NOTES OF THE WEEK VIEWS And REVIEWS: Render unto Caesar. By THE GERMAN DEMOCRACY.By S. Verdad . A. E. R. . The PROSCRIPTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS. BY REVIEWS : The Town Labourer ; After-War S. G. H. . Problems ; An Attempt at Life ; Proportional NOTES ON POLITICALTHEORY. By O. Latham . Representation . STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARYMENTALITY. By Ezra PASTICHE. By Triboulet, Kenelm Foss . Pound. V.-“The Strand Magazine” . LETTERS TO THE EDITOR from Camouflage, F. H. DRAMA : “The Invisible Foe.” By John Francis Drinkwater, W. M. . Hope WE MODERNS (concluded). By Edward Moore . MEMORANDA(from last week’s NEW AGE) THE MORIBUNDIDEA. By Triboulet . PRESS CUTTINGS

The “Times,” the organ, be it remembered, of the NOTES OF THE WEEK. enemies of democracy in the War Cabinet (Lords Milner and Curzon and Sir Edward Carson), is confident IN office Mr. Henderson is no better than a that the Stockholm “bubble” is now “dispersed politician, but out of office he occasionally talks like a into thin air.” Agreed that it is dead for the present; Labour statesman. This transformation was particularly but we happen to believe in the resurrection. Furthermore, observable at the recent Trade Union Congress, we must say that the “Times” is taking a great at which he delivered not only the best speech of the responsibility upon itself in insisting upon carrying week, but also the most popular. He frankly on the war from its office in Printing-House Square. exposed the reasons that made imperative the postponement For this is not only not the first occasion upon which of the Stockholm Conference : the Allied Socialists the “Times” party has arranged to postpone a promising were not in agreement ‘among themselves either as piece of policy, but up to the present moment to the composition of their delegations or as to the no suggestion that had not first occurred to one of manner of conducting their mission. A good deal of the people we have named has ever been adopted by education at home is therefore necessary before they the “Times.” With this consequence, we must point can hope to propagate the democratic gospel among out; that for the conduct of the war, for our present the heathen autocracy. But he no less frankly situation in it, and for our future prospects, it is the announced that the Stockholm Conference was by no “Times” party that is responsible before God and means dead, and that, in fact, sooner or later, the man. If the nation is satisfied, of course, that the internationalLabour and Socialist movement would insist war has been conducted with the maximum of upon holding it. We need not say how we welcome this efficiency, and that no other advice than that offered by declaration; and when, moreover, it found an almost the “Times” party would have been less costly in unanimous support at the Congress we need not add lives, in time, in money; and in ultimate security- that it is as much a forecast as a threat. In other well and good, we have nothing more to say. But words, in our judgment the Stockholm Conference if it be true that the war has cost us, is costing us, will now be held as soon as the Allied Socialists can and promises to cost us a hundred times as much come to some agreement. All that we are waiting for as it should have cost us, we know now where the is a little common understanding. The objections to responsibility is to be laid. It is not upon us who the Conference are fast dwindling in number, and are have spent our days in devising means of victory now little more than a prejudice against Labour having only to see every one of them contemptuously thrust anything to do with the final settlement. Labour, it aside for the counsels of men like Sir Edward Carson. is thought, would emerge from the war altogether too It is not even upon the pacifists who, as everybody triumphant for the future security of capital if, in knows, have not been able to deflect the policy of the addition to having provided the means of victory, War Cabinet by the width of a hair. No, the whole Labour should also have contributed to a democratic and sole responsibility for every item in our war-policy peace. Hence we may be sure both that the opposition falls upon that part of the Government that is in to the Labour mission will be continued, and league with. Lord Northcliffe; and it is therefore to that any alternative mission will be encouraged, them that our accounts must be rendered. We repeat secretly if not openly. We have only to contrast, in that in declining to consider the Stockholm proposals, fact, the attitude of the Allies to the Pope’s and a score of similar proposals emanating from Internationalwith their attitude to the Labour International Labour and Socialist quarters, the named conductors to realise that a peace via Rome would be less of our national policy are preparing a pretty bill for unwelcome to them than a peace via Stockholm. And themselves, which only a glittering success can it is certain that the Pope’s attempt to intervene in the possiblyenable them to discharge. And, unfortunately for war is neither the only one nor the least respectable. them, a glittering success is impossible without the active co-operation of the Labour and Socialist the world at heart, can avoid assenting to the movement. propositions that both increased production is necessary *** and industrial peace is a condition of it. But the We can understand very well the objections raised means to be employed to these ends are everything; by the French Majority Socialists against the Stockholm and if it should happen that either the means proposed Conference; they are chiefly political, and have should entail greater evils than the good to be more concern with French party politics than with expected from them, or the means should appear to be humanity at large. But the hostility of the Belgian inadequate to their ends, we have the right and the Socialists is a little harder to understand. We must duty of saying so. Now, the means proposed in the agree, of course? that “ the sufferings of the rest of Whitley Memorandum appear to us to fall under both the Allies are nothing to the sufferings of Belgium,” the objections we have theoretically raised. In so far as one of the Belgian delegates remarked; and it as they promise to increase production they promise would be bad taste to dispute it. But we really do at the same time to intensify the present evils of not see in what respect this fact alone ought to dictate our industrial system by increasing the competitive our policy. When we are asked if we would negotiate tendency of workmen inter se. And in so far as they with Germans after having experienced the treatment aim at establishing industrial peace, they promise Belgium has received at the hands of the Prussian either complete failure or, still worse, the permanent army, we reply that as persons we most certainly enslavement of the proletariat by the suppression of should not. Moreover, if it were proposed that in a their power to strike. We are not arguing the matter conference at Stockholm ,we should be expected to at this moment, it will be noted; but we are entering fall upon the necks of the German Majority Socialists, once more our objections to the acceptance of the or in any way to condone the crimes of their Government, Whitley Memorandum without the closest inspection. we should reject the proposals with some heat. On the face of it, the Memorandum is an advance in But neither, in the first place, when we are discussing the direction of National Guilds, and as such it has national policy, is personal conduct the proper criterion been recommended to the general notice. As authorities to employ; nor, in the second place, is it expected on the proposals known as National Guilds, of the Belgian or any other Allied Socialists that they we can, however, say that the Whitley Memorandum will make an agapemone of the Stockholm Conference. is as far, from National Guilds as it is near in The Stockholm Conference, on the other hand, is a spirit and structure to National Capitalist Trusts. piece of Allied policy pure and simple; and it is *** designed precisely to secure for Belgium both reparation and guarantees for the future. Of course, if it were The National Guilds League, we see, directs its possible to rid the world of Germany altogether, or chief criticism to the side from which the Memorandum if the seas could be made to divide Germany and approaches the reconstruction of industry. This, Belgium for evermore, the resolution of the Belgian the League says, is from aboveandby superimposition Socialists on behalf of Belgium to refuse to speak to instead of being frombelow(in the workshops, a German again would be proper and possible. But that is) and by conquest. The point is well worth as it is, Belgium must not only continue, as we all making, since, as we know, a stick has two ends, must, to live in the same world as Germany, but only one of which is the right end. But it fails on Belgium must remain Germany’s next-door neighbour. the present occasion to be fatal if we allow, as we The question is therefore whether Belgian Socialists must allow, that the problem of industrial would not be wise to create in her inevitable neighbour reconstructionis likely to be approached from both ends at least one party favourable to her integrity in at once. The nation cannot and will not wait, before the future. After all, international guarantees by beginning reconstruction, until Labour has set itself means of the sword are not everything, as Belgium to organise industry from the workshops upwards. has discovered. The goodwill of the German Socialist This process, however necessary, is sure to be too Party, which might perchance be secured in Belgium slow for the pace at which reconstruction must by the Stockholm Conference, would be at least an proceedafter the war, if the country is to be rehabilitated. addition to international guarantees, and an addition It follows that, if it is not altogether ignored not to be despised as the world goes. We appeal to by the governing authorities as comparatively our Belgian friends to reconsider their attitude, and negligiblein point of time and need, it will most certainly to reflect that the rest of the world will not always be suppIemented by industrial organisation from the have in mind the sufferings of Belgium. other end ofindustry-namely, from the end of Capital. *** With this probability in mind, it is therefore The Trade Union Congress did a wise thing in desirable to pay attention to the proposals of the referring the Whitley Memorandum to the Whitley Memorandum for joint councils of a national ParliamentaryCommittee for examination and report. Not character, and particularly with a view to a only is the Whitley Memorandum full of traps for constructive criticism of them. Joint councils, we may Labour, as both we and the National Guilds League say, are in all reasonable probability destined to be have pointed out (the latter in a counter-manifesto set up; and it only remains for National Guildsmen which ought to be as widely read as the original), but, to point out what it is, and how much of it, these owing to the fact that its proposals are both well councils must control until the movement, begun from drawn up and admirably adapted to the purpose of below, is ready to supersede them. Now, in our Capitalism, ‘it is likely to be adopted as the policy opinion, the proper subject for the joint control to be of the next Government. There is all the more exercised by workmen and employers is not, in the reason, therefore, that we should discuss the first instance, the industry itself, but the capital, proposalswhile they ,are stiIl in the egg, The objects of consisting of the tools of the industry, primarily. the Memorandum are two in number, though one of Industry, as we have ’often observed, stands to Capital them is left unwritten. In the first place, the as action stands to the organism. Industry is Capital unavowed object of the proposals is to increase production energised by Labour; it is therefore, in point of order, as a means of paying off the cost of the war; secondary to Capital, being, as it were, its branches, and, in the second place, the avowed .object, which foliage, and fruit. To invite Labour, therefore, to co- is also the condition of the first, is to secure industrial operate with Capital in industry while reserving to peace. Now, we hope that we need not assure our capitaliststhe ownership and direction of Capital itself is to readers that with both these objects we are in invite Labour to a joint responsibility in the secondary completesympathy. lt stands to reason that no patriotic but not in the primary element. It is not partnership writers, having the welfare of their country and of in any sense of the word that would result from such a co-operation, but merely an extended servility their support to it, with the consequence that we may of Labour under the disguise of an increased responsibility. now take the proposal as having been adopted by the We make it a condition of the acceptability principal Labour and Liberal parties. We have of any joint council such as the Whitley Memorandum nothing, of course, to say against the proposal, since, proposes that the common thing to be controlled by indeed, we had the chagrin of first making it three years the council shall be the capital of the industry no less ago in the midst of a dense silence. Moreover, we still than the processes of the industry itself. Not only confidently repeat our assurances of the same date that must it, as at present suggested, have under its the war cannot be completely won by this country upon controlthe Labour that energises the Capital, but it must borrowed money. The reflection may, however, he have the Capital under its control as well,. We are allowed us that the bargaining circumstances of the aware, of course, that capitalists will not for the Labour party are not at this instant so favourable as moment contemplate such a drastic supersession of they were when the conscription of wealth was first their private rights of property. They will continue suggested to them. Then, it will be remembered the to cling to their ownership of the national means of conscription of lives under the National Service Acts production, even while graciously condescending to was only beginning to be seriously discussed; and the permit the working classes, proletariat and salariat, Labour party, upon whose laps the success of the Acts to arrange their own hours of labour, etc. Nevertheless, lay, were then in a position to require the conscription it is to this that they must come if industry is to of wealth as a concurrent act of justice with the be reconstructed. conscriptionof men. The conscription of wealth under *** these circumstances, whatever Mr. Henderson as We printed last week an extract from the “ Round politician may have pretended, would have been as Table” in which, with characteristic caution, a levy easy as it appeared to him to be difficult. Since, no upon capital, such as we have often recommended, was less than the conscription of men, it was proper to the advocated as a means of paying off the war-debt. This conduct of the war, either, in fact, the war would have proposal, however, was made in the “Round Table” to been brought to an end or we should have had it. The apply to the future, to the period of peace in short; but, strategists of the Labour party, however, had other in our opinion, it is necessary at once. The power fish to fry at the moment, and they sold the lives of taken by Mr. Bonar Law to raise a fresh loan, if their class without even demanding an equivalent considered expedient, while Parliament is in recess, is sacrificeof the wealthy classes. And now, when so many sufficient evidence that the State expects to be short of lives are gone, they are reminded of the missed money very soon; and the fact that money is to be opportunity. It is fortunate that they are still not too late. raised by loan and not by taxes is evidence, again, for *** such as can understand the simplicities of finance, that To the pleas elsewhere made by our colleague prices are likeIy to rise in the future as they have risen “S. G. H.” for the better employment of brains by the in the past on the heels of every fresh inflation of the Labour movement, we may add the following consideration. currency. The case for a levy upon Capital is, therefore, As the war continues it is certain that the overwhelming from as many points of view as it nation will be progressively reduced to greater and can be looked at. It is just, but that is the least of its greater dependence upon the elemental factors of life; effective virtues. It is, above all, expedient, both from and since the prime factor of life is Labour, we may the fact that it is the only means of reconciling be as certain that Labour will increase in importance as economists to the cost of the war, and from the fact the other factors of society drop in immediate value. that it is the only means of maintaining prices at a But this again is to say that in all probability we are relativelystable level. Money, after all, is merely purchasing on the eve of a considerable access of power in the power; and the situation during the war has been organised Labour movement as a whole. Power, in that the State has needed to gather to itself a considerable short, is likely to be thrust upon them by the mere amount of purchasing power. Now, there was force of circumstances and whether they are able to only one source from which it could be derived-the bear it or not. The problem of the immediate future purchasing power of its citizens; and this private is therefore likely to be this: whether the Labour purchasing-power, distributed before the war very movement is intelligent enough in itself or has the unevenly among individual citizens, was bound (or ought intelligence to employ intelligence in sufficient amounts to to have been bound) to lessen as the purchasing power ensure its beneficent use of the power that of the State increased. This natural transference of circumstanceswill shortly bring it. At the present, we must purchasing-power from the citizen to the State has, admit, there is some doubt about it. The hostility of however, been frustrated by the policy of loans. Labour to what it calls the intellectuals augurs no good Instead of taking outright from citizens their purchasing ’from its accession to power. On the