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.