Mt. FUTURE Of 
 
 i.M'fiYNDMAN 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 By John A. Hobson, Author of " Imperialism," 
 "Work and Wealth," &c. Crown 8vo, Cloth. 
 2s. 6d. net. Second Impression. 
 
 " He is alwa5'S lucid, cogent, and unflinching in the 
 pursuit of his argument." — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 " Cool, dispassionate, and temperate in its analysis, care- 
 ful and thorough."— Daily News. 
 
 ENGLAND'S GUARANTEE TO 
 BELGIUM AND LUXEMBURG 
 
 By C. P. Sanger and H. T. J. Norton. 
 Demy 8vo, Cloth. $s. 6d. net. 
 
 A full discussion of the legal aspects of the treaties by 
 which the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg were 
 guaranteed. 
 
 TOWARDS A LASTING 
 SETTLEMENT 
 
 By G. Lowes Dickinson, H. N. Brailsford, 
 J. A. HoBsoN, Vernon Lee, Philip Snowdon, 
 M.P., A. Maude Roydon, H. Sidebotham, and 
 others. Edited by Charles Roden Buxton. 
 Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LIMITED 
 
THE FUTURE OF 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
 BY 
 
 H. M. HYNDMAN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " ENGLAND FOR ALL," " THB BANKRUPTCY OF INDIA," 
 
 "THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM," "THE COMMERCIAL 
 
 CRISES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," " THE RECORD 
 
 OF AN ADVENTUROUS LIFE," ETC, ETC. 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
 RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C. 
 
^ 
 
 .\^'^' 
 
 iA^L.^ 
 
 First published in 1915 
 
 (All rights reserved) 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I AM indebted to the courtesy of the pro- 
 prietors of the Fortnightly Review and the 
 English Review for permission to reprint five 
 of the essays in this volume. The essay which 
 appears as Chapter I, I wrote for the English 
 Review in collaboration with my old friend 
 Ernest Belfort Bax. I have removed the con- 
 troversial portion of the article which appears 
 as Chapter VII, inasmuch as Mr. Austin 
 Harrison's paper in the English Review, to 
 which it was a reply, is not reprinted. 
 
 H.M.H. 
 9 Queen Anne's Gate, 
 
 St. James' Park, London, S.W. 
 October 1915. 
 
 3423S7 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/futureofdemocracOOhyndrich 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction . . . . • 9 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Social-Democracy and the War . • 17 
 
 II. Social-Democracy and Nationalism . . 49 
 
 III. Social-Democracy and Peace . . 73 
 
 IV. Class-State Socialism . . . .105 
 V. The Reorganization of English Trade . 128 
 
 VI. The Armed Nation . . . • iS^ 
 
 VII. Marxism and the Future . . '^ . 178 
 
 Conclusion . . . • .202 
 
I 
 
 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 When very great changes take place suddenly, 
 especially if they are forced upon a nation 
 from above, there is always a probability that 
 the people at large, for sheer lack of under- 
 standing, will resent and resist the alterations. 
 This may easily happen, even when what has 
 been done is advantageous to the community 
 and is in consonance with the general course 
 of national development. The danger of 
 vigorous assault upon accomplished facts is the 
 more serious when the population, whose political, 
 economic, and social forms have thus been 
 interfered with, is ill-educated, insufficiently 
 organized, poorly trained, badly disciplined, 
 and for the most part, crowded into large 
 towns. In this case, I say, the likelihood of 
 trouble arising increases, and the possibility of 
 making an effective appeal to reason as against 
 bitter prejudice, or well-meaning sentiment, is 
 
TO THE FUTORE; OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 lessened. Any economic strain, such as high 
 prices of the necessaries of life, which mean 
 starvation for the very poor, will carry matters 
 still farther towards something more vehement 
 than the ordinary antagonism between capital- 
 ists and wage-earners, between the possessing 
 and the disinherited class. The unprecedented war 
 for national existence, involving unparalleled loss 
 of life and unheard-of expenditure of wealth, 
 will bring us face to face with problems more 
 threatening to social peace than the war 
 itself. 
 
 These are general considerations, the sound- 
 ness of which would not be disputed if they 
 dealt with affairs in the abstract. Only when 
 they deal with a specific instance do contentions 
 arise. Few among us can look at the present 
 situation in Great Britain from a detached 
 point of view. We are all so closely mixed 
 up with and influenced by the national policy, 
 in the course of our daily lives, that cool 
 and careful reflection upon what is taking place 
 is very rare. We are rubbing along in apa- 
 thetic fashion as our fathers have done before 
 us, and imagine that if we can manage our 
 business and handle our disputes, misdemeanours, 
 and crimes without anything in the shape of 
 a codified law, we can equally well conduct 
 our polity without anything approaching to a 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 Constitution. We are quite content to drift 
 alike in calm and in storm. Those who are 
 wise enough or fidgety enough to ask for 
 a compass and to request that we should set 
 a definite course are regarded, until the crash 
 comes, as mere wiseacres and meddlers who 
 would do better to attend to their own matters 
 alone. 
 
 In this respect we had, so far, forgotten 
 nothing and learnt nothing up to the beginning, 
 or even well on into the middle, of the greatest 
 war of all time. Then a Government of old 
 Whigs and new Radicals suddenly discovered 
 that even their favourite new plan of a nomin- 
 ated and highly paid bureaucracy could not 
 successfully encounter the urgent necessities of 
 a struggle to the death with a modern Empire 
 whose entire peaceful as well as military life 
 was organized and disciplined for the purposes 
 of conquest in war. The tremendous scheme 
 of Frederick the Great, devised and carried 
 out in such wise that education, science, art, 
 history, philosophy, and every department of 
 intellectual and moral training should be culti- 
 vated, not for their own sake or for the up- 
 lifting of individuals and the community, but 
 to increase the power of the State, under the 
 control of his family and the militarist caste 
 which it had created, and by which it was 
 
12 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 upheld, found full realization for the first time 
 in the opening years of the present century. 
 So remote was all this from the conceptions 
 which had been fostered in the minds of the 
 people of this island for at least a hundred 
 and fifty years, that no warning from men who 
 knew Germany well and had thoroughly studied 
 its growth and its objects was heeded. The 
 thing could not be. Mankind had outgrown 
 the ideals of domination and the desires for 
 universal empire. National organization might 
 be replacing the old individualist tendencies, 
 but the most civilized nation on the planet 
 could not possibly aspire to achieve world- 
 wide supremacy on land, on sea, in industrial 
 competition, in trade, in peace, in war. Such 
 was the talk I commonly heard. The attitude 
 of Germany at The Hague and in the Moroccan 
 imbroglio deceived our politicians and rulers 
 in one direction : the pacific teachings and the 
 political success of German Social-Democracy 
 misled them in another. Nor did the admir- 
 able efficiency as well as the unscrupulous per- 
 sistence of German merchants and financiers 
 and manufacturers in the domain of trade 
 competition open the eyes of our own bour- 
 geoisie to the perils ahead. When our 
 statesmen were being precisely informed they 
 would neither tell the truth nor act upon it. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 In 191 1 Mr. Asquith and his Cabinet knew 
 Germany had resolved upon war. In one State 
 department alone, we were compelled as a nation 
 to overrule the shortsighted incapacity of many 
 of our men of affairs. The necessity for a 
 very powerful navy, in the face of another 
 powerful navy growing up to threaten Great 
 Britain with starvation and invasion on the 
 German side of the North Sea, was so obvious 
 that, in spite of the agitation of Radicals and 
 Labourists in favour of disarmament, a suffi- 
 cient fleet in being was kfept at the disposal 
 of the country. Even so, it was more by 
 accident than design that the nation had this 
 fleet ready for battle in the right place at 
 the critical time. But for this lucky chance, 
 a large portion of Great Britain would prob- 
 ably have shared the fate of Belgium and 
 our food supply would have been seriously 
 endangered at the same time. 
 
 The most credulous and short-sighted pacifists 
 now rejoice that their advice was rejected, and the 
 majority of them have finally discarded their doc- 
 trines of misplaced confidence in favour of more 
 Chauvinist methods, ashore and afloat, than those 
 which I myself and others who were constantly 
 adjuring the country to make ready against 
 German attack, ever advocated. 
 
 The truth is, that, as matters stand, nations 
 
14 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 large and small who fail to maintain them- 
 selves in a posture of defence and offence 
 simply court insult and invite aggression. This 
 is very clearly shown in the case of such a 
 powerful country, potentially, as the United 
 States of America. If the Great Republic 
 were in possession of a sufficient army and 
 an adequate navy, the attitude of the American 
 President, alike towards our enemy Germany 
 and ' our ally Japan, would be very different 
 from what it now is. But, in consequence 
 of a lack of preparation as fatuous as our 
 own, the Americans find themselves unable to 
 do more than protest, when their commercial 
 interests are threatened by Japan in China, 
 and are " too proud to fight " when their 
 non-combatant fellow-citizens are drowned by the 
 Germans in the Atlantic. I hope, though I 
 can scarcely believe, that the world-wide war now 
 being waged will preach peace more effectively 
 than any pacifist among us can possibly do, 
 and that international arbitration and simul- 
 taneous suppression of armaments will become 
 the rule among all civilized peoples. But 
 it is very evident that we have not yet come 
 within hail of this happy period, and it is 
 not easy to say how we can do so, when 
 the country which is responsible for the present 
 terrific^ struggle declares that it will respect 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 no treaties which it may enter into when peace 
 is at last proclaimed. 
 
 Just and indeed inevitable as a war of 
 defence against organized and educated bar- 
 barism must ever be, the democracy of each 
 nation engaged in the strife bears the main 
 burden of the conflict. The workers give their 
 lives, their limbs, their domestic happiness, and 
 their political freedom in order to ensure 
 success. Yet, under any reasonable system, 
 they have no antagonistic national interests to 
 serve and nothing to gain by the most com- 
 plete victory. The gratification of internecine 
 hatreds engendered by race, religion, or profit 
 cannot benefit themselves in their households now, 
 or secure the betterment of their children after 
 them. 
 
 They are all influenced, nevertheless, by 
 these causes of difference. They accept the 
 dictation of their economic masters. Yet from 
 j the peoples alone can come the certainty of 
 continuous peace. The first step towards this 
 most desirable end, therefore, is the existence 
 of a thoroughly educated and organized 
 democracy in each cbuntry. All talk of a 
 Board of International Arbitration, or of an 
 International Police Power to enforce its 
 decisions, must be futile until nations them- 
 selves are ready to accept, and determined to 
 
1 6 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 uphold, such a system. We are on the eve 
 of revolution in several directions and in more 
 than one country. Only by thorough prepara- 
 tion for the coming period will anarchy of 
 the most serious character be avoided. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 
 
 I 
 
 So remarkable has been the growth of Socialism 
 in all civilized countries, and even in uneducated 
 England, during the last thirty years that the 
 attitude of the International Socialist Party in 
 this unprecedented crisis is of considerable 
 interest to the world at large as well as to 
 Socialists themselves. We admit that the in- 
 fluence exerted by the Socialists to prevent, or 
 I limit the extension, of the war has been 
 i lamentably small. But it is equally certain 
 ! that their enemies and their friends alike ex- 
 ! pected too much of them in this respect. In 
 \ France, in Belgium, and in Great Britain, 
 \ Socialism is certainly stronger than it was 
 j before the war began, being much more in 
 touch with the mass of national feeling and 
 tending to secure advantages of a practical 
 * description for the people which could not have 
 
 2 '7 
 
1 8 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 been obtained before. In Germany, no doubt, 
 the representatives of Social-Democracy in the 
 Reichstag did not take the course anticipated 
 from their record. The majority supported 
 the mihtarist party by voting for armaments 
 at the commencement of the war, when, in 
 the interest of Socialism generally, they should 
 at least have abstained altogether. Moreover, 
 when the war had begun, they apparently 
 acquiesced in the attack on Belgium with 
 hardly any protest. 
 
 Bitter, however, as is the animosity at the 
 present time on both sides of the North Sea, 
 it is unquestionable that Social-Democrats did 
 good service to the cause of peace in the past. 
 But their successes were still more impressive to 
 others than they were to themselves. The huge 
 vote of between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 men 
 over twenty-five years of age, growing steadily 
 at General Election after General Election ; the 
 round million of weekly subscribers to the 
 party funds, the ninety daily self-supporting 
 Social-Democratic newspapers, and the admir- 
 able organization of the party as a whole 
 misled the world outside Germany (including 
 Ministers for Foreign Affairs) into the belief 
 that Socialists could do much more to preserve 
 peace than proved in fact at all possible. 
 
 The old leaders of the German Socialist 
 
THE WAR 19 
 
 party never at any time made this mistake. 
 They knew that they could not stop, nor even 
 postpone, war, when the dominant caste, had 
 resolved upon making it. Bebel, Liebk'necht, 
 Singer, and others told me, a few years ago, 
 that it was impossible for Social-Democrats to 
 check mobilization, or to avert hostilities, whether 
 the campaign was directed against France, or 
 England, or Russia. The utmost they could 
 do would be to enter a formal and vigorous 
 protest — a very dangerous matter for the pro- 
 testers. A definite refusal to obey the call 
 to arms would be dealt with in such a manner 
 as to throw back Socialism for a generation. 
 Open resistance was out of the question. This 
 opinion of the most influential German Socialists 
 was published in England more than once, 
 and never contradicted by them. But their 
 statement was scarcely needed to show the 
 truth. If the Social-Democrats had been able 
 to stop war, obviously they were strong enough 
 to take control in peace. 
 
 Still, for forty-four years, they did what they 
 could. They protested against the war of 
 1870, and their leaders were imprisoned in 
 consequence ; they strove their utmost to pre- 
 vent the annexation pf Alsace-Lorraine ; they 
 resisted the military fury of the Junkers, as 
 they denounced their reactionary finance ; they 
 
20 THE FUTURE OF. DEMOCRACY 
 
 voted every year for the reduction of the 
 expenditure on armaments and attacked the 
 poHcy of menace at all their meetings. .Quite 
 recently, also, Karl Liebknecht, following in 
 the footsteps of his great father (himself im- 
 prisoned times out of number) was incarcerated 
 for exposing the infamies of Prussian militarist 
 discipline. In this patriotic but dangerous 
 work he was boldly seconded by the fiery 
 Rosa Luxembourg, who has just been sent to 
 prison for doing so. Throughout, the party 
 denounced war upon France as a crime against 
 civilization. The less we can excuse the panic 
 which seized the majority of their Parliament 
 men, when threatened by Russia, the more 
 credit we should give to their previous efforts ; 
 and still more should we applaud those like 
 Karl Liebknecht, Mehring, Ledebour, Clara 
 Zetkin, Rosa Luxembourg, and Bernstein, who 
 have remained true to the faith. 
 
 The rank and file of the party, after be- 
 trayal by their representatives, had no means 
 of expressing their opinions. But, had Wilhelm 
 Liebknecht and August Bebel been living", we 
 believe that fully half the members of the 
 Social-Democracy would have declared that 
 their views on aggressive warfare were un- 
 changed. If there was no danger of this, 
 why was all Germany kept so carefully in 
 
THE WAR 21 
 
 the dark as to the objects and the progress 
 of the war? Why have lies been the current 
 coin of German officialism throughout? It is 
 not necessary to conceal the truth from a 
 nation that is eager for war I But war once 
 entered upon with ruthless energy, it was 
 almost impossible for hundreds of thousands, 
 or even millions, of objectors to make their 
 voices heard. Recall what occurred in Great 
 Britain only fifteen years ago. Although it 
 is probable that a majority of the inhabitants 
 of this island were opposed to the war waged 
 on behalf of international millionaires against 
 the South African Republics, matters were so 
 contrived by the English agg;ressors that those 
 who publicly opposed that criminal and costly 
 policy — I speak from personal experience — did 
 so at serious risk to life and limb. It is 
 far worse in Germany to-day, where the Prus- 
 sian Junkers have absolute mastery, with 
 martial law at their command. 
 
 Social-Democrats of all nationalities are 
 necessarily vehement advocates of peace between 
 the peoples. They know that there is no 
 real economic antagonism between the workers 
 of the world. Race, religion, greed of gain, 
 obscure the true interests of the producers. 
 Social-Democrats are, however, essentially Inter- 
 Nationalists ; meaning thereby that they strive 
 
22 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 for universal understanding among nations to 
 their common advantage. They are not in 
 principle Anti- Nationalists ; for that would 
 imply them to be necessarily indifferent to 
 national independence, because capitalism op- 
 presses all alike. They recognize the right 
 of every nationality to safeguard its own inde- 
 pendence, or to free itself from foreign rule. 
 The sympathy of Socialists has always been 
 with the conquered against the conquerors, with 
 the small Powers against the great, with the 
 weak against the strong. Moreover, at Inter- 
 national Congress after International Congress, 
 side by side with declarations in favour of 
 peace, a resolution has been carried unani- 
 mously by the assembled delegates in favour 
 of a National Democratic Citizen Force (or 
 Armed Nation) to ensure effective national de- 
 fence. Assuredly, therefore. Socialists cannot 
 be honestly denounced either as peace-at-any- 
 price men, or as Chauvinists. They oppose 
 aggression, they resist attack, they help on 
 emancipation. The action of Vaillant, Guesde, 
 Sembat, Vandervelde, Anseele, Plechanoff, Pablo 
 Iglesias, Charles Edward Russell, Herron, Wal- 
 ling, and many English SociaHsts may be fairly 
 set off against the temporary backsliding of 
 the weaker brethren in Berlin, who could not, 
 as their forerunners did, distinguish between 
 
THE WAR 23 
 
 a war of militarist aggression and a war of 
 democratic defence. 
 
 To class Marx with Treitschke, Bernhardi, 
 and the rest of the fire-eaters and professors 
 is ludicrous. Marx, and with him Engels, 
 was the most powerful opponent in Europe 
 of all that German Prussianized militarism 
 stands for. He loathed it and all its work, 
 as he showed in his writings, in his con- 
 versation and by his actions. Engels, a more 
 impulsive man than Marx, actually wanted to 
 go over and render what aid he could to 
 the French in the war of 1870, and Marx 
 only dissuaded him by urging that his action 
 would be misunderstood by the French them- 
 selves. Marx and Engels were strongly op- 
 posed to any policy which aimed at giving 
 Germany, as organized in their day, a dominant 
 position in Europe, i More than this, they 
 attacked the influence of Prussia and Prussian 
 methods as directly injurious to Germany itself, 
 and as tending to crush down the real great- 
 ness of the German people. In practical 
 politics of the day these great men may have 
 
 * A pamphlet by M. Laskine, written with the object of 
 showing that the Social-Democrats of Germany were favourable 
 to the Kaiser, gives extracts from the correspondence of Marx 
 and Engels which are much more Chauvinist in thought and 
 expression than I could have gathered from their general 
 action. 
 
24 THE FUTURE OF. DEMOCRACY 
 
 made their mistakes ; but it is an outrage upon 
 their memory to accuse them of having any- 
 thing in common with the infuriate mihtary 
 and professorial fulminists of to-day. 
 
 True, Sociahsts work towards the period 
 when, in a wider sphere, all nationalities will 
 be absorbed as separate entities into the great 
 Co-operative Commonwealth of Socialist Humanity 
 — just as, in the past. Tribes, ceasing to fight 
 among themselves, were combined into a Con- 
 federation of Tribes or a People ; Cities, aban- 
 doning their internecine warfare, expanded into 
 a Province ; and Provinces, within whose borders 
 peace became the rule, consolidated themselves 
 into the modern Nation-State. Though, also, 
 armaments intended for use by one nation 
 against another may be unavoidable in the 
 competitive profit-making and commercial system 
 of our day, with the attendant race hatreds 
 inherited from the past, these antagonistic 
 elements will disappear in the general co- 
 operation of internationally organized industry 
 and the universal peace of to-morrow. But 
 the basic antagonisms to be resolved, before 
 this ideal of the future can be realized, are 
 the economic and class struggles, within each 
 and every nation, mainly due to the system 
 of production itself : not to the persistent 
 efforts of each nation in turn for ex- 
 
THE WAR 25 
 
 pansion, or domination, at the expense of other 
 nations. 
 
 This great and terrible war has been forced 
 upon the world by Prussian militarist ambition ; 
 but this does not mean that Germany must 
 be counted out in the progress of Socialism. 
 Far from it. Notwithstanding her frightful 
 mistakes, Germany, by reason of the superior 
 education of her people, has probably advanced 
 farther towards the solution of the problem of 
 social revolution and social reconstruction than 
 any other country. France gained her solid 
 Republic by the German overthrow of the 
 French Empire. It is within the bounds of 
 possibility that Germany may attain to a still 
 higher and more beneficial transformation when 
 finally defeated by the Allies. " Revisionism " 
 most certainly will not arrest the approaching 
 change. Its influence has been greatly exag- 
 gerated, as I could easily demonstrate. It is 
 enough to say here that the leader of that 
 clever but unsuccessful sect of mild progressives 
 has himself not only abjured his errors, but 
 as a patriotic German sees no hope for the 
 uplifting of his country save in the defeat of 
 Prussian policy. 
 
 But Germans generally, being Germans, fail to 
 understand that the immediate danger of them- 
 selves to other nations, handled as they are by 
 
26 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Prussian Junkers, looms larger and seems more 
 directly hateful than the success of Russia 
 allied with England and France. Muscovite 
 Czarism may be warded off. The Prussian 
 Goth is at the gate. 
 
 II 
 
 Speaking broadly, Socialists at the present 
 time are, in most countries, divided into two 
 camps. The minority favour the extreme doc- 
 trinaire dogma that all wars in modern times 
 arise out of capitalism and capitalist an- 
 tagonism, and that, therefore. Socialists should 
 take no part in them whatever, even when 
 national freedom and national independence are 
 at stake. The majority, on the other hand, 
 contend, and act upon the contention, that by 
 no means all modern wars are capitalist wars, 
 or due to capitalist antagonism, and that, even 
 if they were, capitalism plus foreign militarist 
 domination, or racial repression, is worse 
 than domestic capitalism by itself. The former 
 opinion is in opposition to the decisions of 
 International Socialist Congresses : the latter is 
 in accordance with them. The great Peace 
 Congress held at Basle just before the Balkan 
 uprisings made an imposing declaration in 
 favour of universal peace. The workers of 
 the world, as already said, have really no 
 
THE WAR 27 
 
 antagonistic interests, if they understand their 
 true position, and without their aid no war 
 can be carried on. Sound as this may be 
 in the abstract, when war once breaks out, 
 working men are quite ready to take sides, 
 as we see, and to fight to a finish like other 
 classes, and many an ardent pacifist in Great 
 Britain yesterday is an ardent recruit or 
 recruiting agent to-day. Nevertheless, though 
 it is useless and even harmful to preach 
 peace when there is no peace, Socialism will 
 have a good deal to say when this war is 
 over. It has made more progress in this 
 island during the past twelve months than it 
 did in the previous twelve years. 
 
 It is worth while, therefore, to study the 
 exposition of scientific Socialism known as the 
 materialistic interpretation of history of which 
 we hear so much nowadays on both sides of 
 the Atlantic. That this conception influences 
 a growing number of thinkers is apparent. 
 
 I give the theory below, in the words of 
 its chief promulgator, Karl Marx. Marx, apart 
 from his analysis of capitalist production, which 
 still holds the field in political economy, 
 systematized, and provided a philosophic and 
 historic groundwork for, the ideas popularly 
 expounded years before he came to the front 
 by the English Chartist leaders and the prin- 
 
28 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 cipal French agitators. These ideas comprised 
 the class war, social antagonisms based upon 
 economics, etc. It is his name, therefore, 
 that is generally associated with the theory 
 which he thus formulates himself :— 
 
 ** In the social production of the environment 
 of their life, human beings enter into certain 
 necessary relations of production which are 
 independent of their will, and correspond to a 
 determinate stage of development of their 
 material and productive forces. The totality 
 of these relations of production form the 
 economic structure of the society, the real basis 
 upon which a judicial and political superstruc- 
 ture raises itself, and to which determinate 
 forms of social consciousness correspond. The 
 mode of production of the material life of 
 society conditions the socio-political and in- 
 tellectual life process generally. It is not the 
 consciousness of men that determines their 
 existence, but, on the contrary, their social 
 existence that determines their consciousness. At 
 a certain stage of their development, the material 
 productive forces of society come into contra- 
 diction with the existing relations of pro- 
 duction, or, to speak in judicial language, with 
 the conditions of property-holding, under which 
 they have hitherto worked. When this is the 
 case, the forms of development proper to the 
 
THE WAR 29 
 
 productive forces become suddenly transformed 
 into fetters for these forces. An epoch of 
 social revolution is then entered upon. With 
 the transformation of the economic basis, the 
 whole immense superstructure sooner or later 
 undergoes a complete bouleversement. In con- 
 sidering such revolutions as these, one must 
 always distinguish between the material revo- 
 lution in the economic conditions of production, 
 and the judicial, political, religious, artistic, or 
 philosophical — in short, the ideological form, in 
 which mankind becomes aware of the conflict 
 and under which it is fought out. Just as 
 little as one can judge an individual by what 
 he thinks of himself can we judge such a 
 period of revolution from its own consciousness 
 alone. On the contrary, we must rather 
 explain this consciousness by the contradictions 
 obtaining in the material life of the time, in 
 the conflict existing between the social forms of 
 production and the social relations of production. 
 A social formation never passes away before all 
 the productive forces immanent within it have 
 had time to develop themselves, and new and 
 higher relations of production never establish 
 themselves before the material conditions of 
 their existence have already been formed within 
 the womb of the old society. Hence mankind 
 only sets itself tasks that it can accomplish, 
 
30 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 for if we consider the matter carefully we 
 shall find that the problem to be solved never 
 arises except where the material conditions of 
 its solution are already present, or at least 
 where they are already in process of realizing 
 themselves. In their broader outlines, Oriental, 
 classical, feudal, and modern modes of pro- 
 duction may be designated as progressive 
 epochs in the economic formation of society. 
 The bourgeois relations of production are the 
 last of the antagonistic forms of the social 
 progress of production, antagonistic, not in 
 the sense of individual antagonism, but 
 of an antagonism arising out of the 
 social conditions underlying the life of 
 individuals. These are created by the pro- 
 ductive forces developing themselves within the 
 womb of bourgeois society, which forces create 
 at the same time the material conditions for 
 the resolution of the antagonism thus created. 
 With the present social formation, therefore, 
 the introductory period of the history of human 
 society is closed." 
 
 Now, it is obvious, if we accept this as 
 a complete summary of human development, 
 that mankind in society is thereby reduced to 
 a collection of merely sentient automata, un- 
 consciously dominated, from generation to 
 generation, by economic circumstances, outside 
 
THE WAR 31 
 
 of their own cognition or control. Moreover, 
 used in this sense, the word and the 
 conception ** materialist " or (perhaps better) 
 " economic " assumes the attributes of a God, 
 or First Cause. And, indeed, some of Marx's 
 followers are quite content to ascribe to it such 
 a power. That is to say, the materialist, 
 which for them means the economic, factor 
 devours all other factors in the long history 
 of man in society, and proceeds onwards and 
 upwards of its own motion and volition. Pro- 
 gress is assumed as one of the properties 
 inherent in matter, giving forth of itself an 
 impulse towards the modification of human 
 environment. Hence all individual, as well 
 as all social, improvement becomes virtually 
 automatic. 
 
 The mental or psychologic factor is thus 
 wholly eliminated. The inevitable rules society 
 inevitably. Consciousness itself is nothing more 
 than a special modification of the object of 
 consciousness (i.e. of its own object \)J Simi- 
 larly social advance is no more than an effort 
 of highly organized matter to reach an unseen 
 goal, in which effort mankind renders blind 
 
 ' Consciousness as external perception which is the source 
 and condition of our objectively known world is reduced as 
 such to a mere effect or mode of that world — i.e. to a special 
 set of its own impressions. — E. B. B. 
 
32 THE FUTURE OF. DEMOCRACY 
 
 assistance as a vitalized material agent. How 
 or why progress, rather than stagnation or 
 retrogression, should result from such unin- 
 fluenced material evolution, no attempt is made 
 to explain. 
 
 There must, we suppose, be some charm 
 to certain minds in this crushing down of 
 active mentality. The simplicity of the theory 
 is itself a perfect joy to searchers after the 
 universal formula — the philosopher's stone — for 
 the transmutation into theoretical certainty of 
 all that is knowable. This key it is claimed 
 opens up, lays bare, and explains every period 
 of history in its innermost detail. The adjust- 
 ment, also, of apparently irreconcilable historic 
 developments to the theory, wholly regardless 
 of more obvious reasons for what has taken 
 place, possesses an attraction for the devotees 
 of this materialist cult of abstraction, which 
 transcends even the believer's delight in tracing 
 ** the finger of God " in every incident of 
 life. Save that men of genuine ability, such 
 as Karl Kautsky, the late Paul Lafargue, 
 Morris Hillquit, and a few others, including 
 from another side Robert Blatchford, accept 
 this human automatism as a material revelation, 
 it would not be worth while to expose the 
 shortcomings of Marx's brilliant and pregnant 
 generalization, when pushed to extremes. 
 
THE WAR 33' 
 
 What Marx overlooked, in the passage 
 quoted, is that one factor of a complex syn- 
 thesis cannot constitute reality : least of all 
 can one aspect of one factor do so. The 
 total material conditions, omitting the mental 
 factor, are as purely abstract as the mind 
 itself divorced from its material expression is 
 abstract. Still more does the economic element 
 by itself, severed from the other material con- 
 ditions, become an abstraction : being, indeed, 
 an abstraction of an abstraction. In the 
 domain of social psychology, family, tribal, and 
 personal feeHngs, internal and external per-^ 
 ception, mental combinations, invagination, etc., 
 all have their influence. 
 
 The last-named psychologic factor, in par- 
 ticular, often works in direct antagonism to 
 material intei-^sts, both individual and social. 
 The crudest superstitions, have very greatly 
 influenced human action, in many v^ays and 
 in various directions. Even the profound 
 belief in what, to the average modern mind, 
 is an absurdity, such, as ** the Second Advent " 
 of the Christ, which, by no possible perversion 
 of ideas can be attributed to the economic 
 forms, or the economic development, of the 
 time, had a powerful influence upon the actions, 
 as well as upon the teachings, of the early 
 Ch,ristians. The hope of another world, with 
 
 3 
 
34 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 its sempiternal happiness for disembodied spirits, 
 brought about an indifference to this world 
 with its material needs. This is common to 
 all supernatural rehgions, when really believed 
 in. Similar, and almost as widely spread, 
 popular delusions, which also had no bearing 
 whatsoever upon the material side of social 
 life, have produced very serious effects upon 
 men in society — effects which have extended 
 over whole continents, and lasted for long 
 periods. 
 
 Many historic situations, also, cannot possibly 
 be explained by the comparatively simple 
 formula of economic antagonisms, and the 
 struggle of classes thence resulting. Granting 
 that these class-struggles themselves were wholly 
 due to the purely economic factor (of itself 
 a very large concession), there were other des- 
 perate conflicts going on simultaneously, or 
 successively, which had nothing at all to do 
 with class warfare. The antagonisms of race, 
 of religion, of custom, and so on, have brought 
 about some of the most terrible conflagrations the 
 world has ever seen. History bristles^ with 
 illustrations of this truth. Can there be any- 
 thing more absurd than to try to prove that 
 the early movements of Mohammedanism or 
 Peter the Hermit's Crusade are traceable, either 
 directly or indirectly, to the economics of the 
 
THE WAR 35 
 
 time? The attempt falls through of its own 
 fatuity. Nevertheless, the long-drawn conflict 
 extending over centuries which resulted from 
 the growing power of the more recent Asiatic 
 creed, Mohammedanism, and the furious assaults 
 upon it of the older Asiatic religion, Christianity, 
 greatly affected the future of the race. That 
 economic interests arose out of and followed 
 the initial religious antagonism may be true ; 
 but this does not in the least weaken the 
 original contention : namely, that the antagon- 
 ism was mainly psychologic and not economic. 
 The Social-Democratic movement is itself a 
 refutation of the purely materialistic theory ; 
 inasmuch as Germany, where economic condi- 
 tions are less developed than in England or 
 America, nevertheless, owing to psychologic 
 causes, has organized that movement much 
 more vigorously and capably than either of 
 the other two countries. i 
 
 ' An even more striking instance is the advance of social- 
 democracy in Finland. Here is a poor and very sparsely 
 inhabited country, whose chief industries, tar and papermaking, 
 only employ a very small number of the working population. 
 The majority of Finns are peasants or farmers ; yet for the last 
 seven years the social-democratic vote has steadily increased, 
 until its representatives comprise very nearly half of the whole 
 elected assembly. Further, the majority of this vote is polled 
 by the agricultural workers of Finland — peasants from remote 
 farms and forests— living, under the most primitive conditions, 
 upon a harsh and barren soil. 
 