contrary, looking power and employing it on behalf of the State, our as far ahead as we can, we may say that if the present Chancellors have borrowed-with the consequence that, hostility of Labour to intelligence continues, the accession the lenders feel themselves to be as well off as they were of Labour to power will indeed come, for nothing before the war. In other words, though the State has can stop it, but it will be short-lived and will end in a been spending for them, they have continued to spend calamitous reaction. The excuse, no doubt, will be for themselves exactly as if the State were not spending urged that upon many occasions in the past the Labour at all. The nemesis of this double extravagance will movement has been betrayed by the intellectuals it has be seen when the bill is presented. If private more or less nourished in its bosom. Are not, indeed, extravaganceis not stopped by a levy on Capita1 to-day, the some of the worst enemies of Labour to-day its ruin wrought by it will increase at compound interest. intellectualleaders of yesterday? We do not deny it, and More than a levy on Capital will be necessary we have every sympathy with the proletarian leaders tomorrow. who look with suspicion upon the Socialist intellectuals. *** Nevertheless there are intellectuals and intellectuals, Not only, however, is the “ Round Table ” now and they must be discriminated by experience if advocating a levy on capital, but under its respectable not by judgment. For it is not in the least degree auspices quite a number of authorities are venturing true that if, in despair of distinguishing them, the into the open on the subject. The “Daily News’’ on Labour movement casts out brains altogether, it will Saturday followed the ‘‘Round Table’s ” lead in a fiery avoid being led by ideas. By refusing to exercise its article by the editor who, it seems, had never heard of judgment, the Labour movement will infallibly fall the proposal before, but had fallen instantly in love under the influence of the unscrupulous intellectuals with it. Both the Trade Union Congress and the who, in default of leading the movement by the hand, Workers National Committee have now also given will lead it by the nose, not know what it wants, became the root idea of that The German Democracy, Prussianism which finally triumphed under Bismarck. By S. Verdad. . . . Every one in Germany was henceforth, in one shape or another, compelled to acknowledge Hegel’s The school of thought in the Allied countries which principle, that the State is everything and the individual used to be so severely critical of President Wilson’s nothing. . . . Heine and Boerne, Herwegh and principles, when America was neutral, has not yet Freiligrath, Prutz and Pfau, and a hundred other reconciled itself to the distinction which he has always Germanthinkers and poets, fled before the Prusso-German made between the German Government and the German reaction, and froin foreign lands hurled their scorn and people. Those observers, on the other hand, whose derision against Germany in cries of anguish and interpretation of history led them to support and revolt. (Pp. 161-163.) emphasise this essential distinction are more than ever This brings Mr. Fernau to another important convinced of its importance as an indispensable factor principleof German State administration, and that is that in the preservation of future peace. There is but one only those professors and teachers and thinkers who means of making the distinction valid and active, and support the Hegelian axiom shall be encouraged. that is by the democratisation of the German Empire. Schopenhauer himself saw this danger, and definitely By this phrase is meant-to take only the essential held that a Government would never appoint to professorial points-the entire withdrawal from the German chairs men who taught the contrary of that Emperor of the arbitrary powers he exercises “by divine which formed the very foundation of the governing right,” the placing of the Army and the Army budgets authority. Mr. Fernau says :- under the control and supervision of the Reichstag, There exists nowhere a body of professors and as the Imperial Parliament; and the application of scholars under such strict supervision as in Germany. the principle of ministerial responsibility as it exists in The Prussian State has always possessed the indisputable democratic countries. Under the present German monopoly of education. She has never tolerated constitution-as is now known in England, though free schools and universities, such as exist in France, appreciationof the fact was late incoming-the armed forces Belgium, England, Switzerland, etc. All professorial of the Empire are under the supreme control of the chairs are, without exception, in the nomination of the Emperor in peace or war; Articles 11 and 68 of the State. German professors are State officials. . . . Constitution give the Emperor absolute powers in time German professors have unlimited liberty in the exercise of their calling, with the exception of the liberty to of war, without the need of passing special Acts differ from the Government. Provided that they through the Reichstag; and Ministers of State are regard the Prussian State as a model State, the responsible to the Emperor in person and not to the dynasty as appointed by God, and the existing parliamentary body. Constitutionas the highest expression of civic bliss, they En “The Coming Democracy” (Constable, 6s. net) have even the liberty to rebel against the Almighty Mr. Hermann Fernau analyses, with minuteness and (Haeckel, Ostwald, Eucken), or to criticise the force, the constitutional system of the German Empire, economic order from a socialistic point of view and provides for those who believe in democracy as (Schmoller, Sombart, etc.). Hence, among the German professors, we find extraordinarily bold spirits- a cure for German militarism an abundant mass of free thinkers, free traders, pedants of reform theories evidence. Indeed, every unprejudiced reader of this of Socialism, sexual-reformers, and even intellectual volume must acknowledge that the only alternative anarchists; but there are among them no actual to a democratic Germany is a European inferno. The democrats,republicans, or apostles of popular liberty. In choice, as Mr. Fernau says shortly (p. 270) is Dynasty other countries, professors, after quitting the lectureroom, or Humanity; and his new book traces the German again become citizens and take their place, as evil to the extraordinary powers of the Hohenzollern such, in the political world, without regard to the family. When he wrote there were four non-responsible Government. Professors who belong to the Socialist dynasties of the Hohenzollern type-the party and openly acknowledge the fact are not Hohenzollernsthemselves, the Hapsburgs, the Romanoffs, unknown in England, France, Italy, Switzerland, etc. In Germany such a state of things is unthinkable, because and the Osmanlis. The Russian revolution has there professors, in their private life, still remain removed one of these, at the same time conveying a Government officials. A century of intellectual drilling warning to Germany. Even Turkey no longer permits has reduced them to such a condition of absolute its monarch to exercise supreme political power, and dependence upon the State, as bread-giver, that the the new Austrian Emperor Karl has shown some little dynasty can blindly rely upon them. (Pp. 163-164.) disposition to consider, in a temperate spirit, the It could have been wished that Mr. Fernau had democratic tendencies noticeable in more than one part of emphasised this point even more than he does. It his dominions. But Germany, despite her immense is not only the professors who have been “intellectually learning and scientific discoveries, despite her marvellous drilled. ” The stubborn solidarity of modern material progress, remains without political Germany is due to the fact that the whole nation privileges“possessed by the English, French, Americans, has been intellectually drilled ; that the ideas initiated and Swiss for the past 150 years; by the Italians, by Hegel, and continued by his school down Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, Serbs, Bulgarians, to so widely different representatives of it as Roumanians, Greeks, etc., for some decades ; General Bernhardi, George Bernhard, Paul and by the Chinese since quite recently. Only think Rohrbach, Count Reventlow, and Professor Delbruck-not of it ! The Chinese !” (p. 317). to mention such classical historians as Treitschke, It is for his analysis of the conditions leading up Sybel, Mommsen, and their present-day representatives-- to this state of things that Mr. Fernau’s book is most have been instilled into the mass of the people valuable, as a few quotations will show. Readers of with such skill and assiduity that every crackpot Mr. Maeztu’s recent book and articles, by the way, theory of Germany’s immeasurable superiority to the will remark that Mr. Fernau comes to similar rest of mankind is implicitly believed in as an article of conclusions where philosophical principles are involved : national and even religious faith. And the dynasty is George William Frederick Hegel is the great man now, as it has ever been, the foundation, the rallying whose merit it is to have secularised, that is to say point, the “granite rock, ” on which these principles modernised, the dynastic idea. . . . He created a new of German superiority, of German culture, rest. Upon divinity, which ostensibly followed in the steps of the what, asks Fernau, do we found our German achievement of the French Revolution and Kant’s doctrines, namely, The State. Hegel’s doctrine, that the patriotism? State is a divine entity and that man is not an end in As a fact, we base it upon our affection for the himself, but only a brick in the fabric of the State, and Imperialhouse. Any other devotion to country would be that the people is that portion of the State that does senseless. William II, Professor Delbruck, and other authorities, assure us, and with truth, that the Army principle that every nation, be the territory it occupies “is the basis of our political system.” But, since this ever so small, is absolute master in its own house, and Army is sworn to allegiance, not to our country and its must, as regards its rights, be treated as equal with the Constitution, but to the person of the Emperor-King, it greatest, and that nobody can justifiably violate its follows, by mathematical logic, that our whole German independence, unless its own is manifestly imperilled. political system does not exist for the behoof of US (P. 172.) German citizens, but is merely a creation and possession After a period of superposed imperialism, France-- of the German dynasty. And so it is : Emperor always faithful, at heart, to the principles of the and Fatherland are in Germany one and the same. Revolution-reverted to revolutionary principles again after (Pp. 216-217.) the Franco-German war, and protested energetically The Kaiser, as Fernau goes on to emphasise, is against the forcible annexation of Alsace-Lorraine not merely regarded by the Constitution as the without reference tu the wishes of the permanent supreme authority in the State. He is, in fact, the very population. Fernau sums up the German answers by incarnation of the political system, the leader of the quoting Treitschke, who said :- people in peace-and war, the arbiter in problems of Who can plead, in the face of our duty to secure the art and science, and also, it might have been added, world’s peace, that the Alsace-Lorrainers do not want of morals and faith. Here is an essential difference to belong to us? Confronted by the sacred necessity between Germany and other countries founded on the of these great days, the doctrine of the autonomy of all European tradition : German races, that alluring theme of outlaw The notion of Fatherland implies for the German demagogues,will come ‘to a miserable end. These lands are only the person of the German Emperor. Our ours by the right of the sword, and we will deal with devotionto him is our love of country. If a German were them by virtue of a higher right, by the right of the to Iove his country as other civilised nations do theirs German nation not to allow its sons for ever to estrange (as a political community of which he is an active themselves from the German Empire. . . . We Germans, member), he would be a revolutionary. Even to-day who know both Germany and France, know what suits the idea of a Fatherland belonging to the German the Alsatians far better than that miserable people nation is regarded as a crime. Of course, it may knows itself. . . . We wish to restore to them, against certainly be disputed which notion of Fatherland is the their will, their own real self. (P. 179.) higher, that of the French, the English, and so forth; Upon which Fernau comments :- or .that of the German. But it cannot possibly be disputed that on this point, as on most others, we have “By the right of the sword!” “That miserable sundered ourselves from the rest of the civilised world, people!” “Against their will !” Here we find that is to say, we have placed ourselves in diametrical ourselves in the midst of the neo-German notion of opposition to it. For State and Fatherland, which constitutional law and culture. Hegel’s fundamental idea elsewhere form a natural entity, are in our case only of the stupidity of the people is brilliantly demonstrated notions artificially welded together. In reality, the to us by Treitschke with reference to those “miserable” Prussian conception of the State is the absolute Alsace-Lorrainers. It is apparent, at the first glance, negationof the conception of the Fatherland obtaining in that this “modern” German conception of other countries. (P. 217.) constitutionaland international law is not only very convenientfor the dynastic will to power, but is really Germany, in short, has deliberately withdrawn nothing else than a learned term for it. The herself from the comity of nations, justifying herself, fundamental difference in the legal conceptions of the where she troubles to do so at all, by vaunting her two hostile nations is now rendered apparent, and also own cultural superiority and expressing contempt for the reason why this antagonism, which has troubled what other countries regard as worthy ideals. The Europe for forty years past, could never be adjusted. German conception of international law is an example (P. 180.) of this state of mind. As Fernau shows-for the As it happens, the “intellectual drilling” of the evidence is damning-the German representatives at The people has had cumulative results. Little by little the Hague Conferences hardly troubled to conceal their theories of the State-trained and State-paid professors contempt for the humanitarian principles so earnestly percolated the body of the people, and even recognised advocated by their non-German confreres. The Socialist leaders have suffered from the prevailing applicationof the law of nations to international affairs system of German education. How, indeed, could they show how completely the German mentality has escape it? The materialism which had affected the isolateditself : ruling classes led to what British Socialists will In a legal sense, international law is the codification certainly regard as surprising results :- of legal principles touching the attitude and relations When, a year after the outbreak of the world-war, I of civilised States to each other. Now the French translated a book by Gustave Herve, in which he Revolution had set up an entirely new morality inrespect advocated for the better assurance of world-peace the to these relations between State and State. This autonomyof Alsace-Lorraine, and thereby a Franco-German morality culminates in the proposition (but tell it not understanding, this proposal was rejected with scorn to any German professor!) that every country has the in Germany at large, and even by the Socialists in incontestable right to administer its own affairs. It is particular. The work of the former revolutionist, clear at a glance that an international law resting upon Paul Lensch, “Die Sozial-Dernocratie, ihr Ende und this basis is a negation of the former divine constitutional ihr Gluck,” openly scoffs at the idea of the right of right of dynasties, as Machiavelli taught it, and nations to autonomy. German Social Democracy was, as it has been modernised by Hegel and Treitschke. . . . theoretically, the champion of the autonomy of nations. These new theories of the free right of nations to control Rut it regarded this, according to schedule, as “civic their own ”destinies were immediately put into practice ideology,” and only awaited its realisation as a result by the Revolution. (P. 172.) of the great anti-capitalist revolution, without which The instances quoted by Fernau are those of Alsace no social amelioration was thinkable. Social and Savoy. Both expressed a wish to be incorporated Democracyregarded the eight-hour-day movement as more in the French Republic, and in both cases the French important than all the “petty” ideals of the revolutions Government ordered the wishes of the people to be of 1789 and 1848 taken together. (P. confirmed by a referendum. The French principle Hence :- was emphasised by Carnot in connection with the in; A German professor of international law who should corporation of Monaco :- declare international law to mean the unfettered right It is the inalienable right of every nation to live of nations to autonomy, and, therefore, to denounce the apart from others, if it so pleases, or, for the vindication annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and of Bosnia, or even of their common interests, to unite with others, if the violation of Belgium, as being crimes against the such be its desire. We French, who know no other law of nations, would at once be arraigned on a charge sorereigns save the people themselves, have fraternity of high treason. The logical thinking out of the and not lordship as our system., We worship the principleof the free right of nations to autonomy, which was proclaimed by the French Revolution, and has been Chamber’sexercising control over the Ministers, then the acknowledged by the whole civilised world as, at least, foreign policy, on which peace or war depends, lies at a theory of international law, is a crime in Germany, the mercy of any headstrong, foolish, intriguing ruler because it inevitably leads to