THE

NEW AGE A WEEKLY REVIEW OF POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND ART

Edited by A. R. Orage.

No- 737 [series. Vol. III. No. 26 SATURDAY, OCT. 24, 1908 ~$$$$!$~~“j ONE PENNY

CONTENTS. PAGE PAGE

AND SHALL THE NEW AGE DIE? By A. R. Orage . . . . . . 501

NOTES OF THE WEEK . . . ANNO DOMINI I. . . . . ..“’ . ..“’ . ..“’ . ..‘** . ...*’ . ..“‘504 THE COMING SESSION COME ! By Victor Grayson, M.P. . . . 504 A REPLY TO MR. PHILIP SNOWDEN.

son, M.P. By Victor Gray-

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MR. GRAYSON'S PROTEST. By Robert Blatchford

505 . . . . . . 505

MR. VICTOR GRAYSON TAKES A HINT FROM THE QUEEN. G. Bernard Shaw

By . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE POLICY OF AUTOMATONS. By G. R. S. Taylor::: . . . 505 . . . 507

THE CHURCH CONGRESS AND SOCIALISM. By Conrad Noel 508 A CRY FOR MACEDONIA. By R. A. Scott James . . . --a 509 FABIANISM AND THE DRAMA. -IV. By William Archer . . . 510 WHY NOT? By W. L. George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 THE BLUE LADY. By Beatrice Tina . . . ..; . . . . . . 512 BOOKS AND PERSONS. By Jacob Tonson . . . . . . . . . 512 BOOK OF THE WEEK. By J. M. Kennedy REVIEWS : Oscar Wilde, 514; William Morris::: 1::

. . . 513

. . . 514 DRAMA. By L. Haden Guest . . . CORRESPONDENCE : Peace-with Force. by Sir. F. Vane, Bart.

516 518

And Shall “The New Age” Die ? As this is the last number of THE NEW AGE that will wide in his intellectual sympathies and tolerant to the appear under my sole editorship, I may be allowed for point of modernity in his attitude towards opponents. the first time to address my readers personally. Nothing narrowing in the scope of THE NEW AGE is,

Something in the nature of an appeal would be most therefore, introduced by his presence on the editorial fitting to the circumstances of THE NEW AGE at this board. THE NEW AGE, I may safely say, will continue

moment. For though in the eighteen months during to defy the established procedure of outworn conven- which THE NEW AGE has been issued as an independent tions in art, literature and journalism, as Mr. Grayson (very independent) Socialist review, its circulation has has defied the established procedure of outworn politics enormously increased, and its standing been raised to at Westminster ; and both for the same purpose, the level of any sixpenny weekly ; though, in addition, namely, to turn the fierce light of public discussion I may truthfully say that its immediate prospects are on the secret insanitary corners of our social and brighter than they have ever been ; yet, despite the political life. Except, therefore, for the better, and unpaid services of a galaxy of brilliant writers, the particularly for the improvement in the political underpaid daily labours of editor and staff, the efforts direction of THE NEW AGE, the addition of Mr. Grayson of the business management, and the help of innumer- will make no change. able friends, THE NEW AGE is not even yet paying its While thus writing, I cannot refrain from thanking own way. publicly, as I have often privately, the scores of

For eighteen months, to be quite explicit, THE NEW writers, both Socialist and non-Socialist, who have AGE has been accumulating an average weekly loss of co-operated in making- THE NEW AGE what it is. If close upon £20 ; and though that amount is now very I were disposed to be modest about the creation of considerably less, and weekly growing still less, and a penny review which, I am assured by hundreds of much of it has been capital expenditure by which the correspondents, is regarded as an honour to the value of the paper has been proportionately improved, Socialist movement, I should reflect that after all the the resources at my disposal are at an end. It has, praise is wholly due to the splendid spirit of communism therefore, become necessary for me to appeal to readers that has animated the writers for THE NEW AGE. of THE NEW AGE in general for means to carry on the I am, therefore, not entitled to be modest. On the paper and to enable it to profit by the work that has contrary, I will boldly say that the three volumes of been done by and for it, THE NEW AGE here closing are worthy of comparison

Not for a moment, however, would I suggest that the profits are likely to be for a long time considerable. intellectual pioneering was never a profitable enter- prise, and political pioneering is even less so. All the same, I have no doubt whatever that with the con- tinuance of the present policy of the paper, the addition of Mr. Grayson to the political side, and the extra- ordinarily close relationship between the general spirit of THE NEW AGE and the general spirit of our im- mediate epoch, the not too remote success of THE NEW AGE, even financially, is certain.

And may I assure the readers of THE NEW AGE that the popular figure of Mr. Grayson as an iconoclast pure and simple is a journalistic myth? One of the rare, sincere and courageous reformers of our day, Mr. Grayson is in many respects a typical visionary with- a great deal of the Sibyl’s eloquence. But he is also

with any paper published in the world. That,- I feel, is something for a group, mainly com-

posed of intellectuals, to have contributed to the Socialist movement in this country. And even should THE NEW AGE now fall on evil times and die, as it very well may, during the financial crisis through which it is striving to pass, we who have worked for it shall be able to look back on the last eighteen months! as, to quote a correspondent, the heroic period of The NEW AGE.

But I do not believe that our readers will willingly let THE NEW AGE die, or be sold into the hands of the enemy. Yet I must conclude with the warning that such a fate may be in store for the paper. The pro- posed Company, prospectuses of which can be had on application to THE NEW AGE office, is the last shot in THE NEW AGE locker And THE NEW AGE is not afraid to die, though it would prefer to live.

A. R. ORAGE. Took’s Court, Chancery Lane,’ E.C.

NOTES OF THE WEEK. ONE topic overshadows all others this week. The single official Socialist in the House of Commons has adopted the only course open to him. For good or for ill, he has given forcible expression to the views held by every Socialist in the country who is worth his salt. He has made it clear once and for all that we are not Conservatives, and that all the rules and the dignity and the venerable traditions of Parliament are of no account whatever to us when they but serve to prevent discussion of the most fundamental and urgent of national problems. For this outrage upon pomp and circumstance Mr. Grayson has been excluded from the precincts of St. Stephen for the rest of the session by a unanimous vote of the House. That such a vote should be unanimous is without precedent in the annals of Parliament ; yet it is a fact that of all the pro- fessed Socialists present on the Liberal and Labour benches there was not found one to challenge a divi- sion on Mr. Grayson’s behalf. A more tragic proof of the demoralising effects of Parliamentary life has never been forthcoming, Could this have happened in any other country in Europe ? a short two years ago ?

Could it have happened here Could it happen even in the

Moderate-ridden London County Council to-day ? There is no avoiding the truth that the Socialists in the Labour Party have already learnt to revere those very obstacles in the path of democracy which they were sent to remove.

* * ’ * For it is not the House of Lords, nor Whiggery,

nor the Conservative Party itself that is the most powerful enemy of Socialism to-day. It is the para- lysing atmosphere of immemorial gentility, produced by centuries of class rule, that pervades every nook and cranny of the House, weakening resolve,

blighting enthusiasm, and reducing good-will to impo-

tence without respect of persons-in short, it is the curse of tradition that stands in our way. Until a revolutionary change is brought about in the very temper and fashion of the House of Commons, our boasted heritage of popular government must remain a delusion and a snare. The Labour Party has striven to placate where it should have challenged. It has never risen from its knees to its feet. Whilst criti- cising oppression, it has accepted the standards of the oppressors, and who can wonder that its criticism has been in vain? It has learnt by force of example to regard haste as ungentlemanly and disorder as in- excusable, and actually seems anxious to convince the country that it has no higher ambition than to imitate the manners of the Treasury Bench. “We realise,” said Mr. Ramsay Macdonald a few days ago, “that it is absurd to think of rushing an Unemployed Bill through during the autumn session, already appropri- ated to something else.” Monstrous ! A Socialist finding excuses for the inactivity of a Liberal Govern- ment ! How have the mighty fallen !

* + * The “Daily News,” commenting upon Mr. Gray-

son’s action, observed that a majority of the House were as deeply and genuinely concerned upon the sub- ject of Unemployment as Mr. Grayson himself. Of course they are. We fully believe that the House, not to mention the Government, is really sympathetic and keenly desirous of remedying Unemployment. But what is the use of sympathy? Have not the “damned compact Liberal majority ” (Ibsen’s phrase) been sym- pathetic for the past three years? To the public it is, ‘Curse your charity, we want work.” To the Govern- ment, duty.”

“Curse your sympathy, we want you to do your

* * * It is this talk of sympathy that reveals the essen-

tially vicious character of the spirit of the House of Commons to-day. What right has an elective assembly to profess “ sympathy ” people it represents

with the sufferings of the ? Until the assumption of superior-

ity which is implied in that profession is utterly de- stroyed and a new democratic spirit has taken its place,

the will of the people will never find effective expres- sion. The unemployed artisans of Great Britain are not a subject race suing their masters for merciful at- tention, but free-born citizens demanding the right to live upon their native soil. No Government, however good it may be, has any business to expect the grati- tude of the people ; the most it may claim is their approval. It is here, we repeat, that the Labour Party has failed most conspicuously. Instead of demanding rights, it has accepted favours and flattery. Instead of protesting against the attitude of the ruling classes, it has embraced and imitated it, until now the party is shocked on its own account because Mr. Grayson has ventured to assert that the condition of the unemployed is more important than any rules and regulations which the two capitalist parties may have agreed upon be- tween themselves. The Labour Party will one day realise that the traditions of the House of Commons are in themselves the greatest of all conspiracies to subjugate the people -and. then they, too, will make scenes.

+ * *

We say without fear of contradiction and with hun- dreds and even thousands of proofs in our hands, that Mr. Grayson has already the support of every Socialist in the country who is a Socialist first and a politician afterwards. He is denounced and disowned, unfortu- nately, by nearly all the prominent members of the Labour Party, including the I.L.P. members. They have lost no time in dissociating themselves in the most bitter terms from the “boy ” who has done what they realise, now it is too late, they should themselves have done, Hinc illae lachrymae. That Mr. Grayson should have refused to attend useless divisions is ap- parently the chiefest of his crimes in the eyes of these Parliamentarians. For that, however, he will be ac- quitted by his constituents, who now number the majority, we firmly believe, of the Socialist and Labour forces of the country. We are happy to print this week letters from Mr. Robert Blatchford, editor of the “ Clarion,” and from Mr. Bernard Shaw. We are authorised also to declare Mr. Hyndman’s emphatic support of Mr. Grayson. In fact, there will not be found a single representative Socialist, except among . those whose judgment has been blinded by the glamour of Parliament, who will condemn the Member for the Unemployed.

+ + *

The House of Commons is the most ignorant as- sembly of men in England ; they are bewitched by the fascination of the party game. Everyone outside knows what is going on in the country, and recognises the extreme urgency of a situation which is rapidly growing desperate with the approach of winter ; the House of Commons alone remains oblivious. Nothing but a rude shock can bring it back from the realms of trifling controversy to the world of reality. To use constitutional methods of agitation about a purely social and non-party question like Unemployment is to court disappointment, and every fresh disappointment means a loss of faith in those methods. Mr. Asquith really believes that the question of the length of the time-limit is of more importance than the starvation of persons who are not of his social world. He is, always ready to show sympathy and academic interest in the theories of Socialists, but the matters of really serious concern to him are how to score off the Tories in the House and out-manoeuvre them in the country. In short, while preaching patience and caution, he offers every possible inducement for violence.

* * +

If any man on the L.C.C. deserves the special grati- tude of the London unemployed it is Mr. Frank Smith. By creating an uproar last week in the Council and obstructing all business he has forced the hands of the Moderates. A scheme of tramway reconstruction in- volving an expenditure of over £400,000 which would probably have been postponed until Christmas is to be hurriedly rushed through this week, and in a very short time there will be a large demand for labour. There is no manner of doubt here about cause and effect. The

"disgraceful scene" denounced in nearly every Tory and Radical paper in London, has achieved its desired result. We *would add, however, that the greatest credit is due to the Labour members and to Mr. Sidney Webb for their staunch physical and moral support of Mr. Smith. They were in no way privy to his inten- tions beforehand, but by coming to his rescue, they undoubtedly saved the situation.

) * * The combined demonstrations of Suffragettes and

Unemployed outside the House of Commons on Tues- day last was a much bigger affair than even its pro- moters expected. The crowd not only far exceeded all the previous records in Numbers, but its temper was quite different from that of the usual light-hearted affair. It was markedly an ugly crowd, ready for any- thing, and it needed but a spark to have set it alight. Had the spark been forthcoming, there would almost certainly have been a most serious riot and more blood- shed than has occurred in London in the memory of the present generation. As it was, however, nothing happened beyond a few arrests, and the House of Com- mons continued its discussion of trivialities undis- turbed except by the momentary intrusion of a Suf- fragette into the sacred chamber. We note that the “ Spectator,” commenting on the part taken by the Suffragettes in this demonstration, remarks, “ This shows a coolness of premeditation alongside a singular wildness of judgment ; and the combination of the two is alarming as the symptom of a frame of mind.” This is, we take it, one of the most genuine and spon- taneous compliments the W.S.P.U. has ever received. The “Spectator ” is quite right to be alarmed. The nation is being taught the use of violence.