36 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 All wars are no more of necessity economic 
 wars than all internal national conflicts are of 
 necessity class struggles. 
 
 This is as true of modern wars as of the 
 wars of history, and is particularly applicable 
 to the greatest war the world has ever seen 
 in which we, as a nation, are taking part 
 to-day. That many wars of our time have 
 been waged in the interest, real or supposed, 
 of the capitalist class does not admit of 
 dispute. Such wars are, in fact, so numerous 
 that only the eager desire to make the econo- 
 mic theory universally valid could induce the 
 fanatics of materialistic monism to insist upon 
 bringing the present war within the limits of 
 the same category. The wars in China, 
 Burmah, South Africa, Morocco, Tonquin, 
 Cochin China, Madagascar, Manchuria, Korea, 
 Cuba, Tripoli, and the Philippines were un- 
 doubtedly all of them capitalist wars in the 
 strict sense : wars, that is to say, whose 
 primary object was to obtain an extension of 
 trade and commerce, or to ensure the expan- 
 sion of some financial scheme. On the other 
 hand, the wars of emancipation, such as those 
 of Italy and Hungary and the Balkan Princi- 
 palities, cannot be brought under this head ; 
 nor can the wars of Germany against Austria 
 and France. 
 
THE WAR 37: 
 
 The war between Great Britain, France, 
 Russia, Servia, etc., against Germany and 
 Austria-Hungary is likewise not a capitalist war 
 in its origin. 
 
 HI 
 
 The rise of Prussia to its present position 
 of domination over Germany, and lately even 
 over Austria, has, of course, been due to 
 militarism. The history of Frederick the Great 
 and his wars, in which he made defeats as 
 fruitful as other generals made victories, shows 
 that clearly enough ; and when Prussia had 
 recovered from Jena and Auerstadt, the tale 
 was taken up by the reorganized army which, 
 after Leipzig and Waterloo, became the most 
 powerful engine of war on the continent of 
 Europe. Nearly fifty years elapsed, however, 
 before the successful campaigns of 1864, 1866, 
 and 1870, against Denmark, Austria, and 
 France, proved that the Prussian military 
 system still preserved the organization and 
 impetus given to it by Scharnhorst and Gneise- 
 nau, and that the lessons of thorough unscrupu- 
 lousness in diplomacy, taught by the ablest 
 of the HohenzoUerns, had not been lost 
 upon Bismarck. From 1871 onwards, Prus- 
 sianized Germany, by far the best-educated, 
 and industrially and commercially the most pro- 
 gressive, country in Europe, with the enormous 
 
38 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 advantage of her central position, was, con- 
 sciously and unconsciously, making ready for 
 her next advance. The policy of a good 
 understanding with Russia, maintained for many 
 years, to such an extent that, in foreign affairs, 
 Berlin and St. Petersburg were almost one 
 city, enabled Germany to feel secure against 
 France, while she was devoting herself to the 
 extension of her rural and urban powers of 
 production. Never at any time did she neglect 
 to keep her army in a posture of offence. All 
 can now see the meaning of this. 
 
 Militarism is in no sense necessarily eco- 
 nomic. But the strength of Germany for war 
 was rapidly increased by her success in peace. 
 From the date of the great financial crisis 
 of 1874, and the consequent reorganization of 
 her entire banking system, Germany entered 
 upon that determined and well-thought-out 
 attempt to attain pre-eminence in the trade 
 and commerce of the world of which we have 
 not yet seen the end. From 1878, when the 
 German High Commissioner, von Rouleaux, 
 stigmatized the exhibits of his countrymen as 
 ** cheap and nasty," special efforts were made 
 to use the excellent education and admirable 
 powers of organization of Germany in this 
 field. The Government rendered official and 
 financial help in both agriculture and manu- 
 
THE WAR 39 
 
 facture. Scientific training, good and cheap 
 K before, was made cheaper and better each year. 
 Railways were used, not to foster foreign com- 
 petition, as in Great Britain, by excessive rates 
 of home freight, but to give the greatest 
 
 (possible advantage to German industry in every 
 department. In more than one rural district 
 the railways were worked at an apparent loss, 
 in order to foster home production, from which 
 the nation derived far greater advantages than 
 such apparent sacrifice entailed. The same 
 system of State help was extended to shipping 
 until the great German liners, one of which, 
 indeed, was actually subsidized by England, 
 were more than holding their own with the 
 oldest and most celebrated British companies. 
 
 Protection, alike in agriculture and in manu- 
 facture, bound the whole Empire together in 
 essentially Imperial bonds. Right or wrong 
 in theory — which it is not here necessary to 
 discuss — there can be no doubt whatever that 
 this policy entirely changed the face of 
 Germany, and rendered her our most formidable 
 competitor in every market. Emigration, which 
 had been proceeding on a vast scale, almost 
 entirely ceased. The savings banks were over- 
 flowing with deposits. The position of the 
 workers was greatly improved. Not only were 
 German Colonies secured in Africa and Asia, 
 
40 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 which were more trouble than they were worth, 
 but very profitable commerce with our own 
 Colonies and Dependencies was growing by 
 leaps and bounds, at the expense of the out- 
 of-date but self-satisfied commercialists of Old 
 England. Hence arose a trade rivalry, against 
 which we could not hope to contend success- 
 fully in the long run, except by a complete 
 revolution in our methods of education and 
 business, to which neither the Government nor 
 the dominant class would consent. 
 
 This remarkable advance in Germany, also, 
 was accompanied by the establishment of a 
 system of banking, specially directed to the 
 expansion of national industry and commerce : 
 a system which was clever enough to use 
 French accumulations, borrowed at a low rate 
 of interest, through the German Jews who so 
 largely controlled French financial institutions, 
 in order still further to extend their own trade. 
 It was an admirably organized attempt to con- 
 quer the world-market for commodities in 
 which the Government, the banks, the manu- 
 facturers, and the shipowners all worked for 
 the common cause. Meanwhile, both French 
 and English financiers carefully played the 
 game of their business opponents, and the great 
 English banks devoted their attention chiefly 
 to fostering speculation on the Stock Exchange 
 
THE WAR 41 
 
 — a policy of which the Germans took advan- 
 tage, just before the outbreak of war, to an 
 extent not by any means as yet fully under- 
 stood. 
 
 Thus, at the beginning of the year 191 4, 
 in spite of the withdrawal, since the Agadir 
 affair, of very large amounts of French capital 
 from the German market, Germany had attained 
 to such a position that only the United States 
 stood on a higher plane in regard to its 
 future in the world of competitive commerce. 
 And this great and increasing economic strength 
 was, for war purposes, at the disposal of the 
 Prussian militarists, if they succeeded in getting 
 the upper hand in politics and foreign 
 affairs. 
 
 The only party in Germany which was deeply 
 interested in making war was this same Junker 
 party and its militarist friends. They consti- 
 tuted the last military caste, as a caste, left 
 in the world. They were being threatened on 
 two sides. On the one hand, the great 
 capitalists, with whom the Kaiser was more 
 friendly than he was towards the Junkers, were 
 gaining influence and power, aided by the 
 State, in every direction. Fiscal protection 
 against agricultural imports and control over 
 the army did not compensate them for being 
 thus supplanted at Court and ia political 
 
42 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 influence. Every year that passed made their 
 position, as they thought, more insecure. 
 Hence their endeavour to make their power 
 felt in every household, and their growing 
 determination to impress their superiority upon 
 the mass of the people by almost unendurable 
 arrogance and brutality, alike to soldiers under 
 their command and to civilians who at any 
 time might be at their mercy. Militarist 
 policy only waited its opportunity to push 
 ahead with vigour, and, in its desire to obtain 
 for itself in the name of Germany (as its 
 ablest writers admitted) the leadership and the 
 domination of Europe, nothing was omitted 
 from the necessary preparations which science 
 could suggest or which material organization 
 could provide. The incident of military 
 ruffianism at Zabern, which horrified Europe, 
 but left Prussia unmoved, was but a fair 
 example of the tendency in one direction ; the 
 secretly built howitzers for the destruction of 
 Belgian and French forts was a manifestation 
 of the other. Only war was needed to give 
 full outlet to both. I 
 
 ' Endeavours have been made of late, in more than one 
 quarter, to confuse the exceptional militarist caste in Prussia 
 with the military staffs and officers in Great Britain and other 
 European countries. The difference, both politically, socially, 
 and militarily, is very great. Nowhere, not even in Austria, 
 where the power of the aristocracy over the army is quite bad 
 
THE WAR 43 
 
 And war became the more necessary from the 
 Junker point of view on account of that 
 astounding growth of German Social-Democracy 
 to which we have already made reference. For 
 German Social-Democracy, though in direct 
 antagonism to German Capitalism, was even 
 more menacing, or so it was thought, to 
 German Militarism, and for that reason could 
 rely to some extent upon support from the 
 German lower middle-class and even from the 
 great German capitalists. Neither of these 
 sections had any love for the Junkers and 
 their military caste, nor had they any desire 
 for war. In fact, as quite probably the 
 Kaiser himself and his more sober advisers 
 saw clearly, Germany was gaining so much 
 and so rapidly by her quiet but unceasing 
 progress in peace that she could not possibly 
 hope to obtain more by war without en- 
 countering desperate risks. Therefore, capitalists 
 and people were at first dragged into hostilities 
 by the military caste, whose policy had been 
 systematically advocated among the ** intellec- 
 tuals " by the university professors for at least 
 fifty years. This, consequently, is not a care- 
 enough, have the prejudices of a hereditary caste been so greatly 
 strengthened and rendered so intolerable, by the irresponsible 
 arrogance of military command, as in Prussia, and through 
 Prussia, in Germany. 
 
44 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 fully prepared war of capitalist aggression 
 against rival capitalists. It is the final effort 
 of Prussian militarism to retain its predomin- 
 ance at home by conquest and annexation 
 abroad. The Junkers were losing ground : war 
 might enable them to recover what they had 
 lost and a ^reat deal more. Therefore, foreign 
 war was deliberately engineered in order to 
 save the domestic situation. Hence the in- 
 trigues of this camarilla around the Kaiser and 
 his family, as well as in every capital in 
 Europe ; hence the constant and at last suc- 
 cessful efforts to embroil Austria and Russia 
 against their will in the trouble arising out 
 of the Serajevo assassination ; hence the sudden 
 attack upon Belgium as a preliminary to the 
 crushing of France ; hence also the miscalcula- 
 tion about the attitude of England, which the 
 Junkers could not understand. 
 
 To the amazement of all foreign Socialists 
 the German Social-Democrats supported the 
 militarists, who were their worst enemies. 
 Why? " Russia the enemy " was substituted 
 for "England the enemy" — the cry since 1878 
 — and Social-Democrats, like other Germans, 
 were misled. Unfortunately, too, the English 
 capitalist newspapers played into the hands of 
 the German Chauvinists all over the Fatherland 
 by starting an agitation, immediately on the 
 
THE WAR 45 
 
 outbreak of war, for " the capture of German 
 trade " ; as if sheer capitalist greed on our 
 side, and not the outrage upon Belgian neu- 
 trality, the attempt to immolate France, or 
 even the necessity for defending the inde- 
 pendence of Great Britain herself, was the real 
 reason why this nation declared war upon 
 Germany. The truth being, of course, that 
 the capitalist class in Great Britain, native and 
 foreign, was strongly on the side of peace. 
 The grim irony of the thing is almost unprece- 
 dented in history. 
 
 Peace favoured the commercial expansion of 
 Germany. Peace favoured the racial growth 
 of the Slavs with Russia behind them. Peace 
 favoured the consolidation and permanence of 
 the French Republic. Peace favoured the 
 general policy of Great Britain. Yet war was 
 forced upon the world by the fear and the ambi- 
 tion of the only purely militarist and reactionary 
 system left in Europe. Outside Germany, even 
 the most rigid conscription does not engender 
 a military caste of the nature it has created 
 there. But Prussianized Germany, as repre- 
 sented by the Junkers, with Austria-Hungary 
 trailing at her heels, was becoming more mili- 
 tarist every day. 
 
 Victory for such a power would inevitably 
 bring about a long set-back, not only to 
 
46 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Socialism in Germany, but to democracy all 
 over Europe. For that democracy, as well 
 as Socialism, will be attacked and repressed 
 if the Prusso-German army wins is apparent 
 from what is already to be seen in Germany 
 itself. Prussia, the headquarters of Junkerdom 
 and militarism, bristles with reaction. Her 
 political system and methods of election are 
 entirely behind the times. So far, also, not- 
 withstanding the great and growing power of 
 Social-Democracy in Berlin and throughout 
 Prussia, it has been found impossible to 
 introduce reforms. Not only so, but reaction 
 has gained ground in the South. In Saxony, 
 where Social-Democracy had made most effective 
 use of universal suffrage, that democratic right 
 had actually been taken away from the people, 
 and no effective protest was made by Social- 
 Democrats against this high-handed action of 
 the reactionary minority. As the Social-Demo- 
 crat poll mounted up, at General Election after 
 General Election, the Junkers openly threatened 
 to suppress universal suffrage throughout the 
 Empire in the same way. Should they win 
 in war they will carry out this poHcy in peace, 
 and the countries they conquer, annex, or put 
 under tutelage will be subjected in like manner 
 to the rule of the sabre. Culture is only 
 useful in the minds of the Junkers in so far 
 
THE WAR 47 
 
 as it enables them to dominate and oppress. 
 Triumphant abroad, they will be the despots 
 of Central, Western, and South-Eastern Europe. 
 Happily, this misfortune seems unlikely to 
 befall humanity and civilization, including Ger- 
 many herself. Prussianized Germany to-day, 
 like Napoleonic France of a century ago, has 
 raised against herself the most formidable com- 
 bination the world has ever seen. Yet we have 
 all had a narrow escape from at least her 
 temporary success. The conspiracy against the 
 independence and general freedom of all her 
 neighbours was conducted with masterly ability 
 and good fortune, up to the point when the 
 tide was turned back on the Marne. German 
 calculations were by no means so rash as 
 some of us are now apt to imagine. If by 
 far the greatest danger of modern times seems; 
 to be slowly passing away, this is due to the 
 fact that her own policy has forced her 
 enemies to fight with unheard-of resolution and 
 patriotism. Let us hope that the defeat of 
 Prussian militarism, to which we may confi- 
 dently look forward at an earlier or later 
 date, will be accompanied by the uprising of 
 all that is really noblest in the German people, 
 who have been made its dupes, its tools, and 
 its victims. On the side of the Allies there is 
 no ruthless hatred against Germany — though 
 
48 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 that the wrongs done by her soldiery must 
 be duly paid for is a sad consequence of the 
 hideous barbarism which has disgraced her 
 campaign — but when the war is over, that a 
 new and greater Germany may again take a 
 leading place in the ranks of great nations 
 striving for human progress is the sincere 
 desire of not a few of those who have been 
 compelled for years past most vigorously to 
 denounce and oppose her as a standing menace 
 to Europe. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALISM 
 
 One of the most remarkable contrasts in recent 
 history is the condition of modern Germany 
 in 1858 and its condition to-day. In the 
 former year, as a lad of sixteen, I first made 
 acquaintance with the Rhine and the provinces 
 on its banks. The river was still at that 
 time the river of the poets. The people who 
 inhabited the towns and villages along its 
 course, and dwelt in the beautiful valleys which 
 run up from the stream, were all agriculturists 
 of a kindly, simple character, whose behaviour 
 to a young stranger travelling alone among 
 them was invariably good-natured and cour- 
 teous. The French wars of the Republic and 
 Napoleon I were almost forgotten, the uprisings 
 of 1848 had quieted down, the new war period 
 had not begun. Austria and Prussia were, 
 superficially at least, on very good terms. The 
 great fortress of Mainz — it was still commonly 
 known by its French name of Mayence — ^was 
 
 4 *' 
 
so THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 garrisoned by 15,000 Austrians and 15,000 
 Prussians. 
 
 There was, in fact, little or nothing to show 
 at this period, nor in the first years of the 
 following decade after Napoleon Ill's Italian 
 campaign against Austria, that we were on 
 the eve of a complete change in the dis- 
 tribution of power in Central Europe. The 
 partial withdrawal of Austria from Italy in 
 1859, the overthrow of the Kingdom of Naples 
 and the two Sicilies in 1860-61, the splendid 
 but disastrous revolt of the Poles under 
 Langiewicz, left that brilliant but unfortunate 
 people as much oppressed and admired as ever, 
 and France, with her New Year's Napoleonic 
 Encyclical from the Tuileries, was still regarded 
 as the leading Power of Europe, and main- 
 tained that doubtful influence for just upon 
 another ten years. 
 
 The period of transformation. Which we can 
 all now see meant so much to us of to- 
 day, began with the dastardly attack by 
 Prussia and Austria combined upon little Den- 
 mark in 1864. No Englishman can read of 
 the behaviour of our country at that juncture 
 without shame. It would have been easy for 
 Great Britain to have formed successfully a 
 league of defence against the brigandage of 
 the Germanic Powers, to have safeguarded 
 
NATIONALISM 5 1 
 
 Denmark from dismemberment, and to have 
 asserted the rights of small States and nation- 
 alities in Europe. But these were the days 
 when our highest conception of policy was 
 pusillanimous surrender and our duty to our 
 neighbours consisted in prayer to the Almighty 
 that they might turn their misfortunes to good 
 account. So Schleswig- Holstein was duly 
 appropriated by Prussia, while British trade was 
 still mounting upwards by leaps and bounds 
 in the peace we so carefully preserved. 
 
 Then followed the dispute between the two 
 great Teutonic freebooters, which led to the 
 critical campaign of 1866, when, thanks to 
 Bismarck's amazing diplomatic coup, the Italian 
 Alliance, Prussia won the leadership of Ger- 
 many from Austria and became the most 
 powerful State in Europe. The victory, how- 
 ever, was due far more to the absurd 
 meddling of the old .women in Council at 
 Vienna with Benedek's strategy and tactics, and 
 to the Italian diversion of some of the best 
 Austrian troops from the main field of con- 
 flict to the Adige and the Po, than to either 
 the brilliant military prowess of the Prussian 
 troops or the effectiveness of their breech- 
 loading rifles. It was a very narrow escape 
 for the Berserker of Berlin, even as things 
 stood, and the result mig'ht have been very 
 
52 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 different had Austria (with her usual blunder- 
 ing taken as an inevitable factor in the case) 
 remembered in war, as in diplomacy, Pozzo 
 di Borgo's indispensable condition for success 
 — Uune apres Vautre. Less than half of the 
 Archduke Albrecht's army, with General John 
 in command, could easily have held the Italians 
 in check, while the remainder .would have 
 crushed the divided Prussian armies north of 
 the Alps. 
 
 But the what-might-have-beens of the past 
 are as futile as they are fascinating'. Specu- 
 lations as to the consequences of Benedek's 
 success are confronted by the realities which 
 followed upon Moltke's victories. Within four 
 years of Sadowa and Koniggratz Austria had 
 been cajoled into taking up the role of an 
 indifferent or friendly spectator, while the diplo- 
 macy and strategy which had destroyed her 
 leadership were turned with even more fatal 
 effect against France. Unscrupulous and ruth- 
 less as was again the policy of Prussia, few 
 regretted the downfall of the second French 
 Empire, with its reactionary clericaHsm at home 
 and its piratical assault upon Mexico abroad. 
 The Gallic cock crowed too loud each ist 
 of January ; and Europe was weary of a 
 shoddy Imperialism which was crushing down 
 all that made France of real value to the, 
 
NATIONALISM 53 
 
 world. But with the crowning" victory of Sedan 
 and the establishment of the French Republic 
 an entirely new situation was created. 
 
 Then, if ever in her history, was the time 
 for Great Britain to take up the cause of 
 her old rival in g'rim earnest. The ruin of 
 Republican France even for a time could not 
 but be harmful to all that England ought 
 to stand for. French influence, relieved of 
 Imperial chauvinism and corruption, required 
 strengthening rather than weaken ing". The two 
 Western Powers together could make head 
 against any attempt to revive the old Holy 
 Alliance, which had done so much to check 
 progress and blight freedom in Europe. Most 
 unfortunately, England at this time had a 
 vehemently pro-German Court, and her diplo- 
 macy was at the mercy of an agreeable in- 
 competent as Foreign Secretary and a peace- 
 at-any-price rhetorician as Prime Minister. 
 
 The United Kingdom stood by, therefore, 
 while the French Republic was beaten by the 
 Prussian armies, and France herself was bled 
 mercilessly by the conqueror. Queen Victoria, 
 Granville, and Gladstone by their pro- Prussian 
 prejudices and general ineptitude, were directly 
 responsible for bringing about the European 
 conditions which led to the war of 191 4. 
 Had France been adequately supported by 
 
54 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 England in the autumn of 1870, Austria and 
 Italy could have called a halt to Prussia's 
 victorious armies, and the Republic would, in 
 all probability, never have been driven into 
 the harmful Alliance with Russia. I regard 
 the policy pursued in 1870 as the first cause 
 of the present devastating" war. It was no 
 difficult matter even then to foresee that 
 Prussia, especially if she maintained her friendly 
 relations with Russia, would sooner or later 
 become the dominant nation in Europe. 
 
 I have given already my reasons for hold- 
 ing the opinion that the present war is not, 
 what so many believe it to be, a capitalist 
 war. Nations 'g'o tnad about other things than 
 the mere lust to gain wealth. That, how- 
 ever, the Germanic Powers, and in particular 
 Prussianized Germany, had resolved for many 
 a long year to develop their strength at the 
 expense of their neighbours does not now admit 
 of dispute. The truth is admitted by the 
 Kaiser, by other members of the Federal 
 Council, and by the heads of the great German 
 departments. This does not mean that all 
 German or Austrian contentions have been 
 directed to this end. But, even when in the 
 right, both German and Austrian diplomacy 
 have been conducted in such fashion as to 
 put those nations in the wrong. Arrogance 
 
NATIONALISM 55 
 
 is always as provocative as it is unwise.; 
 Thus in the matter of Morocco Germany was 
 in the main right. Even the French Yellow 
 Book shows that. But, sound as her views 
 were in themselves, when she demanded the 
 resignation of M. Delcasse at the point of the 
 sword, she inflicted a humiliation upon France 
 to no good purpose whatsoever. 
 
 Similarly, Austria could not be expected to 
 continue the doubtful position she held in 
 Bosnia and the Herzegovina. She had long 
 since carried out the Treaty of Berlin — feet 
 foremost: it was high time that fraudulent 
 document should be decently buried. But 
 when its immediate and sudden abrogation was 
 thrust upon Russia, contrary to all diplomatic 
 usage and in ,a singularly brutal way, it was 
 again obvious that the parties to this un- 
 fortunate method of conducting international 
 business were forcing an open door after a 
 most unmannerly fashion. Behind these rough 
 methods lay the conviction that Germany and 
 Austria-Hungary, with Italy as their Ally, were 
 strong enough to defy the public feeling of 
 other nationalities whenever they saw fit to 
 do so. Such a belief tended to embitter 
 antagonisms of every kind. 
 
 Of these antagonisms, by no means the least 
 important is that which exists between Teuton 
 
56 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and Slav. This antagonism is nowadays very 
 marked indeed. It has, however, been going 
 on for many hundred years, and is still 
 assuming a more and more critical shape. 
 The Slav is the advancing race. This too, 
 in spite of German industry and German 
 efficiency. About that there can be no doubt. 
 In peace the Slav steadily gains ground. 
 Whole districts in Austria, and on the borders 
 of Germany, which were German a few years 
 ago, had German names and used the German 
 language, have now become Slav in every 
 respect. "Where the Slav abuts upon the 
 German, he is to a large extent eating the 
 German out — especially in the south-east of 
 Europe. So bitter was the feeling in Vienna 
 about this, that, just when war was being 
 forced on Serbia by the Austrian Foreign 
 Office, a Councillor in Vienna of very moderate 
 views, and as a rule of calm expressions, 
 wrote quite furiously to my wife on the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 This is, in effect, what he said: ** Now 
 is the time to crush and put an end to this 
 Slav danger once for all, and to enable us 
 to show that we Germans are the dominant 
 race and intend to remain so. Everybody 
 here is of one mind about this." Serbia was 
 to be annihilated as a step towards placing 
 
NATIONALISM 57. 
 
 the whole of the Slavs of South-Eastern 
 Europe under more thorough subjection to the 
 Germans. If this was the reasoned judgment 
 of a highly educated and capable man of high 
 position in Vienna, what was the line taken 
 by less thoughtful people? Beyond question 
 that the Slavs must be " taug*ht a lesson." 
 It was fear underlying a sense of superiority 
 which engendered this policy of " thorough." 
 The ** superior " race was being outfought in 
 peace by the more prolific and less exigent 
 people who were considered ** inferior." 
 
 Such a policy, moreover, was no new thing, 
 as Haase, the leader of the German Social- 
 Democratic Party in the Reichstag, openly de- 
 clared. For five-and-twenty years before the 
 assassinations at Serajevo, said he, Austria had 
 been doing her utmost to hamper and head 
 back Serbia in every possible way. And this 
 chiefly, if not entirely, from the racial point 
 of view. Teuton against Slav. What was 
 the argument put successfully to the Social- 
 Democrats of Germany in order to justify the 
 war? " Would you give way and allow Russia 
 to come down and dominate us? You are 
 bound to help us ,to defend pur country against 
 this terrible rising power of the Slavonic race 
 which is coming forward in the Balkans and 
 threatening Austria, and which by the building 
 
58 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 up of an autonomous Poland, may render our 
 position permanently insecure." 
 
 The Germans, feeling that their economic and 
 bureaucratic hold on Russia was slipping from 
 their 'g'rasp, cried out that emancipated Russia 
 might overwhelm them. This bugbear of 
 Russian aggression on Germany was worked 
 up for the purposes of the militarist faction 
 in Germany and Austria. But the Slavs on 
 their side felt bitterly the oppression to which 
 they were subjected wherever Germans got the 
 upper hand, as well within as without the 
 limits of Germany and Austria proper. 
 
 There is, for example, no more furious race 
 antagonism in the world than that between 
 Czech and German and Slovak and Magyar. 
 At a Congress of our own party at Manches- 
 ter two or three years ago, Habermeyer, one 
 of the Social-Democrat delegates in the Hun- 
 garian Assembly, said to me: ** My name 
 is German, but I am Slav by race. You 
 can have no idea of the position we hold in 
 comparison with the German and the Magyar 
 in Austria-Hungary. We are treated as serfs. 
 Our education is neglected. Every department is 
 starved. We are regarded as an inferior people. 
 Yet we know that in some directions our quali- 
 fications are higher than those of the people 
 who are dominating us and crushing us down." 
 
NATIONALISM 59 
 
 That is the common feeling* among them. 
 At the International Socialist Congress of 
 Copenhagen in 1910, when pacifism ruled, when 
 the very idea of war declared by Germany 
 for aggressive purposes was jeered at by the 
 whole Congress, the Czech delegate from 
 Bohemia stood up and vociferated the deter- 
 mination of himself and his fellow-Czechs 
 never to combine in one Socialist organiza- 
 tion with German Social - Democrats. "The 
 Congress may say what it likes and do what 
 it likes, but," he declared, '* never will we make 
 common brotherhood with them in a local 
 organization." Teuton and Slav I Had the 
 fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the 
 old International been celebrated at Vienna in 
 191 4, as was intended, there would have been 
 far more dangerous scenes than this. 
 
 The antagonism between German and Slav, 
 Slav and German, is a conflict of ideas, of 
 views of life, of conceptions of what ought 
 to be: a struggle between the practical, 
 vigorous, efficient, dominating element and the 
 more poetical, sentimental, less logical, less 
 disciplined, but still charming and admirable 
 qualities of the other race. You may admire 
 the one and despise the other ; you may 
 fear the one and like the other. But therei 
 exists the struggle of race, and unless full 
 
6o THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 account is taken of it, peaceable international 
 action becomes impossible. 
 
 Similarly, between Frenchmen and Germans. 
 The ideal of the French as a nation differs 
 entirely from the ideal of the Germans as a 
 nation. This may change as time goes on, 
 and republican and democratic opinions spread. 
 But, as matters stand to-day, the national con- 
 ceptions are as antagonistic as the national 
 institutions are different. I think mankind could 
 better spare the Germans than the French : 
 others hold the contrary view. But it is 
 certain that much as they may hate one another 
 to-day, both nations are needed for the advance 
 of humanity. 
 
 It may even be said that there is less 
 contrast between the views of Germans and 
 Slavs than between Germans and French. The 
 former, when freed from the militarist cult, 
 have more in common with the dreamy quasi- 
 philosophic strain of the Slav than with the 
 logical, clear-cut conceptions and ideals of the 
 French. Strange, however, is it to recall that 
 the Borussians who were the forbears of the 
 Prussians were Slavs, and that Bismarck von 
 Schonhausen was a Slav himself. 
 
 And so I might go over the map of Europe 
 and show that in any attempt to reorganize 
 the faculties of civilized men, the element of 
 
NATIONALISM 6i 
 
 nationality must always be taken into account. 
 Before the war Germans despised us English 
 as decadent, apathetic, inefficient. ** A fine 
 nation but too fat," as Bismarck said. We 
 have learnt from them and they have learnt 
 from us during" the war. It is a pity at 
 least that we did not learn from them sooner 
 in peace. 
 
 There is, then, race antagonism of the most 
 formidable character, quite apart from any 
 economic struggle or any national rivalry. And 
 yet there is sufficient evidence that, even under 
 the conditions of to-day, social advantage and 
 personal liberty can harmonize all these various 
 causes of difference, or bring them at least 
 into the field of peaceful political conflict. 
 Nearly every great nation to-day is com- 
 pounded of a great variety of races and 
 peoples. "The True - Born Englishman" is 
 perhaps the most complex entity of the whole 
 of them, as Daniel Defoe was careful to point 
 out in the eighteenth century. Frenchmen look 
 upon France as a country worth fighting for, 
 and worth dying for. Yet can there be a 
 greater contrast than that between the Norman 
 and the man of the South? 
 
 We regard Italy, again, nowadays as one 
 people. But the Neapolitan, the Calabrian, 
 the Sicilian have little besides language in 
 
62 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 common with the Lombards and the Pied- 
 montese. 
 
 More interesting and noteworthy still are the 
 cases of Switzerland, Belgium, and Bukovina. 
 The Republic of Switzerland comprises several 
 different races and languages. Yet, in spite 
 of continuous efforts by the Germans to dis- 
 rupt the country in the interest of Berlin, 
 the people are well contented with their 
 Federal Government and Cantonal Administra- 
 tion. A thoroughly democratic political Con- 
 stitution, and, in the main, a community of 
 social aims, enable them to maintain national 
 unity, notwithstanding their difficult geographi- 
 cal position. There are wide differences of 
 opinion, the class war between the capitalists 
 and the wage-earners exists there as every- 
 where else ; but so far they all contrive to 
 manage their own business, and conduct peace- 
 ably their own referendums on affairs of 
 crucial importance, whether German, French, or 
 Italian be their language and personal nation- 
 ality. 
 