a condemnation of the who may happen to occupy the throne. The Reichstag whole Prusso-German policy. And, therefore, such a is elected by a democratic enough franchise, logical thinking-out has never been publicly attempted though its seats are badly distributed-distributed in in the Fatherland of Logic. Is it likely that a Government will appoint and pay professors who condemn its such a manner as to, penalise the liberal elements in policy as contrary to the law of nations? (P. 185.) favour of the reactionaries. But these are minor points. “If the Constitution is mediaeval,” says All these defects in present-day Germany, however, are utterly opposed-and Fernau is not alone in thinking Fernau, in one of his concluding passages (p. so-to the spirit of the German people. We have ‘ ‘militarist, and generally autocratic, then sooner or later the foreign policy of the State will tend towards known the Germans, by tradition, as solid if somewhat war.” And, again : ‘‘In order that the concert of the heavy thinkers ; as scholars, plodding and accumulative Great Powers may at length become harmonious, and rather than displaying brilliancy and initiative ; as musicians; as historians; as poets; as the possessors contribute to the happiness, of. the nations, care must be taken that any disturbers of the peace are henceforth of simple national songs remarkable for their emphasis deprived of the opportunity of making an on the domestic virtues-and on the virtues of good wine and unlimited food-rather than as the blond interruption. . . . All the nations will be in favour. of an arrangement of this kind; the German nation more beasts of a later period who devote themselves than any; for no nation has suffered more from this systematicallyto brutality and crime, whether in peace or in war. I do not want to eater into a distinction between war, and no nation desired it less than the German north and south; for even Prussia displayed, during nation.” her formation under ruthless sovereigns, much of the That, after all, is final. We want no more wars. good-nature of the south, albeit wiith more servility. This one has proved that no democracy wanted war, or was without reluctant effort capable of waging it. The point is that the modern German is what his ruler, Skill in war is beneath the contempt of ,a progressive acting through the professors, has made him; and some of the German Emperor’s sayings are wonderful community, though it will remain necessary so long as autocracies exist. enough. Mr. Fernau has collected a few to illustrate But, as Germany is the only his arguments, such as :- remaining autocracy that counts, we can do much towards avoiding war by curbing the German autocrats So we belong together, I and my Army, so we were born together, and so will we indissolubly hold fast to through democratisation. That is the task before one another, come, as God wills, peace or storm. German Social Democracy after the Allies have (July, 1888.) You have sworn me the oath of allegiance. defeated Germany in the, field. It can deal with the More than ever before unbelief and dissatisfaction Capitalists afterwards, when they are disarmed. lift their heads in the Fatherland, and the occasion may arise when you will have to shoot down or bayonet your own brothers and relations. Then seal your The Proscription of the allegiance with the sacrifice of your heart’s blood. (Nov., 1891.) The more people shelter themselves Intellectuals. behind catchwords and party considerations, the more IT is not a little disturbing to note that, in these stirring firmly and securely do I count upon my Army, and days, when more than one intellectual system is the more confidently do I hope that my Army, either without or within my realms, will wait upon my undergoingclose scrutiny, when philosophies and policies, wishes and my behests. (December, 1896.) I assumed ideals and ambitions are in their several ways subjected the Crown with a heavy heart; my capacity was to anxious and almost agonising inquiry-nations in everywheredoubted, and everywhere I was wrongly judged. search of their souls-a phase of suspicion of its Only one had confidence in me; only one believed in intellectuals should be passing over Labour. The halt, me, and that was the Army; and, with its support, the maimed and the blind wait for the angel to go and trusting in our old God, I undertook my responsible down to the water at Bethsesda that it may be troubled ; office, knowing full well that the Army is the Labour, deeming itself strong at all points, resents the mainstay of my country, and the chief pillar of the slightest ripple on the surface, and is apparently Prussian throne, to which God in his wisdom has summoned me. (June, 1898.) Believe me, peace will content with stagnation. More than one Labour leader never be better safeguarded than by a perfectly has recently served notice on the intellectuals that their organisedand prepared German Army. God grant that it room is preferable to their company. I referred may always be possible for us to preserve the world’s recently to a young man with a degree who peace with this sharp and well-kept arm. (September, enthusiasticallyadopted this particular proletarian cant, 1898; the Imperial answer to the Tsar’s Hague peace whilst only a few days ago Mr. Havelock Wilson manifesto.) proclaimed a vendetta against the intellectuals. During As Fernau demonstrates in the final chapters of his the past ten years THE NEW AGE has been frequently book, all this military spirit, on which the Kaiser has denounced by Labour and Trade Union periodicals, laid such stress from the day he ascended the; throne, not because its principles and contentions were wrong is entirely artificially created. The German nation, (they still remain uncontroverted), but because it was as a whole, would never have gone to war but for the written by intellectuals. Stoning the prophets is, to sake of defending what it believed to be its sorely be sure, a pastime of ancient origin, and I suppose it menaced liberty (such as it imagined its liberty to be); is much too amusing to be lightly relinquished That and so well were the authorities aware of this that they it should go the way of cock-fighting is perhaps to had recourse to a series of duplicities with regard to expect too much. The practical effect is that to the real origin of the war, which Mr. J. W. Headlam discuss and, when tested, to forward new ideas, the and others have already brought to our notice. But intellectuals must be apologetic and deferential. peace or war, after all, depends upon the conduct of a If those Labour leaders who still believe that an nation’s foreign policy ; and Fernau rightly insists that ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory, without regard the rulers of the German Empire must be controlled, in to the significance of the fact or the soundness of the this as in other matters, by a Reichstag formed upon theory, will think for a moment, they must agree that a democratic model. We need not quibble with organised Labour has been well served by its intellectuals. Fernau when he says “Republican,” for he makes no Not to go outside this country, we may fairly distinction between out-and-out republics and limited describe Robert Owen as an intellectual ; certainly his monarchies.It follows that if the Constitution of a ideas have outlasted New Lanark. The mid-Victorian country does not permit of the Parliament or period brought to Labour’s support Maurice Kingsley and Hughes, whilst Chartism had Jones and Feargus familiarised myself with the bookstalls. Nine-tenths O’Connor. No two men did more to put trade unions of the books are shilling novels-shallow, amative pot- on a legal basis than Frederic Harrison and boilers. Do the Labour leaders realise that to drench Professor Beesley. James Thorold Rogers gave it his the minds to which they must appeal with this narcotic monumental knowledge and industry. With all trash is to invite disaster both for their own particular respect for the trade union veteran George Howell (a movement and for the country as a whole? The last conscientious writer who should be studied), Mr. and kind of manuscript that a publisher will look at to-day Mrs. Sidney Webb, two intellectuals, have written the is one dealing with social ideas. There is no hunger best history of trade unionism. Without consulting to-day in England for living thought but only a salted any book of reference, their names instantly come to thirst for coarse fiction. An unthinking community mind when we consider the intellectual life of organised is an unchanging people, too contented and slothful Labour. Without mentioning others, if these to be discontented and active. The most ordinary writers and thinkers had never lived, Labour would prudence ought to impel the Labour leaders, by today be in a more parlous condition than it is. example, precept and subvention, to stem the torrent of Relevant,too, is it to remember that a cloud of Intellectuals, fictional gush with hard thinking and solid reality. To not distinctively Labourist, have supplied Labour with contemn the thinkers is to aggrandise Northcliffe, who a thousand shots for its locker-Adam Smith, Ricardo, learnt, while Labour slept, that the narcotic of fiction Jevons, Mill, and a score of modern writers and is the sure way to buttress the interests. thinkers. Mr. Havelock Wilson and his like have apparently But however admirable the intellectual support to learn that the new objective of Labour (unfortunately tenderedto Labour, and almost invariably ungraciously as yet largely unconscious or vaguely realised) is by received, it is important to note that Great Britain, for securing the labour monopoly to change its status and three generations the leading industrial country, has cease to be proletarian. But what shall it profit, if it produced fewer thinkers on labour problems than in become blackleg-proof and remain proletarian in spirit ? those European countries whose industrial development I understand perfectly that Labour is in some degree has not once nor twice been arrested by war and justified in its suspicion of the intellectuals, not, revolution. Such thinkers as we have produced have however, because they are intellectual, but because they been, almost without exception, advocates of a belong to the oppressing classes. It is not unreasonable bourgeoiseconomy very deadly in its effects upon Labour, for Labour to demand its intellectuals that they shall both industrially and politically. Labour, treating its give hostages to fortune But the sacrifice once made own thinkers with persistent contumely, has let its ought to secure some measure of consideration. The enemies produce Nassau Senior and Jeremy Bentham ; simple fact is that the “ intellectuals ” to-day whom then, having devitalised its own general staff, has been Labour slavishly follows are the popular writers who content to live on the intellectual, scraps thrown to it by think far more of their “ public ” than the integrity of its oppressors. The result is that, notwithstanding our their ideas. Whatever the economic result of labour industrial primacy, we must look to the Continent for monopoly (even if without intellectual guidance and the best Labour and Socialist thinkers. The European support it can be achieved), the proletarian spirit will profusion of social thinkers is English Labour’s shame not have ben exorcised until new ideas are welcomed and condemnation. Again, without any book of reference, as more precious to mankind than the things of the let me jot down such names as immediately flesh. For that is a mark of freedom-the freedom to suggest themselves-Bakunin, Kropotkin, Sismondi, plunge gaily in and find bottom. When the Labour Proudhon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Lassalle, Marx, leader shouts at the intellectual to begone, it is Engels, Saint-Sirnon, Jaures, Rodbertus, Labrioll, not courage, but a cowardly truculence sprung from Sorel, Lagardelle, Rousseau, Jean Grave-and I class-servitude. daresay a thousand more. Those of us who have We may rest assured that no intellectual worth his attended international Socialist congresses must have salt will turn a hair or retreat one inch because Labour been struck with the intellectual crudeness of the rebuffs him. For many reasons, but primarily because, British delegates compared with their Continental if he turned from right or left from threats or rudeness congeners. In that historic contest at Amsterdam he would ipso facto cease to be an intellectual and between Bebel and Jaures, the British delegation sat become a spiritual blackleg. He is an edifice, not made open-mouthed, silent and amazed. At Stuttgart, with hands, eternal in the heavens. Even if its where were met a thousand of the keenest brains of structurebe as gossamer, it is a fortress impregnable before Europe, an English delegate touched my elbow as I ignorance and prejudice and only reducible in the stood looking over the assemblage from a coign of never-ending struggle of expanding knowledge. But vantage. ‘‘ Do you wonder,” he asked, “ if they are a more mundane reason dictates the intellectual’s all thinking of the I.L.P.?” refusal to move on when the Labour policeman bids him. It is, of course, inevitable that, where there is an The whole Labour movement belongs just as much to impatienceor contempt for the intellectuals, principles the intellectual, as to the scavenger: both look to it for and ideas are ignored. The literature, permanent or a new freedom and an ample air, and, in consequence, periodical, produced by or for the British Socialist and must give to it what they possess : the one his modest Labour movement is the least knowledgeable and contribution to mental and moral health ; the other, his inspired in the world. I have been in literally hundreds modest, but not less useful, aid to physical health. It of villages in Europe, from Northern Scandinavia and would be passing strange if the sheer weight of Finland to the Adriatic, where the book-shop was the Labour organisation should constitute a menace to rallying centre, precisely as is the public-house in intellectual freedom ; if in these later days, three England. Bookishness, like drink, may become a centuries after Milton’s “Areopagitica,” Labour should drug, clogging serious thought and numbing action, rely upon its brute strength and forget the spiritual but at least we must admit that great stretches of implications of the freedom it would compass. If that Europe show to-day a reverence for ideas unknown in be the tendency, then the intellectuals, far from retreating, England. That we are what we are is no reason why must redouble their efforts., and, if necessary, die we should assume that it is due to an arrogant of starvation on Labour’s doorstep. But I anticipate proscription of the intellectuals Is it not safer to assume nothing so tragic. It is true that, at the moment, new that we should be already farther on the road, had we ideas come diffidently and speak in whispers; it is true added to our present advantages a true regard for that Labour regards them with ill-disguised aversion, learning and ideas? I have recently travelled several thinking perhaps of the frying-pan and the fire. thousand miles on the English railways. Waiting for Nevertheless,the new ideas, now scarcely felt or heard in the trains at termini and junctions, I have naturally boom of cannon and the insistent clangour of muni- tion factories, are (as the “ still small voice ” ever was) blunder to suppose that what the State wills must the one unconquerable thing that life has to give. Even be always good, or to confuse the location of power if the intellectuals fall back dismayed, by some in the society with the source of the conditions that divine alchemy, their thoughts circle through the air, make a State a State. Fundamentally it follows Plato, finding tardy lodgment in the reluctant brain-lobes of and regards his Republic as a sort of diagram or the Hodges and the Tuppers. S. G. H. schematic representation of the elementary structure which underlies all social life and makes it possible. It arises ‘out of the common need men have of one Notes on Political Theory. another, so that a man’s place in the State is defined by the function he performs in the service of the MR. RAMIRO DE MAEZTU has remarked that outside of general good. It would be easy to work this out in academic circles idealist political theory has remained considerable detail and show how society itself and practically without influence. I think this is false, each group within it has an external side as a body unless it be meant only that the world goes of men engaged in divers but interrelated tasks, and on without heeding how philosophers strive and try; an internal one in which the group appears rather as but Utilitarianism is then in little better case. Almost a single principle running through a number of, minds all recent political theory has been tinged with idealist and taking a different shape within each. Such ideas notions, and its principles have still more frequently are common, I should think, to all who admit the been the common basis from which argument started. relevance of the functional principle to social theory. Accompanying this we have seen social changes (which Society as such is only the widest of the many groups may have been partly effects but were mainly causes) in each of which a man has his place. It includes the of which the most general character has been the others and is composed of them. The man’s activities declineof liberty. There is less of it, and men dare less can be allocated by analysis, one to each group. If for it. Their catchwords are duty and service instead we like to makes certain assumptions, we may pretend of responsibility ,and adventure. I do not wish to that society is beautifully organised on the functional suggest this is a mean thing, though it is fatally easy principle. A man performs the task for which he is to turn it to the base uses of ordered slavery. But I best fitted, earns about what he is worth, and dies a think that it will remain treacherous ground with a merry fellow, except for temporary dislocations of the constant need to cry “Beware, beware” until the machinery that produces the harmony. All is for the traditional theory of the sovereignty of the State is best in this best of all possible worlds. finally superseded in the minds of reasonable men. No theory of the State seems to be implied in this Therefore the real