* + *

The Children’s Bill made some slight progress last week but ‘it is not an inspiring measure. Two pro- visions creating new crimes were discussed at great length, and finally passed. Any mother who overlays her child while under the influence of drink or who gives a child under a certain age alcohol, except by medical orders, is to be fined or sent to prison or some- thing of the sort. Also any small boy who is caught with a cigarette in his mouth in a public place is to. have it taken away from him by the nearest policeman. It is on grandmotherly legislation of this sort-good enough in its way -that the Liberals are wasting their tremendous majority, whilst thousands of children are wandering foodless and half-clothed in the streets of every city in England ; and no voice was raised in any quarter of the House to protest against the monstrous absurdity of it all.

* + *

Let it be understood that we Socialists are not work- ing to obtain a new Government of the old sort only a little more “ advanced. ” We look for a new sort of Government altogether, a Government that will be able to see thing in their real proportion, because it is in the truest and highest sense the servant of the people ; that will face the problem of poverty first, last, and all the time, until it is stamped out for ever ; that will not place its own dignity or its own gentility above the needs of the people ; that will give the chil- dren bread before it forbids them beer and tobacco ; that will abolish unemployment before it reduces public- houses ; that will remove existing inducements to crime before it invents new crimes ; that will secure for mothers an opportunity of bearing and rearing children under decent conditions before it punishes them for the most tragic of common accidents ; and finally, that will regard sweating (about which, by the way, the ruling classses have been sympathetic for sixty years) and under-payment of all kinds for what it is, a crime against society, a crime more heinous than murder. Such a Government will be as different from the present one as Mr. Asquith is different from the Shah of Persia. and perhaps it is-

Its coming is only a question of time, not so far off as some imagine. The

‘awakening of the masses who ultimately hold political power may take place with dramatic rapidity. In the meantime we have, to prepare the way, not by making

terms with the old order and identifying ourselves with the old spirit, but by emphasising the fundamental -:: character of the change we are working for.

* * + !

By a masterly concession Mr. Asquith has drawn the ’ ,. sting of the Licensing Bill. The resumption by the ‘.-,: State of the monopoly value it has created is to be _ delayed for an extra seven years, twenty-one in all. Since the period fixed for the reduction of licenses is :’ to remain as before, the Temperance Party can scarcely ’ protest against the change without laying themselves open to the charge of being actuated purely by malice

‘/

against the Trade. The only ‘persons who have a right X to complain are the Socialists. We have always ad- mitted that our sole motive for supporting the finan- cial clauses of this measure is that they will put an end ’ to a bad bargain and will diminish the quantity of in- ’ terest which passes annually into private pockets. Mr. Asquith’s betrayal of the interests of the nation at the command of the brewers is but another proof of the foolishness of relying upon Liberal opportunism. He has shown himself ready to bow to the storm in ortho- dox Liberal fashion, but if he imagines he can silence . the cry of confiscation by allowing it to seem victorious he must surely be dreaming.

* * * An anonymous writer in the “ Evening News,”

whose views, we are assured, “ may be taken as repre- senting the views of the Local Government Board,” summarises the work done and to be done by Mr. John Burns Department [but perhaps not’ by Mr. John Burns !] on behalf of the Unemployed. Having care- fully examined the crawling list of petty details, we can only conclude that Mr. Burns is very sanguine if he imagines them likely to demonstrate his competence. . Faced with a more difficult, pressing and perilous state of affairs than any of his predecessors had to meet, Mr. Burns has substituted obstinacy for resolution, theories for ideas, and abuse for business. Not Mr. Gerald Balfour at his philosophic worst was less pre- pared than Mr. Burns for the campaign against the foul disease of preventible poverty, always most viru- lent in winter. Nor can we forget the rotund assur- ances of Mr. Burns on the eve of the recess. We were to sleep securely in our beds with no alarm for the winter. Even Mr. Burns does not now, we imagine, follow his own advice.

+ * *

The Near East has remained comparatively tranquil during the past week, though the week-end news from Anatolia and Constantinople should warn us that this tranquillity is only the calm before the storm. We ad- vise our readers to accept with considerable reserve the statements emanating from Belgrade that the Ser- vian Parliament has voted for peace. The “ peace ” vote seems merely to have been a vote of confidence in the Government, The essential point to remember is that the Parliaments of Montenegro and Servia have voted large war credits. the East as elsewhere,

An ounce of ammunition, in

“ assurances. ” is worth a ton of diplomatic

* + +

We extend the heartiest of welcomes to the Anti- Socialist Union of Great Britain which has recently been formed under the chairmanship of Mr. Claude Lowther. The objects of the Union, we understand, are to provide a training school for anti-Socialist speakers, and to work out and disseminate generally the strongest possible case against Socialism. we have no doubt that it will fill a long felt want. There has been of late a serious slump in anti-Socialist speakers, and debates have been very difficult to ar- range ; and as for anti-Socialist literature, there is scarcely any that is worth so much as a serious review. The chief danger which threatens the propagandist side of the Socialist movement is stagnation through lack of intelligent opposition. will, we hope,

Mr. Lowther’s organisation help to save us from ourselves. If it

does as much for us as the “ Daily Express ” cam- paign did last year, we shall be sincerely grateful. We need scarcely add that these columns will always be open to any accredited representative of the new Union.

504

Anno Domini I. (Friday, October 16th, 1908.)

Mr. GRAYSON, rising from the place he usually occupies below the Opposition gangway, said :-Mr. Chair- man,-Before you proceed with the next clause, I wish to call the attention of the House to the fact that, as I stated yesterday, there are thousands of people dying in the streets while you are trifling with this Licensing Bill. (Cries of “ Order. “)

The CHAIRMAN. -The hon. member-- Mr. GRAYSON. -I refuse to give order. (Cries of “ Sit

down.“) I defy you to silence me. The CHAIRMAN.-Order, order. Mr. GRAYSON. -I will not give order. I am alone in this

House, but I have a large mandate behind me, and I refuse to allow the House to proceed while I am in it. (Laughter.

The CHAIRMAN.-Will the hon. member-- Mr. GRAYSON .-The people I represent-- The remark was cut short by loud cries of “Order ” and

“ Sit down. ” Mr. GRAYSON. -I refuse to sit down in this Chamber while

people are starving wholesale, and I refuse to wait another moment.

The CHAIRMAN.-Will the hon. member allow me to ask this question-Does he understand that the House is in Com- mittee, that the Committee can only deal with what the House instructs it to deal with, and that until I report pro- gress we can deal with nothing else ?

Mr. GRAYSON. -I cannot obey your ruling. The CHAIRMAN.-The hon. member cannot move to re-

port, because that is not allowed to anybody except a mem- ber of the Government, under the special resolution dealing with this matter. If the hon. member wishes to raise this question, he should do so in the House, and not in Com- mittee.

Mr. GRAYsON.-The point I want to make is--(Renewed cries of “ Order ” and (‘ Sit down.“)

The CHAIRMAN.-Does the hon. member refuse to obey the orders of the Chair?

Mr. GRAYSON.-Quite, sir. I feel this matter so deeply that I must refuse to obey the rules of the House.

The CHAIRMAN.-I must direct the hon. member to re- sume his seat.

Mr. GRAYSON. -I know there is force of machinery in this House to remove me, and I know that members of every section of the House are pledged to the Licensing Bill, but I refuse to obey-(Loud cries of ‘(Order, order.“)

The CHAIRMAN.-The hon. member has refused to obey my instructions, and I order him to withdraw from the House for the remainder of the sitting. (Cheers.)

Mr. GRAYSON.-I refuse to withdraw from the House voluntarily. Until the House has given some intimation of an attempt to attend to this urgent matter--

The hon. member was again interrupted by shouts of disapproval.

The CHAIRMAN.-I want the hon. member to understand what his conduct means. If he refuses to obey my order to leave, then I must name him, and the sitting will be sus- pended while the Speaker is sent for.

Mr. GRAYSON. -I cannot help that. I refuse to allow the business of the House to go on until the House considers the people who are starving. (Cries of ((Order ‘, and “With- draw. “)

The CHAIRMAN .-Then, in that case, I name you for dis- obeying the orders of the Chair. (Cheers.)

Mr. GRAYSON. -YOU cannot shame me. (Loud laughter and cries of ‘(Withdraw.“) It is all very well for members to laugh. (“ Order, order.“) Members have been always willing to adopt that attitude towards this question. (“Order, order.“) I shall obstruct the proceedings so long as the House refuses to consider this question.

Mr. EMMOTT then vacated the chair, the Mace was placed on the Table, and the Speaker was sent for. The hon. member for the Colne Valley remained standing during the whole of this time, shouting, at intervals, ((You will hear a worse roar than this,” and ‘Shout me down; I refuse to sit down. ” Mr. BOTTOMLEY crossed the floor of the House from the Liberal benches and spoke to Mr. Grayson, who, however, indicated his rejection of the advices tendered by vigorously shaking his head, and Mr. Bottomley returned to his seat. The hon. member again essayed to address the House. “The unemployed,” he began, but the cries of “Order ” from the other members of the House were so loud and persistent that the remaining words of the sen- tence could not be heard.’ Mr. SPEAKER entered the House at this moment and took the chair.

Mr. EMMOTT, who stood at the steps of the Chair, said,- I have to report to you that I have had to name Mr. Gray- son for disobeying the orders of the Chair.

Mr. ASQUITH thereupon rose and said, -I beg to move

OCTOBER 24, 1908

that Mr. Grayson be suspended from the service of the House.

The SPEAKER at once put the question, “That the hon. member for Colne Valley be suspended from the service of the House. ,’

Mr. GRAYSON, who, contrary to all custom and usage, had remained standing during these proceedings, en- deavoured again to address the House, but the SPEAKER, ignoring the interruption, “ collected the voices.” When he came to the formula, “ To the contrary ‘ No,’ ,’ Mr. GRAY- SON shouted out, “ What do the Labour party say? ” There were a few cries of “No,” but

The SPEAKER declared that the ‘Ayes ,, had it. Then, ad- dressing Mr. Grayson, he said, -I have to inform the hon. member that he is suspended from the service of the House, and I must ask him to leave the House.

Mr. GRAYSON. -I leave the House, as I said yesterday, with pleasure, because I feel that no man-(loud cries of (‘Order “) no man can stay in this House another moment- (renewed cries of ‘ Order.,‘)

The SPEAKER.-The hon. member is not entitled to ad- dress the House after he has been suspended.

Mr. GRAYSON. -Well, then, I will leave the House. I feel that in leaving the House, I gain in dignity. (Loud laughter.) And I hope--the rest of the sentence was drowned in the cries of “Order,” which rose from every part of the House.

The hon. member turned to leave the House, but retraced his steps and shouted out, “This House is a House of mur- derers.,, He then left his seat, and, walking down the gang- way behind the chair of the Serjeant-at-arms, passed through the swing doors, and out of the House.

((‘Times “Report. Oct. 17).

The Coming Session Come ! WHEN I penned last week’s article on “The Coming Session ” I did not remotely suspect how soon its ethics would be translated into actual history. On entering the gloomy Chamber last Thursday and beholding the well-filled benches, their occupants animated by a thou- sand and one of the things that don’t matter, I felt an indefinable sense of irritation. A vision of the hungry armies of our great cities came to me in vivid contrast with the spectacle before me. Looking at my Order Paper, I observed that the next, and the next, and the next business were clauses of the Licensing Bill. I knew that the Labour Party had pledged itself, both in Parliament and on Teetotal-cum-Liberal plat- forms in the country, to facilitate the passage of the measure. A feeling of the utter mockery of the whole business seized me, and almost before I knew it I was on my feet. I am now suspended from the service of the House and freed for the service of humanity.

Since my suspension hundreds of letters and tele- grams are streaming in, approving and applauding my attitude. Strange to say, they include letters from Unionist Tariff Reformers, Liberals, Trades Councils, I.L.P. and S.D.P. branches, and one prominent Liberal M.P. It has been said, I hear, by a few prominent people that although I did right, I did it in the wrong way. I should, forsooth, have consulted with the’ Labour Party and previously informed them of my intentions. It might serve a useful purpose if I re- minded those people of a previous stormy incident in the House when I tried to address that assembly. The said Labour Party, through the person of its leader, interposed in the interests of dignity and quiet- ness. Those friends will also remember that the sub- ject of debate was the visit of our King to the mean little tyrant of Russia. On that occasion the Labour Party entered into an “Agreement ” with the Liberal and Tory leaders to close the debate at a certain time. The precise time arranged was strangely synchronous with the moment of my rising to address the House, The Deputy-Speaker had even called my name, but Messrs. Arthur Henderson, Keir Hardie, and the others had different opinions on the subject., and at their instigation I was gagged. Consult with the

Mr. Grayson’s Protest.

Labour Party, indeed ! Not only were they fore- warned of my intention-but, on Wednesday, Socialist- Labour members indulged in elephantine wit on the possibilities of the morrow. The facts of the situation after all are as follows. The Labour Party has abso- lutely bound itself to the Liberal Party to support the Licensing Bill. By that act it explicitly subordinated the question of Unemployment to the Government’s teetotal measure. Prominent Socialist members of the party have boldly figured in the last few weeks on United Kingdom Alliance and Band of Hope public platforms and asseverated their strong determination to support the Government. “We stand here tonight to support the Government ! ” cried Mr. Shackleton while holding a Manchester audience pending the arrival of Mr. Winston Churchill. Under these cir- cumstances, then, what attitude other than bland ac- quiescence in the Government’s plans could the Labour Party possibly adopt ! And on the other, what atti- tude other than that of violent obstruction could an independent Socialist adopt while thousands were cry- ing for bread? All the prominent leaders of the Labour Party have publicly attacked my action. In solemn conclave assembled the Labour Party have offi- cially and indignantly dissociated themselves from my odious and ungenteel personality. Meanwhile the rank and file, imbued with a live spirit, hasten to congratu- late and approve my action.