 In Belgium the antagonism of race, language, 
 and creed between the Flemish and the 
 Walloons is so marked that the possibility of 
 permanent coalescence would seem exceedingly 
 doubtful. Yet, as Belgians have explained to 
 me, proportional representation has averted 
 
NATIONALISM 63 
 
 bitter conflicts, which might have led to civil 
 war, and the factitious domination of the reac- 
 tionary clerical party was being steadily fought 
 down with political weapons, by the forces 
 of progress, confident of the approaching 
 victory of the cause. And all Belgians to- 
 day are at one against the brutal Prussian 
 invader. More telling still is the situation 
 which existed in Bukovina, before the struggle 
 of huge armies marching to and fro over the 
 fields and homesteads of the unfortunate peasantry 
 devastated that flourishing little province. There 
 exist, side by side, seven or eight different 
 races, with an fequal number of different 
 languages. Nevertheless, owing to their politi- 
 cal and economic equality, the unexpected 
 result of the policy of Joseph II, these various 
 elements have lived together in unity, and 
 Bukovina is, or but now was, a prosperous 
 little place. 
 
 Thus, although it is as foolish to refuse 
 to take account of race hatred as it is to 
 ignore religious animosities, there are many 
 countries around us where these causes of dis- 
 sension are removed by intelligent popular 
 policy. What is done with success on a small 
 scale may be achieved on a large one. National 
 and racial differences may be overcome when 
 they are frankly recognized and sympatheti- 
 
64 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 cally dealt with. Only when they are dis- 
 regarded, or an attempt is foolishly made to 
 override them, does any genuine international 
 action become impossible. Economic Sociahst 
 bigotry, which pretends to lay down material 
 rules for the guidance of all mankind, is as 
 dangerous as religious bigotry, which tries to 
 do the same in another sphere. To bring 
 about international action after the war we 
 must discard all theoretic international jargon 
 during the war. To be a useful Internation- 
 alist a man must be a Nationalist first. I 
 wonder how many years I have preached that 
 truth in the Socialist movement? The soli- 
 darity of the human race must be achieved 
 by national g'roupings, and can be achieved 
 in no other way. 
 
 Unless those who strive for peace, disarma- 
 ment, and international comity base their propa- 
 ganda upon the facts of their own day, as 
 well as upon their ideals of the future, they 
 are powerless to influence the course of events. 
 Democracy, publicity, and reference to an edu- 
 cated people on all matters of importance are 
 essential to any real progress towards inter- 
 national action in the common interest of all 
 nationalities. If for any reason one nation or 
 Empire is preparing to make war upon its 
 neighbours, it is worse than folly for the 
 
NATIONALISM 65 
 
 statesmen of any neighbouring country to con- 
 ceal that fact from the people who entrust 
 them with the conduct of the national affairs. 
 Not to go farther back than 191 1, Ger- 
 many at that date had fully made up her 
 mind to go to war within the next few years 
 — it is now said that 191 4 was the date fixed, 
 and that is what I was informed myself from 
 Germany on excellent authority. Our Govern- 
 ment was well advised of all this. Whether 
 Germany was right or wrong in thus pre- 
 paring for her great attack upon France and 
 Belgium and Russia and England is not the 
 point. The Germanic Powers had made their 
 decision: the British Government was aware 
 of their decision. Yet at that time, 191 1, 
 in 1 9 1 2, when Lord Haldane returned with 
 his bogus peace assurances from Berlin, and 
 again up to July 191 4, we were persistently 
 assured by the Prime Minister and the whole 
 Cabinet that our relations with Germany had 
 immensely improved, and were, in fact, never 
 better. During the whole of this period^, how- 
 ever. Sir Edward Grey was carrying on his 
 secret and adventurous diplomacy with France 
 and Russia, while no adequate preparations 
 whatever were being made either to fulfil our 
 obligations to Belgium — which the Government 
 knew would be attacked — or to the Entente 
 
 5 
 
66 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Powers, who were justified in relying upon our 
 support. Never was a nation more unscrupu- 
 lously deceived by its most trusted servants 
 than was Great Britain by Mr. Asquith, Sir 
 Edward Grey, Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Haldane, 
 Mr. Churchill, and the entire Liberal Ministry, 
 supported by its press, at the most dangerous 
 crisis in its whole stirring history. 
 
 From the very start of the Socialist Move- 
 ment in this island at the commencement of 
 1 88 1, a strong protest has been raised against 
 the entire system of secret diplomacy, which 
 renders the people quite powerless to control 
 its own affairs, and sacrifices hundreds of 
 thousands of lives and hundreds of millions 
 of money to greed for office and the pusillani- 
 mity of faction. Had England adopted a 
 policy of internal preparation equal to the 
 support of her policy of international secret 
 diplomacy, had the Government told the full 
 truth to the people and appealed to them for 
 patriotic effort, not to make, but to avert, war 
 — peace would have been maintained. As it 
 was all who knew the facts and proclaimed 
 them to their countrymen were contradicted 
 and vilified, and Western Europe consequently 
 escaped by a mere accident from being 
 conquered by^ the Germanic Powers. Secret 
 diplomacy is a curse to mankind. It has 
 
NATIONALISM 67 
 
 been the function of a Liberal Government 
 to prove it. We neither secured peace non 
 made ready for war ! 
 
 Germans have taken and kept the lead since 
 1848 in the development of modern Socialism 
 and Internationalism. This has been due to the 
 eminent capacity of their theorists, and to the 
 admirable organization and discipline set on 
 foot by their practical men. Strange to say, 
 the International combination, resulting largely 
 from their efforts, has been twice upset by 
 Germany herself^, and in both cases by an 
 attack upon France. The old '* International " 
 of 1864 was destroyed by the campaign of 
 1870-71. The new International of 1900 has 
 been broken up by the rush upon Paris, which 
 was all but successful in 191 4. It is use- 
 less for the most peace-loving and international 
 of mortals to imagine that relations between 
 Germans, Austrians, and the peoples of the 
 allied countries can be as friendly after the 
 war as they were before. The whole policy 
 of Europe has to be built up afresh. The 
 methods of the Prussians in Belgium, France, 
 and Poland will not be easily forgotten, still 
 less forgiven. None the less civilization can- 
 not permanently exclude 120,000,000 of people 
 from intercourse,, and it is absurd to think 
 that France, Great Britain, and Russia can 
 
68 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 permanently ostracize or boycott the Germanic 
 Powers — no matter how completely their power 
 for mischief in the future may be curtailed 
 and portions of their present territory redis- 
 tributed on, racial and nationalist lines. We 
 shall have to deal with Berlin and Hamburg, 
 Vienna and Buda-Pesth as after the Napoleonic 
 Wars and more recent misunderstandings we 
 dealt with Rouen, Paris, and Lyons. We 
 rightly shut^ our eyes to this to-day: but 
 we shall have to open them wide to the 
 facts to-morrow. 
 
 So, likewise, is it unwise to disregard the 
 truth that we have been faced from the com- 
 mencement with a choice of evils. There is 
 not a democrat or a Socialist in the world 
 who has not been and is not afraid of the 
 growing power and influence of despotic 
 Russia. From the Congress of Vienna in 
 1 815, through, the uprisings of 1848-9 on- 
 wards to, the present day, Russia has been 
 the mainstay of reaction on the Continent of 
 Europe. Checked by the Japanese campaign, 
 she speedily recovered her strength, and Fin- 
 land, Poland,, the Ukraine, and the Jews can 
 tell us the use she has made of it. Dread 
 of Russia more than hatred of hostilities 
 animated the tremendous Peace Meeting held 
 in Trafalg'ar Square on the eve of the war 
 
NATIONALISM 69 
 
 to protest in favour of peace. All saw that, 
 win or lose, the weakening of the Germanic 
 Powers necessarily involved the eventual 
 aggrandizement of Russia. The resolution sub- 
 mitted to that meeting, and carried at every 
 platform, expressed, as I believe, the feeling 
 at the time of the great mass of the people 
 of the United Kingdom. Peace if in any 
 way possible: avoidance of co-operation with 
 Russia except in the last resort. It gave 
 evidence of nothing short of national mad- 
 ness on the part of Germany and Austria, 
 that within two or three days they had turned 
 the whole nation furiously against them and 
 had forced the workers of Great Britain, un- 
 informed and, unprepared, to throw in their 
 lot with the Muscovite Czar, and rush to the 
 recruiting stations to enlist, in numbers and 
 with a fervour wholly unprecedented in all 
 our long and stirring annals. 
 
 And the people were right, and are right 
 to-day. All but an insignificant and ignorant 
 minority are, determined to put an end to 
 Prussian militarism and Prussian arrogance, 
 dominating Germany and forcing the hand of 
 Austria, oncQ for all. This Teutonic menace 
 was more dangerous than the Russian danger. 
 In all the affairs of life, when decision has 
 been made and action has been entered upon, 
 
70 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 it is essential to pull down the shutters on 
 one side of the intellect. Discussion is at an 
 end: determination takes up the tale. Victory 
 for the Germanic Powers would be infinitely 
 worse for civilization and progress than the 
 victory of the Allies. That is why, in spite 
 of terrific losses and unprecedented expendi- 
 ture, the peoples of Western and Southern 
 Europe now make common cause with Russia 
 against the most formidable enemy of demo- 
 cracy and freedom which has burst forth upon 
 the world since the Ottoman Turks captured 
 Constantinople nearly five hundred years ago. 
 He who wishes the end wills the means. And 
 the means can be no other than those which 
 are now being employed. The Great Alliance 
 at this moment is fighting the fight of en- 
 franchized nationality and liberty, not for Europe 
 only, but for the world, and the United States 
 themselves are being saved by the British fleet 
 and the Allied armies from dangers which 
 their state of pacifist unreadiness shows that 
 their inhabitants do not comprehend. The 
 victory of the Allies will mean, I am firmly 
 convinced, a victory for democracy in Great 
 Britain. Already a very different spirit is 
 abroad among the workers from that which 
 prevailed before the war. They are learning 
 day in and day out that there is a war at 
 
NATIONALISM 7 1 
 
 home as well as a war abroad, and that the 
 German troops, whom they met in comradely 
 fashion before the trenches last Christmas, have 
 no real quarrel with them, as compared with 
 the bitterness that both must feel against their 
 respective masters at home. That feeling will 
 grow. A complete success for the Allies will 
 be even more valuable for the Germans than 
 for ourselves. We shall need the democracy 
 of Germany in years to come in order to 
 withstand that very same development of 
 Russian power which now is working with us 
 to clear aggressive militarism out of the path 
 of Western Europe. That is why, though it 
 would be contemptible to discuss terms of 
 peace while nearly the whole of Belgium and 
 one-fifth of France are under the heel of 
 Prussian Junkerdom, it is well to recognize 
 that even this terrific struggle cannot perma- 
 nently arrest the development of brotherhood 
 among mankind. It may be that England 
 and France will use their financial and political 
 influence to impel even the Czar and his 
 Councillors to carry out those promises of 
 autonomy and amelioration which at present 
 appear illusory enough. 
 
 ** Mais surtout Messieurs n'anticipez pas les 
 ^v^nements/' said Prince Bismarck to a depu- 
 tation from one of the Balkan Principalities. 
 
72 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 Whatever you do, don't make twelve o'clock 
 at eleven. Never was this advice more sound 
 than in regard to any endeavour to bring 
 about fraternal relations among peoples in 
 organized form until conditions are ripe for 
 the new development. While the mass of the 
 people of all the great European States are 
 engaged in slaughtering one another, with the 
 most improved scientific machines for promot- 
 ing sudden death or permanent mutilation, it 
 is an insult to the troops engaged in this 
 terrible warfare to talk of the eternal brother- 
 hood of man and the necessity for immediate 
 peace before a decision is arrived at. In 
 this way Socialists, democrats, and pacifists who 
 are so eager to ** anticipate events " simply 
 call down ridicule from without and stir up 
 dire conflict within. It is natural for 
 Socialists, whose hopes have been frustrated 
 and ideals dragged in dust and blood, to 
 desire to hasten on the meeting of an Inter- 
 national Socialist Congress. The day will 
 surely come. But not yet. Perhaps not, as 
 we could wish it, for some years. Nations 
 and races have to be emancipated before they 
 can take any effective part in the great inter- 
 national movement. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 
 
 When I debated with Charles Bradlaugh in 
 the old St. James's Hall, Piccadilly, just thirty- 
 one years ago, on " Will Socialism benefit the 
 English people? " he stipulated beforehand that 
 I should give a definition of Socialism. Brad- 
 laugh himself was great at definitions, and 
 I considered this demand quite reasonable. I 
 therefore did my best to satisfy him, and 
 stated that *' Socialism is a conscious endeavour 
 to substitute for the anarchical competition of 
 to-day the organized co-operation of to- 
 morrow." I do not claim that this covers 
 the whole of the ground by any means ; but, 
 if all that is expressed, in this connection, by 
 the word " conscious " is fully understood, the 
 sentence quoted comes as near to satisfying the 
 request for a brief and clear statement of 
 the aims and objects of Social-Democracy as 
 any I could foniiulate at the present time. 
 Simple as it appears to be, the conceptions 
 
 73 
 
74 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 underlying the definition involve for their com- 
 plete reahzation by far the greatest social 
 transformation and revolution the world has 
 ever seen. 
 
 At all periods of human history the great 
 majority of people have believed that the 
 social forms under which they lived were, in 
 the main, permanent ; even when, as we can 
 now see, changes of the most important char- 
 acter were going on around them. The ablest 
 brains of antiquity could not conceive of a 
 stable society in which chattel slavery would 
 be unknown. Yet this great institution finally 
 disappeared. Its downfall was due, in the 
 Roman Empire, to economic causes which 
 brought about the emancipation of the slaves 
 that all the servile wars had been wholly 
 unable to accomplish. The price of slaves 
 rose as further Roman conquests were rendered 
 impossible ; the cost of their keep increased 
 owing to inferior cultivation ; manumission 
 became common because, except for the very 
 rich, it was practically unavoidable. There- 
 upon, it was discovered that slavery was on 
 the whole immoral, and the Church hurried 
 to give its religious encouragiement and sanction 
 to what economics had decreed and ethics had 
 accepted. But neither slaveholder, moralist, nor 
 ecclesiastic had the remotest idea what would 
 
PEACE 7 5 
 
 constitute the succeeding stages of human 
 development after the downfall of that system 
 of chattel slavery upon which the superstructure 
 of their society was mainly built. They could 
 never have imagined that, hundreds of years 
 later, wagedom, which is little better than 
 chattel slavery in disguise, would carry on 
 the traditions of class supremacy. 
 
 Yet that is the position of the most highly 
 civilized countries to-day. The overwhelming 
 majority of the population in Great Britain, for 
 example, consists of wage-earners. That is to 
 say, they are men and women who have no 
 means of earning a livelihood save by the sale 
 of the labour-power in their own bodies to 
 those who possess or control the means of 
 making wealth. A slave, says Cobbett, is 
 a man who possesses no property. The 
 ordinary workers of our day possess no 
 property, and, in the case of factory and even 
 agricultural toilers, do not own or control their 
 own tools. On the contrary, their tools, in 
 the shape of machinery, in one form or 
 another, virtually own and control them, dic- 
 tating the speed at which they shall work and 
 the amount they shall produce, while the 
 product itself passes clean out of their hands. 
 
 True, the modern wage-slave is nominally 
 free and possesses certain illusory political 
 
76 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 rights which his ancestor the chattel slave did 
 not enjoy. But this freedom and these rights 
 have not yet sufficed to emancipate the wage- 
 slave class from economic servitude to the class 
 which has succeeded the old land and slave 
 holders in control over the great means and 
 instruments for the creation of wealth. The 
 individual wage- earner is no longer at the com- 
 mand of a single master ; but during the whole 
 of his working time he is completely dominated 
 by the employing class, or by the companies 
 which have been created by that class. 
 Whereas, also, the old chattel slave, with all 
 his disadvantages, had certain recognized claims 
 upon his owner, the wage-slave has no claims 
 whatever upon his master or the manager. If 
 times are bad and there is no profit to be 
 made by paying him wages for the use of 
 his labour-power, out he goes upon the street, 
 and the employer either runs his plant on 
 short time or shuts it down altogether. 
 
 The fact that a certain proportion of the 
 workers receive good wages, in comparison 
 with others who are paid on a lower level of 
 subsistence, makes no difference to the system. 
 Some highly educated slaves received consider- 
 able remuneration from their owners, and even 
 became rich men, but this did not affect the 
 lot of the mass of overworked and ill-fed 
 
PEACE T^ 
 
 slaves of the same owners toiling in their 
 mines or on their fields under a villicus. 
 (This latter " organizer of labour," by the 
 way, received a smaller ration than the slaves 
 themselves, on the express ground that his 
 duty was less exhausting than theirs.) What 
 prevents the present wage-slaves of all grades 
 from understanding how little freedom they 
 really possess is the payment of wages in 
 cash. This wholly pecuniary bond blinds them 
 to the fact that they receive on the average 
 but a fraction of the value of the wealth they 
 produce in return for the use of their capacity 
 to labour ; just as their power to change from 
 one employer to another obscures the other 
 truth that they are always, in reality, under 
 duress to the capitalist class as a whole. 
 
 All this was clearly and vigorously pointed 
 out to the working class of Great Britain by 
 the more advanced of the Chartists in the first 
 half of the nineteenth century. The term 
 ** Social-Democrat," also, which is supposed to 
 come from Germany, was first employed by 
 one of the leaders of that great but unsuc- 
 cessful movement of 1839. It meant a 
 Socialist who was at the same time a 
 Democrat, as opposed to the State or Bureau- 
 cratic Socialists who, even thus early, made 
 their appearance in the field. The Chartists 
 
78 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 taught that so long as the payment of wages 
 by one class to another class continued, and 
 production for profit under a competitive system 
 consequently remained the dominant form of 
 employment, it was quite impossible for the 
 propertyless majority to emancipate themselves 
 from the control of the rich. The upper 
 grades of wage-earners in the various trades 
 might, as their trade unions gained strength, 
 obtain certain advantages by agreements with 
 the capitahsts. But they could only do so 
 through recognizing the validity of the system 
 itself, while the lower descriptions of labourers 
 were in no case able to make even this little 
 way against the economic forces above them. 
 
 The only possible remedy for this state of 
 things, in which the very progress of society 
 tended to put more and more power at the 
 disposal of the bourgeoisie,^ was, according to 
 
 * The term bourgeoisie has no equivalent in English, and 
 ought now to be incorporated into our language. Bourgeoisie 
 connotes the whole of the social strata and classes, in every 
 country which has reached the capitahst stage of development, 
 that do not belong to the workers or wage-earners. Thus 
 the word includes the land-owning class, which nowadays con- 
 stitutes itself a sleeping partner with the capitalist class in the 
 division of the surplus value created by the working class. 
 Bourgeois ideas, bourgeois ethics, and bourgeois laws dominate 
 our existing society, and are being very slowly modified by the 
 views of the disinherited class who will carry out the social 
 revolution. 
 
PEACE 79 
 
 these champions of the proletariat, the victory 
 of the workers, who would then cease to be 
 wage-earners and would constitute the entire 
 community. This would gain for the whole 
 people organized Social-Democracy, owning and 
 controlling all the great means of making and 
 distributing wealth, and would thus establish 
 the Co-operative Commonwealth. Two full 
 generations have elapsed since the break-up 
 of the Chartist movement. Several of the 
 minor political proposals of their leaders have 
 been adopted. But as we look round at the 
 present moment we must admit that, regarded 
 from their point of view, economic and social 
 progress, in the interest of the whole people, 
 has been so deplorably slow as to be scarcely 
 observable. 
 
 The merit of Marx was that, thrusting aside 
 almost brutally the methods of what has been 
 called Utopian Socialism — much as he admired 
 the personal work of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, 
 and others — he devoted his life to providing 
 a thorough historic and scientific basis for the 
 revolutionary doctrines of his immediate pre- 
 cursors in Great Britain and elsewhere. How 
 great was the service he thus rendered to 
 humanity will, I predict, be far better appre- 
 ciated in the future even than it is now. 
 Temporary success is no conclusive proof of 
 
8o THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 the soundness of any theory or movement. 
 But when we see, a full generation after 
 Marx's death, that those who accept in the 
 main his economic and sociologic analysis, and 
 are guided by the broad lines of his material 
 synthesis, muster in millions to-day as against 
 a few hundred thousands in 1882 ; when we 
 observe also that their numbers grow rapidly 
 year after year, in the face of most bitter 
 opposition and furious criticism, it is certain 
 that we have here something which the 
 educated and dominant class of all countries 
 would do well to study carefully. Superficial 
 criticism is futile ; conspiracy of silence has 
 no effect. The growth of the International 
 Socialist Party in every civilized country, 
 founded on this scientific Socialism, is the more 
 remarkable since Marx's writings are not 
 couched in a very readable style, and his views 
 themselves are not easy to grasp and apply 
 even when expounded in popular shape. More 
 remarkable still, they engender an almost theo- 
 logical enthusiasm and rancour in the minds 
 of many who had previously been indifferent 
 to the welfare of others and apathetic as to 
 their own. 
 
 Never before, I think, has a system of 
 political economy and sociologic and historic 
 investigation, relying wholly upon reasoning and 
 
PEACE 8 I 
 
 argument, and dealing exclusively with material 
 causes and effects, engendered such fanaticism, 
 combined with such unwearying determination. 
 Yet the theories themselves, derived from con- 
 crete illustrations drawn from the social con- 
 ditions of to-day, read cold and philosophic 
 enough. In this country, indeed, where Marx's 
 views are not contemned as mischievous and 
 incorrect, they are still regarded as little more 
 than abstractions. But it is quite different 
 elsewhere. The great majority of delegates at 
 International Congresses are invariably Socialists 
 of the Marxist school. The danger in this 
 direction is that the adherents of these opinions 
 may degenerate into a sect, whose doctrinaire 
 tenets will put them out of touch with the 
 mass of the people. Signs of this unfortunate 
 tendency are already not lacking, and the less 
 advanced the stage of popular education in 
 any given nation the more probable is it that 
 the party there should take this turn. 
 
 But what are the contentions of Social- 
 Democrats at the present moment, and what 
 are the steps which they propose to take when 
 international relations between the workers are 
 resumed after the war? 
 
 There are certain points on which all 
 Socialists are agreed, from whatever standpoint 
 they regard the problems of future development. 
 
 6 
 
82 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 I 
 
 These are, that the community should own 
 and control all the means and instruments of 
 creating wealth, to be used in the interests 
 of the whole people, and that, so far as 
 possible, this end should be striven for by 
 peaceful methods in order to minimize the 
 chances of reaction. The sentimental Socialists, 
 the Ethical Socialists, the Church Socialists are 
 all at one upon this. Collectivism in place of 
 individualism, co-operation instead of competi- 
 tion, production for use instead of production 
 for profit. These are the ideals to be kept 
 steadily before us. Even men and women who 
 do not admit the truth of the materialist con- 
 ception of history, who do not recognize class 
 antagonism and class war as being inevitable 
 under existing social conditions, and who refuse 
 to understand that progress can never be 
 secured by the mass of humanity until the 
 wage-system has been abolished and the money 
 fetish has been swept away, will admit and 
 accept these views. 
 
 Unfortunately, experience has shown that such 
 well-meaning people, while avoiding the Scylla 
 of narrow doctrinairism, fall into the Charybdis 
 of economic compromise and are gradually 
 absorbed into some political faction controlled 
 by th? capitaUst class. The Marxists, at any 
 rate, much as all must lament the weakness 
 
PEACE 83 
 
 and cowardice of their leaders in Germany 
 on the burning question of this war of agg^res- 
 sion, know precisely what they want and why 
 and how they mean to get it. They have no 
 illusions as to the moralization, or Christiani- 
 zation, or general sentimentalization of the 
 capitalist or of the capitaUst class. The capitalist 
 is what he is and capitalists are what they 
 are because, so long as their business is to 
 make profits, they cannot avoid doing what 
 they do. 
 
 Whether they like it or not, the workers 
 represent to the employers in their own affairs 
 simply a set of people who offer for sale a 
 very remarkable commodity — the power to 
 labour, to wit. The workers must sell it 
 at the wages of the day, governed on the 
 average by the cost of subsistence, or else they 
 must starve, or go into the workhouse. The 
 capitalists must buy the workers' sole com- 
 modity, or retire from business, or go into 
 bankruptcy. Out of the labour embodied by 
 the wage-earners in commodities the capitalists 
 make their profit, because the wages paid are 
 of much less value than the total value of the 
 product. To this product in the shape of 
 exchangeable commodities the machinery used 
 adds no value except the cost of the wear and 
 tear and the incidentals used in the process ; 
 
84 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 nor, of course, does the new material, which 
 merely reappears in a new shape. 
 
 Here, say Social-Democrats, is a never-ending 
 class war : the war, namely, between the owners 
 of the powers to produce wealth, including the 
 land, on the one side, and the owners of 
 the labour-power, who can only earn wages by 
 enabling these owners to produce at a profit, 
 on the other. Evidently, if all were combined 
 to create wealth for general use there would 
 be no profit and the antagonism would be 
 at once solved. 
 
 Now, Social-Democrats hold that the entire 
 history of the human race since the break-up 
 of primitive communism has been the record 
 of such class-antagonisms formerly much more 
 numerous and in a sense more complicated 
 than they are to-day. We have arrived at 
 the last class -antagonism, which is, speakingi 
 broadly, the antagonism between the property- 
 less wage-earners and the bourgeoisie. Some- 
 times this exhibits itself bitterly in the shape 
 of strikes, which are rarely very successful, 
 sometimes in the form of demands upon the 
 State to restrain one or other of the conflicting 
 interests, sometimes in the attack of the em- 
 ployers upon the workers as expressed in a 
 lock-out of the wage-earners from their employ- 
 ment. But the struggle is always going on. 
 
PEACE 85 
 
 Even when capital and labour are supposed 
 to be working in harmony there is invariably 
 a fringe of workers, ready to work, but un- 
 employed, who hang upon the labour market, 
 and, by their competition, keep down the rate 
 of wages. This, say the shrewder capitalists 
 (and Socialists fully agree with them) is a 
 necessity for the proper working of the whole 
 capitalist system. Remove the unemployed per- 
 manently from the labour market and the 
 wage-earners would gradually become posses- 
 sors of the means of producing and distributing 
 the wealth which they themselves create. This 
 is why the Social-Democratic proposals for the 
 co-operative employment of all toilers who may 
 be out of work by the State itself, at a high 
 standard of hfe, is always so vehemently opposed 
 by the entire bourgeoisie. They know that 
 the death-knell of the profit-making system 
 would then speedily strike. 
 
 But we are under no delusions as to the 
 possibility of suddenly achieving the desired 
 transformation from Capitalism to Socialism, 
 either peacefully or forcibly. There is no 
 short cut to the Social Revolution. The 
 revolts of impatience and insufficient organi- 
 zation only play into the hands of the; dominant 
 class, as all experience has shown. Thorough 
 education and comprehension among the people, 
 
86 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 combined with the general social advance to 
 the stage of economic development which 
 renders Socialism practically attainable, are in- 
 dispensable conditions for success. A highly- 
 educated population of peasant proprietors can- 
 not proceed to a complete Socialist system : 
 an uneducated nation of wage-earners cannot 
 organize a Co-operative Commonwealth, however 
 far advanced its great factory industry may be. 
 Even State-ownership and control, the wages 
 system being maintained, will not be Socialized 
 until the wage-earners themselves are prepared 
 to undertake administration and distribution, on 
 communal lines, for the benefit of the entire 
 population. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, events are moving in 
 our direction even more rapidly than Social- 
 Democrats themselves anticipated. The expan- 
 sion of the limited company, or anonymous 
 society, as the French call it, has finally des- 
 troyed the idea that there is any personal 
 relation in production for pecuniary profit. 
 Those who buy shares in industrial or railway 
 or shipping ventures, or banks, etc., have, in 
 the majority of cases, never seen their own 
 properties, and have not the remotest notion as 
 to how their workers are employed, or what 
 rates of wages they are paid. The board of 
 directors, or more probably the managing 
 
PEACE 87 
 
 director, or manager, sees to all that, and in 
 successful concerns he is assuredly not the 
 person who absorbs the bulk of the profits. 
 Remove the shareholders, as mere anonymous 
 encumbrancers, and the workers could easily 
 pay the managers their salaries, if necessary, 
 and carry on the business equally well, even 
 if competition were not immediately abolished. 
 In Great Britain, the State, even in ordinary 
 times, is by far the greatest employer of 
 labour, and carries on huge departments alike 
 of distribution and production. Yet, though 
 the State workers as a rule are very badly 
 paid, and the remuneration of the heads of 
 departments is by no means excessive, the work 
 as a whole is well done. As I write the 
 great w^or king- class organizations are clamouring 
 for the extension of State-ownership and con- 
 trol in many departments, notably in the 
 direction of the transfer of all armament con- 
 struction and maintenance to national foundries 
 and shipyards ; while it would not take much 
 more friction between the pitmen and the coal- 
 owners to start a demand for the acquisition 
 of colheries by the nation. How long will it 
 be, as these functions of the State extend, 
 before the workers demand that their remunera- 
 tion shall be regulated, not by the lowest 
 standard of subsistence for which they are 
 
88 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 forced to toil, paid in wages, but by the 
 highest standard of physical and mental enjoy- 
 ment, provided in goods, out of the total 
 wealth which can be created by the services 
 of the whole community? And how far shall 
 we then be from Socialism? 
 
 Abstract considerations as to the Few and 
 the Many are of little or no importance in 
 relation to social changes of this kind. It 
 is not the deserving few — the inventors, dis- 
 coverers, adapters, organizers — who take to 
 themselves the bulk of the social wealth created 
 by the toilers. 
 
 Even if this were so, and I were thus drawn 
 into a discussion on the ethics of individual 
 appropriation, it has long ago been observed 
 that the very highest efforts of the human 
 intelligence are in the main social, and due 
 to the unceasing progress of the race, from 
 prehistoric times up to our own day. Nobody 
 now disputes that all the bed-rock inventions 
 and discoveries of mankind were made under 
 the old primitive communism. It is equally 
 certain that in this primitive communism, 
 remains of which are found among so-called 
 savage tribes in all parts of the world, no 
 individual of the tribe would possess any 
 personal rights over his invention or discovery. 
 We of the twentieth century inherit these social 
 
PEACE 89 
 
 gains which increased the collective powers of 
 man over nature, on the small scale then pos- 
 sible, and are under endless obligations to these 
 unknown Archimedes and Leonardos of the past. 
 
 The same is true of similar progress made 
 at a far later date. It is beyond dispute, 
 therefore, that the ablest men of science and 
 the most brilliant inventors and practical 
 adapters do but carry a few steps farther the 
 accumulated knowledge of centuries. They 
 cannot, by any possibility, relieve themselves 
 of their long chain of obligation, even if they 
 wished to do so. More than this, if a genius, 
 moving ahead of his time, discovers some great 
 physical truth or invents a new machine, it 
 remains useless for all practical purposes until 
 the social surroundings become suitable for its 
 application ; and of this there have been 
 numerous instances. Thus, the great men of 
 past ages, whom we esteem and admire for 
 their individual work and social services, are 
 all indebted in turn to the unseen and 
 unrecorded work of their predecessors of long ago. 
 
 The man of genius is not highly paid in 
 our modern society, nor does he wish to be ; it 
 is the keen, cunning appropriator and trusti- 
 fier, never having invented anything or bene- 
 fited anybody, who, under our legal enactments 
 and private property institutions, receives the 
 
90 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 greatest share of surplus value — as a reward 
 for what? For having done us the honour 
 to be born in possession of his anti-social 
 qualities. But, in reaUty, it makes no differ- 
 ence to the workers, as a class, what the 
 character, condition, or claims may be of those 
 who divide up among themselves the surplus 
 value created by the workers' labour after they 
 have received their wages — out of which, be 
 it remarked in passing, they have to pay back 
 rent to the dominant class. Neither is it of 
 the slightest importance to them whether the 
 participators be few or many, good men or 
 bad. All they know — those of them who study 
 the problem of their own economic subjection 
 — is that no matter how clever a wage-earner 
 may be, the odds are more than a thousand 
 to one he will toil all his life for the benefit 
 of others, and die as poor as he has lived. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the permanent underlying 
 laws of this anarchic society, where social ends 
 can only be attained by antagonistic means, 
 are making themselves felt through the indus- 
 trial chaos which they will eventually har- 
 monize and co-ordinate, so soon as mankind 
 appreciates the course and the tendency of 
 their development. 
 