importance of the discussion of elementary analysis. The idealist requires for his Idealism arises from the fact that it has provided a doctrine of sovereignty at least two further steps. peculiarly specious set of arguments for the doctrine, Imprimis, an explanation of the basis of all ethical which thereby finds itself very much in the company of compulsion, and, secondly, the ultimate identification its betters, whom it then proceeds to corrupt, after the of society as the State. These are established by manner of its kind. The first condition of a special arguments. The functional principal may be satisfactorytheory of political liberty, I am going to argue, affirmed while they are denied. This, I suppose, is is the abandonment of the dogmas of the sovereignty what Mr. de Maeztu does. Or again, they may be of the State. The second is like unto it. It is the accepted, and the functional principle maintained recognition that society consists of interdependent but along with them. This is Idealism, and that he does largely autonomous and voluntary groups, together not see its possibility and the special treatment it with the conviction that wherever social life has been requires is, I think, an imperfection in Mr. de worth living it has been because of these “communitites" Maeztu’s argument. I pass over the metaphysical and in spite of the State. There is a third details of the argument on the nature of obligation condition, which concerns the value of liberty in itself. and try to get to its centre, which comes to this-- We ought, as it seems to me, to find room for as much that the only real reason for condemning a type of liberty as possible in the activities of men, often when experience-that for example which we call moral evil it is not obvious what value these make for, and -is that it is limited and imperfect and self-contradictory. sometimeseven when it is pretty clear that it doesn’t It cannot be worked into the context of a make for any in particular. This, I suppose, is what complete life, either because it is disorderly, or because Mr. de Maeztu energetically denies, for he thinks it though harmonious enough it leaves a great deal involves him in the sin of pride and the error of outsideof it. Goodness in life develops in proportion to its forgetting that man once fell. I agree that these fulness and completeness and harmony. Duty, then, heresies are very damnable, but I shall be happy to is the pressure of a relatively complete experience dispute with him as to the identity of the real original exercised on a limited part of itself, and moral sinner. obligation the expansion of the boundaries of a narrow The primitive theory of the sovereignty of the State and incomplete soul, due to the presence of the ideal in spite of the extent of its influence and its glaring in it. The necessity is real, for nothing else than obviousness to the authoritarian mind is a mere inference this can be meant by reality : it is self-imposed, from the formal unity of the State. As it because the obligation is to realise the fuller self, which develops, other fallacies are added, the idea, for includes within it whatever of reality and goodness and example, that laws are the expression of the will of truth the lesser had. Similarly with political obligation. the sovereign, and as such right and just and good. No apology for it is possible except to show In the end you have the full-blown doctrine of the that the power which is asserted to have the right to jurists, which deprives societies, live trade unions or compel represents the real will of the person on whom churches of any real corporate life of their own, of any the compulsion is exercised. It is his fuller self: it power of development, or any right to act except enjoins what he himself would wish to do were his as definitely provided for according to the letter of a insight more sure and his passing desires less insistent. trust. No community, in short, is to have any power If we follow this creed, therefore, we must or any right except in so far as this is delegated to steadfastlybelieves that when the State cows by show it by the State. This sort of thing does not depend or threat of force the starving striker, it is doing what upon argument, but upon assertions, as the fallacies he himself would do willingly were he not blinded by it involves have been often enough pointed out. But ignorance and prejudice and hunger. It is saving him it is not the idealist doctrine of sovereignty, even if from himself, his worst enemy. This is Idealism the practical effects of the two are not in the end indeed. very different. The latter commits no such elementary Some logical principles must be involved in a theory of this sort, if we follow it out. That is, in order to still recognise its coherence and general freedom from defend it, certain views about truth and existence must spiritual pride. Particular exceptions may, no doubt, be shown to be true. Their fundamental principle has be found, the Liberals, in particular, being hard put been variously defined. Mr. Russell once called it “The to it to disarm suspicion. The adoption or not of a Axiom of Internal Relations,” and the Pragmatists philosophy is in the end a matter of temperament, or have thrown a great deal of mud at the something of something less reputable, so that the discovery of called Absolutism, which, they asserted, had something errors in other people’s views is not so much in the to do with it. More usually it is termed the coherence hope of persuading them as of comforting oneself. theory of truth, and may be shortly expressed by Argument, after all, is happily dissociated from belief saying that the truth is the whole. No proposition, or unbelief. In its formal defence Idealism commits that is, is true by itself; it borrows its truth from its two blunders, which are near neighbours, if not blood context. Only in its relations with other propositions relations. It gives the State a peculiar precedence does it acquire any stability, or become so far secure over the other) organs of the social whole; and against denial. You have degrees of truth in so far imagines also that the difference between social classes as you have systems of connected propositions. The is a matter of custom and breeding, and habit and whole of geometry is more true than a single taste, and mode of life, not of economic status. The proposition;but it is not quite true : for it becomes better State, it seems to think, is society itself, or society understood and the limits within which it holds more from a particular point of view. The functional and more clearly distinguished and defined as the rest principle,carefully applied to interpret the remainder of of mathematics is taken into account. Then there is society, vanishes into space when the State is the rest of knowledge-until in the end the truth of mentioned. But what, after all, is the Stale? It is an a proposition is seen to be what it ‘means in the mind organ of society, like any other; it has its particular of God. I will not discuss the proof offered for this function to perform, the maintenance of order and the theory; nor what the reasons are for believing it to administration of justice, for which reason it is the be false. But it is necessary to point out that the repository of force. The sovereignty of the State- process whereby the elementary judgment-one’s first its right to exercise compulsion on the members of guess at the truth-is defined and corrected is an society-may be regarded in two ways. First, as exact analogue to that whereby the isolated desires the State is normally the only element in the social and impulses which make up the everyday lives of whole which is organised and armed, it can make its men are transformed and purified as they come to will prevail, if for no other reason than that it is not discover through experience what they really want. usually worth while fighting it. The authoritarians The secure establishment of Idealist politics think this all that is to be said, though it does not, demands further some attempt to prove that the State of course, touch the matter of the ethical right to represents the real will of the individual citizen. If it compel. The existence of such a right can be is, it will theoretically have the right to compel him determinedonly by an estimate of the value of the good to do its bidding, and the occasions of its exercise which arises from the strength of theState- will be a question merely of expediency. Essentially orderliness-as against that of the goods which other the contention is that the individual is a member of elements of social life bring into being. The society, a part, that is, of a spiritual or ethical whole. traditional(and damnable) doctrine of the sovereignty of the This provides the logical elements which the theory State has therefore no basis except this, that social of obligation requires. How then does the will of the peace and social order are to be honoured beyond all whole get expression? Where, that is, does the things. It is absurd, and all good men know it. To sovereigntywhich has the right to enforce agreement reside? tell them that the maintenance of order in the State Plato supplied the answer, and his followers have echoed as a whole is an end more binding on them than it in divers times. Society is a mind, a mind not loyalty to Church or Guild, or even to Family, is a numerically or existentially distinct from those of the piece of gratuitous and malevolent folly. Men have citizens, but consisting of their minds looked at as common traditions of courage and honour and organised together in the whole. The easiest way devotion,but never to the State. Vet when they sacrifice of getting at the meaning of this is to remember that themselves for great ends, it claims the credit. The what Plato really wanted to show was that a man’s rule of the idea over men’s minds depends on confusion service of the State does not depend upon his holding and cowardice-confusion, because they will not public or administrative office. His daily work in think clearly-and cowardice, lest if we should so far as it is the performance of a necessary social overthrow the idol, those below us who also have function is itself the furthering of the general good. reverencedit may rise up against us. O. LATHAM. The general will, therefore, gets expression through all the institutions which make up society; though it is brought to a point in what is specifically called Studies in Contemporary the State, Its right to compel, by the use of force if necessary, arises solely from the presumption that Mentality. it is likely to know better and to be wiser than the By Ezra Pound. individual citizen. Parliament, the judicial system, the party organisation, the Press-all these are part V.-“THE STRAND,” OR HOW THE THING of the administrative machinery, good or bad, by MAY BE DONE. which the inarticulate subconscious desires and FOR those who have not followed the sign “ Seek Safety strivings of the citizens are elucidated and given some First ! Read the ‘Spectator’ !” there remains the great kind of clear and definite expression. An ingenious heart of the people. Not receiving comfort in the and moderate man can make one feel really good by groves of academicians, I have gone “ out into the this positive development of this line of argument, open”; to the popular font. In the wideness and while the system of prohibitions and regulations which wildnessof adventure I feel like Captain Kettle and Don make up the law for the non-litigious take upon Kishotee. Heaven knows what I shall come upon themselvesan air of conscious virtue as the sterner side of next ! the general will. They pull us up by their mere presence “ The Strand ” is a successful, and obviously successful, when we are not at our best. They enable us to say, magazine. It carries pages of ads. in double “There, but for the intervention of the State, go I.” column, 50 before and the remainder at the back of its Admitting that the practical corollaries of idealist “ reading matter,” to say nothing of the cover with politics can be stated in a form that resembles the ads. on three sides and a modest statement, or chairman’s speech at a directors’ meeting, we may command,concerning “FRY’S COCOA’’ neatly fitted into its belettered facade. It does not contain pictures of which is bound to find him at home. (After all, the car actresses or of Mlle. Regine Montparnasse in the act of is only a “Ford.” The German Embassy had a Benz saying that she wears beach stockings because sand is motor. ) disagreeable to the feet. It is thicker and uses a Let us examine the modus. Let us see what is left slightly better paper than the other 8d. and 6d. (olim to the imagination or credulity of the reader, and just 6d. and ) magazines on the stand where I found what the author is most careful NOT to trust to the it. intelligence of the reader. Putting aside my personal preferences for “ literature," I. The exposition of the position of things by the thought, etc., and other specialised forms of German head spy and the Chief Secretary of the activity, we (and again obviously so) will find here a Legation(? I forget whether this is von Kuhlmann), at any display of technique, of efficiency. This, No. 321, vol. rate, they are very explicit, and the documents in the 54, is manifestly what a vast number of people want; safe are clearly labelled, “ Harbour-Defences, ” what a vast number of people spend the requisite 8d. “ Naval Signals,” etc. to obtain. This is the “ solid and wholesome.” The 2. When Sherlock (who is, of course, the chief spy’s ads. proclaim it. The absence of actresses’ legs is a most trusted assistant) arrives, they begin to talk sign of power. “The Strand” can sell without their rather freely, before the reader is assured that Watson, assistance . . not only to those who despise or disapprove the chauffeur, is well out of hearing. However, it of the legs, torses, etc., of our actresses, but also to the might be assured that he is. Sherlock, in delivering dissolute who know that these delicacies can be more all the naval signals, is careful to say, “a copy, mind effectively “conveyed” in the pages of the large you, not the originals.”, But this is not trusted to the illustratedweeklies than in small-paged monthly magazines. reader in so simple a form. Two paragraphs are taken I suspect that “The Strand” is “soundly” imperialist ; to explain (between the assistant Sherlock and the boss believes in the invincibility of Britain (odds ten to one spy) that the originals would have been missed. under all circumstances) ; does not present Americans That is the sort of thing that the reader is not trusted in an unfavourable light-for is not the language more to see for himself. or less common to both countries, are there not American 3. Sherlock chloroforms the chief spy. This is about readers to be thought of? In normal times I think all the action there is in the story. He suddenly the comic characters might have about them a “foreign produces a sponge soaked in chloroform. This chloroform touch.” However, let us come to the facts. Let us is so strong that he and Watson, have to ventilate see “what carries the ads.” the room a few moments later, yet no whiff of this I. “Sherlock Holmes Outwits a German Spy.” Red chloroform has aroused the suspicions of Von Bork. band on the cover. “His Last Bow, The War-Service Of course, he had it in a specially constructed thermos of Sherlock Holmes. ” This is what business managers flask, or something of that sort, but this detail is left of periodicals call “the real thing.” Sir A. Conan to the reader’s “imagination” or inattention. Time Doyle has never stooped to literature. Wells, Benett, required for extraction and use on Von Bork’s mouth and the rest of them have wobbled about in penumbras, and nose equals three-fifths of a second. but here is the man who hat; “done it,”who has I am reminded of a little story in the Italian comic contributed a word to the language, a “character” to the paper, “Quattro cento venti. ” Alpine traveller having fiction of the Caucasian world, for there is no European missed his shot at a bear, and being at the end of his language in which the “Great Detective” can be hid ammunition, remembers that he has seen bears dance under any disguise. Herlock Sholmes, spell it as you to a tambourine. He at once begins to play a tambourine, like, is KNOWN. Caines and Corellis lie by the and the bear dances. He is saved. wayside. Sherlock has held us all spellbound.Let us see Friend : “But where did you get the tambourine?” what is requisite. Let us see what we are asked to Traveller (unabashed) : “Made it out of the bear’s believe. hide.’’ In the first place, there is a residue in the minds of 4. Further details : Sherlock has taken to Claridge’s. everyone who sees this name on the magazine cover. The Imperial Tokay they drink at the spy’s expense is We all know something about Mr. Holmes. We have from Franz Joseph’s special cellar. Sherlock still no difficulty in calling to mind this figure. He is has (p. 234) “his long, nervous fingers. ” Sherlock perfectlyfearless, possessed of inordinate. strength, is recalls his triumphs over Prof. Moriarty and Col. absolutely impervious to the action of all known drugs Moran (p. 234). Further on we find the true steam and narcotics, and possessed, if not of eternal youth, calliope : “It was I who brought about, etc., and late at least of an eternal prime, of an invulnerable energy. King of Bohemia, when, etc., Imperial Envoy . . . etc. He is also an eunuch (though I have no doubt that Sir nihilist Klopman, Count Von und Zu Grafen . . . etc.” Arthur would fit him out with a past full of romance if So like that pretty little song: ever the public desire it). “I’m the guy wot put de salt in de ocean.’’ In the present story we are asked to believe that two “There is only one man,” said Von Bork. years before the war (i.e., 1912), Mr. Asquith and Sir We must really agree with Von Bork. Sherlock Edward Grey visited Sherlock, who had then retired is unique, but mankind remains amazingly unaltered to the South Downs to study bee-culture. “The and unalterable. He likes a relief from reality, he Foreign Minister alone I could have withstood, but likes fairy stories, he likes stories of giants, he likes when the Premier also, etc.,” says Sherlock, with his genii from bottles. Sherlock with his superhuman usual modesty. These dignitaries asked him to round strength, his marvellous acumen, his deductive up the Chief German spy. (For the Empire was then reasoning (which is certainly not shared with the reader), alert to these matters.) Sherlock at once went to has all the charms of the giant. He is also a moral America and grew a real Amurikun beard. Titan: right is never too right. The logical end of When the action takes place, he has not seen his dear these likes is, or was, God. The first clever Semite Watson for some time. In fact, they stop in a breathless who went out for monotheism made a corner in giantness. passage to see how time has mutually treated them, He got a giant “really” bigger than all other and find themselves unmarked by his ravages. possible giants. Whenever art gets beyond itself, and Nevertheless,when Holmes telegraphs Watson to appear at laps up too great a public it at once degenerates into Harwich “with the car,” Watson appears. What religion. Sherlock is on the way to religion, a modern djinn could be more obedient to his Aladdin? In the worship of efficiency, acumen, inhumanity. Only a midst of a most vital affair, you naturally do trust man on familiar terms with his public as Sir Arthur, someone you haven’t seen for several years to arrive as habituated to writing for that public, would dare on the instant with “the car” in response to a telegram “lay it on so thick.” His Sherlock’s peroration (sup- posedly, August 2, 1914) is a mixture of moving- Next Item : Story translated from the French. With prognostication of the “cold and bitter” wind which the aid of its illustrations, we are to believe that “little will blow over England and wither many in its blast, milliners” in Paris are equipped with rather nice and a hurry to cash a cheque before the arrested eveninggowns, and that the way to strangle cruel spy (then actually in their Ford motor-car, and about Russianex-Governors is with long gloves which leave no to be taken to Scotland Yard) has time to stop payment. mark on the throat. Watson is urged to “start her up.’’ Next Item (small italics) : Paragraph on “Improvement Sir Arthur is as illogical as any other sort of fanatic. on Double Dummy.” He is loud in praise of Sherlock’s faculty for reason, Next Item: “For Greater Italy !” (in the smaller but his own flesh or mind, or whatever it is, falls a little print). Descriptive writing of the Italian front, all short of divinity. the usual words, presumably conveys nothing which So much for the red-label story. It undoubtedly might not have been left to camera and cinematograph. sells the magazine. BUT it is not all the art of making We are expected to read through such important bits a magazine, and, besides, one can NOT count on such of conversation as “Buon’ giorno, signor capitano.” a draw as Sherlock for every issue. There is a lot more Life is too short to read this article. With the exception in the technique of successful magazine making than of the paragraph on “Double Dummy,” it is, in getting an occasional story from Sir A. Conan Doyle. however, the only unreadable thing in the magazine. The next item is “Confessions of a Censor-Fighter,” (Note: Author writes of D’Annunzio as if he were by William G. Shepherd. This is clean, hard copy, greater than Leopardi. This, however, may be merely six to seven pages of the first-hand experience of a a slip of the pen; by “modern poet” he may mean newspaper correspondent during the present war, and “living poet.” It is, however, quite possible that much the best thing in the number. Leopardi’sname is unknown to him.) Next Item. Luxurious room, light such as Next Item : Acrostics (half page). “Rembrandt,”etc., burglar, quelled by tremendous will- Next Item: “Funny Pictures” for children (4 power and “concentrated lightning” from the “flint- pages). blue eyes” of a blind man. Blind man very noble, Next Item : “Perplexities,” one page of puzzles. burglar very base, and has deeply injured the blind man Very good puzzles, too. and the lady of his devotion. Bell rung in the last Next Item: “The Acting Duchess,” usual farce paragraph when the blindness is discovered. about charming people with titles and egregious Next Item : Comic story, bell in last paragraph but bounder without. Probably not based on a very close one. study of “the aristocracy,” and would “do on the Next Item: Mark Hambourg tells how to play the stage. ” piano. Next Item : Curiosities. One page. Nest Item, in smaller print, end of continued story Then comes Notice (as on front cover) that “The (resume of the first half given in black print). Killer Strand Magazine” can be sent post free to the Ames, the wicked pearl-fishing captain, terribly troops. (This postal regulation applies equally to all wicked, hero terribly noble? tremendous passions, other periodicals.) tremendous situations. Very readable. Very probably Finis : Johnny Walker, Secrets of Beauty, Jaeger, quite impressive if read without too close attention. Protective Knickers, Eno’s, etc. Point : Nobility is exalted. One must always remember this point in any study of melodrama. And, moreover, one must not scoff at it. In this story the Drama. fundamental life values are right. By this rightness By John Francis Hope. the author is able to “move” the reader, despite his surface exaggerations, a la Hyper-Conrad. Of course, MR. WALTER HACKETT’Sinterest in spiritualism does one skips large paragraphs to “get on.” not promise to be fruitful in the dramatic sense.. Ne The most wildly roman tic and melodramatic writer secured his one success when he created that delightful always has this one advantage over the professed impostor, Beverley, in “The Barton Mystery” ; but “realist,” that whenever anything “happens” in real that success is not duplicated by anything that he life it is often different from, and often in excess of does in “The Invisible Foe.” There is no dramatic “fiction,” of the patterns of life already portrayed. novelty in the use of the supernatural on the stage; The dull writer, seeking only verisimilitude, the ghost of Banquo presumably rose to frighten possibly writing without experience or imagination, does Macbeth into confession of his guilt; and Mr. H. B. not take this into account, and his work lacks a real Irving’s skill in playing the haunted man has been so profundity. I am not saying melodrama is profound. recently demonstrated in the revival of “ The Bells ” But the “unlikely” element in romance has a that Mr. Hackett’s use of the idea affects me with a profound value, a value that no aesthetic, no theory of sense of damnable iteration. There is nothing in literature, can afford to omit from its scheme of things. Stephen Pryde that enables Irving to do more than Next Item : “The Tanks,” described at the request repeat himself; and there is nothing in the play itself of the authorities by Col. E. D. Swinton, who is to make us more tolerant of spiritual intervention. The obviously put to it, to make an “account” without Horatian rule that a god should not intervene unless saying very much. The, editors say he has written a crisis occur worthy of his interference, should apply ‘‘masterly” stories. He is probably busy with other to the use of spiritualism on the stage; there surely matters, and it is unfair to look at his article too is a lex parcimoniae of art as well as of science which closely. The beginning is verbose, a predicate does forbids us to use short cuts out of our difficulties by the split over six lines, etc. He says calling to our aid the help of beings of a different order "Schutzengrabenvernichtungsautomobil”is not likely to be used as or condition to ourselves. If we make too frequent a topical refrain ‘in vaudeville song. Toward the end and commonplace recourse to the spirits, surely they he conveys some interesting information. will, like Hercules, tell us to put our own shoulders to Next Item: Story, young man called “The the wheel, to exhaust every known means before Wastrel,” worst recorded act that of distinguishing himself resorting to the unknown. The problem that Mr. at football, gives his life for a cad who, we are Hackett has to solve could have been solved by any assured, is very brilliant, although he behaves like an ass stage detective. and displays no intellectual gifts. The problem is quite simple. On apparently Next Item : “Lion-Kings,” in the smaller print. irrefutable evidence, Mr. Bransby had condemned his Brief biographies of Pezon family, possibly left over nephew, Hugh, as a thief; there were the entries in the from before the war stock of copy. ledger in a handwriting that Hugh could not deny. I do not pretend to know anything of the procedure by spiritualist seance, and seen the amateur aping the which an officer resigns the King’s Commission; but professional by an ecstatic self-assertion. There. is, as if Hugh had not forgotten to write this resignation, I said before, no rea1 pleasure to be obtained by watching Mr. Hackett would have had to use his wits to make Miss Fay Compton trying to convey her father’! clear who was really the culprit. Mr. Bransby, noticing message; there is a real pleasure lost in the transfer of the omission, makes Stephen Pryde, Hugh’s interest to her from Mrs. Hilary. As played by Miss brother, write the letter of resignation, and sign it; Marian Lorne, this character could easily have beer he observes that the handwriting is a facsimile of developed into as certain a comedic triumph as war Hugh’s, charges Stephen with the theft and forgery, Beverley ; her breathless wonder, her artful innocence extorts a confession, and compels Stephen to write were a delight to observe, and I regret that she did and sign the confession. Both documents are then not capture Mr. Hackett as surely as she did Dr. placed by him in a copy of “David Copperfield,” which Latham. She is a character who has a right to run he leaves lying on the table, when he staggers into the off with her creator; she indicates that Mr. Hackett’s hall and dies. A lady with a passion for putting gift is not expressed in his commonplace thrills (after things away bustles in and puts “ David Copperfield ” all, he does not produce so powerful an impression of in the book-case, while Richard Bransby is being spiritual presence as Chesterton did in the last act of diagnosed as dead ; and the possibility of redressing his “Magic”), but in his fantastic comedic characters. by human means the injustice done to Hugh is, therefore, Mrs. Hilary is own sister to Beverley, and under her assumed by Mr. Hackett to be so slight as to be guidance Mr. Walter Hackett would do better work negligible. Therefore, for the next two acts, he calls than “The Invisible Foe.’’ A good word must be to his aid the hypothesis of spirit return. said €or Mr. Sydney Valentine’s performance of But the lex parcimoniae condemns no less the Richard Bransby, although he must be so used to good particular use he makes of the spiritualistic hypothesis words that their utterance is really unnecessary. But than it condemns his recourse to it. If channels of if Mr. Walter Hackett maintains his interest in spiritualism, communication already exist, there is no need to make and forgets the obligations of drama, he will new ones. Those channels do already exist in the soon be qualified to write sketches for Maskelyne play; Mrs. Hilary caused much hilarity in the first act, rather than for Irving. and, indeed, started the discussion on spiritualism, by telling everyone that she had received a communication from a spirit control (through a professional We Moderns. medium) that one of her friends would die that day. By Edward Moore. She had visited them all, and, to her disappointment, they were quite all right. Richard Bransby died that END OR EFFEcT.-one may possess all the virtues night, and, on the hypothesis, fulfilled the prophecy. save Love, and remain unhappy. Love, however, If it were necessary for him to return to repair the brings Happiness with it as the sun brings light. Is injustice done to Hugh, the channel of communication Happiness, then, the end of morality? Or an effect was already open ; Mrs. Hilary’s mediumistic friend of Love? could have transmitted the message much more clearly, Superiority.--In order to despise enjoyment, one much more quickly, than anyone else. But Mrs. need only be supremely happy or supremely wretched. Hilary’s medium is forgotten after the first act ; Richard BEAUTY AND TRAGEDY.-In every beautiful face there Bransby had to begin de novo, as though nothing had is nobility, strength and a touch of sadness-the seal happened since the Rochester rappings. of tragedy is upon it. To make Life beautiful, then, He has not only to develop his own power of would be to make it tragic? Nay, rather let us say spiritual control, he has also to develop the mediumship that to make Life tragic is to make it beautiful. of his daughter. The reason is, of course, that Supreme beauty is but the expression in which are Mr. Hackett wanted another two acts in which to give comprised in a miracle of unity the sorrow and the joy Irving and Miss Fay Compton the opportunity to do of Tragedy. For in the most radiant manifestation of something more than play the ingenue and the Beauty there is a brooding solemnity; in the most gentlemanly“honest, honest Iago” that we saw in the first sorrowful there is triumph. act. But whatever we may think of Irving (and CHRISTIAN AND Dionysian.-The Christian and the although it is not one of his best parts, he puts into it Dionysian are both of them step-children and solutions some very goad work, plays, as always now, with of Pessimism. A gloomy and realistic view of the extraordinary subtlety and finish), Miss Fay Compton world was necessary before either of them could be is not an actress of such quality that we can watch her born. In Christianity Pessimism was translated into for two acts faltering towards a foregone conclusion. symbols. “Original Sin” and “transgression against She still walks from the hips, as though she were on God”-these were the theological counterparts of the the musical-comedy stage; she has little gesture, and pessimist’s “suffering,” “the tyranny of the Will.” none of it is significant; ‘and her voice is singularly How did Christianity find relief from this fundamental lacking in power and variety of expression. A less pessimism ? By a pathetic illusion in which mankind promising leading lady, to say nothing of spiritualistic were transformed into erring children. who, however, mediumship, I have never seen on the West-End were forgiven by an indulgent Father. Here suffering stage; and if the sense of spiritual possession and was still an argument against Life, and a palliative direction depended upon her or Mr. Edward Combermere (who plays Hugh) for its conveyance, it would was sought and found. The Dionysian, however, remain on the other side of the footlights. Luckily, affirmed Life in the very tragicality of its aspect, and, there is always Irving to produce the effect of a ghostly by so doing, achieved a victory over it. In short, to presence by sheer diablerie; it is the materialist, the Dionysian Life is a tragedy; to the Christian it is Stephen Pryde, who conveys most vividly the a pathetic tale with a happy ending. certainty of spiritual communication. “The devils also MASTERY AND TRAGEDY.--The desire of Man to believe, and tremble”; and their trembling is of more subjugate Nature and fate and obtain mastery over his dramatic value than all the unintelligent assurances of resources-perhaps it is as well that this is meantime the dutiful daughter and nephew. unattainable! For Man’s spirit is not yet noble Frankly, Mr. Walter Hackett as a thesismonger is enough for him to use this power aright : he would use disappointing; he forgets his drama in his demonstration it, if he could grasp it now, as a means to Happiness ! of things that are surely well known after nearly Our first duty is to fight the idea of Happiness, to forty years of experiment. There can be very few make Man tragic. Once Man wills Tragedy, however, people in London who have not been at least once to a the more mastery he acquires the better. THE HIDDEN FAcuLTY.-when we speak hopefully the many, on the other hand, appear to the few as a of the discovery of still undiscovered faculties in Man, naively happy, narrow and absurd form of existence. to what do we look forward? In plain terms, how do THE Modern Devil.--The devil is not wicked but we expect this faculty to be of use to us? In bringing corrupt,-in modern phraseology, decadent. The qualities about Happiness? It is almost a tragedy-it is a of the mediaeval devil, rage, cruelty, hatred. tragedy without the nobility-that in our time the most pride, avarice, are in their measure necessary to Life, beautiful, heroic and powerful things have to bow their necessary to virtue itself. But corruption is wholly heads and become slaves to this weak and pathetic had; it contaminates even those who fight it. Hell tyrant, Happiness. Should we then oppose the relaxes : Mr. Shaw’s conception is profoundly true. additionof one more divine power to the imprisoned? Well, But if the devil is corruption, cannot the devil be a hope consoles us. For the discovery of a new abolished? It is true, ,Man cannot extirpate cruelty, faculty in Man will not make him more happy, but hatred and pride without destroying Life; but Life simply more powerful ; his self-expression in action is made more powerful by the destruction of the will be the more complete; the essential conflict of corrupt.God created Man; but it was Man that created Life will be magnified; Life will become more tragic. the devil. So think well, you votaries of Happiness, before you NIETZSCHE.-what was Nietzsche, that subtlest of bring to life another power of the tragic creature, modern riddles? First, a great tragic poet : it was by Man. Far better for your ends if you could but a divine accident that he was at the same time a succeed in killing some of those he already possesses. profound thinker and the deepest psychologist. But his But have you not sometimes tried to do that? tragic affirmative was the core of his work, of which THE OTHER Side.