I am too busy to write more at present, but hope to deal more fully with the situation next week. I call all Socialist comrades everywhere to arms. We are on the edge of a great crisis, and we need to be ready. The ethics of the drawing-room will not help us. It is not by the simpering of amateur gentlemen that the Social Millennium will come. VICTOR GRAYSON.

A Reply to Mr. Snowden. To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.”

My attention has been called to a speech de- livered by Mr. Philip Snowden at Blackburn, in which he makes some totally inaccurate statements con- cerning myself. The Press and the country generally have given great prominence to Mr Snowden’s attack. Therefore I feel it my duty to tell the plain facts.

In the first place, I challenge Mr. Snowden to state a single date upon which he has. seen me entertaining my friends in the House to anything that could be described as a sumptuous dinner. The date stated by Mr. Snowden to have been the date of my “banquet ” to my friends, namely, June 30, was the famous Tues- day when the women raided the House of Commons.

On that night I was present in Palace Yard with Mr. Robert Blatchford watching the scenes. Not only did I not enter the dining-room, but I did not even dine at all, so sickening was the spectacle we were witnessing.

Further, I did not receive my cheque from the I.L.P. on June 30.

I wish also to say that instead of leaving the House on June 16 and not returning till the 30th. Mr. Will Crooks drew me, on June 17, a plan in the House of Commons of how I might reach Woolwich to fulfil my engagement there. On June 18 the same gentleman discussed the meeting with me in the House of Com- mons. On June 19 I journeyed to Pudsey to help the Socialist Parliamentary candidate, and on June 20 I ad- dressed a Women’s Suffragist meeting in Manchester. On June 21, I addressed two meetings for the Wigan I.L.P. On the 22nd I was laid up and ordered a com- plete rest by my doctor, and on the 30th, against his orders, I went to the House of Commons, in case I might be of assistance to the Women. I was then advised abroad to-prevent an absolute breakdown, and sailed on July 23.

On Monday and Tuesday of the opening of the present session I was absent from Parliament, through fulfilling lecturing engagement at Sale and Liverpool, the dates of which I fixed upon before I was cognisant of an autumn session.

These are cold, plain, unadorned facts, proofs of

which I shall provide to Mr. Snowden or anyone else if they wish. They constitute an absolute contradic- tion of every one of Mr. Snowden’s statements, and I feel it is his duty to myself, himself, and the country, absolutely to withdraw his statements, and make a decent apology.

I shall not reply to the general tone of his remarks. There is a greater issue before the country than the banal personalities of angry M.P. ‘s.

VICTOR GRAYSON.

To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW AGE.” Victor Grayson’s action in the House on Thursday

and Friday last ought not to be mistaken for a mere personal protest.

Grayson did not speak for himself alone, nor for the unemployed, solely : he voiced the commonsense and humanity of millions of British citizens. The conduct of the Government in shelving a question so urgent and tragical as the problem of Unemployment, and sitting down to discuss more than fifty pages of amendments to the Licensing Bill, constituted an in- sult to the intelligence and right feeling of the nation. Parliament must- be taught that the misery of millions of the people cannot be treated with cynical indifference, nor evaded by contemptible subterfuge.

Grayson’s protest, let us hope, is the first word of a much-needed lesson. If the Parliamentary machinery is too obsolete and clumsy to deal with any emergency, it is time for that machinery to be thrown on the scrap heap, and replaced by something more efficient and human.

For twenty years, to my knowledge, the unemployed poor have been with us. No real help has been given to them by the Liberals or the Tories. To-day in their, despair they are asked to wait-to wait while the House discusses the Licensing Bill. Victor Grayson protests, and I, for one, thank him for protesting.

ROBERT BLATCHFORD.

Mr. Victor Grayson Takes a Hint from the Queen.

It is ungentlemanly to hit a horse with a whip-in the opinion of the horse (also in my opinion). It is un- gentlemanly to hit a fellow-creature in the eye-in the opinion of the fellow-creature (also in mine).

But suppose you are in a hurry to catch a train, and the horse in your hansom refuses to budge an inch or to do anything but urge you to be a gentleman ; to keep your temper ; and to admire his smart harness. Or suppose, when you get to the station, you find a perfect gentleman blocking the platform gate, and delicately ignoring your appeals to him to allow you to pass. Suppose, further, that a careful study of the history and habits of horses and gentlemen of this particular breed leads irresistibly to, the conclusion that the only arguments to which they are accessible are whips and black eyes, what are you to do? Clearly, the answer depends on how much in earnest you are about catching the train.

The late Samuel Plimsoll failed utterly to induce Benjamin Disraeli’s Government to attend to the sailors who selfishly objected to be drowned for the profit of our shipowners until for one dreadful moment he persuaded the House of Commons, including Ben- jamin himself, that he meant to punch the head of that sensitive statesman.

Later on, it was proved that what John Stuart Mills’ patient reasoning, high character, and admitted authority as a political theorist had failed to do for Women’s Political Rights, could be done by a handful

of women who resolved to be unreasonable, disorderly, unladylike, and even personally violent.

I deplore this state of things. I have always thought it a pity that though the French Governments of the eighteenth century would not allow their attention to be diverted from Marie Antoinette’s gambling debts to the poverty of the common people by the reasonings of Turgot, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Voltaire, Rous- seau, and the Encyclopedists, they forgot them at once when the Bastille was pulled down and the country houses burnt about their ears by people with no manners and less sense. I have never been able to understand why Mr. Gladstone did not undertake his Irish legislation (all wrong as it mostly was from beginning to end) on its merits, instead of waiting until some mischievous person irrelevantly blew up Clerken- well Prison. Like all sensible men, I detest and dread panic legislation. When the dismal cry of “Something must be done ” is raised, I feel as one who, in a narrow, twisting lane, hears the hoot of an auto- mobile. Yet when the poor (that is, the English people) is concerned, there ‘is absolutely no other legis- lation in. England except panic legislation. I and my colleagues of the Fabian Society have spent twenty years in proposing urgently needed measures in a strictly constitutional way, with the result that more attention is paid to mobs that break windows and demand Mansion House Funds than to us.

In short, our lords and masters (politely called the governing classes because, though they can’t govern, they won’t let anybody else govern) are continuously inciting the masses and their leaders to violence and disorder by constituting themselves a permanent object lesson in the uselessness of everything else. Nobody has ever succeeded in teaching them anything ; but any criminal can intimidate them. Carlyle and Ruskin and Dickens appealed to their consciences with the pens of angels, and got nothing from them but “sym- pathetic interest,” invitations to dinner, and offers of knighthoods. But the moonlighter, the dynami- tard, the envious ruffian bold enough to destroy any good thing that he does not share and assault every man that does not buy him off, has always been able to count on their prompt and terrified attention.

That is a cheerful state of things, I don’t think. One of its effects is to create a class of professional

Terrorists, who, when the success of their crimes in frightening the Government into reform threatens to deprive them of‘ their means of livelihood, commit some surpassing atrocity on their own private account in order to rouse enough popular indignation to frighten the Government back again into reaction. Thus, when the Irish moonlighters, by diligently peppering farmers with shot and maiming valuable cattle (to the humane horror of our fox-hunters), at last enabled Parnell to force from the Government’s uneasiness what they had refused to his reasonings, the “ Invincibles ” eclipsed the martyrdom of Becket in horror by assassinating the brother of an English duke. (Incidentally they assassinated an Irish official as well, but nobody re- sented that, or even noticed it.) And although the event obviously had no bearing whatever on the merits of the Irish question, the assassins were completely successful in frightening the Government out of the reconciliation they had previously frightened them into.

However, there is no use complaining. Our govern- ing classes are what they are, intimidated from their, cradles, and taught in their public schools to bully lest they should be bullied ; to do nothing for anyone who is not prepared to beat them if they don’t ; and to “play the game ” (which is sometimes party politics, but mostly shooting and fishing) without thinking or changing sides.

But when I say that there is no use complaining, I do not mean-as most people seem to mean-that there is no use doing anything. When the House of Commons says to Mr. Grayson, “We shall do nothing unless you intimidate us ; and we know you are too

much of a gentleman to do that,” it is open to Mr. Grayson to reply, “Gentleman be blowed ! I want to get something done,” just as much as it is open, to the Labour Party to murmur a polite assurance that the horny-handed, reefer-jacketed representative of Labour can be depended on to behave himself as genteely in the face of starvation as the flower of Eton and Oxford.

One cannot but wonder gloomily whether Mr. Gray- son’s action will be sufficient, or whether the unem- ployed problem will be ignored until an English city is burnt, and half the inhabitants stoned and beaten to upset order and the other half shot and sabred to restore it. It is true that Mr. Grayson, though sus- pended, has succeeded in calling attention to the un- employed in Parliament, just as the triumphant Mr. Frank Smith has on the London County Council ; but will anything serious be done? The last time the difil- culty arose, the part of Mr. Grayson was played by the Queen. With an impetuous contempt for the Con- stitution which must have scandalised even Miss Christabel Pankhurst, that eminent lady, without wast- ing time consulting Ministers, swept into the arena and appealed straight to the public over the heads of the Houses of Parliament. No doubt it was the duty of the Prime Minister to move the suspension of the Queen. But he didn’t--perhaps because he could not count on the support of the Labour Party-and the lady, victorious, happy, and glorious, forced Parlia- ment to act. But it acted without ideas. In spite of its pretence of organisation by a senseless machinery of fundamentally purposeless committees and the like, it did nothing but offer the mob money ; and ever since that, Mr. John Burns, who knows something about the problem, has been very wisely and properly doing all he can to prevent the mob from getting it. So now the House of Commons knows that the attempt to deal with the question into which the Queen shamed it did no good, and that its own Labour Minister has his hands full with the thankless but necessary job of burking it.

That is how the matter stands at present. The Queen, convinced of the uselessness of being constitu- tional, has thrown the constitution to the winds to stop starvation. Mr. Grayson and Mr. Smith have done the same with the procedure of the County Council and the House of Commons. Mr. Thorne has been summoned to answer for having-so the police allege -given the unemployed a broad hint that the House of Commons helps those only who help themselves.

Thus you have four capable persons of varied posi- tion, character, and experience : namely, the Queen, Mr. Victor Grayson, Mr. Frank Smith, and Mr. Will Thorne, all driven to the same conclusion : to wit, that it is hopeless to induce the House of Commons and the County Council to deal with the starvation question by orderly methods.

It is, of course, possible to arrive at this conclu- sion and yet to accept the preservation of order as heaven’s first law, and give up the struggle as. hope- less. This appears to be the position of the Labour Party. Only two Labour members, we are told, voted against Mr. Grayson’s suspension. No doubt it was difficult to approve of Mr. Grayson’s action without constituting him a leader in this matter. But that is hardly what I should call a popular reason for desert- ing him when he has, as a matter of fact, led. The contrast between the behaviour of the Fabians who stood by Mr. Smith in the County Council, even to the point of actual fisticuffs, and the conduct of the Parlia- mentary Labour members who didn’t stand by Mr. Grayson, even to the point of taking part in his sus- pension, is one which will strike the popular imagina- tion as unfavourable to the Labour members. NO doubt they had excellent reasons for their conduct. So had the Liberals and the Unionists. And the reasons appear to have been the same all round. Which really raises the question why we should have Labour members at all if Unionists and Liberals will do just as well. G. BERNARD SHAW,

The Policy of Automatons. On Thursday, and again on Friday, of last week,

Victor Grayson was ordered out of the House of Commons because he refused to allow the value of brewery shares to be discussed before the needs of starving men and women were considered. Not one member of the Labour Party - stood by his side ; not one dared to protest when the Speaker ordered the serjeant-at-arms sat silent-and

to it is

remove time to

him. write

The Labour Party mournful epitaphs.

To think that the day would ever come when a man flung down the gage of defiant labour on the floor of a House of Masters-and not one member of the

II Labour Party would enter the lists to defend it. So the air of our political world smells of musty graves.

Of course, Mr. Grayson broke the rules of law and order. The House of Commons had agreed that the

‘. I, Licensing Bill should take precedence of all else. The fact that every large town in the land is being paraded by men in search of the necessities of life makes no

._ difference to the official arrangements of politicians who represent the wishes of a few rich people. In the face of this brazen-faced indifference to the most urgent cry of distress, the Labour Party is prepared to sit quiet, with the rest of the House, considering a Li- censing Bill which,, at the best, will not substantially affect anyone, except brewers and publicans,, for a

Mr. Grayson calmly and deliber- quarter of a century. ately refused to do any such thing. The Speaker told him that the House had by resolution excluded other business, and Mr. Grayson flatly refused to obey that resolution. . . What was the position? He had to choose between the bye-laws made by a majority of

.’ landlords and manufacturers considering their own in- terests, and the laws of social justice and national wel- fare. He refused to discuss the Licensing Bill, because starving men cannot wait. The Labour Party agreed to discuss Licensing before starvation. No manner of argument can get round that fact. The Party stood for law and order. It is all very well to say that the subject of unemployment will be treated this week. That is the answer which has been given many times before; and the weeks have become months, and the months, years. It is time someone objected to law and

, order on principle. That the Labour Party should support law and order,

indeed ! Why the law of the land is that people shall be starved to death. Order? Why, it is the business of policemen and Speakers and sergeants-at-arms to enforce orders that mean misery to most of the people in the kingdom. Law and order? Why, we sent the Labour men to Parliament to defy nine-tenths of the Statute-book -and they obey every little sessional rule of the House of Commons. We sent them to begin a revolution in the theories and practice of English government -and they have become humdrum poli- ticians like their predecessors since the days of Simon Montford.