 Fourier first pointed out in 1825 that com- 
 petition must find its logical term in monopoly. 
 
PEACE 9 1 
 
 It has taken eighty years of continuous pro- 
 gress to verify the truth of this forecast. Now 
 all can see that this gradual concentration of 
 capital, whether under nominal Free Trade or 
 actual Protection, was inevitable. The one 
 object of every individual capitalist is to make 
 larger profits and to extend the scope of his 
 business, if need be at the expense of his 
 competitors. The rule of such a struggle is, 
 " Get bigger or burst." When the smaller 
 man bursts the bigger organizer of labour 
 *' acquires his assets " and " extends the opera- 
 tions " of his firm. Soon this is too heavy 
 a job for the individual capitalist. Then the 
 company form of capitalist control comes in, 
 and shareholders replace individual owners. As 
 time goes on these separate companies, fighting 
 one another at reduced prices in the same 
 trade, find that they could do their work much 
 more economically and dispense with a large 
 portion of their jaux frals — commercial travel- 
 lers, advertisements, costs of distribution, and 
 the like — if they would only co-operate with, 
 instead of competing against one another. 
 Straightway they drop their daggers of mutual 
 economic conflict and combine for their com- 
 mon advantage, making thereby greater profits 
 for the fraternal shareholders in the erstwhile 
 rival concerns. From this to monopoly, in 
 
92 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 certain branches of production and trade, is 
 no long step. Unconsciously the capitalists, 
 by this far-sighted repudiation of free com- 
 petition, have rendered socialization in each 
 separate department much easier than it would 
 have been if their own interests had not 
 marshalled them the way that we are going. 
 
 What I have written so far can scarcely 
 be regarded as vehement or inflammatory. On 
 the contrary, it is, I think, a plain and rather 
 dull statement of economic facts, looked at 
 from the standpoint of an educated Socialist. 
 In the United States, where Trusts, Combines, 
 and general agreements not to compete are 
 more powerful, or perhaps I should say more 
 in evidence, than they are here, the Federal 
 Government has been endeavouring to check 
 or even to break up these vast concentrations 
 of capital, in the supposed interest of the 
 nation at large. Strong personal feeling is 
 introduced, and the great American billionaires 
 — the richest men the world has ever seen — 
 are denounced as enemies of the Republic. 
 But such reactionary attempts and rhetorical 
 objurgation are futile. However wrong, or 
 temporarily objectionable, the actions of these 
 folk may be, it is quite impossible to prevent 
 the development of economic forces by legal 
 enactments, or to restrain them permanently 
 
PEACE 93 
 
 by the judgments of the Courts. Properly 
 considered, the gigantic Trusts are carefully 
 preparing in every department for the estab- 
 lishment of Socialism. Some of their prin- 
 cipal men are beginning to recognize whither 
 events are tending, and one of the ablest 
 of them stated not long ago that such a 
 vast enterprise as the Steel Trust could not be 
 allowed much longer to carry on its business 
 outside the control of the community. 
 
 And that is the plain truth. Unfortunately, 
 we in Great Britain are, as usual, muddling 
 along, without any intelligent guidance from 
 above or any clear-cut demands from below. 
 Foreigners tell us that there is more floating 
 Socialism in the United Kingdom than any- 
 where else in the world. But this is pre- 
 cisely the difficulty. Floating Socialism in 
 society, like ** float gold " in the mines, is un- 
 commonly hard to catch and utilize. 
 
 Many, many years ago I predicted that, our 
 education as a people being so desperately 
 bad as it is, we should never come near to 
 Socialism, or recognize that, co-operatively pro- 
 duced, wealth to-day could be as plentiful as 
 water, until we had, as a nation, received 
 a great shock from without. Then only would 
 our people begin to comprehend what was 
 going on around them. Thirty-five years of 
 
94 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 continuous teaching and agitation have further 
 convinced me of the soundness of this fore- 
 cast. Not even the continuous rise of the 
 prices of the necessaries of life (owing chiefly 
 to the cheapening of the cost of production 
 of gold, which is the universal measure of 
 value) could wake our people up till August 
 last year. Though wages had fallen in 
 purchasing power to such an extent that a 
 pound sterHng valued on the level of twenty 
 shillings in 1901 could procure necessaries only 
 to the value of i6s. 6d., or at the outside 
 17s., in August 1 914, it was useless to point 
 this out to the workers as a reason for 
 vigorous, combined action. The utmost they 
 would do was to strike for a moderate rise of 
 wages, which, if obtained, was insufficient to make 
 up for the rise in price. In other directions 
 they showed similar apathy and indifference. 
 
 But no sooner had we drifted into this tre- 
 mendous war than a very different spirit ap- 
 peared. It became at once manifest that the 
 whole capitalist system, unless bolstered up by 
 the national credit, would go bankrupt. The 
 Government rushed to the aid of bankers, bill- 
 brokers, stock exchange magnates, great ship- 
 owners and mercantile houses ; took over the 
 railways, commandeered 1,500 ships, guaranteed 
 marine assurance, and generally used the whole 
 
PEACE 95 
 
 financial power of the nation, not only to 
 make good the short-sighted policy which 
 landed us unprepared in the greatest war of 
 all time, but to save the wealthy classes from ruin. 
 Shareholders, for instance, in the huge bank- 
 ing monopoly were not even required to pay 
 up the balance of the calls upon their shares, 
 but were allowed to refuse to repay to their 
 clients deposits in cash actually entrusted in 
 all good faith to them for safe custody. It 
 was of crucial importance that their dividends 
 should not be cut down ! Naturally, the 
 wage-earning class began to understand what 
 all this meant. The national credit is their 
 credit, just as the national Army is overwhelm- 
 ingly their army. The Army could not fight 
 effectively without officers. But where would 
 the officers be without the rank and file? 
 Just so in industry and transport. The workers 
 might not be able to do without the capitalists 
 under existing legal conditions. But where 
 would the capitalists be without the workers? 
 Where indeed? Their mines, their factories, 
 their shops, their railways, their lands could 
 be handled advantageously by the community 
 even if all employers and shareholders left 
 the country in disgtist. This, it is true, is 
 not quite how the mass of the wage-earners 
 reason as yet. But it very soon may be. 
 
96 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 People have already begun to demand that 
 the Government, which has drifted the nation 
 into war without preparation, should forthwith 
 turn the same powers which they have lavishly 
 used for the benefit of the wealthy to the 
 service of the poor. A far-reaching change 
 of opinion has commenced. What the workers 
 might once have been grateful for as bounti- 
 ful charity they now claim, on a much larger 
 scale, as a rig'ht. The raising of huge loans, 
 too, almost as a matter of course, for war is 
 teaching the masses what might with equal 
 ease be obtained for their own purposes in 
 peace. Palliatives of poverty which we Social- 
 Democrats had advocated in vain for years, 
 which had indeed been opposed by the most 
 trusted representatives of the trade unions 
 themselves, are now accepted and pushed for- 
 ward almost without discussion. A programme, 
 Socialist in all but name, was issued by the 
 National Workers' (War Emergency) Com- 
 mittee, and that committee represents no fewer 
 than 4,500,000 persons— trade unionists, co- 
 operators. Socialists, most of them heads of 
 families, or some 17,000,000 people in all.' 
 
 ^ The following extracts from this programme, which is 
 being steadily advocated throughout the country, proves that 
 the above statement is no exaggeration :— 
 
 "We call upon the entire Labour and Socialist Movement, 
 
PEACE 97 
 
 The heavy rise of prices, over and above 
 those already referred to, has in the past 
 six months reduced the purchasing value of a 
 pound a week to less than 14s. as compared 
 with what the same coin would have bought 
 in 1 90 1. The last turn of the screw in 
 this crushing economic impost has been pressed 
 down upon the people quite suddenly. They 
 therefore feel it far more than they otherwise 
 would. They know that there is no shortage 
 of wheat on the markets of the world which 
 at all warrants the rise of bread from 5d. 
 to 8d. for the quartern loaf. Yet they have 
 to pay. At once there is a loud and de- 
 
 through all its national and local organizations, to force these 
 demands upon the Government by an immediate national 
 campaign, expressing itself in public meetings, the distribution 
 of literature, the passing of resolutions by affiliated branches of 
 Labour and Socialist bodies, and in such other ways as may 
 be deemed effective. 
 
 "7. (a) Provision of productive work, at standard rates of 
 wages, for the unemployed. 
 
 " (b) Where the provision of work is impracticable, main- 
 tenance to be granted on a standard sufficiently high to ensure 
 the preservation of the home and the supply of what is necessary 
 for a healthy life, and the immediate abandonment of all the 
 inquisitorial methods now too often used in order to restrict the 
 amount of relief. 
 
 " (c) Trade Unions to be subsidized out of national funds to 
 such an extent as will permit them (where provision of work is 
 impossible) to pay members unemployed benefit without bank- 
 rupting their resources. 
 
 "8. The encouragement and development of home-grown 
 
 7 
 
98 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 ter mined cry for Government intervention, and 
 *' profiteers " are denounced in unmeasured 
 language, even by those who are not suffer- 
 ing most seriously. Men and women who but 
 yesterday spoke to me as if Socialism were 
 a mere chimera, and I myself were an infatu- 
 ated visionary, now admit privately that, if 
 things go on as they are going, there is no 
 remedy for the existing state of things but 
 organized co-operation supported by the national 
 resources. Whether Social-Democrats are right 
 in their theories and sound in their practical 
 proposals or not, it is certain that never in 
 my long life have they been listened to and 
 
 food supplies by the national organization of agriculture, accom- 
 panied by drastic reductions of freight charges for all produce, 
 in the interests of the whole people. 
 
 "9. Protection of the people against exorbitant prices, 
 especially in regard to food, by the enactment of maxima 
 and the commandeering of supplies by the nation wherever 
 advisable. 
 
 " 10. The inauguration of a comprehensive policy of municipal 
 housing. 
 
 "II. National care of motherhood, by the establishment of 
 maternity and infant centres ; the provision of nourishment 
 for expectant and nursing mothers, of doctor or midwife at 
 confinement, and of helps in the house while the mother is 
 laid aside. 
 
 " 12. The compulsory provision of meals and clothing for 
 school children, three meals a day, seven days a week. 
 
 " 13. The continuance of national control over railways, docks, 
 and similar enterprises at the close of the war, with a view to 
 the better organization of production and distribution." 
 
PEACE 99 
 
 applauded with the sober vigour they are to- 
 day. The fact that the present administration 
 has carried out all its pro-capitalist measures 
 regardless of the House of Commons, and 
 has played fast and loose with our ancestral 
 liberties, without any reference to the people, 
 is also slowly, but none the less surely, rous- 
 ing a feeling which may easily produce im- 
 portant results in our favour. 
 
 At the same time, the reduction in the 
 amount of food available per household, while 
 rents remain as high as ever ; the pressure 
 on the children, who are suffering terribly ; 
 the short supply of coal, Which tells heavily 
 upon health when food is short — ^all these 
 things, superadded to the poverty already exist- 
 ing, not only stir up discontent with the con- 
 ditions of to-day, but are leading the workers 
 to demand a far better state of things to- 
 morrow. It is useless for our rulers to rejoice 
 at the continuance of good employment. Where 
 the hugest profits are being made, cash wages 
 for equal work remain stationary: in several 
 coal districts they have been actually reduced 
 since the war, and this at a moment when 
 his wages represent less subsistence for the 
 worker than they have ever done in our 
 period. 
 
 Is it to be wondered at that, in such con- 
 
loo THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 ditions, the cry for an organized collectivism 
 should be growing louder and louder every 
 day? Especially is this not surprising when, 
 during the whole of this period of devastating 
 poverty, the Insurance Poll Tax is being 
 relentlessly exacted, though its advantage to 
 the poorest of the poor, who are paying the 
 tax directly out of their stomachs, is becoming 
 more problematical every day. State Socialism, 
 with its persistent jobbery and overpaid bureau- 
 cracy, is a considerable distance from Social- 
 Democracy, where the whole people control the 
 creation and distribution of their own wealth 
 to their comtnon good. But it obviously gives 
 the mass of the workers, with whom' the lower 
 grades of the educated classes are more and 
 more associating themselves, much better oppor- 
 tunities for taking the next and decisive step 
 of abolishing wagedom altogether, than any 
 relations which they could establish with em- 
 ployers as a class. The latter, as already 
 said, are learning* that wide combinations are; 
 far "more profitable to them than the con- 
 tinuance of internecine competition. The wage- 
 earners are being taught the same lesson of 
 close combination to fight for a common cause. 
 Their solidarity as a class is constantly grow- 
 ing. Since the present Government mobilized 
 half the national army against the strikers 
 
PEACE- ;. . . ...,., ,,, ,, ipi 
 
 in 191 1, enormous progress has been made 
 in this direction, and, unfavourable as has 
 been the experience of strikes, the possibility 
 of a really effective general strike against the 
 whole employing* class is being discussed in 
 a 'more serious spirit than ever before. I 
 have no belief myself in this policy, nor do 
 I think it will be carried out in support of 
 any demand, however justifiable it may be. 
 But the steady consolidation of the forces of 
 labour render: an attempt in this direction by 
 no means so improbable as it was not long 
 ago. 
 
 The really critical times in these islands will 
 come after the declaration of peace. The 
 workers have borne more than their fair share 
 of the fighting: the proportion of Wage-earners 
 to well-to-do men at the front being at least 
 twenty-four to one. When these soldiers return 
 they will be very different men from what they 
 were when they left. They will know that 
 they have been the means of helping' to avert, 
 by their coolness and discipline and heroism, 
 the disaster tO: Western civilization which the 
 victory of Germany would have occasioned. 
 But as they survey the condition of their class, 
 which large numbers of them will do from 
 the ranks of the unemployed, it is at least 
 probable they will ask themselves: ** Was it 
 
102 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 worth while? " Social-Democracy may well 
 appeal to these trained soldiers, when they 
 look again upon the squalid conditions in 
 which millions of their fellow-men and women 
 exist, and reflect how the glories of war have 
 only brought them back to the horrors of 
 peace. The policy of '* the survival of the 
 fittest " and the morality of individual greed 
 (mollified by individual charity) have utterly 
 failed to preserve our society from the hideous 
 squalor of our slums, the physical deterior- 
 ation of our factory folk, the desperate ugli- 
 ness of our industrial centres, and the inferior 
 instruction which is thought good enough for 
 the poor. But it is not from the poorest 
 and most miserable that the great awakening 
 will come. Only the vigorous, the trained, the 
 disciplined, the organized, the educated can be 
 trusted to use changed political forms, or 
 democratic military force, to help forward the 
 social emancipation. 
 
 Social - Democracy will, as I believe, rise 
 stronger than ever before in every country 
 from this frightful war. The longer the war 
 lasts the more exhausted will be the com- 
 batants and the more discontented the workers, 
 who are the chief sufferers in all the bellige- 
 rent countries. Socialists are not merely in 
 favour of peace ; they are the only people 
 
PEACE 103 
 
 who, while not denouncmg' the principle of 
 nationality, openly proclaim that there is and 
 can be no reasonable cause for strife be- 
 tween the masses of the population on either 
 side of any arbitrary boundary. They alone 
 declare, in season and out of season, that as 
 in each nation the real enemy of the popu- 
 lation is the class which keeps the overwhelm- 
 ing majority in the position of wage-earners, 
 so in all nations these same wage - earners 
 should have as their closest friends and allies 
 the workers of every nationality, who are 
 sufifering under the same economic and social 
 disabilities as themselves. Jlven during this 
 war the spirit of proletarian solidarity is slowly 
 making itself felt, in spite of the furious 
 campaign of hatred preached in the country 
 mainly responsible for hostilities. 
 
 When peace is proclaimed it will be im- 
 possible for the rulers of any of the European 
 nations to neglect the rising forces of demo- 
 cracy, and these democracies will be more 
 and more inspired by Socialist ideals and 
 impelled towards the enactment of Socialist 
 measures. As the great factory industry and 
 capitalism on a large scale were first de- 
 veloped in this island. Great Britain is more 
 ready, economically, than any other nation for 
 the commencement of the active period of 
 
104 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 transformation which has in truth already un- 
 consciously begUn. Unfortunately, our political 
 forms, which should give a peaceful outlet 
 to the necessary social changes are several 
 generations behind our economic development. 
 They do but afford political expression to the 
 plutocratic and bureaucratic dominations, which 
 in turn are the outcome of the obstructive and 
 reactionary stage of production for profit ; while 
 the education of the people as a whole does 
 little more than inculcate error with the object 
 of maintaining the present outworn system. Let 
 us hope that we may yet be able to over- 
 come these terrible drawbacks, and, as champions 
 of the coming democracy of social equality, 
 aspire to give a beneficent and unenvied lead 
 to the peoples of the world. Certain it is 
 that the nation which first rises to the height 
 of this glorious endeavour will render an un- 
 forgettable service to mankind. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY ^ 
 
 A CLEVER lady whom I knew well in Mel- 
 bourne some five and forty years ago once 
 wrote me a charming letter, here at home, 
 the closing words of which were: "And pray, 
 my dear Mr. Hyndman, do not be so dread- 
 fully Republican. If one King is so bad, 
 what must a Committee of them be? '* 
 
 The idea of a Committee of Kings struck 
 me at the time as grotesque, not to say 
 humorous. Little, however, did I imagine that 
 I should live to see my friend's conception 
 realized in this island. Nevertheless, it is. 
 The Monarchy here is virtually in Commis- 
 sion, the House of Commons is reduced to 
 the level of a '* Bed of Justice," kept up 
 to register Cabinet decrees, and the people 
 are deprived of all control over their own 
 affairs. Thus, the United Kingdom, with India 
 and the Crown Colonies, is at the mercy of 
 a self-chosen Board of Autocrats, no two of 
 
 * Published in May 1915. 
 105 
 
io6 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 whom are in full agreement on any subject. 
 Our subservience to the Trade Union of 
 Lawyers is becoming so complete that we 
 scarce have pluck enough left to chalk up 
 on the walls, after the manner of the French, 
 ** A bas les avocats I " and then run away. 
 In the course of a few months we have sur- 
 rendered, with a light heart, the democratic 
 work of seven centuries to a group of poli- 
 ticians who in July last had certainly lost 
 the confidence of the nation — politicians who 
 landed us in this terrific war (which they 
 now admit they knew to be coming) without 
 anything like adequate preparation. A Com- 
 mittee of Kings, indeed ! 
 
 The situation would be ludicrous if it were 
 not so dangerous. Yet at present nobody 
 cares. Public interest is so concentrated on 
 the events of the war that proceeding's which, 
 at any other time, would arouse a fury of 
 popular indignation, are almost disregarded. 
 We grumble a little at this or that high- 
 handed action, tampering with our hard- won 
 freedoms ; but the country as a whole is so 
 apathetic, and has become so careless in 
 matters of crucial import, that we are drift- 
 ing into irresponsible tyranny at home, as we 
 drifted into the greatest war of all time abroad, 
 without any security either for upholding demo- 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 107, 
 
 cracy^ or for obtaining efficiency. Nothing 
 quite like it has been seen in our history. 
 Even the Lord Protector himself could not 
 reduce the House of Commons, so long as it 
 remained in being, to the depth of servility to 
 which it has descended at the beginning of 
 the twentieth century. When, in spite of his 
 threats, that ancient Assembly persisted in 
 claiming the right of criticism, and the privi- 
 lege of interference^ he at least had the 
 decency to avoid^ for once, even the appear- 
 ance of hypocrisy ; he turned the whole of 
 its members out by force of arms and locked 
 up their own House against them. If Mr. 
 Asquith would imitate old Oliver, and openly, 
 instead of secretly, appoint a group of Major- 
 Generals to run his lawyer-made rule, we 
 should at least know where we really are. 
 
 People at large have no idea how far we 
 are going, or are being driven, since public 
 discussion in Parliament has been in abeyance 
 and both the capitalist factions are at one. 
 Nobody can tell us precisely what the law 
 is, at the present time, in regard to personal 
 and private liberties, which we have all of 
 us believed from our childhood to be absolutely 
 indefeasible. The Defence of the Realm Act, 
 the Amendment to the Defence of the Realm 
 Act, Orders in Council, Local Orders by mili- 
 
io8 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 tary authorities, suspension of the Habeas Corpus 
 Act, interference with trial by jury, and so 
 on, make such chaos of the Statute Book that 
 even capable lawyers are at a loss to know 
 where we stand. 
 
 One of the most important measures of 
 those submitted to the House of Commons 
 for approval was not even distributed to 
 members, and narrowly escaped bein^ carried 
 on the strength of what was contained in 
 a single uncertified copy in manuscript. This 
 recalls Lord Randolph Churchill's remark, when 
 a similar trick was tried many years ago. 
 In that instance, an amendment was copied in 
 pencil on a sheet of paper by one of the 
 leaders on his own side, and handed down 
 to him, as valuable information, while he was 
 speaking. Lord Randolph continued his speech 
 and, glancing at the communication, said: 
 *' Things have come to a pretty pass in this 
 House, when important amendments have to 
 be discussed on dirty little bits of paper." 
 Then, screwing up the note into a ball, he 
 flipped it at the mover, and so disposed of 
 the matter. Official personages have been 
 pretty much the same in all periods ; but 
 nowadays they make the war an excuse for 
 bureaucratic domination on a scale which is not 
 even justified by a " dirty little bit of paper." 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 109 
 
 Since England entered upon war without due 
 preparation, our rulers were bound to take 
 some exceptional action if the nation was to 
 defend itself adequately against an unscrupulous 
 and treacherous attack, and to bear its share 
 in the common policy forced upon the Allied 
 Powers. Great Britain was of one mind on 
 this point. No one complained when the 
 Government, acting, as it averred, in the 
 national interest, took control of the whole of 
 our railway system. On the contrary, people 
 felt that this extension of official authority 
 was unavoidable, when troops and supplies and 
 munitions had to be rapidly rushed to the 
 Front. All criticism was suspended and the 
 Government had a free hand. Its arrange- 
 ment to protect the interests of the share- 
 holders by guaranteeing them their dividends 
 passed quite unchallenged, even by the workers 
 on the railways, who themselves had no such 
 assurance of good treatment. 
 
 Unfortunately, this assumption of the national 
 administration of railways Was not accom- 
 panied by a wide conception of the 
 real problems of land transport. The 
 railways are now nationalized, or rather bureau- 
 cratized, under most expensive and antiquated 
 methods ; and when the war ends all this will 
 be used as an argument against the useful 
 
no THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and beneficial reorganization of the entire system 
 of national transport. 
 
 Our already vast irresponsible bureaucracy 
 was, in fact, still further extended, without 
 any possibility of instituting adequate public 
 control, or of introducing really modern plans 
 of conveyance. Unless great care is taken, 
 so soon as the war is over, we shall again 
 have all the drawbacks of monopoly wedded 
 to all the disadvantages of competition in our 
 national transport, and this at a moment when 
 the pressure of German goods upon our own 
 and the world market will call for the com- 
 plete transformation of our industrial and dis- 
 tributive methods to meet it effectively. We 
 are, as usual, attempting to muddle through 
 with a haphazard Committee of Kings in re- 
 gard to one of the most important portions of 
 our national economy. 
 
 It is much the same with shipping. Obvi- 
 ously, the nation required that a large number 
 of vessels should be at its disposal to convey 
 troops to the Continent, to bring them from 
 our Colonies and from India to the seat of 
 war and Egypt, to keep up a constant stream 
 of supplies for the Army, and so on. Equally 
 clear was it that the Government could only 
 obtain these ships by commandeering as many 
 as were needed. We start with the nationali- 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY in 
 
 zation of railways, we proceed to the nation- 
 alization of shipping. No fewer than 1,500 
 steamers were thus commandeered. Excellent. 
 Nobody again raised a word of objection. We 
 all assumed that when exercising its authority 
 the Government would take steps to avoid any 
 abnormal rise of sea-borne freights against the 
 nation, by national action on behalf of the 
 people. Not a bit of it. What was the 
 result? We were elated, and justly elated, 
 at the complete success of our Navy (which, 
 by the way, the Independent Labour Party, 
 many Radicals, and even the Labour Party 
 did their, best to reduce to danger-point before 
 the war) in bottling up the German North 
 Sea Fleet, in destroying German commerce 
 destroyers, and in securing for ourselves and 
 our Allies the entire command of the sea. 
 But, the more successful we were in sweep-, 
 ing enemy vessels from the ocean, the more 
 successful were we also in sweeping food out 
 of the stomachs of the British poor. The 
 irony of unconscious ineptitude was surely never 
 better displayed. 
 
 Freig'hts mounted up by leaps and bounds. 
 Coal which had been carried from Newcastle 
 to London by sea for 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. 
 a ton before the war, now costs for similar 
 service, from los. 6d. to 13s. 6d. a ton. 
 
112 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 From Argentina, similarly, rates of freight for 
 wheat ran up from 12s. 6d. to 60s. or more 
 a ton. Yet, when the Premier and other 
 members of the Committee of King's were 
 challenged on this matter, and were requested 
 to use their autocratic power to reduce the 
 stupendous profits of the shipowners, by further 
 national action on behalf of the people at 
 large, the old doctrine of '* supply and de- 
 mand," which had been thrown overboard with 
 glee by the Government in the matters of 
 sugar, of indigo, of wheat (in India), etc., 
 was quoted against us with chop-licking relish. 
 What is more, so powerful is the Shipping 
 Ring, and so skilfully are its funds applied 
 in subscribing to the needs of both the great 
 political factions, that there is very little 
 chance of any attempt being made to deal 
 adequately with this vast Trust, organized as 
 it is against the interest of the entire com- 
 munity. The people may work hard and fight 
 hard and the poor may starve hard, but our 
 Government giveth to its chosen shipowners the 
 increase. Nay, the national credit is used 
 to lessen the amount paid for insurance, in 
 order that this increase may be the better 
 insured I 
 
 The control of railways and the comman- 
 deering of shipping were long steps to take 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 113 
 
 towards the constitution of a supreme bureau- 
 cracy of Class-State-Socialism, dominated by a 
 Government which assuredly had no popular 
 mandate for any such action. But the next 
 move was in the direction of a complete 
 abandonment of that very same private enter- 
 prise, and supply-and-demand principle of 
 economics, which the Prime Minister and his 
 colleagues still, nominally, adhere to. In this 
 instance. Parliament has authorized the Govern- 
 ment to take in hand, administer and orga- 
 nize all the factories and workshops which 
 may be considered necessary, with the object 
 of hastening the manufacture and supply of 
 essential equipment and munitions for the 
 troops. This, to use vulgar language, is a 
 ** very large order." So large that the 
 Government itself had not even in mind the 
 man who should be selected, as a sort of 
 sub-dictator-in-chief to carry out this unpre- 
 cedented undertaking. 
 
 Now, I believe the people of this country 
 are absolutely determined to fight this war 
 to a finish. But it is just those of us who 
 believe that the Government has leaned too 
 much on Haldane's Germanophilism, on land 
 and on sea, who most strongly object to the 
 measures now being taken to ensure efficiency 
 and victory. Yet no body of people in any 
 
 8 
 
114 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 class have tried to hamper our rulers in 
 regard to any of the industrial changes which 
 have seemed necessary. For my part, as a 
 Social-Democrat, I am confident that National 
 Collectivism and National Bureaucratic Ad- 
 ministration during the war will, sooner or 
 later, help on the development of Co-operative 
 Democratic Socialism when we return to peace. 
 Meanwhile, the establishment of some sort of 
 order, even under the management of the 
 Class-State, is better than the perpetuation of 
 competitive anarchy controlled by capitalism and 
 companies. But, at the same time, we must 
 keep a tight hold upon those democratic 
 principles, which, however seriously they may 
 be misapplied or checked in action under our 
 present queer, out-of-date constitution, unques- 
 tionably underlie our whole political system. 
 The people as a whole, I repeat, do not 
 yet understand what a complete revolution has 
 been made in their political and social affairs 
 within the past few months. It would be 
 well that they should begin to take account 
 of this very important transformation. We are 
 fighting side by side with the French, at any 
 rate, in order to uphold the rights of demo- 
 cracies against the last military caste left on 
 the planet, and to secure the independence of 
 small nationalities. If we imperil our own 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 115 
 
 freedoms while fighting for the liberties of 
 others, the disillusion and the danger will be 
 great indeed. 
 
 Far be it from a Social-Democrat, of neces- 
 sity a philosopher, a collectivist, and a man 
 of peace even at the price of war, to cavil 
 at the use of the nation's resources under 
 national management for the protection of the 
 realm. But why should nearly all the burdens 
 of this new bureaucracy fall on the producers, 
 from the Dan of the Insurance Act even unto 
 the Beersheba of compulsory abstinence? For 
 this is only the beginning of the business, 
 even if, for the sake of the suggestions of 
 the name just used, I touch first upon the most 
 recent phase of Cromwellian compulsion. Ours 
 is a Teetotal Administration. ** So they say ! '* 
 — as the Mohammedan Guard at the Palace 
 replied to the old Czar Nicholas I when, on 
 Easter Day, the Emperor addressed his Moslem 
 subject with the time-worn greeting "He is 
 Risen." However that may be, it is clear 
 that, following hard upon the example of 
 notoriously temperate Russia, our rulers were 
 all eager to close the poor man'!s public- 
 houses by force of Parliamentary enactment, or 
 Order in Council. The ex-Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer was strenuously engaged in sawing off 
 the branch on which the balance of his Budget 
 
Ii6 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 depended, in order to convince us of his 
 earnestness in this matter. Nay, more, he 
 averred, with all the solemnity of the Noncon- 
 formist conscience in high office, that the delay 
 in the supply of the munitions of war, for 
 which his colleague and fellow-abstainer. Lord 
 Kitchener, so well and truly yearns, was due 
 to the drunkenness of the munition-makers. 
 Further, he gave the impression in his talk 
 with the Shipbuilders' Federation that alcohol- 
 ism — ^always among the workers, of course — is 
 seriously on the increase. 
 
 Thereupon a sudden thought — advertized be- 
 forehand by the United Kingdom Alliance — 
 struck him. Let the decree go forth from 
 the Lawyer-King's in Council, with their here- 
 ditary Monarch in the ante-chamber, that all 
 Britain shall be sober whether Britain Hkes 
 it or not. And the House of Commons with 
 one accord shall say "Amen." But the common 
 folk declare that this charge of universal sottish- 
 ness brought against the people is the most 
 outrageously false imputation ever made upon 
 the working-men of this country ; that no 
 German abroad, or pro-German in England, 
 had ever so traduced and insulted the mass 
 of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Welshmen who 
 make the wealth of our nation. As they 
 further tell us, so much overtime is being 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 117 
 
 worked in the factories, in the effort to comply 
 with the demands of the War Office, that, 
 unless the managers take the same sort of 
 care of the "men as the Krupp directors under 
 official supervision do, nervous breakdown will 
 be quite common ; and, so far from drunken- 
 ness being the general cause of inefficiency, 
 only a small minority of wage-earners now 
 suffer from this vice ; in itself chiefly the 
 outcome of poverty and excessive strain. All 
 which is indisputable ^nd capable of proof. 
 So, then, we have citations from Mr. 
 George's speeches to 'show that he never 
 meant what he was generally taken to mean, 
 and that in reality he only says quite a few 
 of the workers are given to drink. But is 
 the whole country, then, to be knocked off 
 alcoholic liquors because a minority of men 
 and women are apt to take more than is 
 good for them? Hard cases make bad law. 
 To subject the vast majority to despotic regi- 
 mentation, by reason of the shortcomings of 
 the few, is foolish tyranny. Why, instead of 
 attempting the impossible, at the dictation of 
 a set of well-to-do fanatics, who never knew 
 what starvation or physical overwork is, does 
 not the Government see to it that sound, light 
 beer and other drinks are supplied, that public- 
 houses become hostelries for the public in- 
 
ii8 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 stead of mere bars for the supply of alcohol, 
 and that adulteration should be punished as 
 a crime? That is one of those mysteries 
 which cannot be explained. 
 