-And yet Man cannot create thought and analysis were but outgrowths. Without without Happiness. The soul that lives in shadow it, his subtlety might have made him another becomes unhealthy and sterile : sunshine is after all Pascal. The will to Power, which makes suffering the great health-bringing and fructifying thing. Happiness integral in Life; the Order of Rush whereby the bulk does make a man nobler; more ready to of mankind are doomed to slavery; the Superman generosity and heroism ; more careless of enjoyment. himself,that most sublime child of Tragedy; and the last affirmation, the Eternal Recurrence : these are the Happiness! But what is Happiness? The Happiness conceptions of a tragic poet. It is, indeed, by virtue that is essential to the best life is a state of the soul : of his tragic view of Life that Nietzsche is for us a this is doubtless that which Goethe and Heine force of such value. For only by means of it could praised. But the other, the Happiness of the utilitarian, modern existence, sunk in scepticism, pessimism and is an effect of calculated action, the reward of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, be a sort of ethical thrift. The first, however, is re-created. independent of calculation, and even a little scornful of For the last two centuries Europe has been under the it; for in its confidence and plenitude it dares to put domination of the concept of Happiness as progress. out on the gloomiest seas. It is not un-related to Altruism, the ideology of the greatest happiness of Love, this effect of an affirmative attitude to Life. the greatest number, altruism as a means of When people praise Happiness, how one desires to universalisingHappiness, was preached in the eighteenth believe it is this that they praise. century; until after a while it was seen by such clear- MODERN ART THEMES.-HOW sordid are the themes sighted observers as Voltaire that men did not obey which modern art has chosen for itself! The loss of this imperative of altruism ; therefore they were money or of position, poverty, social entanglements- condemned: the moral indignation of the eighteenth the little accidents which a thinker laughs at ! Are century, the century of censoriousness par excellence, modern artists as bourgeois as this? A coterie of was the result. First, an impossible morality was shop-keepers? Tragic art has no concern with the demanded, and for the attainment of an unattainable accidental: that is the sphere of comedy. Tragedy ideal; then Man was condemned because he failed to .should move inevitably once it has begun to revolve; comply with it, because he was Man. Thus in the end it is beyond fashion, universal, essential; Fate, not the ideal of the greatest happiness worked out in Circumstance, is its theme. The presence of the pessimism : Life became hideous and, worst of all, accidental in a tragedy is sufficient to condemn it. For immoral, to the utilitarian, when it was seen that altruism it is the inevitable, the “Fate” in Tragedy, that and happiness are alike impossible. Schopenhauer is makes of it a heroic and joyful thing. It cannot be here the heir of Voltaire : the moral condemnation of improvised like Comedy. It demands in its creator the one has become in the other acondemnation of a sense of the eternal, just as Comedy, on the other Life itself, more profound, more poetical, more logical. hand, demands an exquisite appreciation of temporal Altruism has in Schopenhauer deepened into Pity; for fashion. Tragedy is the greater art; Comedy, Pity is altruism bereft of the illusion of Happiness. perhapsthe more difficult. Our modern tragedies, How was Man to avoid now the almost inevitable however, are mainly about accidents, and very mean bourne of Nihilism ? By renouncing altogether Happiness accidents ; they are improvised misfortunes and their as a value; by restoring a conception of Life in effect is depressing. which Happiness was neither a positive nor a negative ENCYCLOPEDISTS. Strange that the great dramatic standard, but something irrelevant, an accident : in poets of modern times have had a weakness for turning short, by setting up a tragic conception of Life. This their tragedies into encyclopaedias ! Consider “Faust ” was the task of Nietzsche: in how far he succeeded and “Brand,” for instance. Is it that sentiment of how can we yet say? the eternal was already beginning to weaken in Goethe AGAIN.-Nietzsche loved not goodness but greatness : and Ibsen? Were they overburdened by their own the True, the Great and the Beautiful. Was not this age? Their world was too much with them; and so the necessary corollary of his aesthetic evaluation of they did not reach the highest peaks of tragedy : they Life? were not universal. Sacrifices.--”The first of the first fruits of thy land THE Two Sides.--The few have a conception of Life thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God.” different from that of the many. To the latter still Thus spoke the oldest reverence. We should not pertain such notions as “do as you would be done by,” scoff at this feeling but rather try to understand it; and so forth. They understand a morality but not the for it is only too rare in our time. What was its end of morality. The few, however, who understand meaning to the rulers of Israel? Gratitude, a beautiful, both the morality and the reason for it, who have a affirmative thing. To enrich Life with our highest conception of Life more difficult and unyielding, seem gifts, which we freely offer in thanksgiving for what to the many cold and a little inhuman. The lives of Life has given us,-that should be our form of sacrifice. And we should perform it gladly, with festive, SOAPER: NOW, you will see what I am driving at. We overflowingheart, not with sullen and conscientious face, must give the labour movement a head, a man as if life were a usurer. We must put flesh in the place of idea. Do you OUR POvERTY.-The spiritual poverty of modern life understand? Give them a saviour, saints, a is appalling; and all the more because men are Lincoln,a Cromwell, it doesn’t matter which, so long unconscious of it. Prayer was in former times the channel as we give them a man. This means a great whereby a profound current of spiritual life flowed into sacrifice, and as I am responsible for the trouble, 1 the lives of men and enriched them. This source of will make the sacrifice. wealth has now almost ceased, and Man has become Widnes : What do you want to do? less spiritual, more impoverished. We must seek a SOAPER: I will publicly renounce my position on the new form of prayer. Better not live at all than live Western Trust and say that I have entirely without reverence and gratitude ! Let our sacramental changed my life purpose. I shall place my ability attitude to Life be our form of prayer. Let us no and all my personal wealth at the disposal of the longer desire to live when that has perished. organised non-political unions. You and FINIS.-‘ ‘TO abjure half measures and to live Portsmouthcan prepare for the crisis of the class war, resolutelyin the whole, the Full, the Beautiful.”-GOETHE. but when I have command there will be neither “To try to see in all things necessity as beauty.”- crisis nor class war. NIETZSCHE. WIDNES : But who would believe in your conversion? SOAPER : There is nothing easier to believe in than The Moribund Idea. sudden conversion. It has been the key to religious By Triboulet. and political success. Men are suspicious of the sincere profound thinker’s slow evolution in (ROOM in Mr. Soaper’s palace. Soaper stands with thought. My path is smooth; my success certain. his back to the fire. Earl Widnes is chewing a cigar Give men saviours and they are lost. I can create by the window.) thousands of subordinate saviours who will SOAPER : I am entirely to blame, Widnes. Among the develop into creatures as valuable to us as the extinct Prince of Portsmouth, you and me the Empire Labour leaders were to our fathers. Everything is divided. We are the dictators, yet the policy I is possible with personalities. Personalities suck inaugurated threatens destruction. I said I would the life-blood of ideas and leave the dry skin of make blackleg-proof unions impossible. I did so. dogma and worship. By setting all, benefits, strike pay, etc., as direct WIDNES : Admirable ! But I don’t think you should charges on the State, I crippled the old unions. be left to-make this great sacrifice. Let me do it. WIDNES : Yes; but I organised the women. SOAPER: Not for the world, my dear Widnes. SOAPER: What harm has he done? I say I am WIDNES : I am just as responsible as you, and, responsible for the trouble. Must I tell you all over moreover,I have studied elocution especially for again? By making the unions smaller and popular appeal. Haven’t I made mistakes? poorer I made them desperate armies. Armies Soaper : You have never made a mistake in your life, not led by men but by ideas. Would to heaven except, I should say, when you studied elocution. we had the old labour leaders back ! I’d give No, Widnes, I’ll undertake the sacrifice foe you. a million pound? for twenty blackleg-proof unions WIDNES : I’ll be damned if you do. I know the game, with vast finances and highly paid officials. Soaper. I can read your thoughts. Unions with figure heads. Unions with human SOAPER: ’That is clever. What are they? stuff at the top. When I was young it only took ten minutes to alter the fate of an industry by WIDNES : The same as mine. I, too, am sick of the getting in touch with substantial leaders. My whole business. We are up in the cold. Sentiment tact, my. determination, had something to work and emotion have gone out of life. We on. To-day, we have to stand up to ghosts that starve in an impersonal ‘world. But there is have more power in their punch than fifteen-stone something worse than loss of comfort and glory. policemen: Beneath us, above us, about us, roll our enemies’ WIDNES: But their ideas eat one another up? ideas, and the only idea we had is dying. We felt SOAPER: Ay, and then new giants are born. While it, and that is why we are now thinking in the ideas lead the organised working class we stretch same way. Come, confess that I have found you out our hands like blind men. We touch no wall, no out. support, and we shall stagger on until we touch SOAPER: You have. no floor. You cannot fight ideas with power and Widnes: You want to leave Portsmouth and me on will. Ours is a forlorn hope, but there is hope. the pretence that you will play our game among WIDNES : What is it? the enemy. It is a trick. We should be the dupes, SOAPER: I shall tell you when you admit that my not the workers. policy has been the cause of this mess. I have SOAPER: You have hit it. Well, what shall we do? plain reasons for speaking only then. WIDNES : Make the sacrifice together. Widnes : But, my dear Soaper, I don’t think you treat SOAPER : And Portsmouth? your self fairly. WIDNES : Hang Portsmouth ! We cannot all do it. SOAPER: Never mind that. I’m responsible, am I We must have a background for our heroics. not? Leave him the whole Empire, and soon he will be WIDNES : Rut didn’t I organise the women and-? broken and take the place he deserves for not SOAPER(angrily): You are not going to take any thinking so quickly and so well as we have done. blame. You made the women’s unions as Bring him here, and we’ll tell him of our sacrifice, innocentas theunorganised public. Admit my responsibility. and prepare him for the demonstration. SOAPER: Yes, we’ll do that. (He goes to telephone on WIDNES : No; didn’t I--? side tabIe.) Hello ! Hello ! What do you say? No SOAPER: I’ll make you admit it. The three imperial answer. Absurd! There must be somebody at trusts are not equal. I have the greatest power. Portsmouth Palace. Ah ! they are there. (Soaper Do what I say, or I’ll pull the whole show down speaks.) Is the Prince there? No! Has gone upon us. where? Eh? Good heavens! (Soaper drops Widnes: Pull it down. It don’t matter, but if you the telephone receiver and reels into Widnes’ are going to be bad-tempered, I’ll admit your arms.) responsibility. WIDNES : What is it? SOAPER : Portsmouth has called a meeting of his WIDNES : What did they say? shareholders,and has been there four hours this morning! PORTSMOUTH: Absolutely nothing. SOAPER: If it didn’t feel like doomsday, I’d laugh. WIDNES : What do you say? His shareholders? PORTSMOUTH: Don’t laugh. We are the littlest men Impossible! alive. The moral and intellectual world has Soaper : The whole thing is too sinister, too mysterious revolved, and we had our eyes shut. Even our for my mind to realise. shareholders are our spiritual superiors. We are WIDNES (loosening his collar) : I am prepared for the infernal gods, big with economic power, but anything. What is Portsmouth’s game? No cut off from heaven. The revolutionary thinkers shareholdershave been called together for ten years ; would not speak to me, because our only idea, the we have had absolute rule since then. They are idea of the Wage System, is dead, stark dead. a pack of wolves. We make them eat each other, They kicked me into the street because their but what‘ insanity would make us consult them? acquisitionof economic power is only a matter of a Was it for this we had the whole police and army short period of joyful endeavour. The thought of system transferred from the State to our persona! a few has become social thought, and we live in service ? one of those rare world-moments when thought SOAPER: Mark my words, Portsmouth is also out to becomes deed. abolish the Wage System, and he has left us to the WIDNES : And there is not even the chance of a job as fury of the revolutionaries. a saviour ! I’m off to America. WIDNES : I am quite nervous. I fear a great calamity. SOAPER: I am with you. (A loud report- is heard from the street.) A bomb ! Portsmouth : Yes, to New York. Double ! Listen to the throbbing. I can hear a rushing (The triumvirate rushes off for its travelling necessaries.) below. Someone is running up the stairs. My God, they are upon us. (The door flies open, and the Prince of Portsmouth rushes in. He wears goggles and a great fur motor coat.) Views and Reviews. Portsmouth! PORTSMOUTH: Both here ! RENDER UNTO CAESAR. Widnes : What was the explosion? THE case of the conscientious objector, as stated in this PORTSMOUTH: One of my tyres. I’ve run my car like pamphlet* by Mrs. Hobhouse, is so self-contradictory the devil to get here quickly. Soaper, Widnes, that it is difficult to avoid being exasperated by it. It we are ruined! is true, as Professor Gilbert Murray alleges in a SOAPER: What have you done? Sou called your preface, that “all the Conscientious Objectors known to shareholders together. history have been exasperating”; but as no one is PORTSMOUTH: So you heard of it. Don’t be angry, grateful to another for exasperating him, the fact does listen carefully. I have rolled in my bed night not tell in favour of the conscientious objector. The after night, wearing away body and mind, as I paradox of his position is manifest in the very title of reasoned and reasoned. Millions of policies have this pamphlet, if Mrs. Hobhouse is really representative danced with the shadows on the walls and have of him; the man who will not ”render unto Caesar been dissipated with the shadows at dawn. You, I the things that are Caesar’s’‘ is yet willing to accept from know, have suffered no less. All seemed hopeless. Caesar the gift of pardon, for that is what Mrs. At last I hit on a plan. It was too daring, too Hobhouseclaims. There are certainly cases in which stupendous to trust to anyone. If I did not act substantial injustice has been done because the Tribunals myself without waiting to persuade or consult you, believed that they had no power to grant absolute my plan would be worthless. I decided to abolish exemption; and there is a clear case for revision in the Wage System! these instances. But if for these men the alternative Widnes : I anticipated that. We have even lost to prison is, as Mrs. Hobhouse declares, not the controlof our thoughts. trenches but work in the Home Office Centres, it is SOAPER: Portsmouth, you did not think of our not easy to discern what right even Caesar has to interests. You betrayed us ! interfere with the choice of these men. State the case PORTSMOUTH: That’s a lie! I acted for you. I knew for conscience as powerfully as you please, assert the you felt what I felt. I called together my most absolute right for a man to do as his conscience shareholders. They were like tigers. At first, I directs, and you cannot escape the conclusion that no thought I should be torn to pieces, but when I one has a right to interfere with his choice. If the made my proposition they rose like one man, and consequences of his choice are not what he expected cheered again and again. At last a man came them to be, if they do not support his conscience and forward and said that this day was the most reinforce his purpose, then it is obvious that he -has important in the history of mankind. He congratulated chosen wrongly ; and should exercise his undoubted me on my move, and affirmed that I had power to choose again. The simple fact is that no saved my soul and theirs. The first thing for me man can relieve another of the consequences of his .to do, he said, was to go with a number of the choice, nor has he any more right to do so than, he has shareholders to the headquarters of the to interfere between a man and his God. The inviolability nonpolitical unions and offer the best services of of conscience carries the consequence that men myself and my shareholders as allies in the who obey a categorical imperative must also accept the revolutionarycause. I agreed, and we went to, the whole train of events that follows from their obedience ; revolutionaries’ headquarters, and there, after even Christ: only came to “save His people from their much difficulty, we saw the nameless men whom sins,” not from their virtues, and Caesar, who makes the public never sees, the chief thinkers. As no pretence to a mission of saIvation, cannot be master of the Southern Trust, I explained the great expected to do more. sacrifice of my shareholders and myself. But the appeal to Caesar must be answered by Caesar SOAPER: Sacrifice ! How dare you, sir ! We were in his own terms. We talk much of liberty in this country, but the only liberty known to Caesar is that as ready as you. You have snatched for glory at guaranteed by what is compendiously described as our expense. We are left, and you are on the pedestal. “ the rule of law.” There is no doubt that the Mili- PORTSMOUTH: Rubbish ! They laughed at me, and * “ I appeal unto Caesar By Mrs. Henry Hobhouse. kicked me and my shareholders into the street. (Allen & Uuwin. IS. net.) tary Service Acts are law, whatever we may think of accept it as a privilege granted in return for submission the methods by which Parliament was induced to pass to the provisions of the Military Service Acts.” them; and being law, only two things are possible, In other words, they argue that a right that is guaranteed either to obey or disobey the lay. The Acts contained by an Act of Parliament cannot be accepted by special provisions to meet the case of the conscientious them ; and -their willingness to accept “the King’s objectors; and many, I suppose most, of them pleaded pardon,” if Mrs. Hobhouse truly represents them, their cases before the Tribunals. In the exercise of indicates that they prefer government by the Royal their undoubted rights, the Tribunals usually gave Prerogative. But the grant of pardon does not exemption only from combatant service; there is nothing exhaust the Royal Prerogative, and the whole history of in the Acts to show that proof of a genuine England expresses such a dread of the exercise of the conscientious objection establishes a title to absolute Prerogative that few of us will feel inclined to turn exemption; the form and degree of exemption is left, and back to arbitrary government. The ordinary constitutional properly left, to the judgment of the Tribunals. The procedure is inapplicable to this case ; we cannot words are : “Any certificate of exemption may be agitate for the repeal of the obnoxious clauses, for absolute,conditional, or temporary, as the authority by they alone establish the right of conscientious objectors whom it is granted think best suited to the case.” to exemption. We can only ask them to “render Those objectors who pleaded their cases before the unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,’’ and to show Tribunals, and refused to accept the verdict, are really respect for the rule of law is our only guarantee of guilty of a most. serious offence against the whole liberty. A. E. R. conception of political liberty ; if they recognised the jurisdiction of the Court, and allowed it to adjudicate, they were in common fairness bound to accept the Reviews. decision.There is no such thing as a law-abiding The Town Labourer: 1760-1832. By J. L. lawbreaker, and the man who will not accept the verdict Hammond and Barbara Hammond (Longmans. of the Tribunal to which he appealed is as much an 10s. 6d. net.) Anarchist as the man who refused to ask for the relief The story of the Industrial Revolution has often offered to conscientious objectors by the Acts. The been told, but seldom with such clearness and elaboration, “rule of law’‘ is as much imperilled by conscientious or with such insistence on the philosophic ideas objectors as it is by what are called criminals; and as of the period. The authors have used the Home Office the rule of law is the sole guarantee of our liberties, Papers freely, and have been able to’ demonstrate the and the conscientious objectors themselves enunciate historical existence of the “two nations” which no other social principle, we cannot feel grateful to Disraeli depicted in “Sybil.” But they insist most on men who have done their best ,to bring the law into the spirit of which the whole history was an expression, contempt. which they describe as “a spirit of complacent That they suffer hardships in prison is undoubted; pessimism. . . . This age had taken for its aim the but there is nothing to show that they suffer anything accumulation of economic power, and its guiding different from that suffered by criminal prisoners. philosophywas a dividing force, because it regarded men There is a general case for prison reform, and I am and women not as citizens but as servants of that glad to see that Mrs. Hobhouse intends to devote power. If the needs of that power seemed to conflict whatever profits may accrue to this publication to the with the needs of human nature, human nature had to cause of prison reform. It is true that the worst staffer. In its extreme form, this theory made the possible use you can make of a man is to put him in mass of the nation the cannon-fodder of industry.” It prison, and the whole prison system, as well as the was an age in which things governed men, and from whole science of penology that justifies it, is in need of which, after a century of struggle, we are only emerging a radical revision. But to argue, as Mrs. Hobhouse into a clearer perception that man must not only does, that, “the hardships of prison to a sensitive educated man are enormously greater than to the have dominion over every living thing that moveth ordinarymembers of the criminal classes, but for almost upon the earth, in the words of Genesis, but over his all except professional criminals they are very severe,” own inventions also. If we drop the emphasis on is to do an injustice to the cause of prison reform by man, we drop from civilisation to barbarism, to the special pleading on behalf of the conscientious objector. condition of England during the half-century covered There is nothing whatever to show that the conditions by this volume. of prison life bear less hardly on the criminal classes, At least, the age was logical. If man in England and scarcely at all on professional criminals, than they would not submit to be a product of political economy, do on conscientious objectors; and the fact that the if he would not willingly be reduced to his functions conscientious objectors are there by their own deliberate (as the cow was sacrificed to its udder, and the ox to choice does not establish an exceptional claim to our its sirloin), then he must be made to do so. Even the sympathy. The complaints made are of a nature none religious revival under Wesley had no more inspiring too serious; Mr. Stephen Hobhouse writes, for message than: “Whom the Lord loveth, He example : “Prison life has its own special temptations- chasteneth.” Hannah More had no more comfort for to selfish introspection and the like. ’’ Three others the women of Shipham who had survived the famine complain of the lack of writing materials, others of 1801 than this: “We trust the poor in general, criticisethe prison libraries because they contain few of especially those that are well instructed, have received the standard works. The lack of educational facilities what has been done for them as a matter of favour, is complained of by others; and a reading of the not of right-if so, the same kindness will, I doubt correspondenceprinted in this pamphlet produces an impression not, always be extended to them, whenever it shall of the complete triviality of their grievances. And please God so to afflict the land.” Everything when we remember (what we must always remember} conspired to teach the labourer that he was a labourer, that they are there because they chose to be there, the and to keep him so : education, for example, was thus feeling of exasperation is intensified. For, after all, regarded by Mr. Giddy, a President of the Royal we all have our grievances, and for most of us it is Society, and a great patron of scientific enterprise : true that our grievances are not the result of our “However specious in theory the project might be, of deliberate choice. giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, What do they hope to achieve? Mrs. Hobhouse is it would in effect be found to be prejudicial to their precise on the point: “They stand for the right of morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise those who think as they do to abstain from war. , . . their lot in life, instead of making them good servants Just because they regard it as a right, they cannot in agriculture, and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them; instead problemsfall into different categories. The iederation of of teaching them subordination, it would render them the Empire, for instance, has no obvious relation to factious and refractory, as was evident in the manufacturing National Health, and “The Cultivation of Patriotism” counties; it would enable them to read seditious sorts oddly with the ‘‘Unsolved Problems of the pamphlets, vicious books, and publications against English Poor Law.” We admit that these essays are Christianity; it would render them insolent to their not so juxtaposed, that the whole volume is divided superiors; and, in a few years, the result would be that into four main classifications : “Empire and Citizenship" the Legislature would find it necessary to direct the “National Efficiency,” “ Social Reform, ” and strong arm of power towards them, and to furnish the ‘‘National Finance and Taxation.” But what is really executive magistrate with much more vigorous laws needed in such a case is not classification, but generalisation, than were now in force.” The laws already in existence some policy outlined in general propositions, included the Combination Laws, which the and intensively considered in various aspects ; and that authors thus describe : “The State was to abdicate in is exactly what this volume does not give us. No order favour of ‘the employers. The employers’ law was to of values is determined; we do not know which is the be the public law. Workmen were to obey ‘their more important thing which needs to he done first, or masters as they would obey the State, and the State how that thing when done will affect all the other was to enforce the master’s command as it would its problems. Many of these essays seem to duplicate the own.” With spies to foment or invent disorder, and problems, instead of simplifying them ; for instance, military to suppress it, the magistrates (who) were Mr. Joynson-Hicks deals with “The Land Question, ’’ usually employers) did not lack occupation. “Troops while the Bishop of Exeter deals with “The Rehabilitation were distributed all over the country, and the North of Rural Life.” What bearing these questions and Midlands and the manufacturing region in the have on “ Housing After the War, ” is not indicated, South-West came to resemble a country under military and as Mr. H. R. Aldridge, who deals with the latter occupation. The officers commanding in the different subject, concludes : “It is clear from the figures given districts reported on the temper and circumstances of earlier in this chapter that the hope of the cheap their districts, just as if they were in a hostile or lately cottage must be placed aside for at least a generation” : conquered country ; soldiers were moved about in we must, therefore, conclude that rural life will be accordance with fluctuations in wages or employment, rehabilitated (whatever that means), the land question and the daily life of the large towns was watched will be solved, although there is no hope of increasing anxiously and suspiciously by magistrates and the housing accommodation of rural districts. One of generals. ” the most misleading sub-divisions of this book concerns That the people became brutalised is not surprising; ‘“National Health,” which is dealt with by Dr. James and the evidence in this book reads like a nightmare. Kerr, while Miss Margaret Macmillan deals with “The Yet, in spite of it, they never surrendered, they kept Care of Children, ’’ without showing that the conditions alive in some form the memory of the golden age of necessary to the health of children differ in any the working-cIasses, and the hope of attaining to a way from those necessary for national health. similar condition. The objection, even of the men and Collaboratorsshould collaborate ; but most of these writers women of Lancashire and Yorkshire, to machinery in the “Social Reform” section demand more and was that it was “inhuman, that it disregarded all their more money to be spent on their particular hobbies, instincts and sensibilities, that it brought into their while Professor Alfred Marshall tells us at the end that lives an inexorable force, destroying and scattering ‘‘aspirations for social betterment, ” although strengthened their customs, their traditions, their freedom, their ties by the community of mer, in the trenches, “will of family and home, their dignity and character as men be to some extent hampered by the destruction of and women.” Warped as they were, they yet capital and the necessity of raising a very large public struggled to become straight ; and they resisted, Revenue to pay interest on the National Debt, and for openly and covertly, the attempt to reduce them to the other purposes.” Mr. Arthur Sherwell’s contribution status of instruments of wealth. Doherty told them is an argument in favour of the immediate abolition of that if life was to be enriched by the new industry, all indirect taxes. For “The Organisation of National machinery must be made subordinate to the men who Resources,’’ Sir Joseph Compton-Rickett propounds used it. They strove ever to organise and increase a cautious extension of our present Collectivism, their power, and to use that power to secure the rights "communalcontrol and State ownership.” On the question of man. By their efforts, they not only stimulated, of “The Relations Between Capital and Labour,” Mr. they actually created, the humanity to which we all pay G. H. Roberts (representing Labour) argues “that the lip-service in these days, they taught the world that elevation of labour is dependent on flourishing industry the best political economy is the care and culture of is self-evident,” and he looks to the Ministry of Labour men, and wrung from their masters concession after for “the harmonious co-ordination of the interests of concession that helped to establish the necessary capital and labour,” and to the Board of Trade for the conditionsof human life. That the work is not complete observation and “cultivation of both home and foreign must be admitted; there are too many resemblances markets. ” Sir Benjamin Browne (representing between our present and their historical condition for Capital,) talks very vaguely about the necessity of us to be free from the apprehension that history may producing in industry the same harmonious relation repeat itself; but history can inspire change as well as between employers and employed as exists between their repetition, and this illuminating work contains the relative classes in the Army. ’The men must consider promise of a happier time. the employers, and the employers must consider the After-War Problems. By Various Authors. Edited men; but where the money is to come from to improve: by William Harbutt Dawson. (Allen & Unwin. conditions, Sir Benjamin Browne does not know. So 7s. 6d. net.) we might go on, trying to get not only a little light on We confess that we are getting tired of after-war our problems, but a little leading to their solution, and problems, and should welcome a volume stating the being fobbed off always with some vague platitudes. solution of those problems. One of the solutions We prefer Lord Cromer to any other writer in this would probably be the co-ordination of effort, and we volume, for he regards “Imperial Federation“ as quite should not get, as we do here, a number of what we a good idea, but apparently impracticable. That is at may call experts, each dealing with his subject as least a definite opinion, and as it makes no demand on though it had no relation to any other. Certainly, all the Treasury, it will probably be welcomed by the the domestic problems need such co-ordinated effort governing classes. Altogether, the volume is for their solution ; the Imperial and International disappointing. An Attempt at Life. By J. W. N. Sullivan. (Grant Richards, Ltd. 5s. net.) Pastiche. TO VISCOUNT HARBERTON. Since Mr. Wells wrote “Love and Mr. Lewisham,” The revolution’s off ! Our profiteers the life of the poor student in London has attracted Will soon begin to crop away their ears. remarkably few novelists. This is a pity, for the No more in counting-house, exchange and mart, seemingly prosaic subject proves on analysis to be They’ll argue over Plato, Locke, Descartes ! composed of highly poetical ingredients which No more they’ll stride with Shakespeare, dream with accommodatethemselves to the most varied treatment. Mr. Keats, Sullivan has turned the pliant nature of his material to Neglecting stomachs, wives, and balance-sheets ! good account, and although in his normal attitude of They’ll throw their classic tomes at Labour’s brains, And knock the monster senseless in its chains. detachment he steers a middle course between the What liberties will Labour wish to take romantic and realistic, he swerves to one extreme or When brained with Milton, Ibsen, Mars, and Blake? the other in appropriate episodes. O noble Harberton, your voice and wit “The Attempt at Life” is made by James Walker, Might save plutocracy from culture’s pit, B.Sc., whose ambitions are at first wholly scholastic. But for the simple fact that, Whiteley dead, To him the value of scientific research in a college A million Whiteleys flourish in his stead! laboratory is a matter simply beyond dispute. But this TRIBOULET. comfortable religious creed is disturbed by contact with HALF-TRUTHS. the less academic emotions, and then the aim of life (I) Epigrams are half-truths felicitously worded. presents itself to him ,as a menacing problem. Whether (2) Nothing of importance ever happens before lunch -and very little after. his manner of solving it will prove to be the right one (3) A business man is someone who expects to be paid is left to the reader to decide, and the reader will for ideas which any gentleman or artist would consider probably leave it undecided, since Mr. Sullivan’s hero too obvious to be worth mentioning. remains after all perhaps the most shadowy figure in (4) It is as easy for an actor to be a man as it is for the novel. This does not mean that Mr. Sullivan has an actress not to be a harlot. failed to depict a character with skill. On the (5) Things are not always what they do not seem. contrary, his Lane, Professor Turner, Mr. Marsh, Briggs, Because a thing is printed in the paper it is not necessarily Miss Nash and Marjorie are, in particular, presented untrue. (6) Man never plays the knave till woman has played with a convincing touch of personal atmosphere. But the ten. Mr. Sullivan has portrayed these characters more in (7) The only way to make sure of being happy for the form of an outline sketch, for which hi.; capacity is five or six hours together is to go to sleep; but one great. The portrait in greater detail which he has may be fairly certain of one hour’s optimistic outlook reserved for his main character has resulted in by judicious over-eating. something more complete, but less harmonious in the (8) The highest taxed superfluity is- sensibility. drawing. Hence, Walker’s marriage ‘with Lucy, who (9) Jews, the working class, self-sacrifice, and Socialism seems to attract him more as a symbol of the feminine