‘, England has been governed by politicians for five

hundred years, and a pretty mess they’ve made of their job. There are people who are sick to death of their

r everlasting muddle-headed blunderings in the business and women in of governing ; and there are men

England determined on getting a new kind of law and order which is a little nearer the eternal facts of justice than the procedure book of the House of Commons.

The Speaker and his fellow Tories and Liberals can tell us, with all the pomp of robes and maces and Adelphi trappings, that we are not playing the game. _ We quite agree ; we have no intention of playing their game, or obeying its rules a moment longer than suits

,’ our purpose. We never expected Whigs and Tories would agree with us. But-- We thought the men

.: of the Labour Party would. Instead, they stood by the Speaker ; and have received the congratulations and

sympathy of the Conservative and Liberal Press. It is a morbid business to write an epitaph, but the “Stan- dard ” has written words on the Labour Party,

which have the tone of the graveyard : ” the practical moderation consistently displayed by them is recognised j in every quarter of the House.” The Labour Party, in its official statement, “ dissociates itself entirely from the tame attempt on the part of Mr. Grayson to make a scene in the House,” and has received the sympathy and congratulations. of the “ Standard.“. I note that ’ the “ Times ” also dissociates itself from Mr. Grayson.

What is the exact point at issue between us and this weird political alliance of the Speaker, the Liberals, and Tories, the “Times,” and the Labour Party? We are not prepared to be moderate in face of the appalling nature of the social chaos and dire distress which are all around us. Our united opponents are prepared to . wait until the Government chooses to do something- ’ or nothing. Mr. Grayson said that he refused to wait another moment. The men and women who are starv- ing can decide which policy pleases them best. Now we are not going to hide ourselves, behind vague’ , phrases. We quite admit that the real problem is whether moderation or immoderation is the more paying

. policy. If we would reach our end more quickly by being moderate and obeying all the rules of the House, then we would. curl our tails and sit quietly like the other little mice. Surely the men of the Labour Party have learnt the ways of the political world by this time. The political battle is not an autumn manoeuvre ; it is a real fight. The victory goes to the men with the drawn sword. If Mr. Stuart had kept Mr. Churchill out of Dundee, the Old Age Pension limit would prob- ably have been sixty-five instead of seventy : if Mr. ’ Hartley had won Newcastle, there would have been an Unemployed Bill promised’ by this time : if the Labour Party had followed Mr. Grayson out of the House last week, the unemployed grant which Mr. Asquith. will promise them this week would be infinitely larger than they will now get, when they have sat quiet. What proof have we of these suppositions? Just the common . sense knowledge of political affairs which tells us that , we will get nothing vital which we do not seize by sheer force. Have the men of the Labour Party no imagination ? Do not they understand the thrill which would have run through the Socialist and Labour’ move- ment in this country when it heard that its leaders had been thrown out of the House of Commons because they dared to demand instant attention to the relief of poverty ? And, instead, the Labour men sat silent and-they have received the congratulations of the “ Standard.” Mr. Asquith will coo sweeter words to . them this week, and make the grant half as large as it would have been if they had stood by Mr. Grayson. Little the Government cares for their voting power in the House ; it would care very much if these thirty men were ranging the land as the preachers of political revolt. If the Labour men only had a glimmering knowledge of their power, they would not sit so tamely.

We do not say that the Labour Party has gone back on its faith. The majority of the members are sincere Socialists. ‘I am certain that if half of them had fol- lowed their wishes, they would be in open rebellion to- morrow. There is even something fine in their obedi- ence to discipline. We do not blame them for sitting together when Mr. Grayson defied the House of Masters ; we blame them for not all being thrown out- side together. Their discipline has bound them to a policy of patient resignation’ which is shattering their

influence in the country. They have given up rebellion and taken to, political intrigues ; and the Liberal and Tories are laughing in their sleeves. The Party which will get Socialism will be made of men who never sheathe their swords ; men who are out for big ad- ventures. That is what is the matter with the Labour Party ; it has settled down. to domestic life before it has conquered its enemies. Mr. Macdonald said in the “ Labour Leader ” last week : “ The Labour Party executive did not back down over Dundee. Stuart being the candidate of an affiliated society and on the Labour Party list, automatically secured a certain amount of recognition.” Mr. MacDonald surely does not think that Socialism will be won by automatons. We assure him that it will need a bigger adventure than that.

G. R. S. Taylor

The Church Congress, Socialism, and other Matters.

By Conrad Noel.

SOME people seem to have thought that church audiences largely drawn from Lancashire, where the industrial problem is acute and the unemployed are not tame, would necessarily be Socialistic. They forget that Lancashire if not so vigorously protestant as for- merly, is by no means democratic catholic. The moderates are for the most part in possession. The while-on-the-one-hand-yet-on-the-other type of speaker scored heavily, and the people, puzzled ‘by the Bishop of London’s five-point demand for “ justice, equality of opportunity, the supremacy of righteousness; the reality of religion, and the brotherhood of the church,” breathed freely again when he explained that he meant justice for employer and employed. He believed there was an election lately in Manchester, but as a Church Congress they did not want to know who got in. The Church knew no party. It was tied to no political

‘party at all , l it was concerned with measures, not with men. (Applause.) Nor had they come to Manchester to advocate any particular nostrum of social reform. They had come to preach in Manchester five ideas which had already changed the face of the world.

“ With measures, not with men “-a welcome re- versal of the platitude “ Men not measures ” ; but this was only the while-on-the-one-hand. Swiftly followed the yet-on-the-other. We did not advocate any par- ticular measures, because every particular measure was a nostrum or a panacea. Translation : we sympathise with the unemployed and the sweater’s victim, but we who advocate measures have no measures to advocate. We will return to our wallowing in the sympathetic mire. We will collect. We will give alms. We have no remedy. Remedies are nostrums. Preach abstract principles : justice, brotherhood, but spell them with capitals, and never translate them into political or ‘economic action, never incarnate them ; they lose by definition, by material limitation, by the necessary al- liance with parties pledged to see them through-just as much, we might imagine our bishops to add-if they were a little more intellectually candid-just as much as God lost by His terrible blunder of self-limitation, of materialisation, when He became incarnate in gross flesh. How material, how degrading, objected the old docetic heretics ; how degrading, how material, echo our right reverend Fathers in God, and our religious newspapers.

Because that is what it all comes to. This superfine spiritualism which will not soil itself with party, or bring itself within material compass, is in reality the unorthodoxy which denies the Incarnation, terrified lest the spiritual should be lost by alliance with the material.

In the Church at large, as in the Manchester gather- ings, we are always hearing that Our Lord laid down general principles. Therefore Socialism, which is not only a general principle, but a particular application, is un-Christian. But they do not mean general prin- ciples. Principles are ideas to be applied. What they do mean is that Our Lord laid down general platitudes. Then they hold the heresy of imitation. Imitation they do not consider the insincerest snobbery, but the sin- cerest flattery. Imitators never really imitate. They pick out what pleases their shallow natures,. copying certain tricks and gestures, missing the spirit of the hero they think they follow. The Imitation of Christ !

Children, who generally understand, and whose is the kingdom, are naturally scornful of imitators. They call them “ copy-cats. ” These modern Christians miss the significance of the dogma, “ I believe in the Holy

Ghost. ” To be filled exultingly full with the life of the Spirit which came to its fullness in their Hero, to band together into a vital society, to apply from age to age the eternal principles laid down under the driving-force of that human-divine spirit-of this they know little.

he Christ did not lay down general principles in order that his Church should not apply them but go on par- roting them for ever. If he ‘had laid down such general

platitudes, he would oftener have had somewhere to lay down his head, and would not have had to lay down his life. For preachers of the domestic virtues die com- fortably in their beds ; for them there is no risk what- soever of violent death, nor of a resurrection on the third day.

The modern bishop is often democratic, alert, hard- working, keenly anxious to do the right thing, pos-

sessed of colossal energy, a splendid organiser, but he lacks dogma, is intellectually nonconstructive, has no unifying principles that can be tested by application. He wishes to be perfectly sincere, and is in the literal sense of the word, perfectly unprincipled.

This was apparent, I think, in the Bishop of Man- chester’s clever presidential address, and again ap- parent in the Archbishop of Melbourne’s sympathetic speech on Socialism. He laughed at the British fears about the Socialist terror. He told us what he liked in the Socialistic legislation of the colonies, and what he disliked. He did not tell us why he liked or disliked it. Mr. A. T. Carlyle had an easy task at the subse- quent Memorial Hall meeting of the Church Socialist League in courteously admonishing him. It was de- licious to see Mr. Carlyle playing with the right rever- end father and the editor of the “Spectator,” tossing them up in the air, pretending to let them go, and finally swallowing them.

But the Socialists had their innings after all. The Congress officials had appointed Mr. Percy Dearmer, and Mr. Summer-bell, M.P., and we had an admirably proportioned paper on Socialism from the former speaker, which, I hope, may shortly be published in full in THE NEW AGE.

Mr. St. Loe Strachey, of the “ Spectator,” defended individualism and the Manchester school. Socialism would mean tyranny ; whereas his system, when at its height, meant liberty of choice. People must, he urged, be free to choose their employment, as free, we presume, as were the infant-slaves conveyed by barge loads to be murdered in the factory hells of Lancashire when his precious system was at its height, and when his Manchesterian heroes were moving heaven and earth to prevent Lord Shaftesbury-“ Socialist ” and “ snivelling sentimentalist ” as they called him-from passing his factory acts. Socialism has not been tried. Stracheyism has ; and it turned fair England into filthy England, and fleeced the workers and filled the share- holders with good things.

For all this, Mr. Strachey uttered unconsciously a useful warning. “ I am not afraid of Socialism. What I am afraid of is the nation, tempted by time- serving and irresponsible statesmen, plunging into social experiments which will lead not to progress but to decadence, experiments which will postpone the day when we shall obtain a better distribution of wealth.”

For the rest, we discussed rubrics, secularism, liturgies, and the Poor Law, and fought over the limits of biblical criticism. Loisy is to be admired, when safely over the Channel, admired and championed against the intolerant and persecuting Vatican. Loisy in the shape of our Anglican Professor Burkitt, this side of the Channel, is to be howled at and anathema- tised, not, indeed, by the officials of the Congress, but by a large section of Manchester churchmen. But then, as I said before, this is protestant and moderate Lancashire. God save us from the tyranny of moderate men !

SOUTH PLACE INSTITUTE, FINSBURY, E.C.

(close to Moorgate St., Liverpool St., Broad St., and Tube Stations)

A COURSE OF FOUR LECTURES

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND WILL BE DELIVERED BY

JOSEPH MCCABE, On Tuesday Evenings at 8 p.m., commencing

October 20th. Particulars may be obtained from the Hon. Sec., South Place ,

Institute, South Place, E.C.

A Cry for Macedonia. By R. A. Scott James.

ALL the journalists in all the capitals of Europe have been busily engaged during the last few weeks in carving out the future of the Turkish Empire. We in England, as I implied in my article last week, have been so magnifying the “ crime ” of Bulgaria, that we have made it almost a matter of honour to our new friends at Constantinople to show the same hostility to the little principality, now a kingdom, that we our-

selves have evinced. It is the most. remarkable in-

stance of volte-face on the part of the leaders of English opinion that I am able to recall. But it must be con- fessed the situation is a complicated one for Liberal politicians obsessed by the fixed idea. The enthusiasm

which has made them welcome the success of the Turkish revolution has made them hostile to the legiti- mate: aspirations of others. They have not paused to consider how apparently conflicting ideals may be reconciled ; they have thrust out of their minds the wickedly ungenerous thought that, possibly, a Liberal- ised Turked might not be a perfect Turkey. They have

thrown over, with a callousness only equalled by the diplomacy of Beaconsfield, the Servian population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, leaving the finest and best-

governed race in the whole of Europe, Montenegro, to be almost surrounded by the hated dominion of Austria. They have given not one thought to the Christian races of Macedonia, except to assert, without a scrap of evidence, that they have now been relieved of violence and disorder, and must be entrusted, without condition or observation, to the new and untried government of Turkey.

It is, indeed, a shuddersome thought to recall that this is the attitude adopted by the whole Liberal and progressive Press of this country. One turns almost with relief to the statement of that refined Whig, who is usually looked upon as a reactionary, Lord Fitz- maurice ; he has at least officially declared that the ties which for thirty years have bound to us the small races of the Balkans will not be forgotten by the Govern- ment. I do not see how we can be content to see the hope of freedom diminished, whether in Bosnia, in Bulgaria, or in Macedonia itself.

Now in this matter of Macedonia, it is important to remember that we can do no more than express pious aspirations. I doubt if the final settlement of this question can ultimately lie in the hands of the Powers of Europe. We cannot reasonably be angry if Bul- garia still remembers the Treaty of San Stefano by which the bulk of Macedonia was made a part of Bulgaria, a treaty which Great Britain insisted on tear- ing up ; we cannot reasonably be angry with her if she feels the deep call of kinship with the Christian Bulgars who inhabit that part of Turkey.

Nor can we tell what attitude towards the Turkish regime will be adopted in the future by the mixed population of Macedonia, which contains Serbs, Greeks, Vlacks, Albanians, Jews and Turks, as well as the pre- ponderant Bulgar element. The Powers of Europe may draw the articles of their fate in an international con- ference, ‘but they cannot usurp the functions of the law of evolution.