 This attempt upon 'the workers' liberties — 
 upon the freedom of the class that is doing 
 most of the fighting and all the production— 
 though it has roused more feeling than all 
 the rest put together, is but the most recent 
 of a whole series of tyrannical enactments. 
 Who would have believed a few years ago, 
 for example, that any English Government would 
 dare, without authority from Parliament, or any 
 notification as to what was being done, to sus- 
 pend the Habeas Corpus Act? and that, this 
 having been decided upon, the Judges should 
 be instructed not even ** to state a case," in 
 order that the matter might be argued publicly 
 in Court? Yet that is precisely what occurred 
 in the case of the unfortunate man Dove, 
 master of a steam-trawler on the south-east 
 coast. On returning to port he accidentally 
 ran down one of our submarines. There was 
 not a tittle of evidence from the first to show 
 that this was anything but a pure accident, 
 or that Mr. Dove was in any way to blame, 
 even for carelessness. Yet " the authorities " 
 took for granted that the collision was brought 
 about on purpose, that Dove was acting in 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 119 
 
 the interest of the King's enemies, and that 
 he had no defence of any kind. He was 
 therefore haled into custody, bail was refused, 
 he could get; no satisfaction under writ of 
 Habeas Corpus through his counsel, and the 
 poor fellow might be in gaol to this hour but 
 for the intervention of Lord Parmoor and the 
 House of Lords. This confession is not a 
 little humiliating to a democrat and a SociaHst 
 who has always been opposed to any non- 
 elected Assembly. But so it is. 
 
 To that reactionary House, also, is due the 
 revival of trial by jury, which had been sup- 
 pressed for certain cases under the original 
 Defence of the Realm Act. As showing, like- 
 wise, what monstrous injustice might be 
 perpetrated if Habeas Corpus and Trial by 
 Jury were both removed from the list of our 
 legal protections against arbitrary rule, it 
 turned out in the end that the Government 
 had no case at all against the man Dove. 
 Not a single charge was formulated against 
 him when he was brought from gaol 
 into Court, and he was, of course, dis- 
 charged without, so far as is known, any 
 compensation whatever being paid him for his 
 illegal and wholly unjustifiable incarceration., 
 We may all find ourselves in his case if 
 vigilance is relaxed ; for class legislation was 
 
I20 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 never so pronounced as now ; and never, for 
 good reasons as well as bad, was the public 
 more apathetic about its own rights. Attacks 
 on individual freedom, which cannot be bene- 
 ficial either to the individuals or to the com- 
 munity, are now, indeed, quite common ; but 
 few of these are dealt 'with as they ought 
 to be. Much, too, is being done and more 
 attempted, under direct military law, of which 
 the public hears nothing ; and it is impos- 
 sible to obtain the local enactments by which 
 such petty tyranny is fostered. When, some 
 time before the war, Mr. Winston Churchill 
 suggested the organization of military districts 
 under military men of high rank, in imitation 
 of Cromwell's instalment of Major-Generals, as 
 the supreme authorities throughout England, 
 people laughed. But that is the regime under 
 which we are, to a large extent, actually living 
 to-day. The military order for the regulation 
 of women of loose life at Cardiff is only 
 one out of many instances of high-handed 
 action to justify which no law, nor even any 
 Order in Council, can be cited. 
 
 Quite recently, large schools have been 
 commandeered throughout the country for 
 hospitals by the War Office, though there are 
 plenty of empty private houses much better 
 suited for the purpose which could be adapted 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 121 
 
 at a fraction of the expenditure considered 
 necessary for the luxury of German officers 
 at Donington Hall. So it goes. 
 
 Where military men cannot very well act, 
 the police are called in. Thus Jim Larkin's 
 brother gets a month's imprisonment because, 
 being boycotted by employers, he goes to his 
 work under another name. I have no sympathy 
 with Larkin's anarchistic opinions, but an Act 
 of Parliament or an Order in Council which 
 supports this sort of injustice towards a man 
 who is unpopular with the capitalists is 
 tyranny. Then it is assumed that a propor- 
 tion of the wives of soldiers will use their 
 payments and allowances for strong drink. All 
 soldiers' wives are, therefore, placed by order 
 under police superintendence — the very worst 
 sort of supervision possible for soldiers' wives, 
 no matter how capable the constables may 
 be in the performance of their ordinary duties. 
 This rouses serious opposition. The order is, 
 in consequence, allowed, so it is said, to lapse. 
 But, as a matter of fact, such inquisitorial 
 and objectionable interferences may be revived 
 anywhere at any moment, and in some places 
 they are still going on. 
 
 Again, if there is one point on which public 
 opinion has advanced more than another during 
 the past thirty years, it is upon the employ- 
 
122 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 ment of children in industry. Even in 
 Lancashire, a genuinely strong democratic 
 Government would be quite safe in putting 
 an end to the half-time system ; though, to 
 their shame be it said, most of the fathers 
 and mothers in that county support this sweat- 
 ing of their offspring, because it brings them 
 in more money, and they themselves under- 
 went similar treatment. But now the local 
 educational authorities in the agricultural dis- 
 tricts are being permitted to set back the 
 clock in this ^matter by allowing young children 
 to work in the fields in place of adults at 
 ridiculous rates of wages. So far, no ade- 
 quate opposition has checked this deadly attack 
 upon the vigour of the next generation. 
 
 It wt)uld be easy to multiply instances of the 
 way in which our liberties are being un- 
 necessarily infringed, not for the public benefit 
 or to ensure public safety, or even to increase 
 our effectiveness as a nation in the tremendous 
 war we are waging. From the incompetent 
 and foolish meddling of the Press Bureau to 
 the wholesale opening and, in some cases, the 
 using and publishing of private letters in the 
 cabinet noir of the Post Office, we are at the 
 mercy, not of one powerful and capable if 
 obnoxious dictator, but of a series of petty 
 despots and jacks-in-office, who take advantage 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 123 
 
 of the truce in party politics, and the g'eneral 
 desire not to embarrass the Government to 
 imperil and attack our ancestral liberties in 
 every direction. We might all be ready to 
 put up with a Cromwell for a time, if only 
 we could make sure that he could be quietly 
 removed when he had done his work. But 
 to acquiesce in the present rule of a set of 
 nominated Committees, with all sorts of un- 
 restricted powers under the supreme Com- 
 mittee of a Cabinet, which was not elected 
 for the wholly unforeseen and enormous work 
 that it has in hand, is simply to create an 
 inefficient and dang^erous Cromwellism, minus 
 the Cromwell, from which we shall find it 
 no easy matter to free ourselves when the 
 German military combination is crushed and 
 peace is proclaimed. 
 
 I have left the above almost as I wrote 
 it at the end of April, 1 9 1 5 . Events move 
 so fast that we are apt to forget how we 
 find ourselves in the position we occupy to- 
 day, and we shall soon have forgotten how 
 we stand to-day in the still more serious 
 circumstances of to-morrow. It is, indeed, no 
 easy matter to keep a trustworthy record of 
 what is going on. From the haphazard jack- 
 in-office bureaucracy, already described, we are 
 
124 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 drifting steadily into Wage-Slavery of the 
 State. When this was first predicted as the 
 inevitable result of the Insurance Poll Tax, 
 the Blackleg Labour Exchanges, etc., I could 
 not believe that the people of this island would 
 ever put up with such an objectionable system 
 of jobbery and officialism, much as I objected 
 to those measures themselves. But it is now 
 quite clear that we have entered upon pre- 
 cisely that form of domination of the workers 
 which most easily lends itself to corruption and 
 tyranny. Our whole social as well as our 
 entire political machinery is being transformed 
 from bottom to top in the interest not of the 
 producing but of the profiteering class : the 
 latter having now the guarantee of the nation 
 that their increased gains shall be secured to 
 them. 
 
 I should be the last to deny the inevitable 
 necessity of improved organization in every de- 
 partment in order to win the great fight of 
 nationality and freedom against the militarist 
 despotism of the Germanic powers. If some 
 of us, who foresaw and predicted what was 
 coming many years before it came, had been 
 in power, such organization on a democratic 
 basis would have been set on foot long ago. 
 But now we are striving in hot haste to 
 imitate German methods without German know- 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 125 
 
 ledge, or Geraian efficiency. The Coalition 
 Cabinet may be as versatile as it is variable. 
 The Premier may be a second Chatham, but 
 no statesman in the world's history ever under- 
 took such a task as that which they have 
 undertaken in setting to work to deal with 
 the whole country as if every man and woman 
 in it were bound to obey without question the 
 commands of a self -nominated administration. 
 The Munitions Act followed by the Registration 
 Act, coming on the top of previous inter- 
 ferences with the liberties and rights of the 
 wage-earners changes the whole foundations of 
 our national life. Our people who as I have 
 insisted time after time provide twenty-four 
 twenty-fifths of the fighting forces of the country, 
 and do all the production, are first denounced 
 as drunken skulkers, then appealed to by the 
 same Minister as self-sacrificing and loyal 
 patriots, and afterwards regimented as mere 
 mechanical munitioners. Granted, I repeat, 
 that better organization and special effort are 
 needed, this is not the way to get the best 
 work out of independent Englishmen. 
 
 The truth is we are being rushed into 
 a complete revolution by men who do not 
 themselves fully understand what they are doing 
 or what their own enactments mean. Our 
 whole system of Government by Party has 
 
126 THE FUTURE OF. DEMOCRACY 
 
 been done away with. This may have been 
 unavoidable ; but . it reduces the House of Com- 
 mons to a nonenity and gives an irresponsible 
 Cabinet of twenty-two unelected persons abso- 
 lute control over us. Such an unwieldly 
 Council is obviously too large to be either 
 efficient or responsible. It is doubtful even, 
 if it will prove safe either for the people 
 or for its own members. Yet we are all 
 bound to back it simply because there is 
 nothing else to back'. 
 
 But in a nominally democratic country can 
 anything be more grossly improper than that 
 such an Administration should be imposed upon 
 the United Kingdom and the Empire by a 
 series of intrigues and compromises withput 
 any General Election or any Referendum to 
 the people at large? Yet, had a general 
 appeal been made before the Coalition Cabinet 
 was constituted, had a clear and definite policy 
 been put to the country by a capable and 
 responsible War Committee of not more than 
 five men, I believe that the response would 
 have been practically unanimous. And if the 
 opinion of the working class had been definitely 
 tested in regard to what they were prepared 
 to do in the factory as well as in the field, 
 there would have been no need for a costly 
 and superfluous Registration Bill. 
 
CLASS-STATE BUREAUCRACY 127^ 
 
 As it is, though the spirit is there, and the 
 determination to win is unshaken, there is 
 plenty of repressed discontent which may easily 
 break out into open denunciation unless great 
 care is taken to avoid outraging popular feel- 
 ing. The persistent secrecy maintained tends 
 to provoke distrust. When the nation is losing 
 hundreds of thousands of men, spending hun- 
 dreds of millions sterling, sacrificing war vessels 
 and merchant shipping wholesale, and is 
 harassed along its coast and also inland by 
 Zeppelins which come and go much as they 
 please, it is entitled to know everything about 
 its own affairs. But the one idea has been 
 and is to keep us all in the dark about our 
 own business for fear we should be scared. 
 It is Ministers who are scared, not the 
 people. They know the blunders they have 
 made and the neglect and jobbery winked at. 
 These might be forgiven if they would tell 
 the truth about what they are doing and in- 
 tend to do now ; if also, instead of bullying 
 and tyrannizing over the workers, they would take 
 advantage of the splendid national feeling 
 which the war has awakened not to curtail 
 our ancient liberties, but to arouse fresh vigour 
 by their extension in full. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REORGANIZATION OF BRITISH 
 TRADE 
 
 There is a growing opinion amongi the 
 workers of every country that the system of 
 production for profit, and with it ' the payment 
 of wages by one class to another, is opposed 
 to the true interests of mankind and must ere 
 long come to an end. More than this ; the 
 steady substitution of combination, national and 
 international, for competition among capitalists 
 and industrial magnates of every description 
 points to the conclusion that capitalism, in its 
 earlier forms of bitter individual and company 
 rivalry is at an end, and a new era h^.s 
 begun. National Trusts on the one side and 
 State control and organization on the other, 
 are, in fact, displacing and co-ordinating the 
 competitive anarchy which formerly was uni- 
 versal. The theoretic prediction of eighty 
 years ago that competition would find its 
 
 logical term in monopoly is being verified 
 
 128 
 
BRITISH TRADE 129 
 
 before our eyes. But while this process is 
 going on, trade antag'onism between nations 
 in a more organized shape than hitherto has 
 been fiercely waged for many years past. And 
 the nation which was first to recognize this 
 truth, and to use in an increasing degree the, 
 entire national forces in support of its industry 
 and commerce, has amazed the world by the 
 rapidity with which it has forged to the front 
 in the world market within a generation. The 
 advance of Germany during the last five-and- 
 thirty years has been almost as remarkable 
 as the progress of Japan. 
 
 This unprecedented war has necessarily put 
 Socialism in the background for the time being. 
 It will be many a long day I fear before it 
 regains its full influence as an international 
 power. The poHcy of Prussianized Germany 
 has settled that for us, and in this policy 
 German Social-Democrats, as pointed out else- 
 where, have taken an active part. 
 
 Meanwhile it is beyond dispute that the 
 45,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom 
 will undergo terrible hardships and sufferings, 
 unless they can hold their own in years to 
 come on the markets of the world. As 
 matters stand to-day, bitter though the class 
 war between labourers and capitalists, employed 
 and employers in the field of profiteering may 
 
 9 
 
I30 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 be, the interest of the wage-earners, so long 
 as the present system endures, must be to 
 secure as large and as continuous a demand as pos- 
 sible for the commodities they produce. This, 
 prior to the outbreak of war, had grown increas- 
 ingly difficult against the admirably organized and 
 state-aided antagonism of German manufacturers, 
 German financiers, German merchants, and Ger- 
 man shipowners. We were relatively losing 
 ground against the ordered attack upon our 
 industry, our finance, our commerce, and our 
 carrying trade. 
 
 Had Germany continued this commercial 
 campaign with no more than the same steadi- 
 ness and ability for a few additional years, 
 she would have overcome all her rivals 
 including even the United States ; unless we 
 and America had both entirely changed our 
 methods, and adopted German ways of dealing 
 with the vast problems of world-wide trade. 
 Germany was becoming more and more for- 
 midable with every year of peace. Those 
 who imagine that this was due merely to *' pro- 
 tection " are short-sighted, prejudiced, and foolish 
 indeed. It mainly arose from a cultivation 
 of efficiency, and a never-ceasing assiduity in 
 pursuing the great end in view — German domi- 
 nation of the markets of the world — which 
 were entirely unprecedented in history. Ger- 
 
BRITISH TRADE 131 
 
 mans prepared for and carried on their com- 
 petitive warfare in commerce with the same 
 meticulous yet scientific foresight and exactitude 
 that they have applied to their military 
 campaign, with few, if any, of the mistakes 
 which have marked the latter. 
 
 At the present time, owing to the mastery 
 of the seas secured by the supremacy of our 
 navy, German commerce has been swept away. 
 There is much talk also of the capture of 
 German trade now and after the war, by 
 speakers and writers who evidently have never 
 tried to understand why Germany achieved the 
 success she most assuredly did attain, in spite 
 of all the Royal adjurations of many years 
 ago to England to " Wake up." .We remained 
 asleep, and we were content to depend on 
 Germany for some of the most important es- 
 sentials of our own industry. It is on record 
 that in 181 2 the United States of America 
 found themselves dependent for their war sup- 
 pHes and munitions upon Europe. '* You will 
 never catch us in that fix again," said one 
 patriotic American. And nobody ever has. 
 
 But we English have made precisely this 
 mistake in peace, to our abiding injury and 
 disgrace. At the outbreak of the war we 
 discovered that we could not do without 
 German dyes for our textiles. Though aniline 
 
132 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 dyes had been invented by an Englishman, 
 our '* organizers of industry " had allowed the 
 whole business to slip away into the hands 
 of the manufacturers of the Fatherland and 
 their highly-skilled chemists, until now they have 
 a monopoly, which, it appears, we are unable to 
 supplement by home productions, after nearly a 
 year of war and with great help from the 
 Government. Even if protection could en- 
 courage the foundation of factories on a 
 sufficiently large scale, it is doubtful whether 
 they could be upheld against German patents 
 and improved processes. So far also we have 
 declined to make adequate use of our own men 
 of science in this particular line. This is 
 one fine instance of fatuity. The manufacture 
 of optical glasses is another, and there are 
 plenty more. Nor let us forget that Germany, 
 even if she loses Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig- 
 Holstein, and Poland, will still possess a popu- 
 lation larger and far better organized than our 
 own. 
 
 But after the war, allowing a comparatively 
 short period for national recovery, Germany 
 will, I am confident, become a more formidable 
 competitor than ever. Her press, which like her 
 General Staff is well aware that an inconclusive 
 peace is the best that Germany can now 
 expect, threatens us with this already. God, thg 
 
BRITISH TRADE 133 
 
 German God, no longer of battles but of markets, 
 will punish England by depriving her of the 
 means of selling her goods against a rival who 
 produces commodities better and cheaper. Sordid 
 but effective. This is a very serious danger. 
 The more thoroughly Germany is beaten, the 
 more stringent the restrictions which may be 
 placed upon her warlike reconstruction, the 
 heavier the indemnities she may be forced to 
 pay, the more terrible her loss of capital, 
 just so much fiercer will her competition 
 become. The flood of commercialism and mili- 
 tarism may have stunted her genius and 
 cramped her philosophy, but in appropriation 
 and development of inventions, as well as in 
 initiative and astuteness, she has no superior 
 if any equal. This stupendous energy and 
 power of organization has hitherto been largely 
 devoted to the military and naval preparations 
 that have astonished the world. After peace 
 is proclaimed, all the national resources thus 
 used unproductively for war will be thrown 
 into the struggles of peace. Even her loss 
 of men will in a few years be compensated by 
 the new generation bred up for victory in the; 
 most strenuous, pacific antagonism ever known. 
 All this British ^nanufacturers and merchants 
 and workers will have to meet and contend 
 against ; for it is too much to hope that what- 
 
134 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 ever political and economic success democrats 
 and Socialists may have in Germany when the 
 war is over, they will be able to bring about 
 a Social Revolution which will put competition 
 on the shelf. We must therefore be ready to 
 face the worst, and that worst is unfortunately 
 or fortunately due not so much to Germany's 
 strength as to our own self-sufficient weakness. 
 The governing class of this country has 
 much to answer for. Germany has no great 
 natural advantages over Great Britain. On the 
 contrary, in geographical position, in climate, 
 in general fertility, in mineral resources the 
 United Kingdom is on the whole more ad- 
 vantageously placed. Nor would our popu* 
 lation be in any way inferior to hers if only 
 its members were all living under decent con- 
 ditions, were well-fed, well-educated, and well- 
 trained physically from their childhood upwards. 
 But this is precisely what millions of them 
 admittedly are not. The health, strength, 
 vigour, intelligence, organization, and discipline 
 of our youth, male and female, is not a 
 matter with us of national concern. Laissez- 
 falre, happy-go-lucky, and devil-take-the-hind- 
 most, are still, for the most part, our ideas 
 of management. The survival of the fittest 
 is assumed to mean that the fittest must 
 survive, hideous as the degeneracy of our huge 
 
BRITISH TRADE 135 
 
 masses of slum-dwellers may be. A nation 
 which is organized for efficiency will always 
 in the long run beat a nation which leaves 
 things to chance, however imperfect and even 
 detestable the government of the more efficient 
 nation may be. 
 
 EngHshmen hate to be told of their short- 
 comings. They do not show this so much 
 by their opposition to what they hear and 
 read as by their determined indifference to 
 the truth. But the time has come when the 
 truth will be forced upon them in a very 
 ugly way, and they will have to admit among 
 other things that the mischiefs bred of generations 
 of apathy and neglect cannot be remedied all 
 of a sudden to. meet a set of circumstances 
 that ought long ago to have been foreseen 
 and prepared for. We are learning by sad 
 experience what we have to encounter in war : 
 let us understand as soon as possible what 
 we shall have to encounter in peace. 
 
 What then is wrong with ourselves as com- 
 pared with the Germans? The list of our 
 defects is a long and a sad one. Nor should 
 we permit the prejudices born of the monstrous 
 misdoings of the Germans to blind us to its 
 importance in regard to the coming time. 
 
 Education. Our primary education is very 
 defective and it certainly has not improved 
 
136 THE FUTURE OE DEMOCRACY 
 
 since School Boards were abolished and Educa- 
 tion was put in the same category of muni- 
 cipal management and payment as paving, 
 lighting, draining, etc. The old School Board 
 with its cumulative vote, gave an opportunity 
 for men and women who were enthusiastic 
 on the subject of education and its improve- 
 ment to exercise a direct and beneficial in- 
 fluence far in excess of the mere numbers 
 of people they represented by vote. 
 
 Take a borough I happen to have known 
 intimately for thirty years. There one member 
 of the School Board was practically the Muni- 
 cipal Minister of Education. He so animated 
 and pushed on his colleagues that the Board 
 Schools of Burnley were on the high road 
 to emulating the Swiss schools in their 
 ef^ciency. When the change was made, and 
 ad hoc representation on the School Board 
 was done away with, then Councillor Dan 
 Irving lost a great deal of his influence as 
 an educational reformer, and the effect of the 
 cost of education upon the rates was much 
 more considered than before. Consequently the 
 reforms which he had initiated and pushed 
 forward were checked. What occurred in 
 Burnley, to my own personal knowledge and 
 under my own eyes, I believe has occurred 
 frequently elsewhere. I am aware that Sir 
 
BRITISH TRADE 137 
 
 Philip Magnus and other honest optimists^ 
 declare that we have nothing to learn from 
 Germany and Switzerland in primary or second- 
 ary or technical education. I can only state 
 here plainly that this is not the opinion of 
 men and women teachers known to me, who 
 are by no means satisfied with the sort of 
 education which they have to give. The 
 teaching of foreign langiiages is systematically 
 neglected. Is that the case in Germany and 
 Switzerland? And how can men keep them- 
 selves abreast of European progress when 
 ignorant of all foreign languages? 
 
 Technical education has improved of late 
 years. But it is still by no means sufficient 
 for the needs of our industries. If it is,; 
 why are Germans and Swiss so commonly 
 found in positions which would certainly be 
 filled by equally well qualified Englishmen were 
 they to be had? I could give instance after 
 instance from private experience where Swiss 
 and Germans were engaged, not because they 
 were to be had on lower terms but because 
 Englishmen of equal capacity could not be 
 obtained on any terms. True, our employers 
 of labour are too often neglectful of science, 
 they hesitate to adopt new methods, and are 
 disinclined to suit themselves to the needs of 
 their customers ; but, when all is said, the 
 
138 THE FUTURE OF. DEMOCRACY 
 
 present war shows plainly enough that Great 
 Britain depends for what we may call the daily 
 bread supply of practical trained chemists and 
 other men of science upon countries where 
 the so-called *' secondary " education is much 
 better than our own. 
 
 All our higher education is still very 
 expensive and the opportunities afforded and 
 the appliances provided are by no means what 
 they ought to be. I hold no brief for 
 American billionaires. Far from it. Their 
 vast accumulations wholly unprecedented in the 
 history of the world have been obtained from 
 the legal and illegal expropriation of the labour 
 of the American workers. But they have 
 to a considerable extent done for the United 
 States what the State has done for Germany, 
 and in some instances on even a larger scale. 
 Great Britain enjoys neither billionaire subsidies 
 for special objects nor State assistance towards 
 definite ends. All true education must come 
 from above under the conditions of to-day. 
 The slum-dwellers would not grumble if there 
 were no education at all. Even skilled 
 workers make no effective demand for the sort 
 of education they and their children ought 
 to get. 
 
 But our great Universities, which should take 
 the lead in such matters, are regarded and 
 
BRITISH TRADE 139 
 
 regard themselves as little better than social 
 preserves for the sons of the well-to-do. 
 Commerce is looked down upon there and 
 industry despised. Oxford and Cambridge are 
 still entirely out of touch with the mass of 
 the people. Can we imagine them heading 
 a serious demand upon the national govern- 
 ment for the real democratization of their col- 
 leges and their endowments? However much 
 we may be convinced that competition is 
 harmful, so long as it exists, efficiency is 
 essential. And in the development of such 
 efficiency the old Universities have neither part 
 nor lot. They are not, in fact, in any 
 sense National institutions. A root and branch 
 national reform is needed in education and 
 training, which will never be undertaken so 
 long as Oxford and Cambridge men dominate 
 the House of Commons and perpetuate the 
 old traditions. Business science, industrial 
 science, are *' bad form." We shall not hold 
 our own with Germany in competition, nor 
 develop our own Great Britain into co-opera- 
 tion, along these lines. But, unfortunately, 
 the necessary reforms take time, and we have 
 hardly begun our reconstruction. 
 
 Physical development. This also is a sub- 
 ject which has been systematically neglected 
 for more than a hundred years. True, we 
 
I40 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 are just beginning to see what we have done 
 by our apathy in the direction of breeding 
 degeneration and are trying to put matters 
 right. But this again takes time and calls 
 for much more radical methods than we have 
 yet seen fit to adopt. There are no slum areas 
 in Germany which in any way compare with 
 ours in misery and degradation, while the 
 children of the nation are far better cared 
 for than with us. Our just indignation against 
 the Germans, on account of their hideous mis- 
 deeds and atrocities in this war, must not 
 blind us to the lessons they have given us 
 in this direction. 
 
 Health and physical vigour are as im- 
 portant to a nation in peace and in trade 
 as they are in a great campaign : as im- 
 portant for the" country at large as for the 
 individuals who make up its population. Other 
 things being equal, the people who have the 
 best physical development will be most capable 
 of receiving the best mental training. There 
 is no serious national or municipal effort 
 being made here to remedy those social con- 
 ditions which are directly calculated to produce 
 permanent degeneration. I can discern little 
 improvement in this respect as compared with 
 the state of things I well remember in 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire sixty years ago. It 
 
BRITISH TRADE 141 
 
 may be true, as Sir John Ray Lankester con- 
 tended against me in the Times some years 
 past, that no matter how great the deterioration 
 might apparently be, the basis, the stlrps, of 
 the race is physiologically sound. A pleasing 
 theory. But nobody would breed from horses, 
 or cattle, or dogs, whose dams and sires had 
 manifestly deteriorated ; how can we expect 
 better results from children begotten from 
 etiolated parents whose physical inferiority is 
 the outcome of several generations of life in 
 bad surroundings? 
 
 The point can only be decided by experi- 
 ment. Remove the children from thfeir horrible 
 environment and all will rejoice if they show 
 no inferiority to other young folk begotten 
 under more favourable circumstances, and their 
 children in turn develop into sound healthy 
 citizens. This is a matter of crucial import- 
 ance, quite apart from German competition 
 and the conquest of world markets. 
 
 But any such step as State organization for 
 health must cut at the roots of the Upas 
 tree grown in the soil of the old scurvy 
 individualist doctrines of ** laissez-faire,'' ** supply 
 and demand," " the survival of the fittest," 
 '* self-help," and the other rottenness and cor- 
 ruption of profiteering economics. There is 
 no conception of true individual or national 
 
142 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 greatness in all this devil- take-the -hindmost 
 anarchy. It has developed distrust of system, 
 thoroughness and organization throughout the 
 nation, from which we have been and are 
 suffering to an extent not even now fully 
 appreciated. The Germans, coming much 
 later into the field of capitalism at the period 
 when all this '* Manchesterthum " had been exposed 
 in theory and was exhibiting its shortcomings 
 in practice, never allowed these harmful con- 
 ceptions of the ends and objects of the pro- 
 duction of wealth to dominate their entire 
 national policy as we did. 
 
 One serious outcome of our views has been 
 that " Free Trade " has connoted for us, until 
 lately, almost entire absence of Government aid 
 or co-ordination for anything in the shape of 
 national enterprise. Even when, horrified at 
 the quagmire of indiscipline and incompetence 
 in which we had landed ourselves, we set 
 to work to try and remedy matters, we have 
 done so by imitating the very worst forms of 
 German economic and social polity. We have 
 created within five or six years a nominated, 
 costly, irresponsible, and— worse than all — wholly 
 untrained and dictatorial bureaucracy, w'hoUy 
 independent of any democratic control. This 
 huge army of jacks-in-office has undertaken at 
 a stroke the administration of newly-created 
 
BRITISH TRADE 143 
 
 departments which they are quite incompetent 
 to administer. The Insurance Act, the Labour 
 Exchanges, the wasteful Inquisitorial surveys 
 and the like are Teutonic only in their des- 
 potic rigour. The compensating advantages of 
 direct State control have been largely elimi- 
 nated. That Ministers who enjoy far higher 
 salaries than are paid in other countries should 
 be trustees of the national property is an idea 
 that has never yet been accepted in Great 
 Britain — least of all by Ministers themselves. 
 Efficiency in administration is the last qualifi- 
 cation which entitles a politician to a seat 
 in the Cabinet, or to lasting influence when 
 he has attained that seat. Persons who have 
 achieved this distinction may be the most con- 
 spicuous failures in department after depart- 
 ment, the laughing- stocks of the permanent 
 officials and the contempt of all who know. 
 But each takes for his motto of everlasting 
 incapacity not of brilliant success fy suis 'fy 
 teste. And there he sticks to his salary, 
 regardless of the interest of the nation. Case 
 after case of this interminable fatuity might 
 be cited, but the name of Mr. Reginald 
 M'Kenna has been happily chosen by fate to 
 reduce the whole business to absurdity. His 
 indispensable inepitude has been a joy to 
 foreign nations, and is so still. But Liberals 
 
144 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and Radicals tove no monopoly of such unsuit- 
 able appointments. Unionists compete with 
 them on equal terms in this organized pre- 
 ference for expensive mediocrity. 
 
 What is true of Cabinet Ministers likewise 
 holds good of our Ambassadors, in all matters 
 of business. They may be masters of political 
 diplomacy. Of that I am not speaking. They 
 absolutely refuse, no doubt under strict orders from 
 the Foreign Office, to lend any help to Englishmen 
 in business, no matter how important it may be 
 to show zeal in this direction — ^even from the 
 political point of view. The full story of 
 the feebleness of our commercial and financial 
 work at Constantinople as compared with that 
 of Marschall von Biberstein, would go far to 
 explain why tens of thousands of lives and 
 many valuable vessels have been lost at the 
 Dardanelles. And what is true of our apathy 
 and indifference at Stamboul is equally true, 
 though in a less degree, of other capitals, such 
 as Sofia, Bucharest, and Athens. 
 
 Not until the national resources and national 
 agencies are systematically used to aid national 
 industry and to extend national commerce in 
 every direction, and encouragement is given by 
 the State to initiative and efficiency in every 
 department, shall we cease to conduct our 
 competition with Germany at a great disad- 
 
BRITISH TRADE 145 
 
 vantage. And, I repeat, I write this as a 
 Social-Democrat who regards all such national 
 energy and organization as only a step to- 
 wards ensuring our position in order to be 
 able the sooner to transform all our trade 
 into a complete system of national and inter- 
 national co-operation. 
 
 But again, in such crucial matters as trans- 
 port and banking, we are behind the times. 
 This is quite inexcusable. England had the 
 first-fruits of modern development in both. 
 The most serious defects are in our methods 
 of transport. Our railways are the most re- 
 markable instance of protection in favour of 
 the foreigner ever known. I am no bigot 
 in the matter of protection of industry. I 
 know well that in order to build up a de- 
 partment of manufacture, to encourage the 
 cultivation of certain necessary grain or roots 
 in agriculture, to recover trade lost by false 
 principles in finance, to establish shipping 
 successfully against rivals, direct protection or 
 national aid and bonuses may be required. 
 But it is childish to talk about this as a 
 system to be adopted, however successful it 
 has 'been and is in Germany, France, America, 
 and our own Colonies, however successful it 
 actually 'was with our own Navigation Laws, 
 and in competition with Indian manufactured 
 
 10 
 
146 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 cotton in days gone by, until we have put 
 things so far right at home that we are not, 
 by such protection, stereotyping ancient methods 
 and filling the pockets of the landlord and 
 capitalist at the expense of the propertyless 
 and disinherited wage- slaves. 
 
