eat is sold to any customer who does not buy tea.

A quantity of evil-looking sugar, full of black lumps and not without dirt and straw, is offered to customers who do not want tea.”

—”Evening News,” April 28th, 1917.

One is inclined to ask : Have all the public analysts and local medical officers of health gone to the war? Or is it a case of “one good turn deserves another” ?

* * *

An event of great importance to the workers, recently took place. Bearing in mind the scriptural injunction : “Ye cannot serve both God and Mammon,” I observed that that highly-democratic organ of the international working class, the “Weekly Dispatch” (29.4.17) vouchsafed the information that a little family gathering took place at Windsor. The touching story is thus told:

“Our Labour Ministers have had an opportunity during the week of seeing the King at Windsor Castle en famille, and it is gathered that they were delighted at the air of informality which characterised their reception.”

It is further added that Mr. George Barnes was also in the company of the elect, and “it is to be regretted that Mr. and Mrs. Henderson were unavoidably prevented from accepting his Majesty s invitation.” Strange, is it not, that these gentry who rejoice in the fact that one crowned head (the “Little Father,” better known as Bloody Nick) has received the “order of the boot,” are overjoyed at being the guests of another monarch. “By their fruits ye shall; know them” is the standard for measuring their value to the workers struggling to be free.

The “Dispatch” writer sums up this dust-throwing incident by adding :

“To be quite frank, everyone likes to see the King and Queen moving in an informal circle that includes honest, outspoken John Hodge and straight-­forward, plain-speaking George Barnes.”

* * *

The antics of these labour fakirs are excruciatingly funny. In the case of the engineers’ strike Hodge refers to “the irresponsible people of about 25” who, tiring of the dilatory methods of the accredited representatives of the union and the Ministry of Munitions, take matters into their own hands in order to force the pace, and he deplores their action, while on the other hand I read:

“Typists who earn 20s. a week in Government offices and the National Union of Clerks are grateful to Mr. John Hodge, Labour Minister, for complaining of the low wage.

If all the girls were to decline to work any longer for 20s. a week, said Mr. Hodge at Sheffield, what a powerful lever he would have. It would give him the bludgeon necessary to go to the Treasury.

“I am very glad,” said Mr. Herbert H. Elvin, general secretary of the National Union of Clerks, “that Mr. Hodge, as a Minister, has advocated a general strike on the part of women.”

—”Evening News,” April 28th, 1917.

Here we see John Hodge advocating for the women what he condemns in the case of the men. Will Hodge be proceeded against under some regulation of the Defence of the Realm Act, or is such distinction reserved for “people of about twenty-five,” and whose earnings do not yet suffice to support a triple, hodge-podge chin?

* * *

The Government have to blame themselves entirely for the chaotic conditions which they have brought into being in the engineering trades. With the deliberate suppression of news from the storm centres, the cutting off from communication of one section of men with those in other parts of the country, the one sided and meagre reports such as were allowed to be published, all tended to exasperate those concerned. The Munitions Act (Amendment) Bill still before the House, with its purposely ambiguous wording (a common feature of all Bills), also intensified the trouble that was brewing. So complex and incomprehensible is this Bill that the powers that be went to the length of issuing an explanatory poster to reassure the workers that the Bill was not designed to trespass on their hard-won rights as trade unionists, and so on ad nauseam.

From newspaper reports it first appears that Dr. Addison refused to recognise the Shop Stewards Committee, which obviously understands the local conditions better than the Central Executive, but afterwards changes his mind and agrees to see the Shop Stewards’ Committee if they agree to “act in unison with the trade union Executives.” Later we are informed that the Ministry of Munitions replied to the engineers’ delegates, who were in session at Walworth, that: “We shall be glad, if asked to do so by your Executives, to meet them accompanied by yourselves or by any other body your Executives may desire to bring with them, but we cannot receive you under other circumstances.” Then comes the arrest of certain men on a charge of promoting strikes. Commenting on this the “Daily News“ of Saturday (19.5.1917) says :

“A number of the leaders in the engineers’ strike have been arrested, and one more step has been taken by that action on the perilous path down which the Government are being driven. We have never defended this strike. But no one acquainted at all with the circumstances which have led to this dispute, and the real history of how it has been allowed to grow to its present proportions, can doubt where the real responsibility lies for the gloomy prospect with which the whole nation finds itself to-day confronted.