But I agree that everything must be done to stop Bulgaria from plunging into war with a view to adding to her territory, not because she has not a tolerable claim to part of Macedonia, but because such action would be certain to restore the reactionary party in Constantinople and bring back the old miseries and discord to the Christian provinces. We cannot forge. that it was in Macedonia that the young Turkish move- ment started ; that the leaders of that movement have shown their anxiety to co-operate alike with Bulgars and with Greeks, and to give them full citizenship and equality under the law. It is time that we should cease to speak of the Turks in language which implies that

they are the natural enemies of the human race. They are a refined, courteous, and not unintellectual people. What we call apathy’ in them they would call dislike of restlessness. To their dignity and noble pride they have shown that they can also add the virtues of patriotism and self-restraint, and the best elements in the race have been brought to the surface in the recent revolution. The reformed Turkish administration is on its trial, and so far it has stood the test well. It merits the opportunity of cleaning out its own Augean stables, of reforming itself from within.

But when this has been fully recognised, it remains to make certain reservations. The Young Turks repre- sent a ruling caste spread over a vast empire containing innumerable and diverse races. What have the Syrian peasants in common with the Arabs? What have the Kurds in common with the Armenians? What have the Bulgars in common with the Albanians? What have each and all of these in common with the Turkish ruling caste, and what share have they had in the revolution ? One cannot but realise that there are innumerable unknown elements which will contribute to the destiny of this new constitutional government. Let us suppose that the new parliament which is to meet in November is really representative of the vast hordes constituting the Ottoman Empire ; let us suppose that it overcomes difficulties of language and race and works smoothly and harmoniously according to the approved models of British party politics. This at any rate we know for certain, that in this empire where from time immemorial religion has been politics and politics religion, there will be marked lines of political cleavage corresponding to the lines of religious cleavage. Let- it be remembered that I am assuming the best that is possible. I am assuming that order is restored, and that government becomes parliamentary and constitu- tional in the sense in which we understand these words. The inevitable fact presents itself that there will be a large Moslem, majority, drawn mainly from Asia, dominating a Christian minority living mainly in Mace- donia and Armenia.

Now, it is with this fact in view that I think the English friends of Turkey ought to be reminded of our ancient responsibilities for the Macedonian Christians, whom we restored to Turkey by the Treaty of Berlin. If we are going to support Turkish supremacy in Macedonia, it ought not to be uncon- ditionally ; and I think that one of the necessary con- ditions is that Turkey should grant a separate Parlia- ment to the provinces of Kossova, Monastir, and Salonica, and an effective system of local government. It is to be remembered that if we disclaim now our rights to interfere in that country, we establish a new precedent. We shall be sacrificing Macedonia to an hypothesis, the hypothesis of Turkish reform proving real ; and secondly, the hypothesis of a Moslem majority proving tolerant to a Christian minority. On the one. hand, we do not want Turkey to be saddled with a discontented Ireland, affording fresh opportunity for trouble ; on the other hand, I cannot think how we can face the possibility of Macedonia turning round on us in the future and saying : “ You were so intent on your theory of the reform of Turkey, you contemplated’ with such delight the regeneration of the prodigal son, that you forgot us and abandoned us ; in the sensuous ecstasy of applauding your Turkish Utopia, you did not include us in your generosity ; it is you who are responsible for perpetuating out barbarism and our miseries. ” That is a possible reproach in the future upon which the friends of Macedonia may have to congratulate themselves. But that reproach will be averted, without depriving Turkey of territory, if an effective local government for Macedonia is demanded as a condition of British support.

THE FABIAN EDUCATION GROUP is giving a COURSE OF LECTURES on NATIONAL EDUCATION this Session, at CLIFFORD’S INN HALL, STRAND, W.C, The first of the Series will be delivered on Wednesday, Oct. 28, by

Professor SADLER, LL.D , M.A., on The Aim of Education in the Present Conditions in England.‘,

At 8 p.m. Mr. R. BRAY, L.C.C., will take the chair. Admission Free. visitors cordially invited.

Fabianism and the Drama. An Address delivered at Pen-yr-allt, 8th Sept., 1908.

By William Archer. IV.

I SUGGEST, then, that, in a healthier age, better edu- cated people, not afflicted with either too much or too little leisure, will be able so to arrange matters that the livableness of life shall not depend for each individual on the satisfaction of constant and often unnatural and exorbitant claims upon the affections of some other individual. I believe that men and women will be apt to mate more wisely in the first instance, and, should they make a mistake, will not, as at present, hold themselves bound in honour to elaborate it into a tragedy. I believe that as the instinct of property in general is moderated, so the instinct of property in affections and emotions will lose some, at any rate, of its present ferocity. I believe that when men and women take as much trouble to keep themselves happy as they now do to make themselves and each other miserable, their efforts will be crowned with a quite amazing success. I believe that romantic exaggeration of sentimental sufferings will, in a wiser age, be left to the very young, who would not be happy without it. I believe, in a word, that the people of that age will make much less internal, as well as external, fuss over what may be comprehensively called affairs of the heart ; and, as we have seen, the diminution of fuss means the atrophy of drama.

A perfectly healthy community, no doubt, is an un- attainable ideal. Probably there will always be a residue, an irreducible minimum, of sex miseries, per- haps even of what the French call “crimes passionels.” But I think the instinct of a wiser age will not be to re- produce and study such cases in the medium of art, but rather to hide them away as we hide incurable and dis- tressing diseases, subjecting them only to the clinical study of specialists. The very fact that they have shrunk to an irreducible minimum will remove all reason or excuse for their artistic treatment. At present they are very far from having reached a mini- mum, and they are complicated and rendered inveterate, as we have seen, by all sorts of stupidities and iniqui- ties of external law and custom. These things can and must be corrected, and drama is, or ought to be, a

‘potent means to that end. We believe, too, rightly or wrongly, in the Aristotelian doctrine of a katharsis or purging of peccant emotions through artistic repre- sentation. But when this katharsis has become as perfect as we can reasonably hope to make it-when, as I say, only an irreducible minimum of disease lurks in the body politic-it would be anti-social folly to drag it to light. Rather let such warped natures be dealt with in private, by the professional class which Samuel Butler, in “ Erewhon,” calls the “ straighteners.”

William Morris, in his “News from Nowhere,” gives an example of the love-tragedies which he conceives as still occurring even in the age of justice and common-’ sense ; but if you read it, I think you will see that the idea of staging such an incident would seem, to the men of that age, a monstrous absurdity.

“But,” you may ask, “though the dramatic conflicts of to-day may be eliminated from the new life, will not that life have other conflicts of its own, which we cannot yet foresee in any detail? ” It will have its conflicts, no doubt, but not, I think, such as are suited for artistic treatment in the theatre. In the transition to the new life, as I have already hinted, the drama- tist will probably find splendid opportunities ; and that transition may last for centuries, if not for mil- lenniums. For example, one can foresee that the at-

tempt to apply to life the principles of eugenic science

will be fruitful of dramatic complications. Several plays treating of such complications already exist-such plays are Brieux’s “ L’Evasion, ” and “ Les Rem- . plaçantes. ” But, though the struggle for health may beget many dramas, health, once attained, will be ’ barren of dramatic material. The psychologic art of the future will gradually merge in science ; politics will consist in an exercise of reason, not an appeal to superstition, or passion, or greed. The theatre of those days will be a place for exquisite spectacle, beautiful music, beautiful dancing, perhaps for some sort of sym- bolic-philosophic-poetic drama which we cannot foresee, and the idea of which, to my unregenerate nature, is, I confess, not very appetizing. Also, as I have said, I conceive that people will long continue to take pleasure in certain masterpieces of the drama of the past, and, perhaps, of the intervening future. But the form of intellectual interest which at present takes men to the serious theatre, will take them, in the Fabian- ized world, rather to the lecture theatre and the de- bating-hall. In fact, we are at the present moment, as the poet sings, “ Anticipating the slow mind of God,” and supplying a prophetic example of the drama of the future, with, I am sorry to say, a very inferior pro- tagonist.

And now one last word. Some of you may, perhaps, wonder whether you have not been all this time the victims of a heavy joke, a laboured irony. You may suspect me of having set forth to prove the impossibility, not of drama, but of Fabianism. Am I to plead guilty? To be quite frank with you-I do not know. Coming away from the feasts of pure reason which are offered us in this lecture-room, I feel my soul exalted and my courage screwed up to concert pitch. I feel that the kingdom of righteousness is at hand, and that drama begotten of injustice and nourished by disease has but a few short centuries to live. But when, from the , clear heights of Pen-yr-allt, I descend into the valleys and the mists, another mood comes over me. I think of the mountains of cupidity and stupidity, of super- stition and prejudice and inertia, which you have, not merely to scale -that were nothing to your strenuous spirits-but actually to uproot and dislodge ; and I feel that, in the contest between drama and Fabianism, ’ one may safely put one’s money on drama. I feel that the conditions which beget and foster it are likely to endure “ till the sun grows old, and the stars grow cold, and the leaves of the judgment book unfold ” ; or, in more scientific language, till the ice-caps creep down- ward over the hemispheres, and put drama to sleep along with life. Then, and not till then, I sometimes think, will the fuss and worry which mirrors itself in drama, cease from off the planet. But one reflection I may urge upon you without scepticism and without irony-namely, that drama is its own worst enemy, and is constantly striving to cut its own throat. If ever the Fabian ideal of justice and health is realised, it will be largely through the agency of drama. Mr. Wallas pointed out to you last week how the criticism of life involved in fine psychologic art was gradually permeating society ; and the same may be said of moral and economical, as well as of specifically psychological, criticism. I have spoken of the Aristotelian katharsis ; but I think if Aristotle had lived in modern times, he would have borrowed another image from medicine. He would have seen in drama a great prophylactic against various forms of moral and emotional disease- an attenuation of their virus, which, injected into the body politic, serves, if not to stamp out the evil, at any rate to moderate its malignity. are anti-vaccinationists ;

Some of you, perhaps, but I ask you to accept my

metaphor in the spirit in which it is offered, without cavilling at details. I ask you to believe that the drama is, or at any rate may be and ought to be, one of the most potent instruments for furthering the tran- sition from the insensate individualism of the present to the rational collectivism of the future. I ask you to realise that the ennoblement of the theatre would do more than any other single agency towards ennobling the mind of England and of the English-speaking world. And what else, I ask, is the aim of Fabianism?

THE END,

Why Not ? By W. L. George

(Author of “ France in the 20th Century “).

. . . At that moment a shadow fell across the paper. I paused at the words “practical economics,” which necessarily recur rather often in my great work on “ Profits and Profit-making.” I found my outlook on the Clapham Road blocked up by the corpulent form of my friend John William Morris Fourier Smith. The

, visits of J.W.M.F.S. are, in a sense, a visitation, for his arsenal of argument is inexhaustible, his flow of invective amazing, and his ability in the defence of obvious logical fallacies somewhat disconcerting to a purely individualistic economist. “ Plutus my. boy,” re- marked J.W.M.F.S., in his usual stentorian tones, “ I have made a great discovery.” I must say that my friend is the donor of this unpleasant nickname ; it is really somewhat annoying when bawled at one from over the nasturtiums in one’s front garden. However, these Socialists are not entirely normal, so I said no- thing, but assumed an interrogative expression. " Plutus,” went on my visitor, “ I have solved the question of the unemployed ! ” Now that sort of thing is really aggravating ; the merest B.Sc. Econ. (Lond.) knowsquite well that the work fund is such . . . but I need not enter into that.

“ Indeed, Smith, old chap, I am glad to hear it,” I remarked, “ do you intend to take the Board of Trade or the Local Government Board in the Red Cabinet? ”

“ There will be no Cabinets one day,” promised my Socialist friend, “ no vehicles of parliamentary, oppres- sive or coercive dictatures. But, meanwhile, let me tell you that today the question of unemployment vanishes ! ”

“ I have already told you that I am glad to hear it,” I said, “ especially for your sake,” I added, in a gently sarcastic vein. “ I don’t want to discourage you, but remember that during the War there were always ten commanders-in-chief in every railway carriage. ”

“ More often fourteen on the Clapham and Hornsey,” remarked J.W.M.F.S. gloomily, “ I never entered those lists, but now I am in my element. Look here, Pluty, answer me this : Do you believe that human labour has a value? ”

I detest committing myself to anything with this man as a rule, for he has an unfortunate way of building up all sorts of silly syllogisms upon my admissions, but this I could hardly deny. “ Then,” said the Socialist, “ it would always be worth while to hire a man for a minimum of pay and to extract from him a maximum of work? ”

“ Well, yes,” I said “ that would be quite in ac- cordance with the principles of the British constitution, but, my dear fellow, humanity . . . “Away with humanity, ” roared J.W.M.F.S., “ what is humanity but a pretext for inhumanity? You grant my point, I see, and I’m glad to hear you say so, for it’s out of the arid desert of your capitalistic intellect that the flowers of double work at half rates shall sprout ! Will you, yes or no, I ask, allow a man to bind himself to serve you for a year in exchange for a living wage, the rate of which is to be fixed by yourself ? ”

“ I think I could do with one,” I said, “ but . . .” “ Then, Plutus, you are undone : if for one year, why

not for two, for three, for ten, for life? Oh ! exquisite prospect and how all the horrors that democracy has piled on horror’s head melt away before the rising sun of reform ! Don’t you see, Plutus, how we can recon- cile the warring elements of capital and labour? Ex- tend property, I say, not to light and air, and such. like non-syndicatable commodities; extend it to a life contract in men, aye in women and in children, too ; in fact put a value on human beings, make them worth having and worth while : then there will be no more

dyings and starvings, and sweatings and prostitutings ; there will be nothing but an aristocracy of labour, fed, nourished and cared for by an aristocracy of capital of which you, Plutus, will be one ! ”

I jumped to my feet. Truly this was preposterous. The economist flew out of me and the warrior entered

into my soul. Socialism !

“‘So this,” cried I, “ is the end of your This outrageous proposal that should make

our economists, our politicians, our statisticians, the Salt of our civilisation, turn in their consecrated graves! Slavery then is what you propose ! Can it have come to this, that Americans should have fought and bled- British cruisers risked damage at the hands of ferocious slave traders -all to endow the negro with that liberty that you now propose to withdraw from your country- men? ”

J. W. M. F. Smith began to laugh. “ That tickles you, does it,” he remarked! “ Yet I had avoided the word, for I know from some little experience that nothing matters, much as a rule if only you give it a name which doesn’t suit it. Slavery, then, if you will have it so, is going to regenerate the earth. It is not too little but too much liberty that we’ve got nowadays. Why, look at the liberties the people enjoy. They can work ten hours in a mine or twelve in a workshop ; they can make matches and get phossy-jaw ; if that doesn’t suit them they can become shunters and get about a one in three chance of shunting no more after a year’s work. And the children ! liberty they get :

Look at the disgraceful

somebody the right to deliver newspapers before

else’s breakfast time ; the right to be mes- senger boys So long as the Government wants them without having to do any nasty apprentice jobs ! And if they’re girls it’s still worse. They can be cook and butler and parlourmaid and tweenie combined when they’re fourteen ; they can make paper flowers for fifteen hours a day if they like ; and look at the liberty they get to adopt a yet more lucrative profession patron- ised by the most respectable classes in the community ! Now, if you’ll listen to me, we’ll change all that. If you allow a man . . . well, don’t let us say just now to sell himself into slavery, but to accept an in- determinate sentence of labour, what happens? Why, my dear fellow, he becomes valuable ! He does not become valuable because you want him to work, but because you might. If you had a good horse in your stable, you wouldn’t shoot him because you didn’t quite see what you could do with him that day, would you? No, you’d feed him as usual, and keep his coat nice and wait until something turned up for him to do.”

At this point my head began to revolve. For some ex- traordinary reason there always seems to be something in Smith’s vituperative performances. Fortunately, I am a Briton and never know when I’m beaten. “ The simile is good,” I said, amiably, “ but I refer you to Francis Bacon, who will tell you that a simile is not an argument. ”

J.W.M.F. Smith glared at me as is usual in Social- ists when they are confronted with a man who knows his humanities, and planting his foot firmly on the remains of a Shirley poppy, said : “ Plutus, you are an ass. You float between the Charybdis of post hoc ergo propter hoc and the Scylla of petitio principe. shall squirm no more.

But you Understand me if you can : do

you not see what will follow when my little Reform Bill has gone through ? Slavery will mean leisure ! Slavery will mean good housing, good food, good clothing ! Slavery will mean personal interest in the labourer, at- tention when he is ill and an adequate funeral when he has reluctantly forsaken a disenfranchised world. Why, if you belong to me, do you think I’m going to let you . ruin your precious constitution by overwork? No, no, I’ll see to it that your hours are short. If I can go into the market as I can now and get for the asking another Plutus when I’ve worn this one out, I’ll do it, but if I have to pay a round sum cash down I’ll find that it pays me to keep him in good condition. When you are my slave, you’re property . . . you become holy and I become a vested interest which is much the same thing : therefore by losing your equality you will gain it. Why do my rabbits have a clean hutch? Because they’re property : be my property and you shall have housing almost equal to that of a pig on a model farm. Don’t you see, Plutus, that I’m offering you more than humanity has ever got for itself? be moral.

Moreover, you shall

hygiene ; I suppose you know that morality is really

be sure then I’m not going to allow you to fritter away your precious health by loafing at the bar of a public house, to waste your valuable energies in

shouting “They're off. ” or in any other channels where no advantage will accrue to you and therefore to

me. Slavery, Plutus, means that you can marry your eugenic ideal, and of course I shall be there to stop all family troubles which might interfere with your pro- ductive capacity. You will be a slave, but you shall only be driven for your good. The old methods are ‘knocked on the head : we know it doesn’t pay to trice men up to triangles, and that brutality is bad policy ; you will not be an Uncle Tom : you will bask in the sun- shine of my favour, because I, as your master, will realise that your good is my good. And, if you have in your mind a single logical argument which you can adduce as an objection, let’s have it. , Slavery for me ! Slavery and solidarity ! Why not? ”

While I was still looking for a reply, John William Morris Fourier Smith smashed his brown deerstalker over his brow and strode down the garden path. And the discussion ended by my dumbly gazing at a mouth emerging from an ample beard, thrust through my railings and triumphantly bellowing once more : Why not ?

THE BLUE LADY. We met, and round our clasping hands Love wreathed his rose and lily bands For us to cherish or let perish.

We let the gifted moment pass. They have not changed this room-the glass, The polished floor, the painted door.

Where you came, wearing my cockade : My heart, beneath the silk brocade, Shook the blossom upon my bosom . . .

BEATRICE TINA.

Books and Persons. (AN OCCASIONAL CAUSERIE.)

I HAVE been reading a new novel by Mr. W. W. Jacobs -“ Salthaven ” (Methuen. 6s.). It is a long time since I read a book of his. Ministries have fallen since then, and probably Mr. Jacobs’ prices have risen-in- deed, much has happened-but the talent of the author of “ Many Cargoes ” remains steadfast where it did. “ Salthaven ” is a funny book. Captain Trimblett, to excuse the lateness of a friend for tea, says to the land- lady : “ He saw a man nearly run over ! ” and the landlady replies : “ Yes, but how long would that take him? ” If you ask me whether I consider this humorous, I reply that I do. I also consider humorous this conversational description of an exemplary boy who took to “ Sandford and Merton ” “ as a duck takes to water ” : “ By modelling his life on its teach- ing ” (says young Vyner) “ he won a silver medal for never missing an attendance at school. Even the measles failed to stop him. Day by day, a little more flushed than usual, perhaps, he sat in his place until the whole school was down with it, and had to be closed in consequence. Then and not till then did he feel that he had saved the situation.” I care nothing for the outrageous probability of any youthful son of a shipowner being able to talk in the brilliant fashion in which Mr. Jacobs make Vyner talk. Success excuses it. “ Salthaven ” is bathed in humour.

* * *

At the same time I am dissatisfied with “ Salthaven.” And I do not find it easy to explain why. I suppose the real reason is that it discloses no signs of any develop-

ment whatever on the part of the author. Worse, it discloses no signs of intellectual curiosity on the part of the author. Mr. Jacobs seems to live apart from the movement of his age. Nothing, except the par- ticular type of humanity and environment in which he specialises, seems to interest him. There is no hint of a general idea in his work. By some of his fellow- artists he is immensely admired. I have heard him called, seriously, the greatest humourist since Aristo-

phanes. I admire him myself, and I will not swear

that he is not the greatest humourist since Aristo- phanes. But I will swear that no genuine humourist ever resembled Aristophanes less than Mr. Jacobs does. Aristophanes was passionately interested in everything. He would leave nothing alone. Whereas Mr. Jacobs will leave nearly everything alone. Kipling’s general ideas are excessively crude, but one does feel in reading him that his curiosity is boundless, even though his taste in literature must infallibly be bad. “ Q.“. is not to be compared in creative power with either of these two men, but one does feel in reading him that he is interested in other manifestations of his own art, that he cares for literature. Impossible to gather from Mr. Jacobs’ work that he cares for anything serious at all ; impossible to differentiate his intellectual outlook from that of an average reader of the “ Strand Magazine ” ! I do not bring this as a reproach against Mr. Jacobs, whose personality it would be difficult not to esteem and to like. He cannot alter himself. I merely record the phenomenon as worthy of notice.

Mr. Jacobs is not alone. Among our very successful novelists, there are many like him in what I will roundly term intellectual sluggishness, though there is, perhaps, none with quite his talent. Have these men entered into a secret-compact not to touch a problem even with a pair of tongs? Or are they afraid of being confused with Hall Caine, Mrs. Humphry Ward and Miss Marie Corelli, who anyhow have the merit of being interested in the wide aspects of their age--or their art? I do not know. But I think we might expect a little more general activity from some of our, authors who lie tranquil, steeped in success as lizards in sunshine. I speak delicately, for I am on delicate ground. I do, however, speak as a creative artist, and not as a critic. Occasionally my correspondents upbraid me for not writing like a critic. I have never pretended, in this column, to look at things from any other standpoint than that of a creative artist.

* 3c +

It is a long time, too, since I read a new book by Mr. Kenneth Grahame, but the fault is his rather than mine. I suppose that I was not the only reader who opened “ The Wind in the Willows ” (Methuens. 6s.) with an unusual and apprehensive curiosity. Would it disappoint? For really, you know, to live up to “The

Golden Age ” and “ Pagan Papers ” could not be an easy task-and after so many years of silence ! It is ten years, if I mistake not, since Mr. Kenneth Grahame put his name to anything more important than the official correspondence of the Bank of England. Well, “ The Wind in the Willows ” does not disappoint. Here, indeed, we have the work of a man who is

obviously interested in letters and in life, the work of a fastidious and yet a very robust artist. But the book is fairly certain to be misunderstanded of the people. The publishers’ own announcement describes it as “ perhaps chiefly for youth,” a description with which I ‘disagree. The obtuse are capable of seeing in it nothing save a bread-and-butter imitation of “ The Jungle Book. ” The woodland and sedgy lore in it is discreet and attractive. Names of animals abound in it. But it is nevertheless a book of humanity. The author may call his chief characters the Rat, the Mole, the Toad-they are human beings, and they are meant to be nothing but human beings. Were it otherwise, the spectacle of a toad going through the motor-car craft would be merely incomprehensible and exasperat- ing. The superficial scheme of the story is so childishly naive, or so daringly naive, that only a genius could have preserved it from the ridiculous. The book is an urbane exercise in irony at the expense of the English character and of mankind. It is entirely successful. Whatever may happen to it in the esteem of mandarins and professors, it will, beyond doubt, be considered by, authentic experts as a work highly distinguished, original and amusing-and no more to be comprehended by youth than “ The Golden Age ” was to be compre- hended by youth.

JACOB TONSON.

BOOK OF THE WEEK. The Prophet’s Last Curse.* IF the Germans have been living in the hope that they have got rid of their great enemy, Nietzsche, they have been bitterly undeceived. There was, indeed, no lack of careful attempts on their part to do so : first of all they silenced him, then they gave it out that his works were eccentric and pathological, composed during the period of madness which overtook the overworked cham- pion of the New Europe ; then, later, as he acquired a European reputation, they tried to explain him away, to understand him, to popularise him, and thereby dilute his wine with copious swills of water ; and, finally, they have had the courage to treat him as a great German, as a real German thinker, worthy, to be placed by the side of Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel. “He was ours, ” cried every throat ; already they began to prepare for thundering hochs and hurrahs ; already orations were pouring from lager-beery throats ; already were heard in the distance the sounds of Bacchantes, chanting in honour of the Dionysian philo- sopher, while their Evoe Bacche, an embarrassed band- master, endeavoured with but ill success to quicken the measure. All in vain ! Nietzsche knew his Germans too well, and spoiled their joke at the very moment of the apotheosis that these unnatural German parents are so ready to bestow upon their departed sons. “ Ecce Homo,” the hitherto-unpublished autobiography of the philosopher, has just appeared, and the last curse of the prophet resounds from beyond the tomb through the length and breadth of Teutondom, where the first great Super-German was already beginning to be confused with other great Merely-Germans :-

I feel it a pleasure-I think it is even my duty-to tell the Germans what they have on their conscience. They have on their conscience all the great crimes against culture of the last four centuries! . . . . And always for the same reason ; through their inward fear of reality, which is also fear of truth ; through their unveracity, which has become almost instinctive with them ; through their “ Idealism.” . . . . The Germans have cheated Europe out of the har- vest, out of the sense, of the last great age, the age of the Renaissance, at the very moment when a higher order of values, noble, life-permitting values, guarantees of the future, had achieved a victory over the deteriorating values -even in the instincts of popes and cardinals ! Luther, this fatality of a monk, re-established the church ; and, what is a thousand times worse, Christianity also, Just at the moment when it lay vanquished. . . . Christianity, this denial of the Will to Live in the form of a religion. . . . Luther, an " impossible ” monk, who, through his very ‘( impossibility,” attacked the Church, and-conse- quently ! -re-established it. . . . Roman Catholics would have good reason to institute a saint’s day in honour of Luther, and to write miracle plays about him. . . . Luther -and " Moral Regeneration ” ! To the devil with all psy- chology ! The Germans are idealists beyond a doubt. The Germans have on two occasions been able to find back-stairs leading to the old ( Ideal,,’ and to reconcilia- tions between truth and the Ideal (or, in other words, formulae for the right to deny science, for a right to lie) just when, with great bravery and self-control, an honest, unequivocal, and perfectly scientific way of thinking had been arrived at. Leibnitz and Kant-the two greatest drags on the intellectual righteousness of Europe !-the Germans again cheated Europe out of the sense, out of the wonder of the sense in the existence of Napoleon, just as this force majeure of genius and will came in sight, like a bridge joining two decadence-centuries : a force majeure strong enough to have made Europe a unity, a political and economical unity ; strong enough to have created a mastery of the world instead of a balance of powers-they have everything that occurred as a result of this, and which exists to-day, on their conscience ; this anti-culture, illness, and unreason, this nationalism, this névrose nationale, from which Europe is suffering, this perpetuation of little European States, of small politics : they have cheated Europe out of her senses and brought her into a blind alley again. And who, except myself, knows the way out of this alley? . . . Who knows a big enough task to bind the -peoples together ?

And why, in the end, should I not put my suspicion into words? The Germans will in my case also do all in their

* (‘ Ecce Homo.‘, By Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Raoul Richter. Liepzig : Insel-Verlag, M. 20.

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In its Relations to Modern Civilisation, By IWAN BLOCH, M.D.

Translated from the 6th German Ed. by M. EDEN PAUL, M.D. A complete Encyclopaedia of the Sexual Sciences for all earnest men

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HYPNOTISM : or Suggestion and Psychotherapy. A Study of the Psychological, Psycho-Physiological, and Thera-

peutic Aspects of Hypnotism. By Dr. (Med.) AUGUST FOREL, Dr. Phil. (h.c.) et Jur. (h.c.) Chigny, Switzerland.

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power to make my destiny bring forth a Mouse. They have already sufficiently compromised themselves about me in the past: I fear they will do it as well in the future. Oh, how I long to be a bad prophet here! . . . .- My

natural readers and listeners are even now Russians, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen-am I always to be read by ‘foreigners. The Germans are written down in the his- tory of knowledge with imposing, ambiguous names.; they have never produced anything but “unconscious ” swindlers - (Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher, deserve the word as much as Kant or Leibnitz: they are all. mere Schleiermachers ). They shall never have the honour as reckoning as one of them the first righteous spirit in the history of spirits, the spirit in which truth triumphs over the counterfeit of four thousand years. The German mind is my bad air : I breathe with difficulty in the neighbourhood of this instinctive impurity in psychologicis, which is betrayed by every word, every look, of a German. They have never come through a seventeenth century of laborious self-criticism, as the French did-a La Roche- foucauld, a Descartes, is a hundred times superior in righteousness to the best Germans-the Germans have no psychologist up to the present. But capacity for psychology is almost the standard of the purity or impurity of a race . . . . and if one is not pure, how can one be deep? We can never gauge the depth of a German,, because, just like women, he has none : that is the explanation. And if a man has no depth he cannot even be called shallow. What in Germany is called deep is just this instinctive impurity against one’s self, about which I am now speaking : they will not see themselves as they are. May I not propose the word “ German ” as an international coin for this psycho- logical degeneracy ? At this moment, for example, the German Emperor calls it his “Christian duty ” to set free the slaves in Africa : we other Europeans would call this ‘German ” . . . . Have the Germans ever brought out a book distinguished for its depth? They have no notion of what deep means. I have known learned men who looked upon Kant as deep ; at the Prussian Court, I fear, Herr von Treitschke is thought to be deep. And when I occa-

sionally extol Stendhal as a deep psychologist, it has hap- pened to me that German university professors have made me spell out the name for them! . . . .

And why should I not go on to the end? I like to make things clear. It is part of my ambition to be looked upon as a despiser of the Germans par excellence. I expressed my distrust of the German character as far back as my twenty-sixth year. The Germans are impossible to me. When I think of a type of man that runs counter to my in- stincts, a German always appears. The first means I have of weighing a man is in knowing whether he perceives rank, grade, and order between men ; whether he distinguishes : in this way he is a gentilhomme; in every other case he belongs irretrievably to the open-minded, or, so good- natured! tribe of canaille. But the Germans are canaille. -oh, they are so goodnatured! One lowers one’s self by having dealings with Germans: the German fraternises at

once. . . . With the exception of my intercourse with some German artists, especially Richard Wagner, I have not spent a single happy hour with a German. . . . Granted that the deepest spirit of all the centuries appeared among Germans, any silly clown would imagine that his own un- beautiful soul was of equal importance. . . . I cannot bear this race, with which one is always in bad company, and which has not the power to perceive nuances, woe is me ! I ‘am a nuance which is awkward on its feet, and cannot even walk. . . . In truth, the Germans have no feet; they have only legs. . . , The Germans have no conception of how vulgar they are ; but that is the superlative of vulgarity. . . . they are not ashamed that they are merely Germans !

This is a characteristic example of what is con- tained in this wonderful book. The “ Ecce Homo ” gives out tones of such earnest passion that We must go back four thousand years, to the Old Testament, for words of like power and strength. We Englishmen may well remain dumb and motionless in this Day of

Schleiermacher = Veil-maker.

Judgment ! But let us listen to reason ; in England, too, there is no lack of elements to which we may apply the Nietzschean phrase, “ German and miserable ” : perhaps we only lack the Nietzsche who is capable of putting such elements in the pillory !

N.B.- I am greatly indebted to Dr. Oscar Levy,. owner of the English copyright of “Ecce Home,” for permission to translate the extract given above.

J. M. KENNEDY.

REVIEWS. Miscellanies. By Oscar Wilde. Reviews by. Oscar

Wilde. Being the concluding volumes of the complete works. Edited by Robert Ross. Methuen. 12s. 6d. net each.)

Of Oscar Wilde it appears to. be true‘ that his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he has written shall be republished. In these two handsome volumes, which close the completest edition our generation will see of the works of one of the rarest geniuses of any generation, have been collected with the meticulous care of the perfect connoisseur the scattered crumbs from the table of a lord of words. We do not com- plain that no selection has been made by the editor, since we are among those who demand in a complete edition the works, the whole works, and as far as pos- sible, nothing but the works.

Oscar Wilde was often, strictly sneaking, unpresent- able in his loose literary form. Some of the reviews here reprinted, from. the “Pall Mall Gazette,” for example, are thick with cliches and insincere plati- tudes. A good deal of his writing for the “Woman’s World ” is also banal to the last degree. We may even admit that the essay on “The Rise of Historical Criticism-,” here published in full for the first time, is scrupulously colourless. Neither by personality nor by perfection, Wilde’s two canons of art, does the essay rise beyond the lower slopes of the peak on which Wilde’s risen genius has its abode.

But these volumes contain little gems of reviewing as well as here and there passages of such beauty as no other English writer has surpassed. Nothing Wilde ever did in the light vein is’ superior, for in- stance, to his letters in defence of “Dorian Gray.” They will certainly be read as long as the story is remembered. Here also are Wilde’s first criticisms of Whistler, Morris, Crane, Burne-Jones, and all his brightest contemporaries. Here, too, are his American lectures, for Wilde, like Matthew Arnold, engaged the Philistines in their own stronghold.

On the whole, therefore, even for the eclectic, the seam of gold in these volumes is rich ; rich enough to repay handsomely the labour of extraction. As for the rest of us, possessed with the desire to know all there is to be known, we are indebted to Mr. Ross for the pleasure and responsibility of making our own choice. We can be trusted to disentangle the artist from the journalist.

William Morris, Craftsman-Socialist. By Hol- brook Jackson. Social Reformers Series 3. (Fifield. 6d. and 1S. net.)

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Socialist thinkers have often grossly under-estimated. The most penetrating chapter in the book is on “ Com- munism,” and Mr. Jackson makes an excellent dis- tinction between a man like Morris, “who was by nature a Socialist ” [Communist would be more ac- curate], and those who are only advocates of Social- ism. Morris, he says finely, “was. so much of a Socialist himself that he could have stepped out of the turmoil of the capitalist age into Utopia without the slightest inconvenience.” A book to buy.

John the Baptist. By Hermann Sudermann, translated by Beatrice Marshall. (John Lane. 5s. net.)

King Alfred’s Jewel. Victoria.” (John Lane.)

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We have here three plays of varying merit, and they all point to the need England has of some inspiring purpose, or of some vast imagination that will lead writers of limited vision out of their own narrow circle, and cast them under the spell of what Nietzsche called the tragic view of life. England has need of a new drama, of a new set of vivid dramatists, with new artistic aims and ideals ; a variegated and overflowing activity constantly in touch with the life and thought of its time, giving out nothing ignoble, or mean, or base : a re-birth of tragedy-for tragedy, perhaps, is a homeopathic medicine.

Of these three plays, “ John the Baptist ” furnishes precept, the other two, despair. “ The Tragedy of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary ” has the faults to which a while ago we drew attention in “ Mathilde. ”

a play called It apes the Elizabethan in a most

dreary fashion, and though it is more brightly written than “ Mathilde,” what is the use of all its barren over- flow of blank verse and catch-as-catch-can prose? One cannot imagine it holding any stage, and it is tiresome to read; and so, for want of some guiding principle, Mr. Arthur Dillon diligently in play after play wastes his own talent and his reader’s time. In the matter of blank verse, the author of “ King Alfred’s Jewel ” does not err as Mr. Dillon errs, The verse is good and straightforward, without any straining after Eliza- bethanism, and occasionally it is good poetry. But here, again, a fine theme has been overlooked because the author is completely out of touch with the thought of his time. With the petty story, revolving round Alfred, of an unnecessarily jealous wife, her attempt at murder, repentance, and reconciliation, we are not in the least concerned. Why bring Alfred in it at all, we ask? Surely not in order to give substance to a flimsy story. But what an opportunity there was here, if the author had only seized it, of creating the great- ness of Alfred, not as our author has done, mainly by description, but by placing him actually amid all his activities and the alarms of his time, and bringing out by contact with men themselves, and not by a show of their reverence, his good-humoured common Sense and humanity. In both these plays there are too many scenes, and the asides and soliloquies in “ King Alfred’s Jewel ” are weaknesses. There is also the question of the use of blank verse. Unless the verse, like the poetry of Mr. Yeats’s “Countess Cathleen,” has dis- tinction of its own, there seems to be no reason why blank verse should now be used at all in play-writing. We call to mind the noble prose of Ibsen’s “ Emperor and Galilean,” Shaw’s “ Julius Caesar,” Remy de Gour- mont’s “ Théodat,” the intensely poetic prose of d’Annunzio’s “ Sogno d’un Tramonto d’Autunno,” and of Maeterlinck’s plays, the fine writing of Gilbert Murray’s “ Andromache ” and, lastly, of this play of Sudermann, “ John the Baptist.” And it seems to us that ordinary blank verse has no further right to toler- ance.

Not one of the charges we have brought against the two foregoing plays can be levelled against Suder- mann’s “ John the Baptist,” Sudermann is midmost the current of European thought, and is an artist to boot of a quality we do not seem to encourage or to breed at all in England. This translation makes our dearth all the more keenly felt. In the whole story of the rise of the Christian faith, there is perhaps no

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more strange and noble figure than this John who went out into the wilderness to find and possess himself, filled with a prescience of One who was to come. Then the weak Herod, his friend, and the scheming Herodias with her sensual daughter, Salome, whose disprized love for John caused her, incited thereto by her mother’s hate, to have him murdered. In this play John stands out in all his honesty and nobility : scorner of hypocrisy, yet ready to learn even the hypocrite’s mite of human truth ; one sees him gradually overcome by the doc- trine of love and “ justice that is love with seeing eyes ” that comes like little gusts of faint perfume from the direction of Galilee. It takes the stone from his hand that should have been the signal of Herod’s stoning, and it loses him his disciples, who, irony of fate ! flock over to the new prophet, Jesus of Nazareth.-Salome dances-‘ ‘ she holds the charger with the Prophet’s head high in her arms, and dances,” but not before us. Then the curtains are drawn aside, and one sees the roofs covered with women waving palms, and from the streets below swells up an harmonious song, as One passes by who sees life with eyes that have reflected the stars and the light in the eyes of a child. Miss Mar- shall’s translation is exceptional : it is a good one. There are one or two passages where the English is stilted.

‘Will there be a renaissance of Tragedy? We had asked ourselves this question when the current number of “ Vers et Prose ” came to hand, in which Jean Moréas answers affirmatively, quoting Nietzsche, who has said : “ I promise a tragic age : tragedy, the highest art in the affirmation of life, will revive when humanity has behind it, without suffering, the con- sciousness of the most cruel but the most necessary wars. ” Perhaps.

DRAMA. The Understanding of Mr. Jerome. THIS last play of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome’s at the Ald- wych Theatre is not a play that will be particularly liked. It is not a play that I particularly like myself, but it is a play that counts. “Fannie and the Servant Problem ” is an effort to get subtleties translated into obvious realities-that is to say, it has the hall-mark of creative work ; but it is superficial.

There comes, indeed, a time when one delights in the superficial, when to skim over the surface of things is more pleasant than to look into their depths ; but for this one needs fantasy, trickery, whimsicality. There is all too little of these qualities in “Fannie and the Servant Problem.” Your true superficial fantasy, too, should sparkle here and there as we touch deep waters in our skimming ; there should even be a de- liberate artificiality of wit, as there is in some plays of Oscar Wilde. Mr. Jerome’s play is too heavy for its whimsicality and too slight for its seriousness. The serious things are revealed to us, not in witty speeches dropping upon the surface, but in bucketfuls of the butler’s mirage in which we are invited to study our reflection.

The main idea of this “quite possible ” play (Mr. Jerome’s description) is that of a man desirous of marrying a cafe-chantant actress from Paris, and play- ing upon her what her manager describes as “the Lord Burleigh joke.” The joke works to perfection, but Fannie, the cafe chantant artiste aforesaid, finds a disastrous background to the joke in that all my lord’s servants, including the butler her uncle, are her near, and very much less than dear, relations from whom she has run away to go on the stage. Hence the problem.

The generations of the Lords Bantock have been served by generations of the servants Bennett, ultra respectable, ultra pious,. ultra everything that Fannie the runaway has hated. And the price of their silence upon Fannie’s relationship is that she will submit to their training in the Bennett idea of how a Lady Ban- tock should behave.

The idea in itself is so delightfully funny, and repre- sents, in Mr. Jerome’s words, such “a quite possible ”

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situation, that one must regret the intrusion of the servant problem at all-covertly that is. What we get is a rather slow-footed farce, only made to rush along by Miss Fanny Ward’s delightful acting. This is perhaps more than enough excuse for the play. But brilliantly as Miss Ward acts, the accentuation of the farcical elements would have given her even better chances, and might have produced a more vivid result,

It is impossible to escape from this kind of half-way feeling about the play ; either the troupe of Bennett ser- vants ought to have been more obviously typical servants, and served as part of the machinery of farce, or they ought to have been more individualised and more whimsical. Nevertheless, the play matters, be- cause it deals with living people, and because it does not create new mind-stuff for the use of men.

It is not easy for one man to understand any other, and the understanding of the every-day things about one, and the individualising of the every-day things about one, is a high art. It is an art that finds com- petent expression in the drama. When we do express ourselves it is by conveying groups of ideas and associ- ated ideas to other people, by words, by painting, by sculpture, by drama, or how you please. But to escape from quite a few commonplace groups of ideas is quite difficult. If we wrote in Chinese we might find it easier to realise that words, spoken, articulated words, are not of such overwhelming final importance. If we could substitute for an idea-group some Chinese. like symbol we might find it easier to understand how Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Joynson Hicks, using the same words and talking about the same subject, are So perfectly certain to come to such very different con- clusions.

It is these idea-groups that matter. And the crea- tion of new idea-groups is what makes the drama matter and all literature matter. Mr. Jerome’s play is “ not over-stimulating ” (as Mr. Walkley is fond of quoting), but it does try to create new idea-groups, and hence it counts.

I suppose no artist ever sets to work in this cold- blooded way to create new idea-groups, or rather to dig them out of himself. It would be a very good thing if he would. If, that is, he would sit down at his desk at 9.15 a.m., and proceed to consider whether he had anything new or new-combined of sufficient value to need getting said. What does happen is that some casual sentence in conversation or in a book starts a train of ideas, calls around it a flock of associations, out of all which a suggestion for a new work may come. And the suggestion may be artistically com- pletely valueless or commercially very valuable, and there is nothing to help the artist but a few vague standards of criticism extremely difficult to apply. Yet those standards must be applied, if not by the dramatic author before production, then by the dramatic critic after production. And the dramatic critic can have nothing to do with those factors in the finished product which lead to commercial success or failure.

It is lamentable that this should be so-it would be so much better if the public’s likes and dislikes were serious tests of value. Then, for instance, it would not be necessary for critics to insist so vigorously on the existence of standards. Then, for instance, one could be sure the fate of Mr. Jerome’s play depended upon its weaknesses and not upon its strength. And then one might be able to get, by the appreciation and depre- ciation to which a play would be subjected by an in- telligent audience, some help in the understanding of Mr. Jerome.

Miss Fanny Ward’s acting is buoyant, charming, delightful ; the old butler (acted by Mr. Charles Cart- wright) is a fount of ever-flowing wisdom, but there is a sense about the play of something struggling to be conveyed and not conveyed to us, of notions trying to wing themselves with wit into realisations, and only fluttering. There is the sense that Mr. Jerome has not quite expressed himself.

There is a story about the famous physiologist, Ludwig, that when he once wished to do great honour to a visitor to his laboratories, he took off not only his

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hat, but his wig, to him. In bidding a respectful . farewell to the readers of THE NEW AGE, may I be -_ allowed to take off my critical armour to them and

confess that the literary reflections alone, on the under- standing of Jerome, must apply also to myself. And, And, as I wear no wig, I must take off in salute not only my hat. but my white tie to you.

L. HADEN GUEST.

Correspondence intended for publication should be addressed to the Editor and written on one side of the paper only,

SPECIAL NOTICE. -Correspondents are requested to be brief Many letters weekly are omitted on account of their length.

PEACE-WITH FORCE.

To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.”

You cannot make arbitration treaties with the Devil. There are too many good people in the Peace Movement who have not had occasion to find out how really hard the world is, even now; in how small a degree men and nations keep their pledged. words when there is no compelling force, either in public opinion, or in policemen, or in soldiers. Within the space of a week or so we have witnessed a respected and valued ally of ours tear into pieces a treaty to which the Emperor and nation were pledged. We also have done the same thing times without number; to avoid the stigma of hypocrisy it is as well to mention Egypt, which we now hold by a subterfuge, and the Transvaal, which we have twice annexed, in 1877 and in 1900, directly contrary to our pledged word, made legal by treaty at Sand River in 1854.

In fact, law, as we were told, requires a sanction to make it effective, and neither nations nor individuals care one penny for the alleged sacredness of property if, the property can be acquired without’ penalties accruing, or too great scandal arising therefrom. Some of us who have been through wars have witnessed things : a London beau, the polite frequenter of the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, fighting an old woman for a kettle ; and a respected senior officer of a crack regiment packing up loot in Pekin taken from the house, not of an enemy, but of a peaceful citizen of that place! !

If war can be excused in no other way, it certainly has its uses in making things clearer as to the alleged rights of property. Taking, then, the recent instance, the action of Austria in respect to Bosnia and Herzegovina (and this I do with reluctance, because I both respect and like the Austrians and Hungarians), can we have an example of a case which could more completely justify even a Quaker in taking up arms against the Dual Empire ? I have no doubt the French thought the same in respect to our prolonged and apparently permanent retention of Egypt. But here we have an Empire which was entrusted by the other Powers with control over the destinies of two provinces, because of its pledged word and its professions of disin- terestedness, now deliberately taking this first opportunity of appropriating these lands at a moment when by the re- organisation of Turkey the dangers which made its first plea for control reasonable had been eliminated. By the fart that the Ottoman Empire has now become no longer a danger to its neighbours, all reason for external inter- ference has ceased. And yet this is the moment for Austria to annex the Provinces which had been entrusted to its care when the Ottoman Empire was an international menace.

We may admit at once -that, as in Egypt, many pleas may be made out on behalf of the predatory Power. The Austrians spent much money in the country, and to my knowledge settled it in an effective manner; twenty years ago, in districts where now run peaceful motor omnibuses, it was necessary to travel armed and escorted. Yet what- ever excuse may be advanced, the fact is that a crime against God and man has been committed, in that public confidence in treaty faith has been destroyed.

When a man speaks to me of the sacred rights of pro- perty, as, indeed, do many of my Conservative, and some

of my Liberal friends, my mind so works that I am forced to think of what the man is. Possibly he. is a landowner, and I think how he acquired the land he holds, and how the people from whom his ancestors bought it, acquired it. And I cannot help thinking, too, what his poor cousins, who have’ been’ drudging on a pittance so that the head of the family may live in luxury, think of the sacred rights of property.

And, if he be a successful tradesman, I wonder what his employees, by whose efforts he has acquired his fortune, and his customers, through whose ignorance of values, he has consolidated it, think, if they ever think, of his sacred right to property. Moreover, how long would either of these retain his property if he had not induced the majority of his fellow subjects to pay high taxes for the purpose of protecting and policing his land or goods.

So it is, alas, with Peace and the Sacred Treaties that are made in her name: Without Force of some kind, International Force for choice, all the windy arguments at the Hague and Caxton Hall are but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. They mean nothing, because at the first favourable opportunity the arguments will be found un- practical.

Therefore, all those who, like myself, detest war because we have seen its injustice and its inherent vulgarity, and all those who dislike it on either economic grounds for the misery which it brings, or for philanthropic reasons, in that the young and the strong are killed, while the wasters and the greedy remain in safe places to do the shouting and the arguing, all those, in fact, and they are the vast majority of mankind, who wish to see it ended, will have to put their minds to the problem of forming an International Peace Army and Navy to enforce the decrees of the Court of the Hague and the fulfilment of treaty obligations. Without an International Police neither treaties nor the learned decisions of a cosmopolitan judicature will be worth any- thing, and the sooner we realise this human fact the better.

And still it is common for the magistrates to make the awe-inspiring assertion that. Force is no remedy, when they must know, if they can think at all, that it is the only one, and, indeed, only by it do they sit on the Bench and mete out such justice as they are capable of conceiving.

FRANCIS VANE OF TATTON. * *

DOCKERS’ UNION V. LABOUR PARTY. To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW AGE?

The following letter has been addressed to the Labour Party by the Dock, Wharf, and General Workers’ Union. To the Secretary, Chairman, and Executive of the Labour

Party. Dear Sirs, -I am instructed by my executive to forward

you the following resolution :- “In view of the spirit and meaning of Rule 3, indicated

by the words ‘ Abstain strictly from identifying themselves with, or promoting the interests of, any party not eligible for affiliation ’ being flagrantly broken by certain members of your executive and the party, this Union calls for ex- planation of such conduct and expression of opinion as to whether such persons are entitled to membership of the party.

“In view of such members having co-operated with Cabinet Ministers and prominent Liberals on platforms all over the country, in some cases consorting with well known union-smashers, and committing the Labour Party to the Government measure-the Licensing Bill, to wit--our exe- cutive respectfully request to know, have these members been specifically authorised by your executive to appear on a party platform when a party measure is being discussed ?

“In view of the urgency of the unemployed question and consequent distress among the poor, what authority or right has been given to the Temperance section of our member-

with valuable Vegetable additions.

ship to give precedence to a party measure of Licensing, in view of the chronic problem of unemployment, affecting as it does millions of homes?

“We regret that so vital a matter as unemployment should be shelved by the action of individuals who, in effect, consent to the principal time of Parliament being absorbed upon a question of less vital importance to Labour. .

“The Premier and Ministers will utilise speeches made by those who have attacked their own class, and will flout the Labour Part); out of their own mouths if any demand is made to consider unemployment.

We call upon the executive to request explanations of Messrs. Henderson, Shackleton, Richards, Crooks, Snow- den, and others, whose expenses on this question have been met by the Temperance-Liberal Party for the last twelve months.

We regret so serious a breach of Rule 3, the surrender, if not the betrayal, of not only Labour’s independence, but the unemployed question at the same time.-We remain, yours, for the executive, BEN TILLETT.

- * .*

NURSING SCHOOLS. To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE."

In your Notes of September 19th you characterise the recommendation of the Consultative Committee on School Attendance for Young Children-the establishment of nur- sery schools for children between three and five-as a momentous decision, and you express the hope that this recommendation may be adopted. It is unquestionably a momentous decision, but the value of the decision depends upon the nature of the experience and knowledge in deal- ing with these little children in large numbers, that the persons entrusted with the consideration of the subject possess.

The list of names comprising the Consultative Committee does not contain the name of one person possessing intimate experience in dealing with these little children in large num- bers. Even the lady representative of the National Union of Teachers is the mistress of ‘a Girls’ School ! If the Executive of the N.U.T. think, as presumably they do, that actual knowledge and experience are quite superfluous where Infants’ Schools are concerned, the general public may certainly be forgiven for thinking in a like manner. I should like to draw your attention to the publication issued by the Board of Education- in regard to Infants’ Schools- during the past twenty-five years. The pious opinions of the latest recommendations are to be found in them all.

Infants’ teachers know precisely the value and meaning of these pious opinions, and also the cost entailed in trying to realize them. All the strictures and condemnation passed upon the infants’ school as it has existed, and still exists, have abundant justification. But what has been the cause of these malevolent conditions? And why need these male- volent conditions continue ?

They exist because the infants’ schools are dominated en- tirely by inexperienced, irresponsible outside interference. Abolish this interference and increase the possibilities of the existing infants’ school, and there would be “State Nur- series ” in the true sense of the word.

The fact that the enquiry was based upon children from three to five years of age causes deep misgiving to any person who knows how fallacious a basis age is. Some children of three have a more vigorous healthy development than some children of six.

The whole question of Nursery Schools is but another experiment. But if experiments are to be made, they should

SOME ILLS OF LIFE AND THEIR CURE. From their want of knowledge of natural and simple

remedies, many suffer from maladies which render life miserable ; others, from inability as regards expense are unable to follow the treatment recommended by their medical adviser, who, in cases of liver, gout, and such-like complaints, with the attendant chronic con- stipation and distressing headache, suggests that it is imperative to undergo a cure at an expensive spa. Yet this is at your door. The natural waters of Kelen- fold, Hungary-well-known as “ Arabella “-imported direct into England, are an inexpensive natural and effective remedy in the above cases. They are pleasant to take, being without that nauseous taste which is so noticeable in Spa-waters. “ Arabella ” is strongly recommended by the highest authorities. A small dose after meals or taken in hot water on going to bed relieves the troubles and renders life happy by com- plete restoration to a healthy condition.

at least be formulated by experienced persons and tested, so far as it is possible. to test the results of experiments of this nature, before involving the whole of the children of the country in a scheme which the Board of Education may have to add to its avowed errors of the past.

ELLEN LEWIS. * * *

PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY CONTRA NIETZSCHE. To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW AGE."

There is nothing necessarily anomalous about a critic of art who lacks the artistic temperament. Art and the criti- cism of art are two quite distinct amusements. Critics work ’ along certain rigidly defined lines; artists do not. True criticism is a science, not a mere expression of one’s own violent personal likes and dislikes, after the style of George Moore, Shaw, or Nietzsche- interesting though such expres- sions may be. Professor Saintsbury’s estimate of Nietzsche seems to me perfectly just. Nietzsche was an eminent artist and an interesting personality, but he was obviously no critic. Moreover, why should he be?

C. M. G.

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