 When our whole transport system is re- 
 organized, it will be time to discuss how far 
 it is necessary to protect our industry and 
 agriculture in the transition period onwards to 
 the Co-operative Commonwealth. So long ago. 
 as -1892 I gave evidence before the Royal 
 Labour Commission on this matter of our 
 monstrous railway methods as compared with 
 the United States and Germany. It would 
 take a book larger than this little volume 
 to recount adequately our deficiencies. If the 
 cost of haulage is maintained it is useless 
 to talk of effective competition with Germany. 
 Even now the weight of trucks as compared 
 with paying freight is to a gteat extent dis- 
 regarded ; heavy, old, unserviceable private 
 wagons are hauled quite regardless of 
 cost, full or empty ; differential rates against 
 English producers are still upheld ; and it costs 
 several times more to haul goods a mile in 
 Great Britain, quite apart from interest on 
 debentures, than in the two countries named. 
 But the railways constitute a monopoly, the 
 
BRITISH TRADE 14*7 
 
 Companies have about a fifth of the House 
 of Commons as their paid Directors and 
 their servants, kept lawyers and experts with 
 any amount of the shareholders' money behind 
 them, are ugly foes to face. Consequently 
 no effective reforms have been made for a 
 quarter of ^ century at least, and when 
 nationalization of railways comes to be dis- 
 cussed in earnest, the nation will be defrauded, 
 with the aid and connivance of both political 
 factions, unless a few determined and inde- 
 pendent men — rare birds hi political regions — 
 force the House of Commons to act honestly 
 in the matter. * 
 
 Nevertheless, cheap transport at cost on the 
 railways, co-ordinated with, motor transport on 
 first-rate motor roads, would give an uplift to 
 national industry and ag'riculture in the United 
 Kingdom such as the world has never yet 
 seen. The sooner this is set about thQ 
 better. This Government has the greatest 
 opportunity that ever was offered to any ad- 
 ministration. 
 
 Of our Banking system it is scarcely neces- 
 sary to speak. Since the great Joint Stock 
 Banks were carefully saved from bankruptcy, 
 or from absolutely ruinous calls upon their share- 
 holders, by the perversion of national credit 
 to their assistance, at the commencement of 
 
148 THE FUTURE OF. DEMOCRACY 
 
 the war, even Bank Managers have somewhat 
 tnoderated their tone. But the fact that we 
 possess an inelastic, unsound and unsuitable 
 method of banking as compared with certain 
 modernized and energetic foreign institutions, 
 whose competition was being keenly felt in the 
 City of London, cannot be disputed. 
 
 The wonder to me, therefore, is that with 
 all these self-inflicted drawbacks to encounter 
 and overcome, we have been able to hold 
 our own even as far as we have done. Yet 
 German trade has only become dangerous as 
 a competitive agency during the last thirty 
 years. It has been a marvellously rapid growth, 
 based upon deliberate, skilled management. 
 Her increasing success in the world market 
 has been due to careful adaptation of means 
 to ends, unceasing industry, thorough educa- 
 tion, and admirable discipline. The nation 
 went out to fight its commercial war as a 
 war, and spared no pains to ensure victory. 
 Englishmen with their individualism carried to 
 extremes, were far better pioneers, but they were 
 surrendering much of what had been gained by 
 their initiative, even in our own colonies, to the 
 nationally organized forces of their competitors. 
 
 In the huge military war of the trenches 
 now going on, it is much the same. AVhat 
 the British troops have won they have won 
 
BRITISH TRADE 149 
 
 by coolness, daring', vigour, and general pluck. 
 Their appliances have been insufficient and in- 
 ferior. We are still behind the enemy in 
 our provision of these modern essentials. 
 
 It is noteworthy, however, in looking over 
 the list of our own defects — with a view, not 
 so much to the ambitious project of captur- 
 ing German trade, as to the defence of our 
 own— that improvement in nearly every case 
 must be a slow process. Thus, assuming even 
 that the obstructionists were overcome, and our 
 common schools were made thoroughly effec- 
 tive all over the country, some years must 
 elapse before the effect of the change could 
 be felt in the domain of commerce. There 
 is, for obvious reasons, no short cut to; 
 national development in this direction. 
 
 Similarly with secondary and scientific edu- 
 cation. That is a matter of years. The 
 education must not only be thorough in these 
 departments, but cheap. In Germany it is 
 both cheap and thorough. At Freiburg, Karls- 
 ruhe, or Strasburg and many other Universities 
 fees are very much lower than in this country, 
 and the teaching is superior. Unfortunately, 
 a better state of things cannot be improvised 
 at will. Inefficient and expensive methods are 
 not easily corrected, nor are good and cheap 
 ones rapidly popularized. 
 
150 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 But what is true of education applies to 
 nearly all the other points. Adequate and 
 efficient transformation takes time to accom- 
 plish. Men and wt>men already in good health 
 and fair vig'our can be made more healthy 
 and more vigorous by capable training. Where, 
 however, city populations have become etiolated 
 by their surroundings, a full generation is 
 needed to remedy the mischief. 
 
 flnly in finance and transport can any speedy 
 and sound improvement be made. And both 
 of these depend upon national, by which is 
 inevitably meant Government, action. So far 
 national credit and advances have only been 
 used to help to maintain what I hold to 
 be, from any point of view, a harmful system. 
 But I venture to predict that, before we are 
 in a position to cope with the task ahead 
 of us, the national resources will have to be 
 brought to the support of the great co-ope- 
 rative societies in the realm of production, 
 and that the organized forces of labour must 
 be fully represented in any scheme of recon- 
 struction. 
 
! CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ARMED NATION 
 
 I. Voluntary Army and Conscription. 
 
 It is unfortunate that the arduous task of a 
 CoaHtion which, with no active Opposition in 
 the House of Commons, controls the destinies 
 of this country and the Empire, should be 
 complicated from the first with suggested 
 radical changes in the method of raising the 
 national Army. The difficulty, not to say the 
 danger, of introducing compulsory military ser- 
 vice without a Dissolution of Parliament or a 
 Referendum to the whole people must be 
 obvious to all. Minister after Minister of the 
 new Government, including Lord Kitchener him- 
 self, has declared, since the comtniencement of 
 the war, that voluntary recruiting would suffice 
 for all our needs. Yet, before a year has 
 passed, the toll of killed, wounded, and miss- 
 ing has been so great, and threatens to be 
 so much greater, that we are now almost 
 
152 THE FUTURE OE DEMOCRACY 
 
 prepared to see the voluntary principle of en- 
 listment supplanted by a much more drastic 
 system of obtaining the necessary men. Full 
 proof of this need niust be forthcoming ere 
 the crucial change is made, for it is already 
 certain that on this point the people at large 
 will require very strong evidence indeed. » 
 
 Nothing has amazed Europe more than the 
 eagerness and enthusiasm' with which hundreds 
 of thousands of the cream of the working 
 classes of Great Britain, skilled Trade Unionists 
 in receipt of high wages, with the prospect 
 of continuous employment during the war, have 
 rushed to the recruiting stations ; and nothing 
 finer has been seen in all the hateful glories 
 of war than the manner in which these volun- 
 teer troops, British and Colonial alike, have 
 behaved in Flanders and France since they 
 were driven back by overwhelming numbers 
 in August, 1 91 4. We are now forced by 
 policy, as well as by pressure from our own 
 Allies, to conduct the war upon land on the 
 Continental scale, and to maintain the com- 
 mand of the seas as well. For this purpose, 
 we are told, nothing but compulsory service 
 
 * Great as are the drawbacks to voluntary recruiting, it 
 cannot be disputed that, so far, it has provided the country, 
 during the present war, with more men than the Government 
 could clothe, equip, and supply with munitions. 
 
THE ARMED NATION 153 
 
 will now adequately provide. Voluntary en- 
 listment could not furnish enough men to 
 arrest the German invasion, and is at this 
 moment alleged to be insufficient to ensure a 
 triumphant issue to the war. 
 
 This last statement alone, when substan- 
 tiated by facts, is enough to condemn volun- 
 teering, seeing that England is determined that 
 Germany and her confederates shall be com- 
 pletely beaten, and beaten within a reasonable 
 time. But the drawbacks to the volunteer 
 system itself are numerous. I have heard the 
 strongest advocates of peace declare that they 
 would prefer even wholesale conscription to our 
 existing means of getting men. It is the 
 most unfair plan of obtaining soldiers for the 
 national service that has ever been tried. The 
 active, the self-sacrificing, the patriotic, come 
 forward. The lazy, the selfish, the apathetic 
 (just those who could best be spared) stay 
 behind. It would be hard to show, also, that 
 under our conditions of to-day the well-to- 
 do are contributing th^eir fair share of per- 
 sonal sacrifice to the national cause. Why, 
 then, should the timid or indifferent or selfish 
 be .able to rely upon their more courageous 
 or more conscientious countrymen to do their 
 fighting for them? 
 
 Moreover, though the majority of those who 
 
154 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 enlist do so of their own free will, it is 
 well known that, since the war began, very 
 stern economic pressure has been brought to 
 bear by private agency in order to obtain 
 recruits. I myself know of very many cases 
 in which practically no choice has been left 
 to men of suitable age between starvation and 
 enlistment. There was no national compul- 
 sion ; they were forced to go by private 
 effort. 
 
 The voluntary army. Regulars and Terri- 
 torials, is a class army. It is officered almost 
 exclusively by the well-to-do. This is wholly 
 undemocratic and bad in every way. It en- 
 ables the army, though manned by the rela- 
 tives of the workers, to be used on the side 
 of the employers against those same workers 
 in civil differences, when any local magnate 
 chooses to think that military intervention is 
 desirable. Soldiers in England, therefore, with 
 their voluntary enlistment, are more a mili- 
 tary section apart from the bulk of the indus- 
 trial population than they are in France, where 
 all classes are liable to serve, and officers 
 come largely from the ranks. And the lengthy 
 period of barrack discipline under our arrange- 
 ments is even more prejudicial than it is with 
 the three years' limit in France, which was 
 in process of reduction to two years when 
 
THE ARMED NATION 155 
 
 the war broke out. ** Single men in barracks 
 don't grow up as plaster saints." Whatever 
 we may take that to mean, barrack life is 
 a bad life for free and equal men, whether 
 the men are recruited voluntarily or not. It 
 is injurious to health, morals, and general 
 citizen virtues. Apart, therefore, from the con- 
 tention that our entire military system — Regular 
 Army, Territorials, and all— is proving unequal 
 to meet the strain of this terrific war, I con- 
 tend that there are enough inherent drawbacks 
 in it to justify a complete reorganization on 
 other grounds. 
 
 When this statement is made in so many 
 words it is, as a rule, taken for granted 
 that the only alternative to voluntary service 
 thus criticized is Conscription in the Continental 
 sense. But, as a Social-Democrat, I am as 
 much opposed to Conscription as I am to 
 our upper - class - officered Army. So are all 
 Socialists and Democrats. Even in Germany, 
 where nearly the whole people seems to have 
 gone mad for the time being, there is no 
 love for Conscription. Far from^ it. The feel- 
 ing against it grows every year. No wonder ; 
 the marvel is that a highly educated and 
 capable folk, such as the inhabitants of the 
 Fatherland undoubtedly are, should put them- 
 selves continually at the mercy of the Prussian 
 
156 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 militarist caste, with its Kaiser and its Federal] 
 Council, The whole population has been ruth- 
 lessly militarized. The mass of the workers, 
 as in other countries, provide the rank am 
 file which furnishes the ordinary food foi 
 powder ; but in every well-to-do household 
 there are perforce members of the family who 
 look to their career in the army, during their 
 early years of manhood, as the indispensable 
 stepping-stone to any success, civil or military. 
 They all take their tone as officers from their 
 Junker superiors, whose standards of humanity 
 and culture we know. The atrocities com- 
 mitted by their orders in Belgium and France 
 in war were led up to by the brutalities 
 of Zabern and other military districts in peace. 
 Common soldiers under conscript training were 
 treated habitually as no decent man would 
 think of treating his dogs. Ruffianism and 
 cruelty were inculcated as high martial virtues. 
 Those who ventured to expose these wide- 
 spread militarist horrors were indicted as 
 criminals and thrown into gaol. The officers 
 who were guilty of infamous conduct to their 
 subordinates and civilians were supported by 
 their commanders and promoted by the 
 Government. Criticism spelt high treason. All 
 who know, as I do, a little of what Conscrip- 
 tion means in Germany, will be firmly resolved 
 
THE ARMED NATION 157 
 
 that, while they can resist it, peaceably or 
 forcibly, compulsory service on the German 
 plan shall never be introduced into Great 
 Britain. Men under arms forfeit their rights 
 as citizens and possess no rights as soldiers, 
 yet they are so overmastered by crushing dis- 
 cipline and so fired with spurious patriotism 
 that they are nowt fighting to dominate and 
 oppress others as scarce any troops have 
 ever fought to emancipate themselves. A 
 dangerous system' indeed. 
 
 Moreover, the training' in barracks, as carried 
 on to-day, has, in the opinion of cool and 
 expert native observers, greatly helped to cor- 
 rupt morality among the well-to-do class in 
 all the great German cities. The old decency 
 and purity have almost evaporated. Things are 
 far worse in this respect in the Fatherland than 
 in other civilized countries. Brutality has bred 
 bestiality. Scandals such as those exposed in 
 the infamous Zu Eulenburg case have in 
 certain high circles completely ceased to be 
 scandalous. In Berlin alone the number of 
 unseemly houses devoted to such practices is 
 appalling. The police, completely informed and 
 powerful as they are, dare not use their powers 
 to deal strictly with these ofifences, because 
 of the wide ramifications of sexual perversity 
 they would reveal if thiey did. Cofruptlo optinil 
 
iS8 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 pesslma. A sudden access of wealth and 
 luxury may have increased this atavistic ten- 
 dency ; but the de-citizenized and brutalized 
 barrack life is the main factor in the rapid 
 lowering of that high domestic character which 
 was formerly the pride of the nation. The 
 militarist caste has shown itself to the world 
 for two generations more and more immoral 
 and more and more ruthless. This is no 
 accident. 
 
 Against such moral deterioration must be 
 set off the strong interest of the dominant 
 class and the nation at large in securing 
 thorough physical efficiency for all males in 
 order that their soldierly qualities may be in 
 no wise handicapped by lack of health, 
 strength, and endurance at the critical time. 
 This consideration is constantly kept in view 
 from one end of Germany to the other. Part 
 of the greatly superior physique noticeable 
 throughout the Fatherland, as compared with 
 our own population, is doubtless due to the 
 fact that the industrial workers have been 
 drafted much more recently from the country 
 into the towns. But the steady efforts con- 
 tinuously made, under official authority, to fight 
 against the harmful influences of urban life 
 upon children and young people, have ensured 
 health and vigour in a way which we are 
 
THE ARMED NATION 159 
 
 only just beginning to recognize and slowly 
 to imitate. 
 
 The organization, discipline, physical care, 
 and training, due in the main to compulsory 
 service, are also useful to workers not en- 
 gaged in their military duties. All the British 
 working-class delegates who attended the Inter- 
 national Socialist Congress at Stuttgart a few 
 years ago were greatly impressed by the 
 splendid appearance and imposing bearing of 
 the tens of thousands of German workmen 
 who marched in solid military array to the 
 open-air meeting which was addressed by the 
 late August Bebel and speakers of all nationali- 
 ties. I confess that, as I rose myself to 
 address the vast crowd around the platform, 
 I looked with some sadness upon their line 
 physical development. I knew that nowhere 
 in all our island could I speak to so large a 
 body of men, of any political section or party, 
 who would make such a magnificent showing, 
 or who would manifest such perfect organiza- 
 tion and discipline of their own accord and 
 in their own cause. Conscription does help 
 to develop the force of a nation and of its 
 people. Yet Conscription on the German 
 method would be a curse to our country, and 
 these same kindly and noble-looking Suabian 
 Social-Democrats are fighting to-day, against 
 
i6o THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 their principles, to strengthen and expand a 
 domination they detest. They don't love Con- 
 scription, nevertheless. That is certain. 
 
 In France, also, the growing feeling is 
 opposed to compulsion in its present form. 
 It is accepted, so far, only because it is 
 believed to be an unavoidable necessity if the 
 nation is to maintain its independence and up- 
 hold its position in Europe. Yet there is 
 no ,aristocratic militarist caste in Republican 
 France, nor have the reactionists had much 
 success in their endeavours to create one 
 during the war. The French army is a 
 democratic army, its officers largely rise from 
 the ranks, and the tendency is towards still 
 further democratization. As it stands, even 
 with the three years' service, the method of 
 Conscription is fair for all classes, and the 
 French troops produced under it have shown 
 themselves fully the equals of their forbears 
 in valour, and superior to them in cool per- 
 sistence under great discouragement. Still, 
 Conscription is very unpopular. The barrack 
 life is admitted to be harmful, the three; years' 
 training is bitterly opposed as excessive and 
 too continuous for citizens, the placing of the 
 national army at the autocratic disposal of the 
 political faction in power is strongly objected 
 to, the tendency in high military quarters and 
 
THE ARMED NATION i6i 
 
 the military Press to speak and write of 
 soldiers as being of more value to the country 
 than civilians is denounced as reactionary. 
 Conscription, even in France, has a militarizing 
 influence. Citizenship is too often sneered at 
 by superior persons as derogatory. Wrong 
 ideals of human culture are maintained. The 
 danger of a great and successful soldier setting 
 himself up as the heir of Napoleonism is ever 
 before the eyes of French democrats. Intrigues 
 to obtain control of the army, which have 
 been more frequent than some imagine, are 
 feared and resented. The sinister influence of 
 priests and the Catholic sisterhoods is resented. 
 And the Dreyfus case, though now being for- 
 gotten, proved that the clerical section of the 
 General Staff would stick at nothing to crush 
 a man who was regarded as opposed to and 
 menacing their influence. Thus, prior to the 
 war, the existing compulsory service was be- 
 coming more unpopular daily, and the propa- 
 ganda carried on by my lamented friend, the 
 late Jean Jaures, and the whole Socialist Party 
 in VHumanite and elsewhere in favour of ** La 
 Nation Armee," was persuading many who were 
 opposed to Socialism that a system of national 
 military organization might be introduced which 
 would well suffice to defend la Patrie without 
 professional militarism in any form. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 II. The Democratic Citizen Army. 
 
 "Tutti Soldati e nessun' Soldato." — Giuseppe Mazzini. 
 
 " It is for you to urge upon all the necessity of placing your- 
 selves in the position of an armed nation— a nation such as the 
 Swiss — whose strength lies not in its numbers or in its military 
 organisation, but in the spirit of those who love their country 
 and are prepared to die for it." — The late Lord Salisbury. 
 
 " In a democratic nation every citizen must be a soldier, and 
 every soldier a citizen." 
 
 If, then, voluntary enlistment has already 
 proved inadequate for the position which we 
 have now taken up in European politics, and 
 is beside inequitable and disadvantageous to the 
 mass of the people ; if, also. Conscription is, in 
 many respects, objectionable and unsuited to 
 Englishmen, in spite of the advantages already 
 referred to above ; then the problem is, how 
 to establish a thoroughly efficient national army 
 in which all males are obliged to serve from 
 their youth upwards, yet in which there exists 
 no class supremacy ; military law is unneces- 
 sary, and every soldier enjoys, except during 
 active warfare, his full civilian rights. Only 
 under such conditions can the population of 
 Great Britain be induced to accept such an 
 interference with their personal liberty as the 
 obligation imposed upon every active man to 
 place himself under military discipline and fight 
 for his country if called upon. 
 
THE ARMED NATION 163 
 
 The success hitherto achieved by voluntary 
 recruiting in this war is being cited to show- 
 that better pay and better general conditions 
 for those who join the Army will suffice to 
 secure by volunteer recruiting as many fresh 
 men as we want. When we consider the 
 ridiculous pay of the common soldier there is 
 something to be said for this contention. But 
 it is difficult to see why merely by paying others 
 to fight for him, or by contributing a fine 
 for non-training and non-service, any man 
 should be able to shift on to his neighbour 
 his own personal duty to defend the country 
 in which he enjoys the full rights and exercises 
 the privileges of a citizen. The system of a 
 mercenary army is allowed by common consent 
 to be a bad system. 
 
 In Great Britain, however, there exists a 
 considerable number of people who are not 
 only convinced advocates of peace — we are all 
 pacifists, except a few furious jingos, I pre- 
 sume — but who are bitterly opposed to training 
 under arms of any kind. They uphold the 
 brotherhood of man, as Socialists do, but they 
 refuse to see, even now, that the huge con- 
 script armies of Europe are not maintained 
 for the purpose of inculcating the delights of 
 fraternity. These well-meaning folk look with 
 horror at the voluntary boy-scouts movement, 
 
1 64 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 which they cannot check, but they do not see 
 that the only alternative to this sort of un- 
 licensed militarism is that the State should 
 undertake all such education in the duties of 
 national defence. Their fear of Continental 
 Conscription drives them to advocate voluntary 
 enlistment, vi^here they are obliged to support 
 some sort of army, and thus places military 
 power in the hands of a class instead of at 
 the disposal of the country at large. 
 
 At International Congress after International 
 Congress, Continental Socialists who know well 
 what Conscription means, and who are thoroughly 
 versed in the English voluntary system, have 
 voted unanimously in favour of a democratic 
 national citizen army, in which all grown-up 
 males should be at one and the same time 
 both soldiers and citizens, in which offenders 
 against civil or military discipline should be 
 dealt with by civil courts, in which also the 
 officers who had proved their qualifications 
 should be elected by ballot of the men over 
 whom they should command. An army thus 
 recruited and thus organized for national 
 defence would be entirely free from any chau- 
 vinist bias or militarist fervour. Being kept 
 in constant contact with civil life and exer- 
 cising continuously their rights of voting as 
 citizens, they would all be too greatlj' interested 
 
THE ARMED NATION 165 
 
 in avoiding war to indulge in any haphazard 
 ventures, or to allow others to enter into them 
 on their behalf. To be unprepared is to 
 court war when other Powers are ready to 
 carry out a hostile policy ; whereas to be ready 
 for defensive war is the best chance of en- 
 suring peace. 
 
 That being the general view of democrats 
 and Socialists, at least one democratic body 
 in Great Britain has never failed for many 
 years to bring this proposal forward at the 
 Trade Union Congresses. There it has been 
 consistently opposed year after year — on the 
 ground that the working classes had nothing 
 to do with military affairs and could never 
 be drawn into war under any circumstances 
 —by the very same men who began rushing 
 through the country in August, 191 4, as 
 Members of Parliament, in the capacity of red- 
 hot recruiting agents, and are at the same 
 work still. This is the only possible solution 
 of the question of national defence that com- 
 bines the responsibility, of universal training 
 for war against an aggressive nation, with the 
 preservation of our ancestral freedoms. I have 
 been of that opinion ever since I discussed 
 the matter with old Mazzini himself so long 
 ago as 1867^. 
 
 When the old and valuable volunteer corps 
 
1 66 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 had been disbanded and the militia done away 
 with, our plan of a democratic citizen army 
 was brought to the front as against Lord 
 Haldane's objectionable Territorial Act, which 
 placed a large force of voluntary recruited 
 men under military discipline with the liability 
 to be used under class officers against their 
 own countrymen. A Citizen Service Bill was 
 drawn up and put forward by Mr. William 
 Thorne, M.P. for West Ham. It fell quite 
 dead. Nobody would listen to such a pro- 
 posal — such a '* jingo " proposal — as that all 
 the sound and capable men, of the 8,000,000 
 and more in Great Britain of military age, 
 should be trained to the use of arms for the 
 defence of their country ! The Government 
 was utterly scared at such a democratic sug- 
 gestion ; the people were horrified at the idea 
 of creating an army which should be at their 
 own control in peace and in war. Lord 
 Haldane, therefore, had his way. Unluckily, 
 Lord Roberts, who rightly opposed the bootless 
 Territorial scheme, was as much opposed to 
 a democratic citizen army as Lord Haldane 
 was, and told me so quite plainly himself 
 when I put the matter to him some years 
 later. The Territorials were set on foot, and 
 from the first proved a failure. Had our plan 
 of general military training, compulsory upon 
 
THE ARMED NATION 167, 
 
 all, been adopted in 1907, we should not have 
 been caught contemptibly unready to support a 
 national policy last August. ^ 
 
 A democratic army, all whose soldiers remain 
 citizens, necessarily involves short periods of 
 training for the great majority of those who 
 serve. Military authorities, for the most part, 
 urge that this is a fatal mistake, and that 
 the troops who would be available under such 
 conditions would stand no chance of winning 
 against Regulars in any field of warfare to- 
 day. This argument has been greatly weakened 
 by what has taken place in France and 
 Flanders, if we are to believe the flattering 
 reports of the short-service, recently-trained men 
 that reach us steadily from the front. Thus 
 we are assured that men enlisted and trained 
 since Lord Kitchener went to the War Office 
 have shown themselves fully capable of meeting 
 and defeating the best forces Germany, with 
 
 ' At this period the Social-Democratic Federation was 
 exceptionally active in agitating for a democratic Citizen Army. 
 Pamphlets by the late H. Quelch and Sergeant-Major Edmondson, 
 articles by the Swiss artilleryman, M. Moch, in the Social Demo- 
 crat, Mr. W. Thome's draft Bill, as well as reprints of comments 
 from Justice, were widely distributed. Speeches were also made 
 to large audiences all over the country. But the people had got 
 it into their heads that Great Britain needed no considerable 
 army, and that if they themselves were armed they would be 
 forced to fight without their own consent ; which is just what 
 a real Citizen Army renders impossible. 
 
1 68 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 all its conscription, could bring against them. 
 Yet the Canadians, as well as our own men, 
 were trained not in barracks but in camp, 
 and certainly could not be taken as examples 
 in favour of the current militarist contention. 
 The test of war is the supreme test, after all, 
 and not only the Canadians, but the Austra- 
 lians, under Sir Ian Hamilton — a most vehement 
 upholder of our existing system — at the Dar- 
 danelles seem to be passing it with triumphant 
 success. There is nothing in recent events 
 certainly to silence advocates of a general 
 citizen force manned by all of military age 
 for the defence of the country at home, or, 
 if judged essential by democratic vote, for 
 action on the Continent of Europe. 
 
 The South African War of fifteen years ago 
 is an example of what may be done against 
 a first-rate army under highly capable com- 
 manders by a much smaller force of purely 
 citizen soldiers. Looked at rightly, that war 
 ought to have taught us all a lesson. The 
 Boers were fighting, of course, under totally 
 different conditions from those which prevail 
 in Europe to-day, but they had adapted them- 
 selves perfectly to those conditions, not by 
 mechanical drill, or mass formations, but by 
 precisely that sort of personal experience and 
 individual practice blending into action by 
 
THE ARMED NATION 169 
 
 brigade and company, which those who best 
 understand what citizen service means advocate 
 for their men. 
 
 There is, however, far stronger evidence at 
 hand as to what the South African citizen 
 army is really capable of in the masterly 
 campaign organized, conducted, and carried out 
 by General Botha, first against some of the 
 best of his old subordinates in revolt, and 
 afterwards against the Germans of South-West 
 Africa, who had been preparing assiduously for 
 this war for years, and did not think it 
 possible they could fail. The difficulties were 
 much greater than we English at home have 
 realized, our attention being fully taken up 
 with the tremendous struggle going on all 
 round us here in Europe. But they have been 
 triumphantly surmounted by a citizen army 
 commanded by a. citizen general — that is to 
 say, by free and equal men fighting for their 
 country and their liberties against the threaten- 
 ing domination of Prussia. The politicians 
 and journalists who have been praising Presi- 
 dent Botha to the skies for his far-seeing 
 patriotism and faultless strategy must already be 
 half-converted to the support of an army similar 
 to the victorious troops they so much admire, 
 but modified, naturally, to suit an industrial 
 instead of a pastoral and mining community. 
 
170 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 These South Africans as democrats have shown 
 too, ** the spirit of those who love their country 
 and are ready to die for it.'* 
 
 It is reasonable to add that, while not 
 having the very slightest claim to be an expert 
 in military affairs, and writing throughout 
 simply as a civiHan, I have personally very 
 good grounds for mistrust of untrained or half- 
 trained troops when opposed by thorough 
 soldiers, even in a district well suited to 
 guerilla warfare. Patriotism, enthusiasm, self- 
 sacrifice, courage, and devotion will not make 
 up for the absence of knowledge, experience, 
 and physical training, for service in war. The 
 success achieved by Garibaldi on the flank 
 of the French Army in Italy before the battle 
 of Solferino, the victory of the Thousand of 
 Marsala, the overthrow of the domination of 
 Bomba on the mainland misled us as to the 
 value of irregular troops when employed in 
 scientific warfare on any considerable scale. 
 This I witnessed myself in the Tyrol in 1866 
 when a force of Kaiser-Jagers never exceeding 
 1,250 at any time held in check ten times 
 their number of Italian volunteers supported 
 by some batteries of the admirable Piedmontese 
 artillery. The spirit and valour of the Italians 
 was unquestionable. They lacked the discipline, 
 steadiness, and confidence of trained troops. 
 
THE ARMED NATION 171 
 
 The Swiss Army, because it combines the 
 advantage of all existing methods of military 
 training, while at the same time strengthening 
 instead of weakening the forces of democracy, 
 is the best model for the reorganization of 
 our own army during the war and afterwards 
 in peace. In Switzerland we have the full 
 programme of a democratic citizen army com- 
 pletely carried out — except that during the 
 actual period of service, even in peace, the 
 citizen soldier is under military discipline instead 
 of being, as I suggest, subject only to the 
 common law. The training for the defence of 
 the country really begins in the schools. The 
 Swiss education is, on the whole, the best 
 in Europe, not even excepting that of Ger- 
 many. This is rightly regarded as the indis- 
 pensable groundwork of modern democracy, and 
 that it should have been established under such 
 difficult geographical conditions among a people 
 and in a Republic comprising several races 
 and languages, and professing more than one 
 religion, is strong evidence of the common 
 sense of a free, democratic community whose 
 political and social interests and development 
 are the concern of all the persons who con- 
 stitute it. Switzerland spends twice as much 
 on education as she does on her army, while, 
 prior to the war, England's Army cost seven 
 
172 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 times as much as her entire educational ex- 
 penditure. And this disparity is not secured 
 to the Swiss advantage by any cheeseparing 
 in the matter of national defence. 
 
 All Swiss children are riot only well taught 
 intellectually and morally in the common schools, 
 and provided, as they grow up, with admir- 
 able institutions for higher education and special 
 acquirements ; they are also well trained physi- 
 cally in gymnastics and all sorts of exercises 
 and games which develop their health and 
 strength and prepare them for the duties they 
 will later have to perform and the exertions 
 they must undergo. Thus from their boy- 
 hood on to youth and manhood the Swiss 
 grow into good soldiers as they learn how 
 to become good citizens. They understand 
 throughout what they must do, why they will 
 have to do it, and the value of their country 
 to them, as well as of themselves to their 
 country. The lads who are free from any 
 natural physical defect therefore reach the age 
 of seventeen quite as vigorous and far more 
 satisfactorily educated mentally and physically 
 than the best specimens of the middle class 
 in Great Britain at the same age. From 
 the first the nation recognizes in theory and 
 in practice that the bodily and mental vigour 
 of every boy and lad who will proceed to 
 
THE ARMED NATION 173 
 
 the full rights and duties of citizenship is 
 the concern not merely of his parents and 
 relations, or even of himself, but of the whole 
 Republic, which relies upon him, and becomes 
 in turn responsible for him in after years. 
 
 At seventeen all youths join the second re- 
 serve or Landsturm, where they receive their 
 first technical military training. This Land- 
 sturm, apart from these active lads, consists 
 of men past their prime who have gone through 
 their first two periods of service. Under the 
 Army reorganization law of 1907 — what time 
 we were tinkering with lawyer Haldane's Terri- 
 torialism — ^all male citizens join the Active Army 
 (I'Elite) from their nineteenth to their thirty- 
 second year. This is the cream of the Swiss 
 Army, a force of remarkable vigour and capa- 
 city. Yet the duration of training, though 
 very strict and even severe, is surprisingly 
 short. The total period of service or training 
 in the first year was forty-five days for the 
 infantry, fifty days for the engineers, fifty- 
 five days for the artillery, and eighty days 
 for the cavalry. Non-commissioned officers and 
 officers serve for considerably longer periods. 
 