are all particularly abhorrent to the average Christian. than as a feminine individual, concludes the book on (10) On one subject only arc men and women in agreement- a note of interrogation. Will James ever rebel against in distrusting women. Lucy and his polytechnic job, and, if so, what will (11) Every debateable action is assignable to one of happen? We do not know James well enough to two causes-lack of money or superfluity of sex. answer. (12) The one advantage of being married is that it As a novelist, Mr. Sullivan shows himself extremely prevents you marrying such a lot of other people. versatile in his resources. There are admirable (13) Even oId men and old women cannot wholly rob old age of its beauty, dignity, and pathos. passages of impressionistic description. There are (14) Never do anything. This is the only known frequent touches of dry humour. Above all, he has method of never doing anything wrong. avoided the common mistake of lapsing into aimless (15) To acquire a reputation for cynicism, merely autobiography, and his “Attempt at Life” is whisper to your neighbour that which she and everyone somethingmore than an attempt at fiction. else present is already thinking. (16) Possibly even death may not prove the final Proportional Rep resent at ion and British disillusion! (17) It is useless to try and raise money; it is hopeless Politics. By J. Fischer Williams. (Murray. IS. to attempt retaining woman’s love, unless you can con- net.) trive to suggest that you don’t care whether you have Mr. J. Fischer Williams writes with much clearness it or no. concerning the application of the single transferable (18) Everyone does everything a little better when vote to the British electoral system. He claims nothing they are a little drunk. (19) All generalisations are wrong--including this one. for it except that it will result in a House of Commons KENELM Foss. numerically proportionate to the voters, and that it will enable a number of more or less independent members to be elected. What they are to do with their independence LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. except “log-roll” he does not tell us; and if his THE CURE OF Warshock argument is sound that the leaders of parties so elected Sir,-I have been interested in reading in THE NEW will be less powerful, he has provided the most powerful AGE of July 26, 1917, a review o€ Dr. M. D. Eder’s book political argument against his proposal. For it is on ‘‘ War Shock.” certain that the Government (and therefore the Opposition) As your reviewer remarks, “Altogether, it is a most must be more powerful in the future than it has interesting and valuable record,” and although, as he previously been, that national safety alone demands says, “ it wouId be unfair to Dr. Eder’s precision of more resolute government than we have known since statement and classification if we offered a general the Tudors. There must obviously be a new orientation paraphrase of it,” there is one point that evidently requires of domestic politics, and the most satisfactory for a little explanation. the people of this country will be that which gives them In Chapter VIII of the book, the “Summary of Conclusions,” it is observed (in par. 8) that “ The power in the economic sphere. As a game, the single treatmentpar excellence is hypnotic suggestion.’” Par. 9 transferable vote is very interesting; but as a political of the same chapter states, “ 91.5 per cent. of cases of development, if the chief argument in its favour is mar-shock were cured by this method, and 8.5 per cent. sound, it can only weaken the Executive to the national improved. . . . Cure is very rapidly effected; most cases danger. are well in less than two weeks; some in a few minutes or hours.” Par. 13 remarks that “The majority of religious teacher of evangelical views and of great war-shock patients so cured can return to the front in beauty of life. His influence on young men was quite three to six months.” extraordinary, and it was a sad surprise when his last One would be glad to know what Dr. Eder means, by book almost joined hands with Huxley and Tyndall,” “ cure.“ It is an instructive point, especially when one etc. (p. 312). The reliable appreciation of a fair-minded is aware that large numbers of these cases treated at orthodox critic. These “ heretical ” books can now be the centres in France are not only “ cured ” but had for sixpence each. “The Ascent of Man” might returned to duty in the trenches within two to four weeks. very well be included in the R.P.A. Cheap Reprints B.E.F. CAMOUFLAGE. along with the books of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, *** Haeckel, Clodd, Grant Allen, Lankester, A. C. Lyall, SUPPRESS. etc. If Rationalism be “ The Religion of the Open Sir,-The Continental “ Daily Mail ” is practically Mind,” according to A. G. Whyte’s excellent little the only newspaper accessible to most of the B.E.F. Its book, so named, which I commend to Mr. Kerr’s attention, news is strictly limited to what it considers suitable for nothing is to be gained by misreprinting the our consumption. In its issue of August 31, under the work of Henry Drummond as evangelist to students. heading “ Full Text of Mr. Wilson’s Note ” the Mr. Kerr’s memory of “the movement ” may be vivid, italicisedwords in the following not unimportant passage but his bias has evidently grown stronger. We should of that Note are simply omitted :- all cultivate “ the open mind ” nowadays, whatever we [The American people] “ believe that peace should rest were in 1887. W. M. upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments, the rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerful, their equal rights to freedom and security and Memoranda. self-government, and to a participation upon fair terms (From last week’s NEW AGE.) in the economic opportunities of the world, the German Germany is a Tudor among Victorians. peoples of course included, if .they will accept equality The tie between the Prussian, system and the German and not seek domination.” people is the success of Prussia. France. F. H. DRINKWATER. The only means of stubbing up Prussian militarism P.S.-The text of President Wilson’s Note, as is to stub up the Prussian dynasty; and the preliminary publishedin all the French newspapers, is, for what reason means to this is to demonstrate that it is no longer a I know not, a mere paraphrase, and not a faithful one. success. *** With the permission of our surviving anthropoids, HENRY DRUMMOND. we prefer to regard wars between man and man as in- Sir,-Mr. R. B. Kerr’s interesting letter on “ Rationalism" volving ideas as well as the comfort of the barbarian in the issue of August 30 contains an account of classes. Henry Drummond’s work among Edinburgh students Germany cannot at one and the same time boast her thirty years ago, in which occurs this grotesque unparalleled strength and bewail her unparalleled fear. statementthat the meetings “ were nothing but orgies of Is our ,object to end the war or to secure the objects terror about hell.” Neither D. L. Moody, with whom for which the Allies entered the war? Drummond worked in his early days, nor Drummond” The democratisation of Germany is not an aim added himself, said much about “ hell,” but tried and often to our other war-aims; it is the summary of all of them. succeeded in getting at the consciences of men, and Prussia and armament are one and the same thing. helping them to realise that they were already in’ a There exists in the Labour and Socialist movement “hell ” largely of their own making. I was also a a tendency on the part of its members to think not only student in Edinburgh for the best part of the ’eighties, for themselves but by themselves. and, though I only once attended a meeting presided In these days agreement is indispensable to action, over and addressed by Drummond, called to arrange for and action is indispensable to effectiveness. summer work by students who had worked with him, In face of a practical problem there is nothing like I know something of his influence on men my public meetings for eliminating foolish counsels.- contemporariesat the University, and I venture to say that "Notesof the Week.” the influence of his fine character and straight talks with men did far more good than harm, even in the I am not a prophet, but only a political arithmetician. case of those who broke “ into perspiration from fear All Germany is now aboard a submarine. of hell.” In these days Drummond was looked on in With every week of the U-boat campaign we ought certain ultra-orthodox circles as a “ heretic ” and as all of us to run a tuck in our expenditure.-S. VERDAD. an ‘‘ evangelist” of a peculiar type. I refer Mr. Kerr to Professor, now Principal Sir, G. A. Smith’s “ Life of Flattery tends to corrupt everybody. Henry Drummond” for a reliable account of the work It is impossible to conceive anything more hateful or which Mr. Kerr, in his rationalistic bias, unconsciously sterile than a world in which every individual should but not less really represents. Two of the students fortify himself within the hard walls of his own ego, referred to came to the town in which I. then lived, stayed and reject every influence not springing from his own in my home, and conducted a series of meetings in a sap.---RAMIRO DEMAEZTU. church. So far as I remember, they did not preach “ hell ” at all, though they were both Scottish What is necessary is that the individual should be Highlanders,and divinity students of the then Free Church! able to stand a siege against any centralised power Both men have risen to distinction, one in the English attacking his liberty and self-respect. Presbyterian Church and the other as a theological I think National Guilds are the natural development professor in the ‘Presbyterian Church of Australia. of the Trade Unions.--“ Interviews.” The real character of Drummond’s religions addresses and teaching can be best understood by reading his “ Mother, what is a Strachey ?” “ New Evangelism,” “ The Greatest Thing in the The “New Statesman’’ is a prime exemplar of the World ”-Love (I Cor. c. 13), “ Pax Vobiscum,” arid species leading the sheltered life behind a phalanx of “The City without a Church.” I need only refer to immobile ideas, leading the sheltered thought behind his “ heretical ” books-“ Natural Law in the Spiritual a phalanx of immobile phrases. This sort of thing World,’’ severely criticised by Dr. R. A. Watson in cannot fail.-EzRA POUND. “Gospels of Yesterday,” now forgotten, and the far better book, the Lowell Lectures on “The Ascent of When deeds are at their most powerful, the only means Man ” (1894), which was criticised in a pamphlet by of making words effective is to put them in contrast the late Samuel Smith, M.P. In his autobiographical and not in comparison with acts. book, “My Life-Work,” Mr. Smith says of Drummond We are too rational nowadays to be rationalistic, and that he “had made a great name by his first book,” too reasonable to believe in reason alone. N.L., etc. “ It was based on a full belief in The fate of rationalists is always unhappy; they end supernaturalreligion and on the Christian revelation as in sterility or in hypocrisy.-R. H. C. accredited by miracle. Its science was not of the highest, but it was very suggestive and was delightful After working with men, I’m ready for anything!- reading. He had been for a number of years an accepted H.M.T. those of the heads of working-class families.--EDWARD PRESS CUTTINGS. JENKS. But, in view of the present technical development of the weapons and conduct of war, there are only. two We do not want to become militarily weak, .as our enemies would like us to be;, we want to remain as possible ways of completely satisfying the demand for strong as before. But we want to remain strong by security. The one way consists in the continuation of new means, and to abandon those of the old means of the war until one side is in a position to put its knee strength which to-day do us more harm than good. upon the breast of the other side and to make it utterly So let us speak quite candidly about our Junkerdom. incapable of resistance for any time that can be It has rendered unforgettable services to our military foreseen;the other way is to reshape the whole State system strength, and it gave us a Bismarck. But through its of to-day by the winning of democracy and the radical hard egoism and its ruthless lust of power it has removal of militarism. Accidents, which are incalculable, caused us heavy, heavy troubles. I want to avoid may indeed produce a peace of neither the one all agitation against Junkerdom, and to keep my kind nor the other kind, but the result will be only a eyes open to what is healthy, strong, and even great sham peace. As long as the present militarism in it. But what countless people have in their hearts continues to exist, a peace between the nations, containing must out. We desire no longer to be governed in guarantees of permanence, and not consisting in violation Prussia by- Junkers and corps students-and not, I of the rights of the peoples, cannot be expected.- must add, by those who have likened- themselves to EDOUARDBERNSTEIN, in “ Neue Zeit.” them, a class which unfortunately is more numerous than the born Junkers. We are very grateful for a Mr. Lansing, State Secretary, officially denies the German nobility which adds to its old civilisation and published reports that he had stated that the United traditions an open understanding for the needs of a States Government did not insist upon the elimination people which wants to be free. A certain leadership of the Hohenzollerns as a condition of initiating any would fall naturally, and voluntarily be permitted, to peace discussion. this nobility. But absolutely every remnant of the old An authoritative announcement was made at the spirit of privilege and caste is to-day evil.-Prof. same time that what President Wilson meant by a Meinecke in “Frankfurter Zeitung.” change in the Government of Germany was a change in the character of the Government, and not a mere form. The German Government is in its very social and The United States reserves to itself the right to decide political being an instrument for the exploitation and what the character of Government in Germany will be suppression of the labouring masses. It serves at with which this nation will talk peace. home and abroad the interests of Junkerdom, capitalism, It can be stated that President Wilson’s belief is that and militarism. It is the reckless representative peace negotiations can only be entered into after the of world political expansion, the strongest upholders elimination of the Hohenzollerns and the Prussian war of competition in armaments, and one of the weightiest party from the control of German affairs. The President exponents in the creation of the causes for the present sincerely hopes that the German people, sooner or later, war. It arranged this war whilst it was misleading will act in such a manner as to safeguard their own the masses of the people and even the Reichstag. interest? and the interests of’ the world.-” Times.” It seeks to maintain the war feeling in the nation by the most blameworthy means. it carries. on war by The present House of Commons began its existence methods which, even regarded from the former with an immense preponderance of members whose customarystandpoint, are monstrous. Such, for instance, association with their constituencies was of the slightest, are the invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg, the use and who frankly looked upon a seat in Parliament as a of poison gases and Zeppelins, the submarine trade stepping-stone in their own career. Of the rest a war, the torpedoing of the “Lusitania,” the system of numberare serving in the forces of the Crown and still more hostages and contributions especially in the beginning in the Government Departments. Hardly a vestige in Belgium, the systematic trapping of Ukrainian, remains of the old personal relations between Parliament Polish, Irish, Mohammedan, and other war prisoners and the provinces, and the consequence is a steadily in German prison camps for purposes of traitorous war widening breach at a time when the first requirement service and traitorous espionage, the treaty of Zimmermann of the country is intelligent unity. There would be no with Sir Roger Casement as to the formation of substance in the general condemnation of “ politicians ” an Irish Brigade, the attempts to use civilian subjects if more of them realised the true functions for which of hostile States who were in Germany by threatening they were elected.-‘‘Times.” them with forced internment, the dictum, “Necessity knows no law,” etc. To the Editor of the “ Times.” By the maintenance of the illegal state of siege and Sir,-It was, perhaps, to be expected that the by the use of the Censorship, etc., the Government considerableupheavals of reality which have taken place preventsthe public knowledge of uncomfortable facts and during the last three years should produce alarm in smothers criticism of its methods. The present war is comfortable circles. But it may well be doubted not a war for defence or for the liberty of small nations. whether the twitterings of nervous alarmists are From the standpoint of the proletariat it signifies only calculated to arouse respect at the present time for the the most extreme concentration of their political powers that be, who are very much on their trial. suppression and of their economic draining and the The President of Corpus has ventured to criticise a militaristic slaughter of the life of the working classes greater President for daring, at a critical moment, to for capitalistic and absolutist advantage.-Dr. Karl give voice to the widespread hopes of the rank and Leibknecht. file of those nations which, for the past--three years, have given their blood and toil, and the lives of their sons, to make this privilege-ridden world a better place for the average man and woman, unprotected by the triple armour of an academic benefice. To do this thoroughly, there is but one way-namely, to place the destiny of the world in the hands of the masses who compose it, and to help them to work out their own salvation. This is, apparently, not the view of the President of Corpus. He would have us go back to the “Six Acts ” and the Peterloo Massacre, which he genially suggests engendered a “ feeling of security.” Doubtless they did. But the question is-In whom? Possibly in the minds of heads of colleges, hardly in