“In respect of most of the men,” says the “Morning Post,” “they have been irritated and worried by the authorities. The fact is, the Ministry of Munitions have made a sad business of it ; and the sooner the Government recognise the fact the better.”

Evidently “the fact” has been recognised by the Government at last, and a meeting has taken place at which Lld. George attended and at which what appears to be a temporary peace was arranged.

* * *

The Archbishop of Canterbury has authorised special prayers for “God’s blessing on the crops and the fruits of the earth in this time of sowing,” runs an announcement in the Press. Then follows a passage from the prayer telling the All-knowing that we have some Allies and some ships which the Archbishop wants protected. It is to be hoped that the recording angel has duly noted this petition.

* * *

The King has been on tour and at one of the works he visited we are informed in all seriousness that he “clocked on” as if he were an ordinary employee. Doubtless after seeing other people work he “clocked off,” and was duly thankful that his lot had been cast in smoother places.

* * *

“One of the liveliest and noisiest meetings in Glasgow for many years was that held last night when Mr. G. N. Barnes, M.P., Pensions Minister, met with a distinctly hostile reception on the occasion of his addressing his constituents in the Blackfriars Division.” (“Daily News,” 12.4.17.) The storm in the tea-cup was over this gent’s reference to “veritable weeds” in the House on the Pensions problem. He now regretted having used the phrase as it seemed to indicate a lack of sympathy on his part.

Mr. Barnes need not worry his guts into fiddle-strings over this matter. Far from indicating a lack of sympathy on his part, his whole handling of the Pensions problem has shown him to be a very sympathetic man—but his sympathy is reserved, not for disabled soldiers, broken in the war, but for those who pay him for it—the blood-reeking masters.

* * *

The War Office recently announced its intention of opening two new groups for attestation, the age limit being from 41 to 50 years. A kind of Derby Scheme is thus once again in operation, with the promise of an armlet slightly different in design from that issued in the earlier campaign, for those who hurry along and volunteer. According to figures given in the Press there is quite a large amount of recruitable material. This card waits to see how many respond to the call. What a fine opportunity is now presented to those who a short time ago were dying to enlist were they within the age limit. Having urged the younger men to hasten forth to battle for King and Country, it is now up to them to honour the obligation they were prepared to impose upon others.

* * *

“Nine British soldiers are dying every hour.”—Gen. Baden-Powell. But, “There are worse things than bloodshed.”—Windy Churchill.

The Scout.

Watch the antics of the pseudo-Socialists. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watch the antics of the pseudo-Socialists.

England’s Engineers. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engineers have recently fought for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill. For that particular purpose they fought solidly and well. The masters tried their damnedest to beat and overwhelm them with lies and conquer them with hunger. They placarded the Midland towns with crafty official notices. They tried to split the strike with lies and scorn and they tried to split it with bribes and threats. Yet the engineers ignored splendidly the Government promises, official and outside opinion, together with the cowardly threats.

For years the engineers were half-asleep. Hopefully, innocently, patriotically, they abandoned all those rules which they held to be valuable and precious in their union. Soon after the original sacrifice, as early in the war as the Autumn of 1914, they were bound to the benches and engines by sheaves of laws. Act after Act took away their strength as a fighting union. The men they trusted told them that the Allies could never win the war if the union remained as strong, or the men as free, as in the days of peace, so the engineers, like other large bodies, cheerfully gave over the ripest of their plans of advancement, the richest of their trade-union possessions. For it was promised by those they trusted that not a hair of their heads would be hurt through any concessions they made.

Then Acts were passed in a trice; rapidly passed, almost secretly passed, so that after a few months of warfare the workers of Britain had their customary weapons of defence broken or blunted and the finest of trade union safeguards cast into the official dust-bin. The engineers, like the rest, surrendered the trade-union defences of their personal welfare in what they considered to be the national interest. The unions were emasculated.

Then thought these men, surely there can be no harm in this. By the might of our numbers we can easily enough recover at our will what we give away freely. So they believed the finely-spun tales that were told. Yet still in their minds was a little nervous doubt which a generation of conflict had stamped there. Nevertheless the first months passed away silently enough. This and that call passed ringing through the land. At a word from some chief the munitions wheels went whirring on continuously through a lengthening day. What the engineers had to give they gave generously, without murmur or question. Then England became more deeply involved in the Continental struggle. Side by side with that new vast entanglement came the pinch of direct hardship in the engineers’ conditions. Then they first felt the discomforts and misery of the new laws, which were fashioned in the days they had almost forgotten. There was no relief from their insufferable toil. Holidays were stroked out. The intense strain, which commonly they experience, was increased. The Government pacified them with flattery and their trusted men lectured them on patience. Nevertheless the engineers began to regret the day when they broke their own weapons of defence and made their unions a dead letter.

At last the oppression became so unbearable, the injustice so apparent, that little scrappy revolts and outbreaks ensued. It was seen that trusted and prominent men, both Parliamentarians and trade union officials, were associated with every piece of legislation that fettered the workers more. As these outbreaks were only spasmodic they were easily over-ridden by the ruling class. The Clyde trouble of Christmas 1915 is perhaps the best specimen of these sectional and local revolts. The principle of the men was strong, but they were driven down by lies, hunger, victimisation, deportation of their leaders, and, what is more important still, because the strike was local.

It is the mass of engineers only, and not a locality of engineers, who can successfully fight. Ten thousand engineers on strike in a town may gain something in a month for that town’s men—or they may not; fifty thousand spread over one industrial area may force amendments to an  objectionable Bill from a reluctant Cabinet, while one hundred and fifty thousand men who leave their engines, with all their force concentrated on one particular principle, striking at a vitally important time, stand a good chance of getting what they ask for.

Though at the time of writing there is still some doubt as to the issue, the men may get entirely or largely what they want. Their demands are small. Such a strike is just a little barrier raised against a perfidious and dangerous enemy, a little wall between the engineers and their life-long and inveterate foe, the master class. Soon there will be fights for different purposes, fights for higher principles, fights for nobler conditions, fights for a more peaceful and prosperous basis to life and what not.

The efforts of  the engineers are making for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Act, considering they have no strike pay, considering the domestic suffering, starvation almost, which must follow this state of things, is splendid. But if the strike shows how closely industrial slavery is allied to Parliamentary action, what trivial improvements reforms effect, how unreliable the labour leaders are, it will be invaluable as a practical lesson to the engineers and their kindred of other unions.

Let it be seen, too, that if all the things the engineers demand in this strike are conceded by the Government, still will these proven enemies of the workers be left in full command of the Parliamentary power, which they will use more craftily against the workers at a later date.

However, considering the difficulties in their way, the engineers’ struggle has been splendid. At this point our sympathy with them must stop. They have found no new key to the prevention of these periodic upheavals, in which they fight for ordinary human conditions. They must find other principles for which they can fight as solidly as they have done (up to the time of writing) for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill and the upholding of the Trade Card system.

Slowly, too slowly, the workers are finding out their true friends and true principles, their cunning enemies and their delusive ways. The change they make must be vaster than the repeal or modification of one Bill or the establishment of one unconnected wish. The thing that would bring them rest and peace can be done with one wish stroke. Instead of abandoning the political machine to ambitious wiseacres and unscrupulous plotters, and letting them, in the secrecy of Cabinet conclaves, everlastingly scheme to set the social changes on you, see to it that those who are now proven the enemies of your class are no longer sent to represent you. Fill their places with class-conscious men of your own ranks, controlled and guaranteed by the political organisation of your own class.

Engineers! At an early date you will be confronted with other trouble. We want your demands to be more exacting, and more deep the principles you struggle for. Fight with your brothers of other industries for these bigger and nobler things as earnestly and solidly as you recently fought. Fight politically as well as industrially, then, with the principle of the class struggle to guide your fighting, you cannot help but win.

Read our Declaration of Principles on the back page of this paper; earnestly consider them; join with us and help to establish them. Then will slave and master be abolished, and a real peace come, to all, including England’s engineers.

H. M. M.

The Other Side. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Distressing as the sight is, no one who visits the front should leave it without visiting one of these field hospitals, for otherwise he will see only the glorious and not the sad side of modern war.”—Col. A. M. Murray, C.B. in the “Daily News,” May 21st, 1917.

Correspondence. (1917)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

F. A. H. (Leicester.)—Taking your points in the order in which you give them we append our criticism.

“(1) That social development takes place through the action and reaction of economic and political power.”

This question assumes that there is an “economic” power apart from political power, but this assumption is incorrect. Actually “economic” power is a misnomer, and is merely a term for actions of an economic character which take place under the shelter and protection of the political power.

To take a well-known historical instance : It was not until the merchant class—the forerunners of the modern capitalists—had gained a large share of political power that they were able, effectively, to fight against and finally overthrow, the feudal rulers.

Fundamentally social development takes place because of the continued discoveries and inventions in the methods of producing and distributing wealth. When these changes reach a certain stage in their growth they come into conflict with the social arrangements and order that were made to suit the older methods. To continue in existence society must alter its form and order, that is, re-adapt itself to the new conditions. Obviously the class whose material interests are bound up with the old methods will endeavour to retain and preserve the old form and order of society, while the class whose interests are connected with the new method will endeavour to bring about a change. The power to make this change—since the institution of private property in the means of life—rests in the control of the political machinery, that is, the machinery under which laws are made and the force raised to carry them out. Hence as Marx says: “Every class struggle is a political struggle,” because it is only by obtaining possession of political power that the new rising class can establish the social forms in harmony with the economic changes. History shows this in every change that has taken place in the forms of society since private property was established.

“(2) That each developing class takes the line of least resistance, which is to say, of course, that it takes the one that is open to it.”

Not until a series of struggles and experience’s have shown them the error of various ways do the developing class find the right road—which is really the line of least resistance—for the object in view. Over and over again a developing class has been deceived and misled by the ruling class of its day into taking a road quite contrary to its (the developing class’s) own interests. How often have the modern working class been, misled in this way !

“(3) That the difference of the coming revolution from previous ones lies in this, that some measure of political power must first be acquired, and this results from the fact that in the movements which have previously led to revolutions it was not necessary at their inception to visibly deprive the then ruling classes of property, this being effected by the development of the means of production or the property forms themselves.”

As shown in the answer to No. 1, the idea in the first portion of the above statement is wholly incorrect, and the reason given in the second portion is equally erroneous. To go back no further than the French Revolution of 1789, the feudal owners were completely dispossessed of their property, which was handed over to the peasants under conditions laid down in the Code Napoleon. When chattel-slavery was abolished in America it meant the confiscation of a huge amount of property—for, of course, the chattel-slave was property in every sense of the word—from the slave owners. And this has been true of every revolution in history.

“(4) When the S.P.G.B. is attacked for not defining in detail the method of organisation and procedure, am I right in saying that if their general principles are correct efficient organisation will naturally follow; and to a certain extent the details must be dictated by circumstances yet to arise. Also that their organisation, will be, by its very nature, sufficiently pliable to meet all the needs of the revolution ?”

Your answer generally is right, but it may be noted that a real understanding of correct principles is necessary for sound and efficient organisation. Then the direction of such organisation will be retained in the hands of its members, who may vary its details to suit circumstances.

—Ed. Com.

"Neither Shall They Eat." (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of writing an appeal is being circulated throughout the country by the War Savings Committee on the necessity of still further tightening our belts. It consists of a card containing the King's proclamation on frugal living. It is being distributed by some 1,200 local committees (essential occupations?) and those who sign pledge themselves on their honour to abstain from eating but the barest possible amount of food.

As is to be expected, the appeal is directed chiefly to the working class, forming, as it does, the bulk of the population. The class which produces all the food, needs the food, but too often experiences the greatest difficulty in getting a small portion of it back. After the multitudinous exhortations from Press, platform and pulpit to be frugal and still multiply (the output), it would appear that it really isn't necessary for the workers to eat at all—at least, that is the impression I get, especially after reading the [advertisement] of a certain cocoa firm, which assures us that if we will only drink their cocoa we shall save bread !

Besides, look what valuable time is wasted in merely eating! How much better, then, would it not be if the workers abolished the function of assimilating food, and left it to the unemployed rich, who have far more time in which to consume it.

Every sacrifice in this war brings its reward, we have been told. In this case the "voluntary abstainers" will be granted the privilege of wearing a ribbon badge of royal purple, which signifies that the wearer is entitled to go on (hunger) strike without violating the Defence of the Realm Act.

As the majority of the workers have stood for every imposition thus far, it is easy to believe they will stand for this as well, and I can picture the contemptuous smirk on the face of Lord Stink as he floats along in his six-cylinder, to cast a glance now and again at a be-ribboned figure swanking up the road with a satisfied air an an empty gut.

Tom Sala

"Ghosts". (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not many years since Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” was laughed from the stage. But we are now told that the life of those byegone years rang false; children were born into the shame of Peace, while the men-folk slept in the dull, deep dreams of the quiet of a prosperous world. All were wrapt in politics as shallow as Gladstone, were steadfast to the prudery of Victoria, read the feeblest novels, worshipped academic paintings and German sculpture. Never was an age fitter for the pen of the satirist nor for the reign of a queen without ability. Since it was dead as a doornail a great deal has been written to belittle the Victorian age, but if only we think of the old hostility towards Ibsen’s masterpiece we get one of the saddest, one of the gravest comments on the softness of that age it is possible to obtain.

The age demanded Purpose in everything so that in the end ethics became bracketed with art, became almost synonymous with art. This falsity and sentimentality was personified in Ruskin. He instructed the nation in life. He became artistic dictator. Under his powerful influence the picture became a scientific lecture, and the book a biblical homily. Landscape paintings became like naturalists' studies, while innumerable authors set to work to prove that the Lord Jesus had a hand in the fabrication of the primrose and the apple.

Some few did not submit to this vice, this cramp. The spirit of unrest was personified in Whistler. By the excellence of his work combined with the sting and brilliance of his wit he succeeded in lessening the power of the degenerative spirit. In literature the innovating spirit of romance was personified in Oscar Wilde. In painting, then, and in literature the principle of beauty, the principle of charm without Purpose, triumphed over the old principle of Purpose without loveliness.

Definite ethics, precise instructions on how to live, were forgotten in the passions of the new ideals. There was personality and not humanitarianism or science in the new nocturnes and landscapes, while in the new books the question of the divinity of Christ, even of the genesis of primroses, was lost in the fashioning of phrases.

This new movement in England with Wilde, Beardsley, Whistler at its head, with Shelley and Keats and some Frenchmen at its roots, soon became virile, influential, established. Slightly artificial at its birth, it soon added strength to its charm, till at last the pioneers decided to test their influence with the public by the supremely modern “Ghosts." I do not here pretend to give a complete account of the battles of the books and wits of that transitionary time, nor do I contend that the one or two masters of art named here were entirely responsible for the staging of "Ghosts." There were many men, who were sick and tired of the old stuff, who worked to further the interests of the new movements. But I do maintain that the revolt of these remarkable men against the straight-laced interests of the Victorian era made possible the production of "Ghosts." The public failed the play. The spirit of the public was not so fine or noble as the spirit of the play. The public, despite years of romantic tuition, was still interested in the theme of the play— in " what it was about." They were still spellbound by Ruskin and Carlyle and their principle of Purpose. They could not understand that what was purposeless and useless, even that which they might call immoral, might still be beautiful.

Now the play is again staged. The people go in thousands to see it. It is successful, and in consequence we are told that people have become enlightened People have become nothing of the kind. The play is successful because it has been boomed. It has been boomed by the authorities not because it is interesting to them as a wonderful drama, but because, owing to changed conditions, it has become useful as an ethical tract. The truth of the business is that at the time of the first presentation of "Ghosts" in England the masters had no use for it even as a tract. Not understanding the beauty and strength of its art, none of its characteristics appealed to them technically; its gravity and thought, its passion and lucidness, could not be seen by them. The mere theme of it was evident enough, but what Purpose could it serve, what good could it do to a generation nursed among bibles and crinolines?

“Ghosts” deals with the tragedy of inherited diseases. The pitiful condition of the young art student, Oswald Alving, is given with tragic tremendous power, and, although the interest in the theme is secondary to the real interest one should feel in “Ghosts" as a dramatic creation, it undoubtedly appeals very powerfully to anyone who takes even a slight interest in morality. To the utterly inartistic this ethical theme must come like a storm.

Well, it is this ethical thunderstorm that the masters need now. And this is why. Every man is needed for the Army. Yet the military cannot get every man, for thousands are severely suffering with syphilis; other thousands are suffering in varying degrees with this and other venereal diseases. To say thousands is no exaggeration. The numbers are so huge, and the diseases are spreading so rapidly, as to seriously weaken the armed forces. The only ways the authorities can try to stop the plague are by legislation and personal appeal. A bill dealing with these contagious diseases has recently become law; the personal message is being delivered in such dramas as “Damaged Goods” and this “Ghosts.”

But be the laws never so stringent, the sorrows of venereal diseases presented in never so pitiful a wav, still most this generation pay in pain and anguish for the generations of ignorance that have preceded it. It it useless to try and remedy the damage and wreckage of ignorance, of generations of capitalistic schooling and social conditions, with s couple of dramas, be they the greatest in the world. Dramas are not the palliatives of injustice, they are the tragic or sweet fruit of our lives. A man here and there may appear to change after having witnessed some didactic drama, yet he only alters in so far as his earlier life has prepared him for an acceptance of the play’s pronouncements. A development of emotions is what we should expect from plays, only that, and not any change in our ideas. Dramas should be beautiful and useless as music.

So the authorities are quite mistaken again as to the nature of Ibsen’s “Ghosts.” It is neither an immoral play as they first thought it, nor is it moral as they now think it It cannot be crushed for being the one, nor exploited as the other. It is almost worthless as a tract for soldiers. It is useless for the authorities to get soldiers with syphilis to go to the playhouse; it would be more remedial, by means of some royal proclamation, to get them to set spinach.

Poor Ibsen! It would have been better had your poor “Ghosts" rested this while in the shadows of the contumely of its earlier years than be dragged and boomed onto the robbers’ stage for as churchy a purpose as preserving army divisions. Still must those wonderful words in that gem of composition be the precious keepsake of the lonely student—at least till social wisdom brings the great reconstruction and brotherhood.

Then will a play be, not a thing like Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" to be hissed at for heterodoxy, or a thing like “Ghosts” to be given prominence as a moral tract, but a thing of beauty only (and both the above plays may be considered as such) to thrill and cheer and inspire those whose liberated minds can grasp the might and sublimity of dramatic construction. Science then will have its own just dominions; the theatre will have its own. When the world is free, when the harvests of the earth are sensibly gathered and distributed, then will the peoples congregate in the theatres for the enjoyment of the artistic presentation of all the beautiful, jubilant and woeful pageants of the world—and that only.

H. M. M.

Irish Notes. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the Sinn Fein movement appears to be gaining prominence in Ireland and enlisting the sympathies of large numbers of Irish working men, it becomes necessary for Socialists to state clearly and definitely their attitude toward this movement. With this idea in view the following lines have been penned.

The pamphlet entitled The Sinn Fein Policy, published by the national council of the Sinn Fein movement, lays down their position.

This pamphlet shows clearly that Sinn Fein is the revolt of the Irish commercial class against landlords and the Government that supports the landlords to the detriment of the industrial capitalists. This movement gains its catch-cry and working class support on account of Ireland’s peculiar national position. The landlords having been for years mainly English and the governmental powers administered from London, the landlords naturally turned to the Government for support and got it. The position was further complicated by the development of the English capitalists, who were not so foolish as to permit commercial rivalry at their very doors, especially from a country where the standard of living was comparatively low, food being fairly abundant and cheap. Consequently steps were taken to throttle the anticipated rivalry. In the same way when the early English merchants were struggling for control of the carrying trade of the world, all available methods were pressed into use to crush their principal competitors, the Dutch, and the latter eventually went down.

We are not concerned here as to whether those who support the Sinn Fein movement are sincere or not. We are endeavouring to show Irish working men the plain, bald facts of the position, regardless of whether these facts are palatable or not. People’s views are, in the main, the product of their particular social environment—they see the world from the point of view of the class into which they are born and with which their interests are bound up. Consequently the members of the small commercial firm (the germ of the large industrial concern) burn with injustice and struggle to break the bonds that interfere with the expansion of their business. They bawl at the tops of their voices for freedom, like their brothers of the 18^th century in France, but bye and bye we shall see that the freedom they desire (also like that of their French brethren) is commercial freedom—the liberty to exploit nature and the worker to the fullest extent possible.

We, who are working men, however, should concern ourselves with the bonds that bind us to the wheel of capital—that doom us forever to the toil and sweat of slavery.

In the Tracts for Irishmen there is a booklet entitled Ireland Looks into the Mirror which describes with some detail Hungary’s so-called march to freedom under Louis Kossuth and Francis Deak, and a parallel is drawn between Ireland and Hungary, Irishmen being invited to emulate the Hungarians in their struggle, which has resulted in the “resurrection of Hungary”. But what is really the position in Hungary? Free Hungary and Free Italy have meant nothing to the working class of the respective countries. A short time before the Mutual Murdering Association commenced the sanguinary operations in Europe the condition of affairs in Hungary was appalling. The wages were at starvation rate and thousands were actually starving. In Buda-Pesth alone there were 30,000 unemployed; the wages were 6d to 8d for a day of 10 to 12 hours, and hundreds were employed at 2d a day. Truly Free Hungary had brought its workers to a glorious pass! In the issue of our paper that was published at the time were given full details of the position. Now the workers of Hungary, in common with the workers of other countries, are murdering each other for the great god Capital. Evidently one of the benefits conferred upon the working class of Hungary and Italy by their resurrection from oppression has been the opportunity to pour out their blood on behalf of their masters in the struggle for international trade routes and the markets of the world—a truly remarkable privilege!

In case of any doubts arising as to whether we have stated the case correctly in contending that the mainspring of the Sinn Fein movement is the desire for power and expansion on the part of Irish Industrial Capitalists we will give a few quotations from authoritative sources. In the first place we will quote from the pamphlet The Sinn Fein Policy, to which we have already referred.

“With the development of her manufacturing arm will proceed the rise of a national middle class in Ireland and a trained national democracy.” (p. 15.)
“That the General Council of the Councils should have the country surveyed with a view to the profitable development of its natural resources, and having had the cost and return estimated as accurately as possible, should then invite the Irish-American millionaires to do what, at the St. Patrick’s banquet in New York, several professed themselves anxious to do—develop the country industrially. We can offer them 174,000,000 tons of coal, the finest stone in Europe, and an inexhaustible supply of peat to operate on, and we can offer them all the facilities possessed by the County Councils and Rural Councils of Ireland, and the assistance and goodwill of the Irish people in turning our coal, our stone, and our turf into gold. They can offer us in return profitable employment for our people, and an enormous increase of strength, socially, politically, and industrially.” (p. 17.)
“A necessary organisation is an agricultural and manufacturing union—a union of manufacturers and farmers, classes who at the present time, through an extraordinary delusion, are unfriendly to each other, and fail to realise their interdependence. The farmer is indifferent about the industrial revival, failing to realise the increased market an Ireland with a manufacturing arm means to the agriculturist: the manufacturer is indifferent to the agricultural interest, failing to realise that the extension of agriculture—the extension of tillage—means the extension of the market for his products.” (p. 10.)
“Through the lack of a mercantile marine we are debarred from our best markets, deprived of our share in the world’s carrying trade, and are lost to Europe’s interest. We lost sixty years ago one of the greatest opportunities—a share in the China trade, because we had no mercantile navy, and as a consequence the China market knows nothing of our linens, and we procure our tea through England. We lose for the same reason to-day our share in the Indian trade, which would be gladly given us if we only had a marine to work it, and we are losing yearly our share in the European and American trade for the same reason.” (p. 18.)
“In an excellent letter addressed to the Board of Guardians the Cork Chemical and Drug Co., Ltd., put the issue clearly. It wrote: ‘It is a comparatively simple matter for English capitalists to crush out their Irish competitors, and we know that this has been too often the fate of Irishmen striving to promote the manufactures of the country, but once the obstacle is removed it is easy enough for them to advance prices, and thus obtain compensation for preliminary losses. It is to this system that we, as Irish manufacturers and large employers of labour, object, but we are always ready to meet the ordinary competition of business, so long as this is conducted on fair lines.’ Many of the Irish Boards of Guardians have responded to this letter, but, unfortunately, the bulk of the unions have fallen into the net spread by the English ring, and in consequence a very large sum of Irish money, not a penny of which need have passed out of the country, finds its way this year into England’s pocket. Under the Sinn Fein policy such a deplorable error could not occur. The action of the Boards would, of course, be a united one, and no possibility would be left as far as they were concerned for a syndicate of unscrupulous English capitalists to crush out the home manufacturer and the home trader.”

The Irishman of May 12^th last refers to the Cork Industrial Development Association under the heading of “A Live Association”, and two of the items quoted as evidence of its usefulness are the following:

“The Information Bureau of Irish Industries attached to the Association, has been, and still continues to be, availed of by correspondents drawn from all parts of Ireland and Great Britain, and, also, from Continental and American countries, and has, admittedly, resulted in securing for Irish firms orders running into many hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling.”
“The promotion of Industrial harmony between employers and workers in Ireland has long been a plank in the Association’s platform, and its successful endeavours to effect a satisfactory settlement of the recent disputes in the building trades in Cork City were greatly appreciated by the Cork public.”

When an association like the above has the support of the official Sinn Fein organ it shows plainly what the attitude of the principal people concerned in this movement is toward the Irish working class. The whole of the above quotations prove the truth of our contention. The continuance of the private property system is the central idea in the movement, and so long as private property remains the miseries that necessarily flow therefrom will remain also and continue to afflict the workers under the Irish Republic.

In the pamphlet from which we have quoted Germany is instanced as the country par excellence to be emulated by Ireland. But to what has industrial development brought Germany? To the dawn of the Social Revolution, some will truly reply. But then this is not the point of view of the publishers of the pamphlet. They are glorifying the pre-war state of Germany. The German peasant, who used to enjoy the fresh air working in the fields with nothing over him but the sky, while his wife spun at the cottage door, is now cooped up in a factory for the greater part of his waking hours, with the grim spectre of unemployment to haunt him for ever and make his life wretched. The once open country is now studded thickly with great factories, ugly industrial towns, and depressing mining districts. As a result of developing her industrial resources Germany has become one of the greatest industrial countries in the world. The German capitalist can put his feet under the mahogany with the capitalists of any nation, whilst the German workers, who toiled in tragic weariness to make these capitalists what they are, can hold their own with the workers of any nation for poverty, misery, and destitution.

The pamphlet in question also dilates largely on the increase of unemployment in Ireland, and the development of its resources through the investment of capital by the American millionaires. Are the Sinn Fein party anxious to see Ireland smothered with the ugly, stifling, sweating factories and mills that already encumber part of the North of Ireland, and smother England, Germany, America, and other countries? Is it employment Irish workers want, or is it the opportunity to work for themselves instead of working for others who live on the products of their toil? What the Sinn Feiners would have us believe, apparently, is that we want more employers in Ireland.

To sum it all up, the plea of this pamphlet is simply the echo of the plea of the English capitalists in their early struggle for markets. “The more markets we can get the more employment we can give,” cried they, and went merrily on their way murdering children from six years of age in their factories and destroying the lives of women and girls in their mines in the benevolent endeavour to give as much employment as possible, and of course, just by the way, rake in as much profit as possible.

The Irish Republic the Sinn Feiners are after is but the counterpart of France and America, where year by year the capitalist sweats dividends out of his helpless workers.

What part can the Irish workers, devoid of capital, take in the Industrial Revival except the toiling part? All these revivals are useless to the worker until he owns the product of his toil, then he will be able to enjoy to the full all the advantages to be obtained. So long as private property is the order of the day it matters little to the propertyless Irish worker (the vast majority of the population) who rules Ireland.

“Agin the British Government”, Separation with a King, Lords, and Commons for Ireland (Constitution of 1683), and full liberty to exploit Irish workers, are about the sum total of Sinn Fein. Some are ultra-revolutionary, and will have “no bloom’ king but a republic”—It is tantamount to the bosses saying they’ll exploit you with caps on instead of swanking in with top hats on. Republic or Constitutional Monarchy, it works out the same—the workers are always the bottom dogs.

The writers of these notes are Irish workers who have long since turned a deaf ear to the empty phrases of Nationalism, and they look forward with hopeful eyes to the day when Ireland shall be a land of peace and prosperity—its wealth owned and controlled by its workers—and a harmonious member of the great international Socialist Republic. This object, we claim, is far more worthy of the attention and support of Irish workers than the empty phrases and chimeras of Sinn Fein.

Mick and Mack