 This naturally seems to militarists, who are 
 devoted to the old methods, a wholly in- 
 sufficient length of training for men to become 
 trustworthy soldiers in any real sense of those 
 
174 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 words. But they are quite mistaken. The 
 Swiss take nothing for granted in this crucial 
 matter of efficiency. Every year one half of 
 the Active Army and a quarter of the Land- 
 wehr (citizens between thirty-two and forty- 
 four) is mobilized and thoroughly tested in 
 manoeuvres. Nothing approaching to this is 
 attempted in any conscript country. 
 
 Instance after instance has been given of the 
 extraordinary activity and endurance of the 
 men. Nearly twenty years ago a French 
 General of the highest ability declared, after 
 having been present at the Swiss manoeuvres: 
 ** Alone among European nations Switzerland 
 has solved the problem we have all attempted 
 in vain — ^to arm all its citizens and to make 
 of each citizen a soldier." There is good 
 reason to believe the Swiss Army is even 
 better to-day than it was in 1896, and that 
 its soldiers are in every respect equal to any 
 troops in Europe. For mountain warfare they 
 are probably superior to all but the French 
 Alpine regiments and the Piedmontese Bersa- 
 glieri. The Swiss artillery and cavalry, the two 
 arms most difficult to improvise, are also second 
 to none, the cavalry being supplemented by 
 picked forces of cyclists. Instances are given 
 of mountain batteries of artillery which marched 
 for twelve days and manoeuvred for five, cover- 
 
THE ARMED NATION 175 
 
 ing no fewer than 340 kilometres (more than 
 200 miles) in perfect order through mountains 
 in mid-winter. They marched over twenty-five 
 miles the first day. Yet not one of the 
 officers or men was a permanent soldier. The 
 day before the march they were simple citizens. 
 And these batteries were no exceptions to the 
 others or picked in any way, nor are the 
 Swiss specially qualified as artillerymen. 
 
 In the infantry every man is provided with 
 the best possible rifle at the national cost. 
 He retains this weapon himself and keeps it 
 in order. Ample opportunity is aff'orded him 
 for becoming expert in its use, and many 
 rifle competitions of individuals and squads are 
 held to encourage cool and accurate shooting 
 throughout the army. The uniforms provided 
 for the troops are worn only when engaged 
 in actual training. At ordinary gatherings and 
 places of amusement civil dress is worn. Leave 
 is granted during the service period in order 
 that all ranks may be able to vote or perform 
 any necessary civil duty. In this way the 
 soldier never at any time loses touch with 
 the citizen, while his military training obliges 
 him to keep himself well qualified to fulfil 
 his duties when called upon. Though this 
 Swiss army has not been tried in modern 
 war, there is every reason to believe it will 
 
17.6 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 acquit itself admirably should the necessity- 
 arise. Certain it is that if longer and more 
 continuous training* is required, this will be 
 voted for and enacted. The whole population 
 is directly interested in securing the highest 
 personal efficiency as well as in providing the 
 most perfect and adequate supply of equip- 
 ment, material, and munitions. 
 
 I do not claim that this Swiss system can 
 be applied forthwith to the reorganization and 
 extension of our own army, but I do say 
 emphatically that, if Great Britain is to take 
 her fair share on land in the present war, 
 and to be able under democratic forms to 
 defend these shores and be true to her Treaty 
 pledges, some modification of the Swiss plan 
 of compulsory training must be adopted. Not 
 being an Imperialist, in the sense of wishing 
 to keep under our domination peoples who 
 would be glad to dispense with our rule, I 
 leave it to others to say how (and why) the 
 European army in India is to be kept up. 
 As India pays the whole expense, including 
 that of the depots at home, it might be as 
 well to confer with capable Indians on that 
 point. But for home, and even for Conti- 
 nental, service a democratic citizen army 
 appears to tne an immediate necessity if 
 volunteering is really insufficient, Conscription 
 
THE ARMED NATION 177. 
 
 being obnoxious to our entire working class. 
 The absorption of our existing troops into the 
 new organization would present little difficulty, 
 and they would probably welcome it if proper 
 care were taken to secure them from unem- 
 ployment on the declaration of peace. 
 
 The main trouble under any method of com- 
 pulsory training whatever would arise from the 
 unsatisfactory physical status of large portions 
 of our industrial population, which renders it 
 impossible for them to become effective soldiers 
 within any reasonable period. But in the 
 interest of the future of the nation it is im- 
 perative that the truth with reference to this 
 should be made known as speedily as possible, 
 and vigorous steps taken to remedy the terrible 
 social conditions which produce such deplor- 
 able results. In this respect we are on a 
 lower plane than any other country in Europe. 
 The first necessity for the creation of a 
 powerful democratic citizen army is the pro- 
 vision of educated democrats and physically 
 capable citizens. 
 
 12 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 
 
 For many years the New, like the Old, 
 ** International " has suffered from the dictation 
 of the German Social-Democrats and their 
 special friends from Austria, Holland, and 
 Scandinavia. Time after time they have post- 
 poned the holding of this or that international 
 Socialist Congress because the date fixed by 
 other nationalities did not suit their own domestic 
 convenience. Nobody admired more than I the 
 education, loyalty, self-sacrifice and discipline 
 of the German Social-Democrats in their national 
 policy and tactics ; no one has written and 
 spoken in more laudatory terms of their party 
 and their organization as a whole ; never- 
 theless, they and their friends carried things 
 with such a high hand on the International 
 Socialist Bureau, and treated the whole move- 
 ment so much as if it were dependent on 
 them, that on one occasion I suggested that 
 
 nous autres pauvres apotres of the rest of 
 
 178 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 179 
 
 the civilized world should, for once, hold 
 an independent Socialist Congress of our 
 own. 
 
 At another time really important affairs were 
 neglected so completely, and so many hours 
 were wasted on petty details of little real 
 significance, that Keir Hardie and myself, who 
 often differed on other matters, retired from the 
 sitting, after frequently and vigorously protest- 
 ing to no purpose against the restriction of 
 discussion to business which had only interest 
 for the German peoples. German predomi- 
 nance had even then — some years ago — become 
 a nuisance and a danger. We kept silence, 
 even from good words, in order to preserve 
 the international unity of the party, and not 
 to give an opening for ridicule to the enemy 
 without ; in order, also, to avoid weakening 
 in any way the power of the German Social- 
 Democrats themselves in their bitter struggle 
 against the enemy within. 
 
 Now these reasons for reticence no longer 
 exist. The German Social-Democratic Party has 
 had the most glorious opportunity that ever 
 fell to the lot of any people for putting: 
 Socialism and working - class international 
 fraternity nobly before mankind. Millions of 
 Socialists all over the civilized world looked 
 to them for a lead. They were not asked 
 
i8o THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 to risk life or limb for the cause ; they were 
 not expected even to vote directly, as a party, 
 against the credits demanded by their Govern- 
 ment in order to pay for a war of aggression. 
 We only hoped that they would abstain from 
 giving by their vote the support of the German 
 Social-Democracy to the militarist caste which, 
 holding Germany in its grip, had resolved to 
 make war upon Europe ; and we likewise ex- 
 pected that they would fully expound the 
 reasons for their action. They themselves have 
 abdicated the leadership which they had previ- 
 ously claimed. 
 
 Some writers have asserted that, if the 
 original ideas of Marx had held their ground, 
 and the German Social-Democrats had been 
 guided by them, their party could have stopped 
 the war. This I entirely deny. They had no 
 power to do anything of the kind. If the 
 whole of the hundred and eleven Social-Demo- 
 cratic Deputies in the Reichstag had voted 
 against the war credits this would not have 
 checked the war for a day. Had they called 
 upon Social-Democrats to resist mobilization by 
 force, or to attempt a general strike, these 
 efforts would have been alike costly and futile. 
 A few noble spirits might have gone forward 
 as martyrs in the cause. But these few would 
 have been butchered mercilessly, under martial 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE i8i 
 
 law, and the whole party crushed with relent- 
 less military severity. 
 
 The Party in the Reichstag, and as repre- 
 sented by its Executive, was a Marxist party. 
 True, these same Marxists had done some very 
 foolish things. For example, they voted for 
 the admission of the British Labour Party to 
 the International Socialist Bureau and Inter- 
 national Socialist Cong^ress, though these British 
 representatives pronounced against Socialism and 
 had no definite programme either for political 
 or social action. The chief German theorist, 
 Karl Kautsky, even contended that the British 
 Labourists, though they were avowed anti- 
 Socialists and refused to recogiiize the class 
 war, must of necessity be revolutionists at 
 heart without knowing' it. Trade unions, how- 
 ever mild their methods or ineffective their 
 tactics, could not, he argued, fail to fight 
 the class fight, and should therefore be ad- 
 mitted without challenge to th^ same rights 
 and privileges as ourselves. In vain did 
 Madame Roussel, the Guesdist, point out that 
 this was a return to the succession of weak 
 and injurious compromises which had done so 
 much harm at the earlier International Socialist 
 Congresses, and was thus a reactionary rather 
 than a progressive policy. Kautsky, and his 
 majority, all of them placed two deaf ears 
 
1 82 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 at the service of the eminent Socialist French- 
 woman. So the facts went by the board and 
 the philosophic illusionists had their will of us. 
 
 But all this precisely accorded with the 
 *' practical " policy of Karl Marx himself, in 
 the early period of his propag'anda. In his 
 Mis ere de la Philosophie (written in 1847 
 in opposition to Proudhon's Philosophie de la 
 Mis ere) Marx expressed the sangtiine hope that 
 the development of Trade Unionism, at the 
 Trade Union Congress held in that year, be- 
 tokened the commencement of an important 
 revolutionary uprising* in Great Britain. It did 
 nothing of the kind. The great Chartist move- 
 ment was even then approaching' its final 
 downfall. The abler leaders of that movement^ 
 and in particular Bronterre O'Brien, saw much 
 more clearly than Marx what the growth of 
 Trade Unionism meant at that juncture, and 
 warned the i>eople that the constitution of an 
 *' aristocracy of labour," divorced from the 
 main body of the proletariat, must inevitably 
 act as a bulwark to capitalism, prevent the 
 establishment of a really subversive proletarian 
 organization, and retard the emancipation of 
 the wage-slave class. 
 
 Even Marx's residence in England, up to 
 1864, had not cured him- of this delusion 
 about the tendency of Trade Unionism at that 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 183 
 
 time. So far as Eng'land was concerned, the 
 old ** International " was based upon Trade 
 Unionism, not upon Revolutionary Socialism. 
 The first meeting, held in London in 1864, 
 at which the eminent Positivist, Professor 
 Edward Spencer Beesly, took the chair, was 
 in the main a Trade Union g^athering, and 
 old members of that organization still living 
 bear out the truth of what I say, even if 
 the names and positions of the Eng'lish mem- 
 bers— Cremer, Bailey, Applegarth, and others 
 — did not of themselves prove this. 
 
 How right O'Brien was and how wrong 
 Marx has long been clearly apparent. The 
 Trade Unions have acted as a bulwark of 
 capitalism. Their leading members in the House 
 of Commons, by entering into close alliance 
 with the Liberal Party, have headed back 
 Revolutionary Socialism and helped to retard 
 the emancipation of the entire wage-slave class 
 for two full generations, as the Chartists pre- 
 dicted they would. A change has taken place 
 since the war, but the more vigorous policy 
 still makes way very slowly. 
 
 The truth is that Marx who, in theory, 
 was a thorough-going revolutionist, and, in 
 practice, a revolutionist and supporter of revo- 
 lution, wherever he could act in that capacity, 
 comprehended more fully than many of his 
 
1 84 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 followers that the g'reatest social transforma- 
 tion of all time, from capitalist competition 
 and production for profit to Socialist co-opera- 
 tion and production for use, must of neces- 
 sity be a slow process. Therefore, in his 
 anxiety to keep in touch with the organized 
 forces of labour he ceased at times to be 
 a theorist merely, and became in some degree 
 an adherent of compromise. Even the famous 
 Communist Manifesto (written in co-operation 
 with Engels) which gives, more succinctly than 
 any other work, his survey of history, as a 
 record of economic antagonisms and class wars, 
 formulated in its early editions a series of 
 palliative measures, leading, under capitalism, 
 to a better state of things. 
 
 It has been stated that Marx*s teachings 
 were of an anarchist and subversive charac- 
 ter. Subversive, most certainly. Anarchist, not 
 at all. It is impossible, argued Marx, to 
 imagine that a society, based upon wage-slavery 
 for the bulk of the population, can be de- 
 veloped into the new period without subver- 
 sion. But he was none the less throughout 
 his life engaged in continuous and bitter strife 
 against anarchy and all that is anarchical. 
 Individualist ■'* propaganda of deed," violent 
 half-organized efforts to bring about a sudden 
 change, attacks for attacking's sake, nowhere 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 185 
 
 found a more strenuous opponent than in the 
 author of Das Kapital. Marx accused the 
 Anarchists of dense ignorance of history and 
 sociology, as well as of futile addiction to 
 sentimental homicide. To him their theories 
 were as fatuous as their practices were re- 
 actionary. 
 
 No one ever discriminated more clearly than 
 Marx did between revolt and revolution. "No 
 man, and no body of men, can make a revo- 
 lution. No man, and no body of men, can 
 crush a revolution when it is engendered in 
 the womb of society." At the time when 
 Marx began to write, and for many a long 
 year after, bourgeois ideas were universally 
 dominant and the peace of the profit-monger 
 prevailed in the land. Having obtained con- 
 trol of Western society by economic develop- 
 ment, supported by their own organized force, 
 the bourgeoisie were satisfied. Further use of 
 force, being for them unnecessary, was not 
 only improper but criminal. 
 
 They had completely legalized the position 
 of the capitalists and profit-makers ; the aristo- 
 cracy and the landowners were quite content 
 to share their gains ; while the wage- earners, 
 the actual producers, were their nominally free 
 but actually very obedient humble servants. 
 Bourgeois property was secure, proletarian labour- 
 
1 86 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 power was cheap ; people could say pretty 
 much what they liked, so long as they con- 
 tented themselves with only saying it. Most 
 of the wage-earners could even vote if they 
 chose. All grounds for the use of force were 
 therefore removed, from the bourgeois point 
 of view. National uprisings against racial 
 domination they might sympathize with — 
 Mazzini, Kossuth, Garibaldi, Langiewicz were 
 fine fellows: class uprisings against capitalist 
 ** organization " were detestable and infamous — 
 the physical-force Chartists, Blanqui, Raspail, 
 and Socialists of every hue, including Marx 
 himself and his associates, were mere up- 
 setters for destruction's sake. 
 
 At such a period of plutocratic and pecu- 
 niary self-complacency it was natural that Marx 
 should point out, and even dilate upon, the 
 truths that force had been ** the midwife of 
 progress, delivering the old society pregnant 
 with the new," and that it was certain to be 
 so again ; that history did not end with the 
 consolidation and legalization of bourgeois 
 supremacy ; that, even under the forms of 
 peace, force was constantly used by the 
 capitalist class to repress unorganized revolt 
 against what seemed to the people ordered 
 injustice ; and that the time would assuredly 
 come when the disinherited majority would in 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 187, 
 
 turn strive for mastery, urg'ed thereto by the 
 hopelessness of securing their own well-being 
 under the specious but oppressive forms of 
 pecuniary domination. No intelligent man to- 
 day will dispute that this is a sound view 
 of the situation, or assert that capitalism spells 
 the last word in the annals of the human 
 race. But sixty, fifty, even forty years ago 
 this was not so. The " intellectuals " were, 
 for the g'reater part, incapable of understanding 
 that the status of individualism which then 
 pervaded the atmosphere of thought was, by 
 existing economic conditions, rendered unattain- 
 able for the vast majority of mankind. Marx, 
 therefore, was more than justified in systema- 
 tizing and giving a scientific sociologic basis 
 to the teachings of the Chartists, and pointing 
 out that force had still its revolutionary uses, 
 "^et he knew better than they did that, though! 
 force would probably be attendant upon social 
 revolution, it could not by any p>ossibility pro- 
 duce a revolution by itself. 
 
 In my own conversations with him, Marx 
 was always clearly and strongly in favour of 
 Socialists entering the political arena as Socia- 
 lists on this point. He thought it probable 
 that a powerful Socialist Party would eventu- 
 ally appear on the floor of the House of 
 Commons — (which reads sadly to Socialists to- 
 
i88 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 day) — and cited this as one of the reasons 
 why *' England is the one country where a 
 peaceful revolution is possible — though history 
 does not tell us so." The French Guesdists, 
 the greatest sticklers in Europe for the pure 
 faith of Marxism, have invariably used political 
 methods wherever they have had the slightest 
 chance of success, and even where they had 
 not. The endeavour to capture the political 
 machine by representation, or at least to 
 hamper its smooth action in favour of capital- 
 ism, has been advocated persistently by the 
 Marxist in every country, as the easiest and 
 most effective way of making' propaganda for 
 their revolutionary principles. 
 
 'Marx contended that capital would accrete 
 into larger and larger masses ; that the wage- 
 earning class would become more and more 
 numerous in proportion to the possessing class ; 
 that the wage-earners would obtain a less and 
 less share of the total national wealth in every 
 country ; and that discontent would become 
 more and more widespread as the workers 
 better understood the inevitable class war under 
 capitalism, and comprehended the conditions 
 under which they were toiling for the benefit 
 of others. Bernstein, in his ** Evolutionary 
 Socialism," disputed and denied all this. Upon 
 this denial was based the programme of reform 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 189 
 
 instead of revolution ; of co-operation with 
 liberal capitalism in place of relentless oppo- 
 sition to all political factions of the dominant 
 class, of a general sober palliative movement, 
 instead of a persistent active effort of the 
 workers towards the great goal of Socialism. 
 
 These views spread to other countries, and 
 hampered the Socialists much more there than 
 in Germany itself. Bernstein was the founder 
 and father of all this. He remained up to 
 March last, in spite of discouragement, de- 
 feat, and personal detraction, its ablest and 
 most persistent exponent. Then, as already- 
 said, he abjured his heresies completely. Not 
 because he foresaw the forthcoming* war, but 
 because twenty years* experience of facts had 
 irresistibly taught him that Marx was right 
 and he Wrong*. Kautsky summed up the posi- 
 tion thus: "Bernstein acknowledges that all 
 the important doctrines of Marxism are true: 
 the Materialist Conception of History, the 
 Theory of Surplus Value, the Concentration of 
 Capitals, the Approaching Downfall of Capital- 
 ism, the Class .War and its Increasing Bitter- 
 ness.'* 
 
 The vast development of anti - militarist 
 Marxism throughout Germany, in the form 
 of Social-Democracy, was one of the main 
 causes of the present war ; for it engendered 
 
I90 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 in the minds of the Junkers the fear that it 
 would prove still more threatening in the near 
 future. That Bebel supported the creation of 
 a Democratic Citizen Army was, as I have 
 shown elsewhere, no contravention at all of 
 his Marxism. Far from it. It was, on the 
 contrary, a reaffirmation of an important por- 
 tion of the Marxist programme. At every 
 International Socialist Congress, from 1900 
 onwards, Marxists, with Socialists of all shades 
 of opinion, have voted unanimously in favour 
 of the establishment of such a Citizen Army, 
 with officers of proved capacity, elected by 
 the rank and file, as the only effective means 
 of upholding national independence against 
 aggression from without and militarism within. 
 I myself have advocated such a Citizen Army 
 in Great Britain, first as Radical and then as 
 Social-Democrat, for more than forty years. 
 And, oddly enough, I learnt to appreciate its 
 value directly from one of Marx's most 
 vehement opponents — Giuseppe Mazzini. Would 
 it indeed be a great drawback to British 
 democracy if we had a genuinely well-trained 
 and well-equipped National Citizen Army, under 
 the control of the people, in this island to- 
 day? I 
 
 The old *' International " came to an end 
 in 1872, and was not revived in any defi- 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 191 
 
 nite shape until 1900 ; though a fissiparous 
 attempt at reconstruction was made in 1889. 
 After only fourteen, or, at the outside, twenty- 
 five years of more or less solid and recognized 
 existence as an international creed and party, 
 we Socialists, without money, official power, 
 or social position, are told that we have failed 
 and that our Socialism has " collapsed " be- 
 cause we did not convince and dominate 
 Europe and decree peace on earth and good- 
 will among men ! Well, well ; I am usually 
 considered an optimist, but I confess to my 
 shame, as an expert in making bonne mine 
 aa mauvais jeu, that I never at any period 
 of my career as a Social-Democratic educator 
 and agitator took such an exalted view of our 
 capacity. 
 
 Why, here is the Catholic Church alone, 
 with 1850 years or so of tradition behind 
 it ; with millions of believers in every nation 
 and on every continent ; with an international 
 organization of unequalled strength ; with tens 
 of thousands of celibate priests and hundreds 
 of thousands of fanatical devotees all over the 
 world ; and with vast resources at the disposal 
 of an ecclesiastical autocrat who has the power 
 to bind and loose for all eternity — here is 
 this vast institution wholly unable to obtain 
 a truce of God for Christmas, even with 
 
192 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 the support of other forms of its own 
 creed I 
 
 Yet we Socialists, whose international or- 
 ganization (if organization it could be called) 
 really did collapse in 1872, and is anyhow 
 but a child of yesterday, are blamed for not 
 achieving, after half a century of tentative 
 effort, what the followers of Christ have been 
 wholly unable to accomplish by centuries of 
 intellectual domination in Europe ! Because 
 the leaders of one great Socialist section have 
 failed to act up to their principles, therefore 
 all our economic analysis must be abandoned 
 as illusory, all our historical investigations, 
 which have cast light for the first time on 
 many dark places in the record of humanity, 
 must be thrown on the scrap-heap ; and even 
 all the facts which support and confirm our 
 theories must, I suppose, be turned to a 
 contrary purpose ! 
 
 But Socialists do not for one moment accept 
 any of these categorical imperatives. The 
 views of Marx, far less modified by time than 
 those of Darwin, will be upheld by nearly all 
 the delegates at International Socialist Con- 
 gresses after the war as they were before it. 
 We have no need to search for a new system 
 of political economy, to set on foot a fresh 
 exposition of human history, nor to substitute 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 193 
 
 a revised synthesis for that which we 
 acc'epted prior to the outbreak of hostili- 
 ties. The hopes rather than anticipations 
 expressed at the great Socialist Peace Con-, 
 gress of Basle have not been realized. The 
 protests which were there formulated under 
 German leadership have evaporated in the heat 
 of the unpredecented conflict provoked by 
 German ambition. The spirit of militarist 
 nationalism has, for the time being, obscured 
 the ideal of International Socialism. This we 
 admit. But so far is SociaHsm from having 
 collapsed that already efforts — premature efforts 
 though I hold them to be— are being made in 
 every civilized country to renew our organi- 
 zation when the war shall be past. Socialism 
 is no more destroyed by the temporary re- 
 crudescence of national antagonisms than repre- 
 sentative government was crushed when Crom- 
 well decamped with the mace and locked the 
 doors of the House of Commons, or when 
 Napoleon the Great (or, for that matter, Napo-. 
 leon the Little) proclaimed himself Emperor 
 of the French. Those who imagine that the 
 result of the present war will be to re- 
 establish permanently the old national distrust 
 and hatred, quite misread the signs of the 
 times . 
 
 For the industrial evolution of humanity may 
 
 13 
 
194 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 be checked, but cannot be definitely arrested 
 by the mutual slaughter of human beings. 
 When the fighting ceases, progress goes for- 
 ward from the point where peaceful develop- 
 ment was interrupted. Nay, it is even possible 
 that war may accelerate the rate of such 
 progress. In Great Britain as we have seen 
 (while still nominally maintaining the figment 
 of a free competition) the Class-State takes con- 
 trol of department after department, as in the 
 case of the railways, uses the national credit 
 to save the monopolist banks from default, 
 to maintain the honour of the great commercial 
 houses, to guarantee financial issues in order 
 to foster national industries, to regulate prices 
 by enactment, to fling aside the doctrine of 
 buying in the cheapest market, and to increase 
 the State provision for soldiers and their de- 
 pendents to an extent hitherto unheard-of and 
 likely to be still further enlarged. True, most 
 of these collectivist measures have so far been 
 directed to the strengthening or buttressing the 
 more capitalist organizations. But will not the 
 workers, whose combinations are simultaneously 
 drawing closer and closer together, on a larger 
 and larger scale, recognize that a State 
 authority, which can thus be used in war to 
 safeguard and benefit banks, financiers, mer- 
 chants, and even branches of industry, in order 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 195 
 
 to uphold the competitive system favoured by 
 the master class, might be far better applied 
 to inaugurate a system of national co-operation 
 which would emancipate the working class? 
 When upwards of £1,000,000,000 are raised 
 almost without comment for the purposes of 
 war, will it be possible for the most cheese- 
 paring Chancellor of the Exchequer to ask 
 effectively, ** Where is the money to come 
 from? " when the people call on him to 
 expend a much larger sum for the higher 
 purposes of peace? The questions answer 
 themselves. 
 
 In France a similar development is pro- 
 ceeding, and what makes it more noteworthy 
 is the fact that several members of the present 
 French Ministry are ex-Socialists or Socialists, 
 two of whom made very important stipulations 
 before they took office. And what will 
 happen in Belgium after the complete defeat 
 and withdrawal of the Germans? Manifestly, 
 only a national democratic administration, with 
 that thorough-going Socialist, Emile Vandervelde, 
 as a prominent Minister within, or more than 
 a Minister without, supported by the great 
 Socialist co-operative institutions, will be able 
 to reorganize peacefully Belgian industry and 
 transport. Even in Germany, after the down- 
 fall of militarist Junkerdom, where can we look 
 
196 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 for reconstructive forces, outside the Social- 
 Democracy and the great trade unions, able to 
 dominate the vast trusts and combines on the 
 one side, and to enlist the workers of the 
 Fatherland in the vast enfranchised army of 
 industry on the other? 
 
 That which Marx foresaw and predicted is 
 being fulfilled and verified under our eyes. 
 From small competitive production and petty 
 pecuniary relations to the great factory in- 
 dustry, limited companies, vast exchange and 
 transport, and divorce of workers from control 
 over their own tools ; from the great factory 
 industry, with its increasing proletariat and en- 
 larging area of distribution, to trusts, combines, 
 monopolies, international capitalism, accompanied 
 by the permanent wage-slavery of the mass 
 of the population ; from this period of capitalist 
 monopoly, attended throughout by ever-growing 
 combinations of the toilers, and constantly in- 
 creasing recognition of the inevitable class war, 
 to the introduction of State and municipal con- 
 trol, and extension of State and municipal 
 employment under bureaucratic management, 
 with wage-slavery still maintained, but class 
 antagonism growing steadily more bitter and 
 finding slowly political expression ; from col-, 
 lectivist wagedom with mild political protest 
 and unconscious revolt, to national and inter-. 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 197 
 
 national co-operation and Social-Democracy, by 
 the conquest of political power and the trans- 
 formation of competitive production for class 
 profit into general co-operative production for 
 Socialist and communal use.i 
 
 That this transcendent revolution shall be 
 accomplished without passing through a period 
 of internecine bloodshed and wholesale civil 
 war, beside which even the present vast 
 conflict will seem child's play, calls for two 
 conditions : A stage of human development 
 in which the co-ordination of co-operative pro- 
 duction on a large scale is possible ; the 
 education of competing wage-earners to the 
 point where they can understand, and, having 
 understood, can handle and control the eco- 
 nomic and social growth going on around them 
 of which they themselves form a part. It 
 was Marx's opinion that this must of neces- 
 sity be a very slow process, even in the 
 
 ' The power of man over nature has increased and is increas- 
 ing so rapidly that there is no difficulty whatever as to the 
 creation of wealth. In fact, mankind in the highly-civilized 
 countries is overmastered by its own machinery and capacity 
 for production. Wealth may indeed be made as plentiful as 
 water by co-operative effort. Only the fetishism of money 
 bemuses the mind and prevents the workers from understanding 
 the truth. In Western Europe the economic development has 
 proceeded so far that only education is needed to enable the 
 transformation to be made. (Force cannot much longer be used 
 as the abortionist of reaction.) 
 
198 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 most advanced countries. His arguments 
 compelled me many years ago to adopt his 
 views. I 
 
 But since then events have occurred which 
 lead me to take a more hopeful view of the 
 rapidity with which we may attain our end. 
 In particular, what has happened in Japan 
 may well make us sanguine. Scarcely more 
 than forty years have passed since Sir Ruther- 
 ford Alcock referred to the Japanese as 
 ** highly intelligent children," and spoke of 
 their feudal system, their class gradations, con* 
 solidated by a fine religion, as likely to last 
 for many a day. Within that short term 
 Japan has passed through an economic, social, 
 and political evolution which Europe took four 
 hundred years to accomplish. 
 
 Capitalism in Japan has now reached almost 
 the same level that it has in Europe and 
 America. The great factory industry is growing 
 daily, State and municipal loans have been 
 raised to an excessive amount, banks are be- 
 
 " Marx himself was inclined rather to extend than to reduce 
 the period required to realize Sociahsm in any practical shape. 
 I remember well that, in one conversation with him at Maitland 
 Park Crescent, I expressed myself as being impatient at the 
 intolerable delay which would occur before an effective change 
 could be brought about in our horrible capitalist and wage-slave 
 society. He replied : "When you have been impatient as many 
 years as I have, you will begin to be patient then." 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 199 
 
 coming more and more powerful, great shipping] 
 lines are competing on equal terms with 
 European ventures, even trusts and combines 
 are beginning to develop. The hopes enter- 
 tained by some of us that Japan, learning by 
 the experience of Europe, would restrict and 
 control the power of pecuniary domination 
 have, unfortunately, proved false. But the 
 protest of Socialism is being raised in earnest, 
 in spite of the bitterest injustice and perse- 
 cution, and there is no doubt that our opinions 
 will steadily make way. In the much more 
 difficult field of China, too, Socialism has its 
 word to say. Is it not certain, therefore, that 
 Socialism, even among the slow-moving popu- 
 lations of the East, will spread much more 
 rapidly than seemed in the least likely even 
 twenty years ago ? 
 
 Every improvement in international commu- 
 nications and transport facilities cannot but 
 tend to the expansion of international capi- 
 talism, both financial and industrial, with the 
 simultaneous growth of trusts and monopolies, 
 all over the world. But international capitalism 
 Is now everywhere being accompanied and 
 attacked by international Socialism. This is 
 more apparent by far to-day than it was 
 yesterday, and the advance cannot fail to be 
 still more marked to-morrow than it is to-day. 
 
200 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 For against the sinister international capitalist 
 power in peace, as against the belated national 
 antagonisms which lead to war, there is but 
 one effective means of resistance : the solid- 
 arity of the workers of all countries, who 
 have no interest either in the peaceful main- 
 tenance of capitalism, or in the forceful 
 expansion of competitive industry and com- 
 merce. 
 
 But such solidarity can only be achieved 
 by thorough comprehension of the world-wide 
 economic situation, and the acceptance of the 
 ideals and religion of Socialism, which, be- 
 ginning of necessity with national material 
 issues, will gradually, for the first time in 
 history, free all mankind for the highest tasks 
 and the noblest emulation in every department 
 of science, literature, and art. The school of 
 Marx will take the lead in this high en- 
 deavour even more completely in the future 
 than it has in the past. The reason for 
 this is that Marxists alone possess the 
 key to the complex historic, economic, and 
 social evolution which leads to the new period. 
 We do not claim any vain infalHbility, or lay 
 down a doctrinaire programme of inevitable 
 development. Our work is to take account, 
 consciously and capably, of the events which 
 are occurring under our eyes ; using and 
 
MARXISM AND THE FUTURE 201 
 
 adapting the theories of a great genius to 
 stages of human development the full details 
 of which he claimed neither to foresee nor to 
 predict. 
 
 Thus, then, when peace is at last proclaimed 
 and the greatest International Socialist Con- 
 gress the world has ever seen meets in the 
 fine hall of the Maison du Peuple at Brussels, 
 all the delegates present will feel that they, 
 and the millions of Socialists they represent, 
 are entering with greater certainty than ever 
 upon the conquest of the future for the 
 workers of the world. As we rise and take 
 off our hats to the undaunted Belgians who, 
 having sacrificed their all to save Europe from 
 the barbarians, return, like the Athenians from 
 Salamis, far stronger from the sea ; as we 
 record our admiration for the courageous 
 minority of German Socialists who never 
 despaired of the cause even in the darkest 
 hour of militarist tyranny, we shall feel, every 
 one of us, that our comrades have not suffered 
 in vain. Thanks to their services, International 
 Social-D;emocracy will use the lessons taught 
 by the horrors of war to secure for coming 
 generations the permanent blessings of co- 
 operation and peace. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 The changes which are going on around us 
 proceed so rapidly that even the most ob- 
 servant can scarcely keep pace with them or 
 appreciate their significance. 
 
 The demand for troops, on a scale wholly 
 unknown in all our long and stirring history, 
 accompanied by an expenditure as colossal as 
 the struggle itself is unprecedented, has already 
 crucially modified our political and social life. 
 The England of to-day is quite a difi"erent 
 country from the England of a year ago. 
 Up to August 191 4 we were living under 
 conditions which, we can now see, made us 
 unfit to cope successfully with any sudden 
 emergency. On the one hand, competitive 
 capitalism, tempered by monopoly and bureau- 
 cratic interference, was quite unequal to the 
 situation created by highly-organized militarist 
 aggression ; on the other. International Social- 
 Democracy was not by any means ready to 
 
CONCLUSION 203 
 
 play the part which sentimental idealists, and 
 even some politicians, were sanguine enough 
 to believe it might play in the preservation 
 of peace. 
 
 As a consequence, not England alone, but 
 all the nations engaged in the war, whatever 
 their stage of economic development, are now 
 acting under a system of State Collectivism. 
 This Collectivism in Great Britain is ill-con- 
 sidered and ineffective, because our rulers them- 
 selves had no previous conception of the form 
 the transition organization must take. Their 
 hand-to-mouth methods, which barely sufficed 
 in quiet times, were precisely those least 
 adapted to deal effectively and safely with a 
 period of turmoil. Nevertheless, the inchoate 
 State Socialism which has come upon us, un- 
 consciously and unintentionally, is an inevitable 
 step towards organized Social-Democracy. The 
 assertion of the rights of the whole community 
 to control the actions of individuals and to 
 limit freedom in many directions, in order to 
 ensure efficiency, and with efficiency success, 
 is not a mere passing attempt to bring order 
 out of chaos. There is no going back on 
 these great social experiments. What has been 
 forced upon the nation, as a temporary ex- 
 pedient in a time of stress and strain, will 
 be carried to complete fruition, so soon as 
 
204 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 the people comprehend what has been done 
 and how they themselves have the power to 
 turn the new jobbing bureaucratic domination 
 to their own advantage. 
 
 The mass of our people when the war began 
 were ignorant, unorganized, undisciplined, physi- 
 cally untrained, apathetic and indifferent. Their 
 children were growing up like themselves. 
 Great numbers of ill-paid wage-earners were 
 living under such deplorable social conditions 
 that they were and are quite unfit to supply 
 soldiers for the army, or thoroughly efficient 
 men and women for industry. But now the 
 exigencies of war have done much in a year 
 to make the physically capable more vigorous, 
 in body and in mind, and to teach them the 
 advantage of disciplined co-operation. It is 
 not a lesson they are likely to forget. But 
 it will take at least a generation to replace 
 the etiolated millions of our populace by sound 
 men and women. So with education. 
 
 This important matter, studiously neglected 
 by our dominant class, cannot possibly be put 
 right in a hurry. The penalty of leaving the 
 people ignorant, in order to keep them en- 
 slaved, may yet have to be paid in very 
 ugly fashion. But meanwhile we must recog- 
 nize that economy in this direction will only 
 be most extravagant waste. Also, every day 
 
CONCLUSION 205 
 
 that passes which permits the rearing' of rickety 
 children, without State or Municipal interven- 
 tion to secure to them good food and good 
 health, is direct treachery on the part of our 
 rulers to the nation at large. 
 
 War, I say, is teaching us much. But we 
 have had to learn in a terrible school, and 
 our lessons have but just begun. 
 
 (What a different position we should have 
 been in from the commencement had the un- 
 ceasing warnings of Social -Democrats for the 
 past generation been listened to and acted 
 upon I Instead of clamouring wildly, at the 
 last moment, for hundreds of thousands and 
 even millions of untrained men (most of whom 
 we could neither arm nor equip for months 
 upon months) a National-Democratic Citizen 
 Army of at least 5,000,000 of stalwart 
 soldiers, physically fit, militarily equipped and 
 personally capable, would at once have stepped 
 forward ; as ready as our sailors were to deal 
 with any enemy they might have to encounter. 
 We should, even under Capitalism, have been 
 able to reckon upon a large organized body 
 of men and women who knew their duty to 
 the State both as citizens and as soldiers, 
 and were ready to perform it. The propor- 
 tional work of non-combatants, in preparing 
 supplies and munitions. Would at once have 
 
2o6 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 been determined. We should have had large 
 quantities of wheat stored in National Maga- 
 zines and a supply of metals sufficient for 
 any emergency. But now, after more than 
 twelve months of such warfare as the world 
 has never seen, entailing upon ourselves alone 
 the loss of 400,000 men and the expenditure 
 of a thousand millions of money, we are still 
 far from the point we should have reached 
 within a quarter of the time, had Socialist 
 counsels been adopted. Had our Government 
 even listened to such advice after the war 
 broke out, our industrial position would have 
 been infinitely more satisfactory. By taking 
 over large supplies of wheat, food and raw 
 material (as we vainly suggested) early in the 
 autumn, the Government would have kept down 
 prices and provided useful employment in every 
 department instead of calling upon the nation 
 to raise huge sums in charity, which have, 
 so far, proved a temptation to bureaucrats, 
 and little more. Such foresight, gauged even 
 by the pitiful bourgeois standard of hand-to- 
 mouth cheapness, would not only have saved 
 tens upon tens of millions sterling in hard 
 cash, but would have averted the g'reat fall 
 in national credit and the collapse in the price 
 of high-class securities all down the list. 
 Even the despotic methods of Prussia, which 
 
CONCLUSION 207 
 
 we rightly detest and are fighting to over- 
 throw, are less costly in every way than the 
 anarchical profiteering of which u^e have been 
 and are still the victims. i 
 
 The ineffective national control we have so 
 far secured has also been obtained at an in- 
 ordinate price to the workers, who, under the 
 impulse of patriotism, have handed over their 
 few liberties and privileges wholesale to the 
 ruling classes. Now they suspect that they 
 are being used, under the State, to secure 
 larger profits for private employers ; but this 
 suspicion only leads to spasmodic disorder, not 
 organized resistance. 
 
 Similarly, let us assume that railways and 
 shipping had really become the property of 
 the nation. iWe should at least have avoided 
 the ruinous floundering which occurred in the 
 autumn and winter of 191 4, by considering 
 the requirements of the nation and the workers 
 before the dividends of shareholders and the 
 freights and profits of private owners. We 
 should not have left hundreds of thousands 
 of tons of coal blocked in trucks on the rail- 
 way sidings to assist certain secret dealings 
 
 ^ The Government, through one of its innumerable, inefficient, 
 and procrastinating committees, has lately urged upon the 
 country precisely the same suggestion which had been made to 
 them and discarded with contempt twelve months before. Thus 
 was a whole year of preparation cut to waste. 
 
2o8 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 between the mine-owners and the London markets, 
 nor would shipping freights have been inflated 
 to a preposterous height. 
 
 Agricuhure likewise. There, too, had the 
 demands of Social-Democrats been listened to 
 during the past thirty-five years the most im- 
 portant of all national industries would have 
 been regarded as a matter demanding the 
 ablest possible national control and organiza- 
 tion. Had the pasture land as well as the 
 private pleasure-lands and waste lands of Eng- 
 land been even partially put under arable 
 cultivation at the beginning of the war (as 
 we suggested) with Government assistance and 
 control, we should by now have had a better 
 prospect for the future ; and, what is more 
 important, we should have made a start in 
 that increase of home production, which is be- 
 coming a necessity of our national life. But 
 the rulers still looked at the whole industry 
 from the point of view of private ownership, 
 personal rent, and individual profit and — we see 
 the result. The nation has had to pay ex- 
 cessively in every direction, while half-hearted 
 and so far wholly unsuccessful attempts are 
 being made to remedy the blunders of the 
 past. Unfortunately, every step, even when 
 taken on collectivist lines, is guided by men 
 who are by no means anxious to ensure the 
 
CONCLUSION 209 
 
 success of their own efforts. How should they 
 be? Custom, self-interest, and their natural 
 habit of thought bind them' to the system' 
 which is passing! away. 
 
 Thus the bed-rock' contention of Social- 
 Democrats — that only collective organization can 
 remedy competitive anarchy — is being verified 
 under our eyes ; but neither the nation nor 
 the Government reaHze how far they must go 
 before a sohd superstructure can be raised 
 on the basis of a sound system of national 
 co-operation. 
 
 Yet, unless the country at large makes up 
 its mind to look' facts in the face during the 
 war, and to prepare for the inevitable economic 
 and social reconstruction after the war. Lord 
 Loreburn's anticipations of revolution, and 
 revolution of a very serious character, are 
 more likely to be realized here than anywhere 
 else. In this emergency the people have a 
 right to expect a clear and statesmanlike lead 
 from their rulers, who have been trusted by 
 them as no administrators have ever been 
 trusted before. At present there is no sign 
 of any such lead. Politicians brought up in 
 our miserable system of party place-hunting 
 and factious intrigue (who belong also to the 
 class directly interested in keeping things as 
 they stand)' are incapable of the high states- 
 
 14 
 
 I 
 
2IO THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 manship imj>eratively demanded by the present 
 crisis. Not even the implicit confidence they 
 have received can call forth an adequate 
 response or even a straightforward statement 
 from our Coalition Government. All the sacri-. 
 fioes of liberty, life, and money, have been 
 made in vain. No great policy is set forth 
 for time of war : no sound domestic proposals 
 are foreshadowed for time of peace. 
 
 We are all determined to win. The last 
 militarist caste and the most formidable ag-. 
 gressive power in the world must be beaten. 
 Great Britain has fulfilled her pledges to her 
 Allies many times over. But the cost to us, 
 of final victory cannot be less than a million 
 or a million and a half of killed and 
 wounded and £2,000,000,000 of expenditure. 
 It is this last huge mass of indebtedness, 
 with the pensions and allowances that must 
 be paid, which will change our whole national 
 financial outlook, whether we like it or not. 
 The addition to the payments to be made 
 under the Budget will not fall short of 
 £150,000,000 a year, and even these un- 
 paralleled figures may be exceeded, before a 
 permanent settlement has been arrived at. 
 How is a yearly charge approaching 
 £400,000,000, including a great additional 
 expenditure, and interest on the National Debt, 
 
CONCLUSION 211 
 
 to be met without reducing the whole island 
 to bankruptcy? That is the question. That 
 is the problem we have to solve. 
 
 To recommend economy and to enjoin thrift 
 are counsels which, by themselves, are quite 
 inadequate. Thrift does not increase wealth : 
 economy by itself does not enhance pro- 
 duction. 
 
 Whenever, in years gone by, we have de- 
 manded that the interests of the producing 
 class should be sedulously attended to and home 
 production organized and extended, even under 
 capitalism, what is the answer we have in- 
 variably received? *' Where is the money to 
 come from? " Let all children we said be 
 well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, well-trained, 
 well-cared-for. Children are the most valuable 
 asset of the nation. Upon them, upon their 
 health, vigour, character, and capacity depend 
 the well-being of our country, and the future 
 of our race. " Where is the money to come 
 from? " Let these slums, in which milHons 
 of our people pig together and fester in their 
 wretched and unwholesome penury, be swept 
 away for ever, and let homes for the citizens 
 of Great Britain be provided with garden land 
 around them and healthy surroundings secured 
 for all. " Where is the money to come 
 from? " Let the railways become truly public 
 
212 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 property, with free transport at cost for goods 
 and passengers, thus sweepingi away at a blow 
 the protection in favour of the foreigner 
 already denounced. ** Where is the money to 
 come from? " Let motor roads be run through 
 the whole country with public services on 
 the same lines. '-Where is the money to 
 come from? " So the fatuous answer to all 
 demand for improvem'cnt was repeated again 
 and again. 
 
 The fetishism of money bemtised our intelli- 
 gence ; the Mammon-God of profit crushed 
 down our souls. Profiteers and producers, 
 idlers and workers, capitalists and labourers, 
 landlords, and proletaires were all degraded 
 in their minds and stupefied in their imagina- 
 tions by the fallacious illusions; of the cash- 
 book, the ledger, and the balance at the Bank. 
 
 But now that the nation is spending on a 
 ruinous war the full amount that would have 
 sufficed to carry out the completest reorganiza- 
 tion in peace — what will be the new retort 
 of the reactionists and obscurantists when the 
 Social-Democrats again declare that the interests 
 of the whole people shall be dealt with as 
 the one great national need? *' We have spent 
 so much on the war that we " — who are the 
 -we"? — "must have time to recover." 
 
 Now is the time, therefore, to say plainly 
 
CONCLUSION ,213 
 
 to the rich few and to the poverty-stricken 
 many that the day of paltry subterfuges has 
 gone by. The production of all wealth is due 
 to labour applied to natural objects, with the 
 aid of the tools and machines which have been 
 created by labour, and social discovery, and inven- 
 tion. Labour and labour and labour again. It is 
 for the workers to organize their labour and 
 to develop their resources, regardless of the 
 landlords and the capitalists who for genera- 
 tions have preyed upon the people. 
 
 Unfortunately, those who suffer under our 
 present system are as ready to uphold it as 
 those whom it enriches. But the soldiers who 
 return from the Front after hard-won victories 
 will not be the dull subservient wage-slaves 
 who went forth to fight for the country of 
 which they owned no part. Already the 
 Government of the capitalists and their lawyers, 
 who have proved themselves incompetent in 
 every part of the Empire — save where our navy 
 and the democratic Citizen Soldiery of South 
 Africa conducted their own campaigns— already 
 the Government has been forced to surrender 
 at discretion to the demands of the miners 
 under the menace of Civil War. The 250,000 
 miners with the Colours had their own views 
 as to how the War Munitions Act should be 
 worked in South Wales. So the miners of 
 
2 14 THE FUTURE OK DEMOCRACY 
 
 South Wales won all along the line. And 
 this is but the first step in the organization 
 of the workers for victory at home, as their mates 
 have fought for victory abroad. 
 
 We have I say entered upon a new period. 
 This may be summed up as the transformation 
 from production for profit to production for 
 use ; from distribution of commodities according 
 to riches to distribution of wealth according 
 to needs. In no other way than this can we 
 proceed. Necessarily this involves a complete 
 alteration in the view of private property. 
 Even OS matters stand to-day the, English Com- 
 mon Law does not permit or recognize any 
 ownership as indefeasible. Where such owner- 
 ship is opposed to public interest, or stands 
 in the way of necessary public improvement, 
 it is at once swept aside. Compensation 
 itself as against the community is accorded 
 as a convenience not admitted as a right. 
 
 And this applies to every form of property : 
 to the fields as well as to the factories, to 
 mines as well as to water-courses, to shipping 
 as well as to railways. If private ownership, 
 therefore, obstructs, as it must and will 
 obstruct, increased production for the common 
 use after the war, such ownership will have 
 to go the way of feudal rights and feudal 
 dues alike in country and in town. 
 
CONCLUSION 215 
 
 The Government and the Municipalities are 
 by far the largest employers of labour in 
 the United Kingdom. But the remuneration 
 of their labourers, however skilled they may 
 be, takes the form of a competitive wage, 
 and these workers have no equal rights with 
 all citizens to share in the wealth which is 
 socially produced by them as social wealth. 
 The spread of the conception of general co- 
 operation, under the Democratic State, will 
 speedily alter these relations, and in this de- 
 velopment the great democratic Co - operative 
 Societies, which even now supply one quarter 
 of the population, ought to be able to take 
 a very useful part. The fact that at present 
 their customers are bound by the attraction of 
 the dividend to this form of trading will not 
 long prevent them from launching out far more 
 widely and successfully into production on a 
 large scale, alike in agriculture, in general 
 manufacture and in mining. Here is a means 
 whereby the employees of the State and the 
 Municipalities and the returned soldiers might 
 pass, together with the members of these co- 
 operative bodies, from the competitive to the 
 co-operative stage of our general society ; 
 while the general community might proceed 
 on parallel lines to the same end. 
 
 iWe have had conclusive proof during the 
 
2i6 THE FUTURE OF. DEMOCRACY 
 
 waV that any nation which allows itself to 
 become exclusively dependent on countries out- 
 side of its ow'n control for necessaries of life 
 and industry, to an extent beyond that which 
 is absolutely inevitable, places its whole exis- 
 tence in jeopardy, so long as national rivalries 
 and national competition exist. Perfect Free 
 Trade can only be realized under universal 
 peace and international Socialism. In the 
 intermediate period, each nation, small or large, 
 must do its utmost to develop its own re- 
 sources. There is no absolute economic truth 
 either in any system of tariffs or in the 
 abrogation of all tariffs. Great Britain has 
 fallen behind more than one of her rivals in 
 the world market, not because she ceased to 
 be a protectionist power, but because she has 
 failed to organize her inventions, her in- 
 dustry, her agriculture, her transport, her 
 Government in the interest of the productive 
 and trading fortunes of the community, and 
 has failed to see in time the dangers of this 
 happy-go-lucky policy. It may be necessary, 
 if the competitive system is maintained, to 
 extend protection and State assistance to cer- 
 tain industries which have been allowed by 
 our ignorance and apathy to decay ; but this 
 would not in the least militate against our 
 continuous endeavours to substitute national 
 
CONCLUSION ,217 
 
 organization and co-operation for individual 
 profit-making in every department of industry. 
 
 Formerly, in common with most Social-Demo- 
 crats, I held that Social-Democracy could not 
 be realized in practice, until all, or nearly 
 all, civilized countries were ready to proceed 
 on the same or on parallel lines. This is 
 no long'er my opinion. I am now convinced 
 that the nation which first adopts democratic, 
 co-operative Socialism, on a complete scale, 
 will not only benefit herself and every one 
 of her citizens, to an extent as yet conceivable 
 only by those who are thoroug^h- going eco- 
 nomic Socialists themselves, but will peacefully 
 compel neighbouring countries to follow in her 
 wake. It would be impossible to defeat by 
 arms or competition a country in whose pros- 
 perity every inhabitant was vitally interested — 
 a country kept up to the very highest point 
 of efficiency in all new inventions applicable 
 to peace or war. 
 
 I hope to see England lead as the success- 
 ful pioneer in the realization of this great 
 ideal of economic and social emancipation. In 
 1802 Robert Owen stated that wealth might 
 be made as plentiful as ■v\^ater, by the light 
 and pleasurable industry of all members of 
 the community. How much nearer truth 
 and possibility his words are to-day I Diffi- 
 
2i8 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 culties arise, not from any deficiency in the 
 powers of man over nature to produce more 
 and more wealth, but because the human 
 intellect, as a function of the individual and 
 of society, fails to understand how mankind 
 is overmastered by the traditions of the past, 
 and deprived of control over his own instru- 
 ments of production in the present. The 
 most stupendous war of all time may well 
 compel us to such mental emancipation as 
 the dethronement of the money fetish and the 
 simultaneous comprehension of the possibilities 
 of national co-operation. Then, in the solution 
 of the greatest social problem of the ages, 
 little remains to be done. 
 
 ^ut for this political democracy of the most 
 complete character must be combined with the 
 conscious advance towards social freedom and 
 reorganization. Thus only can a peaceful revo- 
 lution be brought about and reaction bo 
 permanently headed back. Our history is one 
 long record of struggles on the part of the 
 people to obtain the fullest right of self-* 
 government. But this has never yet been 
 achieved. Now final success in this direction 
 is more important than ever. A nation which 
 has attained wide political liberties, without, 
 at the same time, winning economic and social 
 control over its own agricultural and industrial 
 
CONCLUSION ;2i9 
 
 system, has attained but a small fraction of 
 that real freedom for which our forbears fought 
 and fell. Yet this stage we have not reached ; 
 for our political forms (which still fail to 
 give the suffrage to all adults) are quite ludi- 
 crously behind the development which the 
 industrial situation demands. 
 
 But an organized political democracy, which 
 secures the vote to all men and women, which 
 possesses even the power bf Initiative in legis- 
 lation and the Referendum to the entire people 
 before any enactment can be accepted and 
 obeyed as law— even such a democracy is still 
 incomplete without economic ownership and 
 control. A free man, at the mercy of those 
 who dispose of his means of gaining sub- 
 sistence, and can regulate, through competi- 
 tion, or the bureaucratic ordinance of the Class- 
 State, the amount of his remuneration, is little 
 better than a chattel slave in disgtiise. Politi- 
 cal Voting power, used by the wage-earners 
 as it is used to-day, to give legal sanction 
 to class ownership of (property, is no more 
 than a juggle, by which the political free 
 man becomes a consenting party to his own 
 servitude. If also, as already urged, these 
 political institutions are themselves some gene- 
 rations behind the entire social system which 
 they are supposed to represent, then this is 
 
220 THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 obviously only a pseudo-democracy which must 
 be reorganized as speedily as possible. That 
 is precisely our case. Those also who contend 
 that a democracy of the kind advocated can- 
 not conduct its business affairs unless thoroughly 
 educated are theoretically right. But we have 
 tramped long enough round this vicious circle, 
 and it is certain that the most ignorant demo- 
 cracy could not have more fatuously mismanaged 
 matters in peace and in war than the lawyers 
 and bureaucrats who now have us in their 
 grip. 
 
 In short, wherever, as now in Great Britain, 
 the methods of creating and sharing Wealth 
 have not only proved injurious to the well- 
 being of the whole people, but have outgrown 
 the political constitution of the country, a revo- 
 lution has been prepared by the unseen course 
 of events which, peacefully or forcibly, slowly 
 or suddenly, will transform the entire society. 
 
 The sooner, therefore, we meet and deal 
 with that powerful current towards Co-ordi- 
 nation and Social-Democracy into which the 
 war has swept us, the greater is our chance 
 of avoiding an anarchical catastrophe. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON 
 
Social Science Series 
 
 Cloth, 2s. 6d. Double Volumes 3^. f>-f. 
 
 * Also in Limp Cloth u. „ei. 
 
 •* Paper Covers is. 
 
 *2. CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. Edward Carpenter. 
 
 *3. QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM. Dr. Schafflr. 
 
 i. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. D. G. Ritchie, MA. (Oxon.). 
 
 New Edition, with two additional Essays on Human Evolution. 
 ♦5. RELIGION OF SOCIALISM. E. Bblfort Bax. 
 
 •a ETHICS OF SOCIALISM. E. Belfort Ba c. 
 
 7. THE DRINK QUESTION'. Dr. Kate Mitchei r^ 
 
 8. PROMOTION OF GENERAL HAPPINESS. Prof. M. Macmillan. 
 ♦9. ENGLAND'S IDEAL, &c. Edward Carpenter. 
 
 10. SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. Sidney Webb, LL.B. 
 
 11. C>«/ of print, . 
 
 12. Out of print, 
 
 **13. THE STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. E. Belfort Bax. 
 
 14. THE CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH. LaurenceGronlund. 
 
 15. ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. Bernard Bosanquet.M. A. (Oxon.). 
 
 16. CHARITY ORGANISATION. 
 
 C. S. Loch, Secretary to Charity Organisation Society. 
 
 17. THOREAU'S ANTI-SLAVERY AND REFORM PAPERS. 
 
 Edited by H. S. Salt. 
 
 18 SELF-HELP A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. G. J. Holyoake. 
 
 19 20. Out of print, 
 
 21. THE UNEARNED INCREMENT. W. H. Dawson. 
 
 22, 23. Out of print. 
 
 •24. LUXURY. Emile de Laveleye. 
 
 •♦25. THE LAND AND THE LABOURERS. Dean Stubbs. 
 
 26. THE EVOLUTION OF PROPERTY. Paul Lafargl «. 
 
 27. CRIME AND ITS CAUSES. W. Douglas Morrisc s. 
 •28. PRINCIPLES OF STATE INTERFERENdS. D.G. Ritchie, M.,V. 
 
 29, 30. Out of print. 
 
 31. ORIGIN OF PROPERTY IN LAND. Fustkl de Coulange^. 
 
 Edited, with an Introductory Chapter on the English Manor, by 
 Prof. W. J. Ashley, M.A. 
 
 32. Out of print. 
 
 33. THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT. Beatrice Potter. 
 
 34. Out of print. 
 
 35. MODERN HUMANISTS. J- M. Robertson. 
 ♦*36. OUTLOOKS FROM THE NEW STANDPOINT. E. Belfort Bax. 
 
 37. DISTRIBUTING CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES. 
 
 Dr. LuiGi Pizzamiglio. Edited by F. J. Snell. 
 
 38. Out of print. 
 
 39. THE LONDON PROGRAMME. Sidney Webb, LL.B. 
 
 40. Out of print, 
 
 43. Out of print. 
 
 •43. THE STUDENT'S MARX. Edwa&d AvfiLiNG, D.Sc 
 
 44. Out of print. 
 
SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES— (Ctf«//««^^ 
 
 45. POVERTY : ITS GENESIS AND EXODUB. J. G. GODAID. 
 
 46, 47. Out of print. 
 
 48. THE DESTITUTE ALIEN IN GREAT BRITAIN. Arnold White; 
 
 Montague Crackanthorpk, Q.C. ; W. A. M'Arthur, M.P. ; 
 
 W. H. WILKINS, &c. 
 
 49. ILLEGITIMACY AND THE INFLUENCE OF SEASONS ON 
 
 CONDUCT. Albert Leffingwell, M.D. 
 
 50. COMMERCIAL CRISES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 H. M. Hyndman. 
 61. THE STATE AND PENSIONS IN OLD AGE. 
 
 J. A. Spender and Arthur Acland, M.P. 
 
 52. THE FALLACY OF SAVING. John M. Robertson. 
 
 53. THE IRISH PEASANT. Anon. 
 •64. THE EFFECTS OF MACHINERY ON WAGES. 
 
 Prof. J. S. Nicholson, D.Sc. 
 
 •♦55. THE SOCIAL HORIZON. Anon. 
 
 56. SOCIALISM, UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC. Frederick Engels. 
 
 •♦57. LAND NATIONALISATION. A. R. Wallace. 
 
 58. THE ETHIC OF USURY AND INTEREST. Rer. W. Blissard. 
 
 •59. THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN. Adele Crepaz. 
 
 60. THE EIGHT HOURS' QUESTION. John M. Robertson. 
 
 61. DRUNKENNESS. Georgb R. Wilson, M.B. 
 
 62. THE NEW REFORMATION. Ramsdbn Balmforth. 
 *63. THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. T. E. Kebbkl. 
 
 64. Out of print. 
 
 65. ENGLAND'S FOREIGN TRADE IN SIXTH CENTURY. 
 
 A. L. Bowley. 
 
 66. THEORY AND POLICY OF LABOUR PROTECTION. 
 
 Dr. SCHAFFLE. 
 
 67. HISTORY OF ROCHDALE PIONEERS. G. J. Holyoake. 
 
 68. RIGHTS OF WOMEN. M. Ostragorski. 
 
 69. DWELLINGS OF THE PEOPLE. Locks Worthington. 
 70-75. Out of print. 
 
 76. BRITISH FREEWOMEN. CM. Stopbs. 
 
 77, 78. Out of print. 
 
 79. THREE MONTHS IN A WORKSHOP. 
 
 P. Gohre, with Preface by Prof. Ely. 
 
 80. DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. Prof. J. B. Haycraft. 
 
 81. LOCAL TAXATION AND FINANCE. G. II. Blunden. 
 
 82. PERILS TO BRITISH TRADE. £. Burgis. 
 
 83. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. 
 
 J. J. Rousseau. Edited by H. J. Tozer. 
 
 84. LABOUR UPON THE LAND. Edited by J. A. Hobson, M.A. 
 
 85. MORAL PATHOLOGY. Arthur E. Giles, M.D., B.Sc. 
 80. PARASITISM, (»IGANIC AND SOCIAL. 
 
 Massart and Vandsrveld& 
 *S7. ALLOTMENTS AND SMALL HOLDINGS. J. L. Green. 
 
SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES— (^*«^''««''^) 
 
 ♦88. MONEY AND ITS RELATIONS TO PRICES. L. L. Pricr, 
 
 89. SOBER BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT. F. A. Mackenzie. 
 
 90. WORKERS ON THEIR INDUSTRIES. F. W. Galton. 
 
 91. REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION. Karl Marx. 
 
 92. OVER-PRODUCTION AND CRISES. K. Rodbertus. 
 
 93. LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND STATE AID. S. J. Chapman. 
 
 94. VILLAGE COMMUNITIES IN INDIA. 
 
 B. H. Baden-Powill, M.A., CLE. 
 
 95. ANGLO-AMERICAN TRADE. S. J. Chapman. 
 
 96. Out of print. 
 
 97. COMMERCIAL FEDERATION & COLONIAL TRADE POLICY. 
 
 J. Davidson, M.A., Phil.D. 
 
 98. SELECTIONS FROM FOURIER. O. GiDi and J. Franklin. 
 
 99. PUBLIC-HOUSE REFORM. A. N. Cumming. 
 
 100. THE VILLAGE PROBLEM. G. F. Millin. 
 
 101. TOWARD THE LIGHT. L. H. Berens. 
 
 102. CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. A. V. Woodworth. 
 
 103. Out of print. 
 
 104. THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS. 
 
 Prof. J. S. Nicholson, M.A. 
 
 105. THE BIOLOGY OF BRITISH POLITICS. Charles H. Harvey. 
 *106. RATES AND TAXES AS AFFECTING AGRICULTURE. 
 
 Prof. T. S. Nicholson, M.A. 
 
 107. A PRACTICAL PROGRAMME FOR WORKING MEN. Anon. 
 
 108. JOHN THELWALL. Chas. Cestre, LittD. 
 •109. RENT, WAGES AND PROFITS IN AGRICULTURE. 
 
 Prof. J. S. Nicholson. 
 110, ECONOMIC PREJUDICES. Yves Guyot. 
 
 HI. CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Achille Loria. 
 
 *112. WHO PAYS? THE REAL INCIDENCE OF TAXATION. 
 
 Robert Henry. 
 
 DOUBLE VOLUMES, 3S. 6d. 
 
 1. LIFE OF ROBERT OWEN. Lloyd Jones. 
 
 2. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY: a Second Part 
 
 of •• The Quintessence of Socialism." Dr. A. Schaffli. 
 
 8. CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASS IN ENGLAND IN 18M. 
 
 Frederick Engei.s. 
 
 4. THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL ECONOMY. Yves Guyot. 
 
 5. SOCIAL PEACE. G. von Schultze-Gaevernitz. 
 
 6. A HANDBOOK OF SOCIALISM. W. D. P. Bliss. 
 
 7. SOCIALISM : ITS GROWTH AND OUTCOME. 
 
 VV. Morris and E. B. Bax. 
 
 8. ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY. A. Loria. 
 
th:3 book is dot o^ tbe last date 
 
 TB-i »"" STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 2S CENTS 
 
 A.N IJNil AAiJ * _.,, „„E TO RETURN 
 
 WLU BE ASSESSED FOR ^A'^^"^;^ ^^^^^^V 
 THIS BOOK °N THE DATE ^^^ FOURTH 
 
 "l';'-;^^ .^roH^THE SEVENTH DAV 
 
 LD2l-10m-5,'43(6061s) 
 
un/AMIt 
 
 ^0S7<^71tS7 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY