H. HAMILTON FYFE 
 
 THE 
 
 MEANING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORLD 
 REVOLUTION 
 
 CECIL PALMER & HAYWARD
 
 '^-^^-Ca^V ^^^ 
 
 /'Tl^ 
 
 %-^ 

 
 THE MEANING OF THE WOULD REVOLUTION
 
 ^(A/t/v,/' 
 
 Cl)e n^eanina of the 
 Woria Resolution. 
 
 By 
 
 H. HAMILTON FYFE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CECIL PALMER AND HAYWARD 
 
 OAKLEY HOUSE. BLOOMSBURY STREET. W.C.I 
 
 %^
 
 F I R S T 
 EDITION 
 19 19 
 C O P Y - 
 R IGHT 
 
 Printed for the PubUshcrs by J. Alexander & Co.. 6+ Finsbury Pavement, 
 and 16 Roscce Street. London. L.C.2,
 
 THE MEANING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORLD REVOLUTION. 
 
 - CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE -WORD AND THE IDEA. 
 E§pur si tnuovc. — Galiluo. 
 
 Revolution I A word which suggests unpleasant 
 ImagesT^^Vhe n we think of it, we tiiink of the 
 French Eevolution with its guillotinings and 
 noijades. Or we think of the Eussian Revolu- 
 tion which has seemed to most observers at a 
 distance to consist so far of wholesale shootings, 
 imprisonings, banishings, wholesale confisca- 
 tions, industrial anarchy, the abolition of t'ade. 
 We do not think of the Revolution which 
 abolished slavery, or the Revolution w^hich 
 substituted law for personal combat, or the 
 
 3
 
 TuE Meaning of Tue World Revolution 
 
 Eevolutioii which brouglil to an end among 
 civilised peoples sports in which men strove to 
 kill each other ur were torn hy wild beasts. 
 
 You may object that these changes wcie the 
 result, not of Revolutions, but of Evolution : 
 that thev were not made suddenlv but as the 
 consequence of the slow growth of a moie 
 humane and more logical consciousness. To 
 which I would reply : that the same is true of 
 all changes. However sudden they appear to 
 be, they have been long prepaiing. Evolution 
 is going on always. From time to time there 
 ariive periods when mankind becomes awai'e 
 that some vast change is in progress. Then 
 there is felt a desire to speed it up. Then 
 we have Revolutions. 
 
 Evolution and Revolution are really the same 
 process. They both result in change, as both 
 words mean ** change." They cause a turning 
 round of man's thought. The bloodshed that 
 often accompanies Revolution is due to the 
 senseless opposition of those who try to resist 
 changes, whose thoui^ht has not been turned 
 round, because their brains are hardened by 
 possessions or privilege. No one who under- 
 stands what Revolutions reallv are would be
 
 TuE Word and the Idea. 
 
 so foolisli as to oppose them any more than he 
 would try to push back an avalanche or swim 
 a^iainst a tidal wave. 
 
 Now most of us think we understand quite 
 clearlv the causes of the lievohitions in Russia 
 and in Germany. One was provoked by the 
 tyranny and imcompetence of olHoiaklom; the 
 other l)v tlie bullvint^ airs and crazed ambition 
 of the Junker caste. What we do not under- 
 stand is that, althougli we manage to control 
 our oHicials and to keep our Junkers quiet, 
 the mass of the population of the British Isles 
 have become conscious of enemies to their 
 liberty and their comfoit not less obnoxious 
 than those which caused the outbreaks in Russia 
 and in Germany. In all countries the same 
 ferment is at work. The demand is everywhere 
 for what George Eliot called in " Felix Holt, 
 the Radical " : "a man's share in life for every 
 man." 
 
 Revolution began to be whispered about early 
 in the year 1917. Russia supplied the word. 
 But the idea behind it had been forming in 
 many lands for a long while before the brute 
 incompetence of government by officials in their 
 own interest provoked the outburst which 
 
 I
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 washed out in that country, along with a weak, 
 well-meaning, insignilicant Tsar, all the existing 
 props of orderly administration. 
 
 What this idea may be, what the meaning 
 of the " Revolution " which is in the air, must 
 needs be asked by all who seek understanding 
 of the age in which they live. 
 
 So far only vague surmises have been mur- 
 mured. Many think it means deposing kings. 
 Many believe that land and property are all 
 to be divided up, ''' which can't do any good, 
 you know, for some would lose or sell their 
 bit, and others would soon get more than their 
 share, and then things would be just the same." 
 Many are afraid of " Bolshevist excesses," and 
 deride nervously the notion of industrv existinj^ 
 without capitalists, that is, owners of spare 
 cash, or under any save a capitalist system. 
 
 What few have seen, and what no one yet, 
 I think, has bluntly stated, is that the World 
 Revolution now in piogress means much more 
 than any or all of these things surmised. It 
 moans that there has taken place a change in 
 the thought of Mankind. 
 
 * * * # 
 
 Numbers of kings have been deposed, num- 
 
 8
 
 The Word and the Idea. 
 
 hers of systems rooted up, numbers of social 
 experiments made, without any change of heart 
 or mind even among those who were the prime 
 movers in such events. 
 
 The French abohshed one despotism only to 
 fall willini^lv after very few years under the 
 jack-boot of another. The Scottish nation threw 
 off the voke of the Priest . . . and substituted 
 for it the yoke, equally galling and insensate, 
 of the Presbyter. The English dismissed James 
 the Second because he tried in secret to use his 
 position for his own purposes, but they put 
 themselves instantly under William of Orange, 
 who did the same thing openly, and later they 
 endured their Third George, who made it an 
 axiom of state that the upkeep of the Royal 
 profit and prerogative must be his Ministers' 
 chief conceni. 
 
 These events clearly did not proceed from 
 any sweeping alteration in the thoughts of men. 
 The same might be said, I think, of any pre- 
 cise event which one might examine. Cause 
 and effect are in human affairs so difficult to 
 determine that it puzzles one to say whether 
 actions ever directly result from mental pro- 
 cesses, whether changes of belief ever produce 
 
 9
 
 The Meaning of Tue Would Revolution 
 
 results which rank in Ilistoiy as Events. I am 
 inclined to hr)l(l that, while " action is transi- 
 tory " and due always to mixed motives, the 
 consequences of Thought-Revolution are " per- 
 manent, obscure and dark." They cannot be 
 directly traced until many years have passed, 
 perhaps not even then. 
 
 For example, let us ask : What ci;e?</cs can be 
 attributed to the abandonment of the belief 
 that this J'^arih was the centre uf a Universe 
 created expressly for the beneiit of one species 
 of earth-dwellers? 
 
 No throne was upset, no system uprooted, 
 no books were even publicly burned, to mark 
 the passing of that odd theory which once was 
 received among all civilised nations. Would it 
 be correct, then, to say that no results flowed 
 from this renunciation? By no means. They 
 are evident in every newspaper W'e read, in our 
 frame of mind towards private as well as public 
 problems, in our habits of everyday life, in 
 everything we think or do or say. Yet these 
 results cannot Ije catalogued as historical events, 
 each with its date attached for the plaguing of 
 schoolboys. Nor will our Revolution be of 
 necessity marked bv events, violent or other- 
 
 10
 
 The Word and tue Idea, 
 
 wise, though in time all acts will be influenced 
 
 hy its effect upon the human mind. 
 * * * * 
 
 This effect must be .gradual. Nearly all of 
 us are affected by chanaes of belief without 
 beinL,' aware of them. We cling to the forms 
 of our old convictions without any longer putt- 
 ing them into practice. Unconscious that our 
 point of view ha.s been shifted, we profess one 
 faith, and are moved to action by anotlier. So 
 it will be seen, long after the Coming Revolution 
 has turned the mind of man definitely away from 
 its earlier prepossessions, that many will con- 
 sider themselves to be still under the influence 
 of these, although their conduct will prove the 
 contrary to be true. 
 
 Already it is possible to discover this Facing- 
 both-Ways attitude. There are many who say 
 that because the majority in Great Britain 
 approved the war, the Irish ought to have been 
 forced to fight; but who, in spite of majorities 
 in iVustria and Germany approving war, pro- 
 tested against Bohemians being forced to fight 
 for Austria; Alsatians and Lorrainers for 
 Germany. The same type of mind, while find- 
 ing it impossible as yet to admit the self- 
 
 11
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 governing claims of national movements near 
 at hand, is persistent in demanding this right 
 for small nationalities at a distance. 
 
 There are many, too, who considered compul- 
 sory service right and necessary in Britain and 
 the United States, but deaounced it as tyranny 
 in the German States : who, while asserting that 
 " the masses need gentlemen to lead 'em," 
 assert also that the gentlemen have made a 
 terrible mess of their leading : who would be 
 shocked by the suggestion that Diplomacy is 
 a back-number and will not live again in its 
 old forms, but who declare that diplomatists 
 have been " worse than useless " and that " the 
 whole system ought to be gone into and over- 
 hauled." 
 
 This gradual infiltration of new ideas saves 
 
 largo numl)ers of us from what would be the 
 
 painful consequences of resisting them. Many 
 
 who believe now that they will resist to the 
 
 death the measures of the Revolution, whatever 
 
 they may be, will be found in time, not only 
 
 accepting them, but declaring that they have 
 
 always thought such measures necessary. 
 * * * * 
 
 *^But," you say, "the enquiry as to the 
 
 n
 
 rp 
 
 The Word and tue Luka. 
 
 nature of the Eevolutiuu waits for an answer. 
 Let us hear in what direction the mind of 
 Humanity is to be turned." 
 
 " Is being turned " let us say, or, better 
 still, " has been turning through the course of 
 many ages." 
 
 More than two thousand years 
 the greatest poet of Greece, if a 
 ness is to be judged by the breadth of his sym- 
 pathy, the penetration of his insight, the moving 
 eloquence of his appeal to what lies deepest 
 in our souls — more than two thousand years 
 ago Euripides pleaded the evolution which is 
 still to come to-dav. He challencred evervthinj^ 
 which put the claims of men and women below 
 the claims of system, which counted their wel- 
 fare less important than the greatness of City, 
 Country or Empire. ^^ ^hfi lienged everything 
 which exalted th e State at the e xpense of the 
 in^TmruaT; everything that gave to tHe^Tew" 
 
 position and prosperity, while the many were 
 despised, used as tools, bullied sometimes and 
 sometimes cajoled, always regarded as the 
 backs upon which the few might climb to riches 
 and power. 
 
 '■' Lies, lies aaain and still they lie,"
 
 TuE Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 he cried of the State and National PoHcy and 
 the extension of Imperial sway, so far as these 
 did not (and we know they never have) contri- 
 bute to the happiness of man, woman and 
 child, so far as they demanded sacrilice of 
 individual joy and freedom, of homes and loved 
 ones, and simple, natural life. 
 
 What is the value of a policy which, in order 
 to safeguard a State from possible future harm, 
 takes a baby from its mother's arms and throws 
 it from the city wall so that its tender body 
 is dashed to pieces? That was the query which 
 Euripides suggested in llie Trojan Women , and 
 from this sprang a stinging criticism of the 
 contf? m porary St ate. What good could come 
 to Athens if, in order to keep up her prestige 
 and teach others (aa^ t^ey h said, " by a striking 
 example ") that its demands must not be 
 refused, its rulers found it necessary to 
 massacre the men of Melos and to sell their 
 women and children as slaves? 
 
 " All the great accepted conventions, slavery, 
 polygamy, concubinage, war, and the wonder- 
 ful reasons that clever and rhetorical people 
 can always find for what is wrong, Jhwipidt? " 
 showed them for what they are, things that 
 
 14
 
 The Word and the Idea. 
 
 war against the soul. He goes back to Nature 
 against all the conventions, to the Real Facts, 
 to Humanity."* 
 
 ^ W TT TV* 
 
 This age ^iras" its "great accepted conven- 
 tions " to fight against. Slavery still exists, 
 though in different shape, the new more cruel 
 in some aspects than the old. Polygamy and 
 concubinage, by which I understand the 
 degradation of women under whatever dis- 
 guise, with no matter what sanction, are no 
 less flagrant now than they were in the Fifth 
 Century B.C. 
 
 And war? If that was a curse to the Greek 
 world, is it not still more harmful and more 
 desolatim? to us? 
 
 These and other evils are accepted still as 
 unavoidable, feebly accepted by those who have 
 had their souls clogged and deadened either by 
 the deceitfulness of riches or by the poison of 
 poverty undeserved. They have been accepted 
 ever since Euripides poured out his passion 
 against them in vain. But his words were not 
 uttered in vain. They did not die, nor did the 
 words of others who have made the like appeal. 
 
 * " From Pericles to Philip," by T. R- Glover. Methuen, 1917. 
 
 15
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Gathering force as the centuries shpped by, 
 the protest has taken hold of men's minds 
 everywhere. The seed of the Coming Revolu- 
 tion has been sown all through the ages. 
 Hitherto its produce has been small. Now at 
 last it is germinating in millions of spirits. The 
 day of questioning is at hand, the day of 
 liberation. The transvaluation of all values, not 
 in Nietzsche's sense but in that of Euripides, 
 wmH be the work of the Cbming Revolution in 
 the thought of Mankind. 
 
 When that Revolution is come full circle, the 
 axiom will have been established that the 
 happiness and the well-being of each individual 
 living creature, the health, contentment and 
 gladness of man, woman and child, are of more 
 value than anything else. They will be set faT 
 above the power of sovereigns, the dignity of 
 statesmen, the comfort of ruling classes; far 
 above a great commerce, powerful armaments, 
 vast wealth in the hands of a small number. 
 
 Strong forces of argument will be marshalled 
 to prove this impossible, undesirable, contrary 
 to Nature, and at variance with the character 
 of man. Powerful interests are bound up with 
 these assertions, the interests not alone of those 
 
 16
 
 The Word and tue Idea. 
 
 who draw present profit from their acceptance, 
 but of those, too, whose view of hfe prompts 
 them to look for such profit in the future. 
 
 It will be said that without a great commerce, 
 creating vast wealth and protected by powerful 
 armaments, the fabric of society could not be 
 kept up. The reply to this will be that no 
 fabric of society is eternal, and that as new 
 conditions arise, the old framework will adapt 
 itself to them. 
 
 Most determined of all will be the opposition 
 of those who consider the mass of people pre- 
 destined to labour for the benefit of the few 
 who know how to take advantage of them. The 
 persuasion that the mass of people do not 
 matter, that they are merely the base upon 
 which the strong and the cunning build up 
 their proud and predatory systems; the cynical 
 and contemptuous regarding of mankind as a 
 servu>n peciis, cattle to be driven, which was at 
 the base of the policy of Bismarck and is 
 characteristic of almost all Ruling Persons; 
 these will come into bitter conflict with the 
 opposing conviction that no one man or class 
 of men matters more than another, that the 
 rights of all are merely such as thev can main- 
 
 17
 
 The Meaning of Tue World Revolution 
 
 tain, and that it is time for the mass to claim 
 that share in the heritage of the race which has 
 so long been denied them. 
 
 By the artilicial constitution of society they 
 have been condemned to begin life under worse 
 conditions than any other species in the animal 
 kingdom. They have the right to say that, if 
 Man's ingenuity has put his existence on a 
 different plane from that of other species, this 
 shall be lui-ned to the advantage of all, not of 
 a small number only. In the satisfaction of this 
 demand many clianges must be made. Much 
 may disappear which has seemed a necessary 
 part of life. But nothing essential can be 
 eliminated, and the gain would outweigh any 
 loss, even if the whole of wdiat we call our 
 civilisation were to go by the board. 
 
 Foi" if civilisation as it is conceived to-dav 
 can only he kept up l^y suffering, degrada- 
 tion and sacrifice, it is right that those who 
 suffer, those who are degraded and sacrificed, 
 should decide whether it shall continue or no. 
 
 If they should say : 
 
 " Let it go on. We will bear the cost of it in 
 our stunted lives. We will be maimed and 
 
 18
 
 The Word and the Idea. 
 
 blinded, we will be slaughtered by the million, 
 for the sake of the pomp of Empires, for the 
 sake of the dignity of statesmen and in order that 
 a small number of men and women not different 
 from ourselves may enjoy a sheltered, scented, 
 sybarite existence, all their needs satisfied, even 
 their fancies indulged, all that could offend 
 delicate ears and eyes and nostrils kept far 
 from them." 
 
 If the mass of People say that, why, then let 
 civilisation as it is conceived to-day continue, 
 and let Humanity stew in the juice of its own 
 pusillanimous folly. 
 
 But I do not l^elieve the mass of People are 
 so fond of their suffering and their degradation 
 and their sacrifice. I believe they will say that 
 such a civilisation as this has endured too long 
 already, and that change must forthwith begin. 
 I believe there is a spirit working in the hearts 
 of men which will make them say that no com- 
 fort, no beauty, no power is other than a curse 
 and a crime if it must be purchased by the 
 diminution of anv sinde human beino-'s health 
 or happiness. I believe the day is coming when 
 each single human being's health and happiness 
 will be the onlv aim worth considering. 
 
 19
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Tliat the love of a wife for her husband, of a 
 mother for her son, should ever have been held 
 of no account against the strengthening of a 
 throne, the securing of an Empire, will then 
 be reckoned a sign of the barbarity and insanity 
 of former ages. The empty and fleeting nature 
 of all earthly pomps and dignities will then be 
 seen so clearly as to arouse wonder that impor- 
 tance could ever have been attached to such 
 trifles. 
 
 All will perceive that the on£ reality in this 
 perplexing world, the one satisfaction which 
 can be grasped by all and which does not 
 deceive, is Affection. Not the vague, unreal 
 sentiment of the philanthropist, who, as a rule, 
 while professing love for the race, dislikes and 
 is heartily disliked by individual men and 
 women, but the warm, steady, comforting 
 affection of parents and children; the affection 
 of lovers whose flame of attachment, lit by pas- 
 sion, burns more clearly and with greater 
 volume as the years increase ; the affection of 
 friends bound by common memories, common 
 aspirations; the affection which wells up at the 
 sight of a kindly, smiling countenance, of a 
 child's trustful eyes, at the doing of a generous 
 
 20
 
 The Word and the Idea. 
 
 action, at the speaking of a lielpful word. 
 
 We have held Affection too cheap. It has 
 been trampled under the feet of men whose 
 hearts were steeled against it bv the lusts 
 which war against the soul. Lust of power, 
 lust of riches, lust of fame. But it cannot be 
 for ever so despised. 
 
 When the Revolution is complete, it will be 
 held that until all have enough, it must be 
 shameful for any one to have more than enough. 
 It will he understood that the sufferings of 
 Peoples have been due either to the con- 
 temptuous disregard of theii interest by 
 monarchs or to the neglect of it by rulers who 
 have not been wise or strong enough to abandon 
 monarchical traditions and to substitute for 
 them the principle of People's Rule. There 
 will be a stubborn resolve not to let that prin- 
 ciple go. 
 
 National greatness will not be valued at all if 
 it be expressed in terms of force, of export and 
 import returns, of industrial output, of diplo- 
 matic gains by craft or bullying. The phrase 
 will be meaningless unless it imply a self- 
 supporting, self-reliant population engaged in 
 active, healthful toil, scornful of theories and 
 
 21
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 holding fast to the only realities we knuw — work 
 and recreation which induce not alone vigour 
 of body, but also oiearness of mind; the affec- 
 tions of Home; the enjoyment of Nature and 
 the copying of Nature by Art; friendly relations 
 with all men. So far as government can en- 
 courage national greatness of this kind, govern- 
 ment will be valued; otherwise the world will 
 have no use for it. 
 
 ^ ^ tP ^ 
 
 Never so far as we can judge from records 
 and writings, never in the course of Man's 
 development, has there existed before to-day a 
 dissatisfaction so widely spread, so eager a 
 readiness to try any experiment which may 
 establish human existence upon a firmer, saner 
 foundation. 
 
 Never has the sense been so acute which tells 
 us — 
 
 (!) That in every civilisation the many have 
 been exploited by the few; 
 
 (2) That leisure and luxuries, pride and 
 power for a small number can be secured by no 
 other means than keeping the great number in 
 subjection and squalor; 
 
 (3) That the few have dazzled and deceived 
 
 22
 
 The Word and the Idea. 
 
 the many into endurance of their servitude by 
 inventing gods, heavens and hierarchies; castes 
 or classes; monarchical claims to obedience on 
 the ground of divine origin ; rulers" pretensions 
 to dispose of the lives and the labour of all 
 men for the greater glory of the State. 
 
 These claims and pretensions are not always 
 deliberately invented. Often they are the result 
 of a desire to justify tyrannical acts by repre- 
 senting them as a necessary outcome of the 
 order of the Universe. A perverted conception 
 of that order has been allowed to triumph over 
 Instinct and over Reason as well. Government 
 which began as a means to an end, has become 
 an end in itself. Originally aimed at securing 
 the free and undisturbed development of indi- 
 viduals formintr communities, it is now a mon- 
 strous hindrance to the attainment of any such 
 ideal. It has trampled upon freedom. It has 
 produced the most devastating disturbances. 
 
 Matthew xVrnold in " Culture and Anarchy " 
 spoke of the " fatal weakness for machinery " 
 which he found in the English mind. He 
 deplored his countrymen's " bent for attaching 
 themselves to machinery and losing all sense, 
 
 23
 
 The Meaning of The World Kevolution 
 
 while they so attach themselves, of the spirit 
 and truth of things." 
 
 But this bent and fatal weakness are not 
 peculiar to any one race of mankind. All races 
 fall quickly into the error of exalting the system 
 above the objects of the system, the machine 
 above the purpose for which it was made. 
 Nothing could more plainly exhibit this error 
 than the transforming of government from pro- 
 tector into tyrant, from an assurance of security 
 into a source of unceasing danger and alarm. 
 
 So purblind is the worship of the Machine, 
 that the best men among those who take part in 
 government are in their actions no better than 
 the worst. The mind which turned once towards 
 a noble and a simple conception of life is 
 quickly subdued to that it works in : to the 
 delusion which pervades governing classes that 
 the interest of the State is all-important and 
 that qualms about the sacrifice of individuals 
 must be stifled. 
 
 The worser kind of jjovernin^ men deliber- 
 ately use the Machine. The better men become 
 part of it unconsciously, or against their wills. 
 The result is the same. 
 
 *' The advantage of the country " has been 
 
 24
 
 TUE WOKI) AND THE JdEA. 
 
 made to serve as excuse for all manner of 
 crimes. As it was in Sparta, when a general 
 charged with treacherous, unprovoked aggres- 
 sion against a neighbouring People, the 
 Thebans, was acquitted on the ground that "acts 
 which are to one's country's advantage are by 
 ancient usage permitted," as it was then, so it 
 is now. The statesmen of Germany offered the 
 same excuse for the bludgeoning of Belgium. 
 The interests, the suffei'ings, the advantage of 
 Peoples are not taken into account. All that 
 matters is the aggiandisement of what Nietzsche 
 called rightly "that coldest of all cold monsters, 
 the State." 
 
 ' *, 
 
 It lies coldly, and this is the lie which 
 proceeds from its mouth : — 
 
 ' I, the State, am also the People.' 
 But it is a lie." 
 
 For what does the advantage of the State 
 mean ? 
 
 It means the advantage of those who control 
 the machinery. 
 
 The wars of Napoleon made the People of 
 France poorer every year; every year more 
 fathers and mothers wept for their sons, more 
 
 25
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 wives for their husbands. To the People of 
 France these wars v^'ere a calamity. But to 
 Napoleon, to his generals, to his heads of civil 
 departments, to his diplomatists, to his army 
 contractors, they brought profit and glory, and 
 so, in smaller or greater measure, to all wlio 
 could get hold of any part of the machine. 
 
 The victory of the l*russians in 1871 with the 
 creation of the Cierman Empire did the People 
 of Germany no good whatever, but it gave 
 Bismarck a vastly more dignified position ; it 
 made his King an Emperor, it increased the 
 importance of all who had to do with govern- 
 ment. 
 
 ^F ^r ^r ^" 
 
 Search through History and you will find no 
 wai^ which brought advantage to a People. War 
 has always been made (save in a few cases 
 where rulers were too feeble or too foolish to 
 avert misunderstandings) for the benefit of those 
 who govern. In general the same mav be said 
 of all other acts of government. When monarchs 
 have made beneficial laws, they have had mostly 
 their own benefit in mind. The motive which 
 impels legislation by elected rulers is the hope 
 of influencing votes.
 
 Thk Word and the Idea. 
 
 Until the XlXth century those who governed 
 usually controlled the expression of opinion. 
 They were able to prevent he enlightenment of 
 the People. Since Thought was freed of its 
 fetters, there has been a rapid advance in the 
 process of explaining to the People why they 
 sutler, how they are harmed by the persistence 
 of ancient tradition, by the criminal ambitions 
 and the not less criminal ineptitude of those 
 whom they endure as rulers. 
 
 Light sometimes issues from unexpected 
 sources, as when in Paris lately the traditionalist 
 and conservative Journal des Debats told Mr. 
 Balfour bluntlv that as British Foreign Minister 
 he followed the methods of the XVIIIth cen- 
 tury, pursuing a hidden diplomacy : and that 
 while he spoke of the war as a war between 
 Peoples, he persisted in acting as if it were a 
 war between governments, still looking at 
 foreign pohcy " through absolutist spectacles." 
 
 The catastrophe which fell upon the world in 
 1914 hastened the instruction of the Peoples 
 and brought much nearer the moment when they 
 will see, all of them, how cruelly and cynically 
 they have been used and deceived. All govern- 
 ments have failed them. Everywhere men and 
 
 27
 
 TuE Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 women are asking, What is the value of our } 
 institutions, our civihsation, if it leads only tu 
 the slaughter of millions, to suffering for all, tu 
 the reversal of every humane impulse, of all 
 teaching founded in the Keligiou of Love? 
 
 " If civilisation he not in men's hearts, 
 then it is nowhere, it does not exist." 
 
 So speaks a character in a book Ly a French 
 doctor, marked by a note of fierce prophetic 
 warning and bv terrible clearness of si'dit. 
 That is what the Coming Revolution will teach. 
 
 '" I often think of civilisation, real civilisa- 
 tion. In my mind it is like a choir of tuneful 
 voices singing, or a marble statute on a bare 
 hill, or a man who savs ' Love one another.' 
 or 'Return good for evil.' But men have 
 done no more than repeat these things for 
 two thousand years. The kings and priests 
 have far too many interests in this world to 
 think of others like them." 
 
 All these great words like Civilisation the 
 Revolution is examining; it will either throw 
 them on the rubbish heap or teach their true 
 meaning. 
 
 * Civilisation, 1914 1917. par Denis Thevenin. Mcrcuic de I'rance, 1818. 
 
 28
 
 Tui-: WoKU AM) Tiih: Idea. 
 
 Civilisation, we siiall learn, is not the luxury 
 and ostentation of big cities, does not lie in the 
 elaboration of comforts and conveniences, is 
 not summed up in motor omnibuses, electric 
 trains, the air-plane, the telephone. 
 
 National greatness is not to be won, we shall 
 understand, by possessing a formidable military 
 power and repudiating all the restraints of 
 honour and humane feeling; nor vet bv build- 
 ing an unconquerable Navy and letting a quar- 
 ter of the population grow up stunted for want 
 of decent conditions of life. 
 
 Institutions, no matter how ancient or how 
 digniiied by tradition, were made for Man, and 
 not Man for institutions. If thev irk instead 
 of easing him, as institutions were meant to do. 
 they can, and must, be swept away. 
 
 That is the Revolutionarv idea. 
 
 29
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 TUK END 01<' RULING CLASSES. 
 
 I belie\c a base will be found for united work 
 afttr the war if we organise all the best minds to 
 think for everybody, to fight against existing chaos, 
 social, political, nctional." — Mtixini Corky, The 
 World's Brain. 
 
 Such tinder as was lit by the spark ut" liuniier- 
 revolt in Russia and blazed so swiftly into 
 floating ash — such dry wood and harmful rub- 
 bish there are in ahnost all the countries of 
 Europe. Already in Germany and Austria, in 
 Hungary and Bulgaria, it is alire and partly 
 consumed. In all countries the oligarchical 
 forms of government, the ascendancy of a 
 Ruling Class, are being examined and found 
 wanting. Not since the vear of revolutions, 
 1848, which gave warning to irresponsible 
 monarchies that they would not be tolerated 
 much longer, a warning they would not heed — 
 not since 1848 has there been so general a feel- 
 ing of dissatisfaction and hopefulness. Now 
 
 30
 
 The End of Ruling Classes. 
 
 we may see the 18-18 effort repeated with solider 
 consequences and on the same scale; nay, on a 
 larger, for then En^hind stood aside from the 
 pastime of turning systems over and kickhig 
 crowns about. 
 
 If we permit ourselves to glance in passing 
 at the Miglit-Have-Been, we mu^^t needs stand 
 regretful at our grandfathers' moderation. Had 
 we gently constitutionalised the young Victoria 
 to the pattern of her grandson George, Prussia's 
 greed and insolence might have been checked 
 at their first exposal. The desire in 1864 of 
 five out of every six Englishmen was to defend 
 Denmark, which looked to us to rap the robber 
 hand stretched out after Schleswig and Hol- 
 stein. Had it been rapped with energy, and 
 warning given that so robber hands always 
 sliould be, we might not have had so unpleasant 
 a police job to carry through later. It v\'as 
 "My People oi- my Prussian relations." The 
 choice of the latter was comprehensible enough 
 in a sovereign who even towards the end of life 
 could describe herself, half-facetiously, to one 
 of her grandchildren as " an old German lady." 
 
 In the seventy years that have dolefully added 
 since 1848 to the record of crimes, follies and 
 
 31
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 misfortunes which, in Gibbon's acrid phrase, 
 makes up the History of Mankind, the 
 Sovereign's place in England has been regulated 
 so as to lit in with People's Rule. Yet the 
 People have not ruled. 
 
 No more than in the sixties? 
 
 Well, perhaps a shade more. But very far 
 from fuUv. 
 
 Here we are interrupted by the Devil's Advo- 
 cate. Out he pops upon us with the query : 
 " Can the People rule? Never mind whether 
 Democracy is desirable, is it possible?" 
 
 '" Clearly, not possible," I reply, " in the 
 sense of an individual ruling, or a small body of 
 people taking decisions and issuing commands. 
 But given a sufhcient number of honest and 
 capable men proposing openly and intelligibly 
 to the People what courses they should follow, 
 the People can choose from among these 
 courses and their choice for the most part will, 
 T hold, assuredly be sound." 
 
 Mr. W. H. Mallock, whose early reputation 
 as a humorist makes it sometimes difficult not 
 to suspect him of irony, asserts in his book on 
 " The Limits of Pure Democracy," that the 
 Many cannot decide anything for themselves, 
 
 32
 
 TuE End of Ruling Classes. 
 
 but must be guided by the Few. "Democracy 
 only knows itself through the co-operation of 
 oligarchy." 
 
 This appears to me to be a misuse and con- 
 fusion of terms. Democracy means the rule of 
 the Many. Oligarchy means the rule of a Few. 
 These systems cannot exist together. The 
 one cancels the other. 
 
 The simplest way to examine the problem of 
 government is to liken the People to the share- 
 holders in a public company, who choose direc- 
 tors. By the directors, and by the officials 
 whom they appoint, the business of the com- 
 pany is carried on. The shareholders as a body 
 could not carry it on themselves. 
 
 But the directors do not rule the shareholders. 
 They do not irresponsibly control the company. 
 They can take this or that action within their 
 powers as directors. Outside of those powej's 
 they can propose that this or that further thing 
 shall be done. The shareholders approve or 
 censure their acts; adopt their advice or reject 
 it. They can, if they please, dismiss them and 
 appoint other directors. 
 
 I agree with Mr. Mallock that the People are 
 not likely to become inspired by ideas of good 
 
 33 
 
 B
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 government suddenly and all at once, as if by 
 some wind of doctrine. They must have ideas 
 suggested to them, and those who have the 
 capacity to originate ideas will always be few in 
 number. If Mr. Mallock means that the Few 
 must guide the Many in the sense of offering 
 them suggestions, everyone who understands 
 mass-psychology will agree with him. 
 
 "fS tF ?RF "w 
 
 This is what Governing Classes (oligarchies) 
 ought to have done, but have not done. Parti v 
 from lack of ideas, due to defective schooling, 
 concentration of interest upon field sports, 
 over-eating and too much alcohol; partly from 
 dislike of change ; partly from the nature of the 
 Party game — " my only desire," wrote Lord 
 Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury, '* is to 
 see the game properly and scientifically played" 
 — the politicians have not desired to guide. They 
 preferred to follow what they believed, often 
 wrongly, to be the popular wishes. 
 
 No Democracy can be other than a pitiable 
 failure without ,^ie co-operation of the few who 
 think and look ahead. But if Mr. Mallock 
 intended to suggest that a few must rule, not 
 after the manner of directors managing the busi- 
 
 34
 
 The End of Ruling Classes. 
 
 ness of a company, but after the manner in 
 which the Thirty ruled Athens or the Bureau- 
 cracy ruled Russia, then I deny that he is 
 describing Democracy at all. 
 
 What we need if we are to make Democracy 
 a sound workable system, giving better results 
 than other systems, is first a People desirous of 
 good government; and, secondly, directors 
 chosen by them, honest and capable men who 
 will put before the People projects of good 
 government based upon the ideas of those who 
 thmk and look ahead, projects which the 
 People can either approve or cast out. 
 
 Up to this present Democracy has failed foi- 
 lack of a sufficiency of these honest, capable 
 leaders. We have depended for government 
 upon Ruling Classes, and the Ruling Classes 
 have not produced them. In no country have 
 there been enough leaders free from dogmatic 
 theories on the one hand, and from personal 
 vanity and pretensions on the other. The 
 Peoples have been either dominated or 
 befooled. 
 
 Many have flung themselves into public life 
 as champions of the right of Peoples to govern 
 themselves in their own interest and have been 
 
 35 
 
 B2
 
 The Meaning of Toe World Revolution 
 
 found after a little time to be no less desirous 
 than the believer in despotism or oligarchy of 
 forcing the People the way they think the People 
 should go. A Robespitirre or a Lenin is no 
 less poisonous a giowlh than a Bismarck ur a 
 Bloody Mary. 
 
 The wish to govern, to give orders, to enforce 
 obedience, is the mark of an intolerant, tyran- 
 nical, inferior mind. The reason why the 
 personality of Christ compels everybody's 
 admiring affection is that, of all characters 
 known to everybody, His had in it the least 
 desire to impose authority, and the most desire 
 to persuade. 
 
 Others who have entered upon political 
 careers resolved to scorn delights and live 
 laborious days in the endeavour to '' remould a 
 Sony scheme of things entire," have been 
 engulfed by the Ruling Class. The System has 
 squeezed them dry of their determination. The 
 poison of Power or the pleasures of elegant 
 luxury have robbed them of their ideals. 
 * * * # 
 
 " Aristocracies have no ideas," but they give 
 dinner parties. They subtly flatter. " You are 
 ' one of us.' " John Morlev started with a 
 
 a/ 
 
 36
 
 The End of Ruling Classes. 
 
 healthy hatred of shams. It was not very long 
 before he wrote in his Diary of a dinner at 
 Marlborough House : ' ' The ghttering silver and 
 glowing gold, the superb ilowers and fruit, the 
 colour of ribands, stars and orders, and the 
 general presence of fame, distinction, greatness 
 of place and power about one." 
 
 Again of an entertainment at Londonderry 
 House: "The meal was sumptuous; the music 
 not too loud; each table with a little mountain 
 of roses, all pink here and deep rose there, 
 coffee and cigarettes in the fme gallery." Not 
 surprising to find Morley in a later passage 
 referring to a speech he made in Parliament 
 opposing a Radical motion with the aside that 
 " he could as easily have spoken in its 
 defence." 
 
 Thus were good Radicals spoiled. Thus did 
 the Ruling Glass strengthen its defence with 
 '" little mountains of roses," with " "littering 
 silver and glowing gold." Thus did it turn 
 those who might have overthrown its pre- 
 dominance into supporters of Privilege and 
 Caste. 
 
 The Ruling Class, crafty enough to open its 
 ranks to any who threatened it with attack; 
 
 37
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 and divided only by such a made distinction as 
 divides the Red from the Blue Army in a 
 sham fight, ruled in the interest of the Party 
 System. Corrupt in itself, as any system must 
 be that values the Machine more highly than 
 the objects for which it was created, the Party 
 System attached to itself by unbreakable ties 
 the Ruling Class, Landlordism, the interests of 
 Capital and High Finance, Bureaucracy, the 
 hereditary principle in legislation, the barrier 
 between " gentle people " and "the poor," the 
 whole evil round of devices for resisting change. 
 
 The controlling politicians of both parties 
 formed a close ring. Only by those admitted 
 within this ring was office to be hoped for. 
 To otTice-holders all authoritv and influence 
 belonged. 
 
 Once in a while a strong character like 
 Parnell might defy and almost defeat them. 
 But the job of breaking in those who did not 
 at once bite contentedly on the Party bit was 
 for the most part easy. The rewards offered 
 were not high, set against those of commerce; 
 but they w^ere high compared with what the 
 ability of politicians could command in any 
 other occupation, excepting that of the Law, 
 
 38
 
 The End of Ruling Classes. 
 
 which puts an artificial premium upon agility, 
 and calls for no depth of mental process. 
 
 The life was agreeable. It conferred 
 pleasant companionship, a sense of importance, 
 deference from " the public," the stimulus of 
 speaking, the mild excitement of mimic battles, 
 engaged in so as not to leave the field clear 
 for the fights in earnest which genuine 
 reformers were impatient to provoke. 
 
 ^P ^P 7P ^P 
 
 From a distance the men who officered the 
 Party forces in these manoeuvre combats, who 
 took turns at being the Government and the 
 Opposition, used to appear dignified, at times 
 even heroic figures, well equipped for their 
 great tasks; men whose information, drawn 
 from hidden sources, went far beyond that of 
 unofficial observers, who had studied and 
 thought deeply into the problems set by con- 
 ditions at home and abroad. They were 
 generously credited with capabilities far above 
 those of the "ordinary man," who modestly 
 thought these problems beyond reach of his 
 understanding. 
 
 When one came to acquaintance with them 
 at a closer ran^e, the politicians, the diplo- 
 
 39
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 matists, the administrators, who once seemed 
 super-men, were discovered to possess, as a 
 rule, less than tlie " ordinary man's " practi- 
 cal ability, small aptitude for steady work, no 
 convictions, no ideals, and, which is most dis- 
 concerting of all, less wide and accurate in- 
 formation than can be acquired from sources 
 open to everybody — books, newspapers, 
 atlases, travel. 
 
 Their conversation rises seldom above the 
 personal, the trivial, the occurrences and gossip 
 of the hour. They do not ponder, they never 
 have pondered, the march of events, the growth 
 of ideas, save as these might be likely to affect 
 their own positions, their hold on public esteem. 
 They do not care to discuss wide issues, which 
 are labelled "unpractical." Speculation 
 fatigues them. Probabilities based on the past, 
 dips into a possible future, are equally dis- 
 tasteful to their ease-loving minds. " Keep 
 to the business of the moment," is their motto. 
 
 If they transacted the business of the moment 
 skilfully, they might, though that is merely the 
 mint, anise and cummin of governing, be par- 
 doned for their neglect of the weightier matters 
 
 40
 
 The End of Ruling Classes, 
 
 of the law, justice and equity and truth. But, 
 in fact, they transact it very ill. 
 
 '* Few men of any real distinction in any 
 walk of life have ever belonged to British 
 Governments, or have even sat in Parliament, 
 except perhaps lawyers." Such is the con- 
 clusion of a truly eminent man of our time, Sir 
 Ronald Ross. He rightly blames the news- 
 papers for not exposing the " political adven- 
 turers " who govern us. But quis custodiet 
 ipsos custodes? Who shall guide newspaper 
 proprietors? Besides, there are Party journals, 
 tied and bound to the Party Machine. Thus 
 the solemnly ridiculous Mutual Administration 
 Society formed by politicians is backed up by 
 the Press. 
 
 " Did you know what these people were 
 like? I had no idea." So Lord Kitchener 
 wrote of the politicians in the 1915 Coalition 
 Ministry not long before his death. 
 
 Few have any idea. This must be changed, 
 will be changed. Bureaucracies, Old Gangs, 
 systems which are mere husks of authority 
 without anv kernel of sincere effort tow^ards 
 improvement, these will soon be everywhere 
 
 41
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 on trial. It is the bounden duty of all who 
 know the Ruling Classes for what they are to 
 enlighten the world. 
 
 As to their origins also, let us look into 
 these. 
 
 42
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CURSE OF INDUSTRIALISM. 
 
 Modern civilisation, with all tts inschanical 
 appliances for making life comfortable and progress 
 rapid on the outside, has become a harrier with 
 regard to the inner spirt of man. It has made our life 
 so intricate that it has lost its transparency of 
 simplicity. — Rabiiitinxnatli Tagore, Lecture at 
 Osaka, Japan, 1916. 
 
 Freedom with good government this land of 
 Britain has soujjht for nieh a thousand years. 
 At Riinnymede the nobles checked the King's 
 power. Not so fully but that w^e had to cut 
 off a head four hundred years afterw\ards to 
 make their meaning plain. Nevertheless Magna 
 Oharta made a beginning. Later, the claim 
 of the nobles to fill the land with the tumult 
 of their feudal petty wars was disallow^ed, 
 though still the easy-going English left them 
 powder of other kinds to linger in patches until 
 this present age. 
 
 By a sad misfortune, after centuries of 
 
 43
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 stnig^le with oppression in many a shape and 
 just when the People seemed about to breathe 
 free, arose a new^ tyranny. The clamps of 
 Industrialism were put on. 
 
 Not more pitiless, not more stunting and 
 deforming the rule of the Land Barons than 
 that of the Barons of Workshop and of Mill. 
 The hope born of the French Revolution, the 
 dawninfj of a day of liberty which gave a 
 glimpse of wider destinies and of a larger share 
 in the good things of life for the mass of man- 
 kind, were soon hidden by the smoke from 
 forge and factory. 
 
 An historian not of emotional temperament 
 describes " a wave of misery " which spread 
 over wretched England and " reached its 
 summit in the course of 1842." This was the 
 period of a Royal Commission reporting on 
 Child Labour in terms which even now chill 
 the blood with horror and make one fiercely 
 cry that no calamity could be held unjust which 
 should fall upon the third and fourth generation 
 of those who for gain so debased and corrupted 
 humanity. 
 
 From '* the summit of misery " in 1842 we 
 have descended somewhat, thanks to unceasing 
 
 44
 
 The Curse of Industrialism. 
 
 efforts of a few high-hearted, generously- 
 minded men. Efforts always obstinately 
 opposed. Forces of industrial barons strong in 
 both Chambers of Parliament. Their parasites 
 and hirelings, the lawyers, ceaselessly busy in 
 their cruel interest. Not deliberately, inten- 
 tionally cruel; not even the cruelty of callous 
 indifference, but that cruelty most devilish 
 because hardest to convict, that which says : 
 
 "The world is ordered so. The weak must 
 suffer. Progress demands it. 1 grow rich, 
 truly, by reason of their suffering, but I cannot 
 interfere with a law of Nature. Those wise 
 men, the Economists, know all about it. Every- 
 thing is for the best .... so long as it suits 
 me. 
 
 W vP Tf 'T^ 
 
 Industrialism had its Political Economy, like 
 its laws, made to suit itself. 'Twas a creed 
 more inhuman and damnable than that which 
 went before. The landlords, great and small, 
 believed that God had created them to be well 
 off and those who tilled their land to be " the 
 poor." But they believed also that He meant 
 all men to he comfortable after their fashion. 
 There was a certain condescending comrade- 
 
 45
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 ship in the squire. Even my lord had a friendly 
 word for his hinds, sent them a flitch at Christ- 
 mas, bade them be merry at harvest suppers 
 and such hke rural feasts. The " landed aris- 
 tocracy " and "landed gentry" held Hodge 
 to be not essentially different from their cattle : 
 they treated him not much worse than they 
 treated their cattle. He had to be kept in a 
 certain state of vigour or his value would be 
 gone. To replace him was not easy. 
 
 The manufacturer, brought into being by 
 the invention of machinery, and by the heed- 
 lessness which allowed him to turn this inven- 
 tion entirely to his own profit, soon learned 
 to rate the men and women, and, to England's 
 eternal shame, the children, who worked for 
 him, not so high even as cattle. They were 
 merely parts of his machinery. Not important 
 parts either, since, more provident than the 
 landlords, he took care that labour should exist 
 in so large quantity that there m\<iht always 
 be more workers than jobs. This secured him 
 against scarcity of labour, kept down wages, 
 made the workers humble, seeing that the em- 
 ployer could pick and choose among them. 
 
 Thus came full circle the v;heel of that one- 
 
 46
 
 The Curse of Industrialism. 
 
 sided individualism whose distinguishing marks 
 
 Lord Mihier has declared to be " abuse of the 
 
 right of private property and the cruelty of the 
 
 scramble for gain," these giving rise in turn 
 
 to " the doctrine of revolutionary Socialism." 
 * * * * 
 
 The high-sounding declaration in France, 
 with echoes in England and elsewhere, of the 
 rights and equality, the freedom and brother- 
 hood of men, was thus quickly followed by a 
 more marked division of mankind into two 
 categories, the struggling-for-life many and the 
 comfortable few. These shaded off into one 
 another through grades of diminished comfort 
 and increased struggle, but, as the Industrial 
 System spread, the dividing line showed up 
 more clearly. The " governing class " crystal- 
 lised. It had outgrown since Tudor times the 
 stage in which it was composed of the more 
 powerful nobles and the higher clergy. 
 Lawyers wriggled into it. The squirearchy 
 followed. Manufacturing and commercial 
 interests found it desirable to be represented 
 in Parliament and in the Ministries of both 
 sides. 
 
 The upper and middle classes merged. The 
 
 47
 
 The Meaning of The Would Revolution 
 
 term " gentle-folk," which had earlier denoted 
 those who by benetit of birth had no need 
 to work at all, now came to include those who 
 worked, not with their hands but with their 
 heads. Because the educated, the literates, 
 had always made the laws and lorded it over 
 the illiterate, and because the brain-workers 
 were few in number, they could exact payment 
 far higher than that which rewarded work done 
 with the hands. So the notion grew that head- 
 w'ork was more dignified than hand-work and 
 must necessarily be paid on a different scale. 
 The Many, stupefied by the increasing harsh- 
 ness of the struggle, raised only spasmodic 
 protest against the conditions forced upon them 
 as the under-dogs, until those conditions 
 became intolerable. 
 
 Landlordism had bound a heavy burden upon 
 the patient necks of the Disinherited. Indus- 
 trialism, by encouraging " those two great 
 curses of the social system " (I am again quot- 
 ing Lord Milner), " irregular employment and 
 unhealthy conditions of life," made them at 
 
 last too grievous to be borne. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Then besan "reforms." Each Partv in 
 
 48
 
 The Curse of Industrialism. 
 
 turn passed measures of palliation, always with 
 the view of winning elections and securing the 
 spoils of office. The voting powder of the 
 under-dogs increased; for a long time they 
 did not know what to do with it. The chaffing 
 counsel which Bob Lowe offered to the Ruling 
 Class, " We must educate our masters," was 
 not seriously received. It was left to " the 
 masters," it still is left to them, in spite of 
 schools everywhere, to educate themselves. 
 For the mass this was impossible. The marvel 
 was that so many achieved it. Only here a few 
 and there a few could draw from their uncon- 
 querable souls courage to make a beginning 
 and obstinacy to persevere. From their per- 
 severance sprang the Labour Movement, passing 
 through the stages of Trade Unionism, Socialism 
 and Svndicalism. The under-doss be^an to 
 ponder, to ask questions, to wonder wdiy they 
 were most of them condemned to existence on 
 poverty's edge, while others appeared to be 
 born into a happier state and, as of right, to 
 enjoy the good things of life. 
 
 Many w^ho earned a bare subsistence by 
 muscular exertion or by handicraft replied by 
 gibes to those questions and wonderings, flouted 
 
 49
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 those who sought to set then- feet upon a 
 
 fah'er road. A consumptive house-painter 
 
 wrote a novel a few years ago which, after the 
 
 poor fellow's death, got itself published. It 
 
 presented a faithful picture of the struggle in 
 
 which a man of active brain had to engage with 
 
 other men of his own condition if he proposed 
 
 the setting up of some better system than 
 
 the system which kept them at the mercy of 
 
 employer, often a Gradgrind, and of foreman, 
 
 often a bully, knowing that if once they were 
 
 "out," their homes would very likely have 
 
 to be sold up before they found another job. 
 
 The house-painter-novelist's gloomy conclusion 
 
 was that his mates were too stupid, too sunken 
 
 in beery degradation, to make any stir. 
 
 But that w^as before the war, 
 
 « # # # 
 
 In their enforced inaction the soldiers of 
 all countries have been thinking. We have 
 seen the eflPect of this in Russia. We have seen 
 the effect of it in Germany. We are seeing 
 and hearing in England, in the reverberating 
 of the w'ord Revolution something of what 
 passes in the mind of the British soldier. 
 
 The British soldier — ask anyone who has 
 
 50
 
 The Curse of Industrialism. 
 
 been thrown with him lately — is resolved of 
 this : he will not go back to the conditions under 
 which he lived before the war. 
 
 What have we been sticking it for? Not 
 for that." 
 
 This is not a resolve confined to the ranker. 
 It prevails among a very large number of 
 officers in all grades. Do not imagine that only 
 the manual workers are fed up with the class 
 system. Many of us who could be described 
 as belonging to " comfortable " layers in the 
 social formation have long felt and fought 
 against the harsh unreality of the distinction 
 between these layers few in number and the 
 vast quantity which exist beneath the low-water 
 mark of what comfort means to us. We have 
 long resented the invidious fencing off of cer- 
 tain elements of the population as if there were 
 real differences between men of varying con- 
 ditions; we know well that the only real differ- 
 ences are between men as men. These things 
 moved us to protest, set us to work, where 
 work was possible; turned our thoughts 
 definitely towards Eeconstruction. 
 
 TT ^p ^F ^P 
 
 Often the most obstinate opposition to a 
 
 51
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Reconstructed State has been offered by those 
 whom it would most benefit. Often help which 
 would have been gladly given by the " com- 
 fortable " has been suspiciously, even scorn- 
 fully refused. The British Labour Party is the 
 only one which until lately limited its member- 
 ship as far as possible, and its representation 
 almost entirely, to men who have worked with 
 their hands. But we have helped notwith- 
 standing!. Here was the only cause which gave 
 us inspiration, the only politics worth thinking 
 aliout. All who had eyes to see and ears to 
 hear knew that the Rulini: Class, after struggling 
 to bear its burden manfully for a long period, 
 had become a mockery and a peril. The 
 burden had become too heavy for back and 
 shoulders enervated by easy and luxurious 
 lives. Too small a choice was open when it 
 was necessary to name men for high office; 
 and, as I have shown, the recruits taken into 
 the Ruling Class too quickly assumed the 
 manners and the airs which they found pre- 
 vailing in it. 
 
 Its motto was " United we stand, divided 
 we might fall " ; therefore it set its face against 
 folly or incompetence meeting its just reward. 
 
 52
 
 The Curse op Industrialism. 
 
 When a holder of office failed too con- 
 spicuously he was shielded from disgrace, even 
 from censure. He was given some other office, 
 or put into the House of Lords. 
 
 " Never let anyone down," Vvas their self- 
 protecting principle. They cared not how the 
 interest of the country might suffer, so they 
 were safe. Suffer it did, disastrously. We 
 saw social and political chaos approaching. 
 The cause was plain. Those of us who had 
 seen much of a different life in Canada, Aus- 
 tralia, the United States, had long ago learned 
 to detest the artificial barriers sustained, in 
 slowly moving England by stagnant prejudice. 
 Now we saw in them danger as well. 
 
 53
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THK COMFORTABLE MILLION OR SO. 
 
 This is ihe history of all rebellions, social explosions 
 in ancient or modern times. Vou have put the too 
 Un-able man at the head of affairs. The too ignoble, 
 unvaliant, fatuous man. You have forgotten that 
 there is any rule or natural necessity whatever of 
 putting the Able Man there. — Carlyle, Heroes and 
 Hero Worsliip. 
 
 That clanger fell upon us when Europe 
 drifted into war. In peace our amateur rulers 
 might count upon muddling through. War was 
 a sterner test. War does not allow mistakes 
 to be retrieved. 
 
 Pleasant, cultivated men our politicians, few 
 of them so genuinely interested in the life of 
 to-day as in the literature of the past. " Lunch 
 at 10 Downing Street," wrote one of them in 
 his Diary, " with A. J. Balfour. Talk about 
 Greek, etc. Most pleasant." That lights up 
 an epoch. 
 
 So " talking about Greek, etc.," they bound 
 
 54
 
 The Com B\mT able Million or So. 
 
 us to certain action and refused to prepare for 
 the fulfilment of their pledges. They played, 
 as amateurs will, with the appearances of 
 things; looked into still waters, declined to 
 believe they ran deep. If the English were a 
 vindictive people, they would hang every 
 Minister who has held office in the past twenty 
 years. 
 
 Before the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 Charles Dickens wrote: "My faith in the ^ 
 people who govern us is, on the whole, infini- 
 tesimal. My faith in the people governed, is on 
 the whole, illimitable." That must be the 
 creed of all w^ho can see things as they are l 
 to-day. ***^ 
 
 " But the people governed," you remark, 
 " must be led. Where are the leaders to come 
 from? " 
 
 They must come from all sorts and conditions 
 of the people, and the people must watch them 
 closely, must insist that all unnecessary 
 branches of Government shall be lopped, must 
 punish incapacity and idleness, must be sure 
 of knowing clearly at all times what they are 
 up to. There lies our only hope. 
 
 55
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 I hear many who all their lives have sneered 
 at Labour and its claims now saying that in 
 the Party of Labour, the Party which represents 
 the mass of Englishmen and Englishwomen, 
 not the Comfortable Class only, is our last 
 chance. Labour might do better; it. could not 
 possibly do worse. And the state of Society 
 which it seeks to create would be far more 
 congenial to us than the reimi of Interest and 
 Incompetence which has brought the world to 
 
 the madness and misery of this present hour. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 The " masses " trusted the " classes." The 
 " classes " were unworthy of the trust and 
 let them down. For all their boasted 
 " superiority," their insolent assumption of 
 being born to the best of everything, they 
 have failed to throw up any governing man of 
 more than mediocre strength and skill. For 
 this the Eternal Justice will exact a penalty, 
 and the only audible comment will be " Serve 
 them right." 
 
 Hear Arnold Bennett on the Comfortable 
 Million or so : it is a passage from one of the 
 essays he published in "The New Age," when 
 he and I were fellow contributors, a passage 
 
 56
 
 Tee Comfortable Million or So. 
 
 I have read a dozen times with still-enlarging 
 admiration for its truthful vigour — 
 
 " Three hundred and seventy-live thou- 
 sand persons paid income tax last year, under 
 protest; they stand for the existence of per- 
 haps a million souls, and this million is a 
 handful floating more or less easily on the 
 surface of the forty millions of the popula- 
 tion. . . . Their assured, curt voices, their 
 proud carriage, their clothes, the similarity 
 of their manners, all show that they belong 
 to a caste and that the caste has been success- 
 ful in the stru^^le for life. It is called the 
 middle-class, but it ought to be called the 
 upper-class, for nearly everything is below 
 it. I go to the Stores, to Harrod's Stores, 
 to Barker's, to Rumpelmeyer's, to the Royal 
 Academy, and to a dozen clubs in Albemarle 
 Street and Dover Street, and I see again 
 just the same crowd, well fed, well dressed, 
 completely free from the cares which beset 
 at least five-sixths of the English race. They 
 have worries; they take taxis because they 
 must not indulge in motor cars, hansoms 
 because taxis are an extravagance, and omni- 
 buses because they really must economise. 
 
 57
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 But they never look twice at two-pence. 
 They curse the injustice of fate, but secretly 
 they are aware of their luck. When they 
 have nothing to do, they say, in effect, 
 'Let's go out and spend something.' And 
 they go out. They spend their lives in 
 spending. They deliberately gaze into shop 
 windows in order to discover an outlet for 
 their money. You can catch them at it any 
 day. 
 
 " Chief among the characteristics of this 
 class — after its sincere religious worship of 
 money and iinancial success — I should put 
 its intense self-consciousness as a class. The 
 world is a steamer in which it is travelling 
 saloon. Occasionally it goes to look over 
 from the promenade deck at the steerage. 
 Its feelings towards the steerage are kindly. 
 But the tone in which it says ' the steerage ' 
 cuts the steerage off from it more effectually 
 than many bulkheads. You perceive also 
 from that tone that it could never be sur- 
 prised by anything that the steerage might 
 do. Curious social phenomenon, the steer- 
 age ! In the saloon there runs a code, the 
 only possible code, the final code; and it is
 
 The Comfortable Million or So. 
 
 observed. If it is not observed, the infrac- 
 tion causes pain, distress. Another marked 
 characteristic is its gigantic temperamental 
 dullness, unresponsiveness to external sug- 
 gestion, a lack of humour — in short, a heavy 
 and half honest stupidity; ultimate product 
 of gross prosperity, too much exercise, too 
 much sleep. Then I notice a grim passion 
 for the status quo. This is natural. Let 
 these people exclaim as they will against 
 the structure of society, the last thing thev 
 desire is to alter it. This passion shows 
 itself in naive admiration for everything that 
 has survived its original usefulness, such as 
 sail-drill and uniforms. Its mirror of true 
 manhood remains that excellent and appalling 
 figure, the Brushwood Boy. The passion for 
 the status quo also shows itself in a general 
 defensive sullen hatred of all ideas whatever. 
 You cannot argue with these people. ' Do 
 you really think so? ' they will politely 
 murmur, when you have asserted your belief 
 that the earth is round, or something like 
 that. And their tone says, ' Would you 
 mind very much if we leave this painful sub- 
 
 59
 
 The Meaning of The Wokld Revolution 
 
 ject? My feelings on it are too deep for 
 utterance? ' 
 
 "1 do not belong to this class by birth. 
 Artists very seldom do. I was born slightly 
 beneath it. But by the help of God and 
 strict attention to business I have gained the 
 right of entrance into it. I admit that I have 
 imitated its deportment. Mith certain modifi- 
 cations of my own; 1 think its deportment 
 is in many respects worthy of imitation. I 
 am acquainted with members of it ; some are 
 artists like myself; a few others win my sym- 
 pathy by honestly admiring my work ; and 
 the rest I like because I like them. But the 
 philosopher in me cannot, though he has 
 tried, melt away my profound and instinctive 
 hostility to this class. Instead of decreasing, 
 my hostility grows. I say to myself : ' I can 
 never be content until this class walks along 
 the street in a different manner, until that 
 now absurd legend has been worn clean oft' 
 its forehead.' Henry Harland was not a 
 great writer, but he said, ' // faut souffrir 
 pour etre seh' I ask myself impatiently, 
 When is this salt going to begin to suffer? ' 
 That is my attitude towards the class." 
 
 60
 
 The Comfortable Million or So. 
 
 Indignation savage as Bennett's is a mood. 
 But it is a mood which has forced itself more 
 and more frequently upon more and more 
 people within the last fifty years or so. 
 Coleridge, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, wrote 
 in 1802 of " the profligate and wasteful ways 
 of the En<^lish aristocracy," of " his detesta- 
 tion for tiieir character and influence." 
 Matthew Arnold, especially in " Friendship's 
 Garland," that penetrating prophecy of our 
 present discontents, strove to awaken England 
 to a sense of approaching danger. " An aris- 
 tocracy has no ideas, but it has a policy — to 
 resist change." And he flayed even more 
 mercilessly the Middle Class which in its blind 
 conceit loved to style itself " the backbone of 
 the country." 
 
 " To be consequent and powerful men 
 ._ must be bottomed on some vital idea or 
 sentiment which lends strength and certainty 
 to their action. Your middle class has no 
 such foundation; hence its imbecility. Your 
 middle class have no great, seriously and 
 truly conceived end, therefore no greatness 
 of soul or mind, therefore no steadfastness 
 or power in great affairs." 
 
 61
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Swinburne had too piercing a poetic vision 
 not to be aware of the truth. Arnold, he wrote, 
 " strove to purge his countrymen of the pesti- 
 lence of provincial thought and traditions, of 
 blind theory and brute opinion, of all that 
 hereditary policy of prejudice which substitutes 
 self-esteem for self-culture, self-worship for 
 self-knowledge, which clogs or enervates all 
 powers and motions of the mind W'ith a hard 
 husk of mechanical conceit." Swinburne was 
 at one witii Arnold in holding that " the work 
 of this era is the work of making human life, 
 hampered by a past which it has outgrown, 
 natural and rational." Oarlyle, Mill, Meredith, 
 Kingsley, all whose vision pierced the rosy 
 mist of self-satisfaction, largely due to good 
 living and field sports, in which the Ruling 
 Class enwrapped itself, warned England that 
 unless this work were accomplished, evil days 
 awaited her. The evil days have come upon 
 us. The work is still waiting to be done. 
 ^ # # # 
 
 George Gissins, wdiose novels are worth re- 
 reading in spite of his stilted phrasing, made 
 one of his characters (" Born in Exile ") say, 
 
 62
 
 The Comfortable Million or So. 
 
 " The task of the modern civihser is to sweep 
 away sham ideahsm." That fits the case 
 exactly . 
 
 The Comfortable Million and the Ruling Class 
 drawn from it are sham idealisms. They hav^s 
 idealised themselves. 
 
 " Believe me, my dear feller, soldiers much 
 prefer to be led by gentlemen." 
 
 " Depend upon it, when the House of Com- 
 mons ceases to be an assembly of gentlemen, 
 this countiy will go to the dogs." 
 
 That sums up their fatuous mentality. But 
 they could not have imposed themselves upon 
 their unfortunate country if they had not been 
 idealised by the other millions. They have 
 been ticketed at their own value. They have 
 been allowed to bluff their fellow-countrymen 
 with blandly impudent testimonials to each 
 other. 
 
 When Mr. Asquith described Mr. Austen 
 Chamberlain (debate on Mesopotamia Report, 
 July 13, 1917) as "a great and rare adminis- 
 trator," there should have gone up a cry of 
 derision. No need to deny that Mr. Chamber- 
 lain has administrative abihty such as would 
 fit him to be a competent second in command 
 
 63
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 of a public oflace, but " great " and " rare " 
 are epithets of fanciful exaggeration. 
 
 Yet those who are " in the know " wink at 
 one another and keep up the fiction that poli- 
 ticians are pre-eminently gifted, intellectual, 
 hard-working and business men, while those 
 who are not " in the know " defer humbly to 
 this fantastic estimate, not understanding that 
 it is all part of the game between the two 
 Old Gangs to humbug the crowd. 
 
 Why was not I^rd Curzon's defence of the 
 traffic in honours on the ground that " peerages 
 were a great safeguard to public life " greeted 
 with the stern rebuke wdiich it deserved? 
 Because Lord Curzon, because peerages, are 
 " sham idealisms." 
 
 When those who offer themselves for election 
 to Parliament are sharply cross-examined by 
 electors at meetings instead of being listened 
 to with bovine vacuity of mind while they 
 pour out a flood of mechanical oratory about 
 matters w^hich commonly they do not under- 
 stand at all, then we shall be better able to 
 get on with the work of the ase. We shall 
 be opening up the region of the natural and 
 rational when we apply all round the double- 
 
 64
 
 The Comfortable Million or So. 
 
 edged dictum of Lord Balfour of Burleigh con- 
 tained in the sentence : — 
 
 "It is impossible to abolish poverty. There 
 must and ought to be poor. If no one is 
 allowed to become extremely poor, many 
 people would do no work at all." 
 
 Could any words better illustrate " the lack 
 of humour, the gigantic temperamental dull- 
 ness, the heavy and half-honest stupidity " of 
 Arnold Bennett's description? How could the 
 retort not be foreseen that " many people do 
 no work at all " now, and that, if this be so 
 great an evil, they should be " got after " 
 without delay? " Ah, but that is different," 
 would be the rejoinder. 
 
 " You cannot argue with these people." 
 Have we not all proved this true? You cannot 
 argue with them. But you can push them 
 aside. 
 
 65
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ARTIFICIAL GULF. 
 
 .... Then Christ sought out an artisan, 
 A low-browcd, haggard, stunted man, 
 And a motherless girl whose fingers thin 
 Brushed from her faintly want and sin. 
 These He set the midst of them. 
 And as they drew back theii garments' hem 
 For fear of defilement, ' Lo here,' said He, 
 The images ye have made of me. ' 
 
 — James Russell Lowell, 
 
 Revolution predicates neither violence and 
 civil warfare nor the changing of any funda- 
 mental laws. 
 
 It will mean, in one direction, the disappear- 
 ance of the Ruling Class; in another, a trans- 
 valuation of values which have been current 
 in respect of the services that men render one 
 another. 
 
 Why has work done with sinews and tools 
 been considered as justly payable upon a 
 standard far lower than that which governs pay- 
 
 66
 
 The Artificial Gulf. 
 
 ment for ' ' brain-work ' ' ? The cause is not to 
 be found complete in the law of demand and 
 supply. It has happened at divers times and 
 places that the supply of a certain kind of 
 labour, say that of plumbers or gardeners, has 
 been short. Yet the wages of plumbers and 
 gardeners did not rise. This was because the 
 workers with hands as well as heads accepted 
 with docility the low standard of payment for 
 their services which had come to be regarded 
 as fixed, and the low Standard of living which 
 was consequent upon this. 
 
 Fictitious values were set upon black-coat 
 occupations. A boy beginning as a bank clerk 
 would receive £60 or £70 a year. A boy 
 carpenter would be told he was lucky if he 
 earned fifteen shillings a week by the time he 
 was nineteen or twenty. Yet the supply of boys 
 apt for banking business was illimitable ; and 
 the capacity required to make a good carpenter 
 is by far gieater than that w^hich suffices a 
 clerk. 
 
 These fictitious values were the result of the 
 gulf fixed between classes, between the MilHon 
 or So of Arnold Bennett's description, together 
 
 67 
 
 c2
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 with those other few milHons who try to be like 
 
 them, and the mass of the People. Between 
 
 the "gentleman" and the "working man.'' 
 
 Between the clerk and the labourer. 
 # # # # 
 
 An artificial gulf. A distinction based, not 
 upon relative usefulness, nor upon relative 
 moral elevation, nor. Heaven knows, upon 
 relative intellectual vigour. The amiable Lord 
 Nuneham observed, while he was still Mr. Lewis 
 Ilarcourl, that he did not believe Socialism 
 would ever be adopted because it would fail 
 " to give a deserved reward to intellectual 
 superiority." 
 
 What variety of Socialism Mr. Harcourt had 
 in mind, or what Socialism would do if it were 
 adopted, I cannot say. But it is clear that 
 these words, applauded by a Yorkshire audi- 
 ence, condemned utterly the system which 
 gave the speaker £'5,000 a year as a Minister 
 of State, wdiile countless numbers of his intel- 
 lectual superiors were earning not more than 
 a fiftieth part of that salary. 
 
 The reason why Mr. Harcourt dreaded 
 Socialism, and why the Comfortable Million 
 
 68
 
 The Artificial Gulf. 
 
 all dread it, and why the other millions who 
 ape the Comfortable do not consider it 
 " respectable " or " gentlemanly " is that they 
 fear it might reduce the " rewards " of what 
 they comically call their " intellectual 
 superiority " and increase the earnings of 
 workin'' men " who really don't deserve any 
 more and would only spend it in the public 
 house if they got it." 
 
 Here is the root of bitterness. Here is the 
 pregnant seed of discontent and . . . Revolu- 
 tion. If the Ruling Class although governing 
 feebly and without foresight, had given itself 
 no airs, it mi<zht have stirred no anj^er. If it 
 had ruled wisely, the masses on the other side 
 of the gulf might have allowed its superiority. 
 It is the combination of misrule with an irritat- 
 ing and unwarranted assumption of superiority * 
 that has aroused fierce resentment. The man 
 who works with his hands can espy no reason 
 why he should be treated as an " inferior." 
 Servants watch their masters and mistresses for 
 any quality which should entitle them, not only 
 to live in ease and luxury, but to vaunt them- 
 selves of finer clay. 
 
 69
 
 The Meaning of The Would Revolution 
 
 The growth of the unnatural and irrational 
 illusion that there are two orders of mankind 
 and womankind, one above stairs and the other 
 below, should be investigated by some student 
 of morbid psychology. I know of an old lady 
 — she is not many years dead — who referred 
 habitually to her servants as " the creatures 
 of the lower regions." I recall another who 
 positively refused to allow a parlour-maid to 
 wear a " fringe " when " fringes " were being 
 worn; and a third who declared she could see 
 no incongruity in a breakfast of several hot 
 dishes being served to the dining room, while 
 tea and bread and dripping constituted kitchen 
 fare. Similar ."symptoms of the illusion could 
 be diagnosed in numbei-less households still. 
 Another is furnished by the difficulty which 
 hinders frank conversation between the " well 
 'to do" and the "poor" (all being grouped 
 under the ' ' poor ' ' heading who wear working 
 clothes and whose work makes their hands 
 dirty). No such difficulty is known in Canada. 
 or the United States. It is a consequence of 
 our being hampered " by a past which we have 
 outgrown." 
 
 How many Englishmen ever discuss the world 
 
 70
 
 The Artificial Gulf. 
 
 and the age with their servants, their gardeners, 
 their coachmen, those who labour in their 
 factories, those who build their houses? They 
 would have more light on tough problems, if 
 they did. Very few o'erleap the barrier, few 
 care to bridge the gulf with good sense and 
 brotherly feeling. 
 
 In the matter of domestic service the general 
 sentiment has of late been changing, as in many 
 other directions. One reason for this is that, 
 while employers could formerly impose their 
 own terms upon their servants, it is now the 
 servants who lav down conditions and fix wa^es. 
 Small blame to them if they should make the 
 most of this, their first chance of free bar- 
 gaining, as some did in Russia after the Revolu- 
 tion, declinins to vrork after ei^ht o'clock in 
 the evening, or to begin before they had had 
 breakfast, raising their wages by half or more, 
 and demanding that they should be addressed 
 by the Russian equivalent of our Mr., Mrs. and 
 Miss. But our domestic servants are most of 
 them too good-natured and considerate to 
 stretch their power to its full extent. The debt 
 we owe to them for their cheerful and laborious 
 
 71
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 smoothing of the pathway of our daily Hves 
 would remain a heavy one even if they were 
 well paid and comfortably circumstanced. 
 Save in large houses, they are not well paid; 
 their conditions of life are often mean and 
 comfortless. 
 
 "According to our standard," I hear an 
 objector protest, " but not according to 
 theirs." 
 
 When we have " made human life more 
 
 natural and rational " there will be but one 
 
 standard. 
 
 * * * # 
 
 Nothing could be more insolent or inhuman 
 than the deliberate railing off of the greater 
 number of our fellow creatures from the 
 pleasures and conveniences which we consider 
 essential to our own well being. Absurdly 
 irrational, too, if we reflect upon the uncertain 
 tenure of our lives, the ignorance as to our 
 coming hither and our going hence, the short- 
 ness of our stay, the oblivion which swallows 
 up all men and their works, the probability 
 that the human race is regarded by higher 
 orsanisms as we regard ant<?, industrious but 
 
 72
 
 The Artificial Gulf. 
 
 futile, ever busy without knowing why or 
 leaving any monument of their labour. 
 
 Look at a swarming ant-hill, think how we 
 should smile if we learned that the ants 
 observed social distinctions, that the fat and 
 lazy looked down upon those who toiled for 
 scanty rations and plumed themselves upon 
 being of more delicate, more honourable make 
 up. "Ridiculous! " we should exclaim. "As 
 if there could be any real differences among 
 these little animals which all look alike and 
 have the same constitution and framework." 
 
 Humanity, de te fabulal Not less ridiculous 
 than would be those of ants are the pretensions 
 of monarchies, aristocracies, Middle Classes, 
 Castes, privileged orders, couches sociales 
 (existent throughout society, the poorest not 
 exempt). Such pretensions were the laughing 
 stock of intelligent folk, even while the Mass 
 supposed itself to be of baser sort, and there- 
 fore not entitled to the same advantages as the 
 comfortable few. That age has passed, that 
 supposition faded, largely through the decay 
 of the belief, sedulously exploited by the Ruling 
 
 73
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Class, that in a future life the inequahties of 
 this woild would be evened up. 
 
 Now when a man professes to discern any 
 superiority conferred by long descent, by long 
 ancestral enjoyment of authority and ease, by 
 accumulated lands or money, he writes himself 
 down a lilockhead, empty alike of biology, 
 psychology and common sense. In persons who 
 have been but lately jumped up from among 
 those whom they now regard as " inferiors " 
 such a pretension caricatures itself. Yet 
 frequently it is these new arrivals who are 
 extreme in the insistence upon " class distinc- 
 tions." 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Once more I repeat, it is the barrier set up 
 in the thoughts and in the behaviour of 
 " gentlefolks " between themselves and the 
 " lower orders " w'hich embitters the great, 
 patient, struggling uncomfortable mass of the 
 proletariat. Here is another version of Arnold 
 Bennett's indictment from the mouth of a 
 working man, quoted by a correspondent of 
 The Times newspaper eight years ago, " a 
 working man who was not a Radical, but an 
 active Conservative untouched by Socialist 
 
 74
 
 The Artificial Gulf. 
 
 propaganda, a man who reads almost exclu- 
 sively the cheaper Conservative newspapers." 
 
 " Suppose their education did cost 'em 
 more. . . . They had the money, hadn' 'em, 
 or their fathers had? Do 'ee think mij 
 chil'ern couldn't be educated up to it if I 
 had the money? They says their sort of 
 w^ork's worth more'n ours; p'raps 'tis: but 
 wi'out our labour they wouldn't live at all. 
 'Tis the fruits of our labour they lives on 
 an' the little you i^ets they srudges 'ee. 
 
 "They tells 'ee you don't have to live 
 expensive. Course you don't ! They says 
 you an't got no position to keep up. Course 
 you an't! Nor not always enough to eat 
 neither. You can't afford it. Tisn't that 
 us wants what they got, but us do want to 
 be able to live a little bit thereafter. Us 
 bain't book learnt, but I'm hanged if us don't 
 know life. 
 
 " An' yet they looks down on 'ee, an' 
 treats 'ee like the scum of the earth, 'cause 
 you does what they can't — labours. Dirty ! 
 they call 'ee, 'cause 3'ou can't afford a nice 
 house an' servants to keep it clean. Rough ! 
 
 75
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 because you wears working clothes an' 
 swears a bit. Drunkard ! 'cause you has a 
 glass too much once in a way — as if they 
 don't have it too in their private houses. 
 Loafer ! because you chucks up the game, 
 which vou knows vou can't win anyhow. 
 Scoundrel ! Cririiinal ! wiicn you're drove 
 beyond yourself an' smaslies; up your happy 
 home or brings the police down on 'ee. 
 TiOrd ! if a chap had their money an' summat 
 to fall back on. . . . 
 
 " You works an' slaves an' worries an' 
 never gets no far'arder. You do get five 
 bob a week to die on, come you'm seventy, 
 if you ever are. An' the likes o' they, they 
 lords it over 'ee, 'cause thev ^ot the coin. 
 An' when you tries to explain yourself, they 
 cross-examines 'ee, an' twistis 'ee up in 
 knots, 'cause they've been able to buy the 
 education for to do it with. An' when you'd 
 like to tell 'em how you feels, you've got 
 to bite your tongue, 'cause the coin's at their 
 disposal. An' who the hell be 'em? We was 
 all born the same way, wasn't us? An'll all 
 be buried, an' us all wants to live? " 
 
 76
 
 The Artificial Gulf. 
 
 " Not Socialist rant," avouched tluj writer 
 in The Times, " hut the ei-erij day talk oj lianl- 
 working men wJto have never come into con- 
 tact with Socialism. " I could well believe it. 
 I know many such, though they mostly adopt 
 a more good-humou redly cynical tone. 
 
 Tf» TT tP "W 
 
 ** 'Tis bound to come, I tell 'ee," was 
 the conclusion of the wdiole matter. 
 " They'm giving this here education to kids 
 what an't got nothin' for to back it up, an' 
 that don't make 'em no happier, nor no 
 more satisfied with the job they got to do. 
 If you'm educated, you want to be able to 
 live educated : an' the likes o' us can't. Us 
 an't ,2ot the rivets (money). But the likes 
 o' they there starch-collar articles, what tries 
 to lord it over 'ee, an' shoves 'ee off with 
 what pay they'm minded, they bain't going 
 to alwavs have it all their own wav. Our 
 sort of people's getting more enlightened, an' 
 they travels about an' sees more, an' rue of 
 these days they'm going to inquire into it 
 proper : an' when they do there'll be a bigger 
 bust-up than ever was — you see! " 
 
 77
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 That was a fair warning eight years ago. 
 To-day the big bu:^t up is upon is. The war, 
 and the incapacity of ruling men everywhere 
 revealed by their conduct of war, have hastened 
 its coming. Men who never rcHected before 
 have been forced to ponder and to aslv 
 ' Why?" 
 
 When those who have been accustomed to 
 consider their social arrangements as fixed and 
 unalterable begin t(^ a^k " Why? " changes 
 are not far off. 
 
 78
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TUE AIM OF LIVING LIFE OR DEATU? 
 
 The pale pathetic peoples still plod on 
 Through hoodwinkings to Life. 
 
 — Thomas Hanly, " TIic Dy)t(ists.' 
 
 Why does the cry go up among all peoples, 
 ' ' There must be no more war ' ' ? 
 
 " Because war is cruel and stupid," you 
 say. '' Because those who hght do not light 
 for their own advantage, nor for the advantage 
 of their nations, but to increase the dignity 
 and revenues of rulers and statesmen, to make 
 kings emperors, and add to their domains., 
 Because in the quarrels of rulers the best blood 
 of nations is shed, and misery brought into 
 homes without number, only that in after years 
 the world may say, ' How foolish and unneces- 
 sarv the sacrifice was.' 
 
 79
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Yes, those are sound reasons. But those 
 reasons have been advanced i)cfore. So far 
 back as we have record of man's thought, the 
 protest against war has been raised, and has 
 been echoed in the hearts of men and women. 
 Yet wars have continued. 
 
 Why is it that now the iron has entered more 
 deeply into the soul of peoples? Why is the 
 protest louder, and the resolve to end war 
 sterner, more purposeful? 
 
 Is it not because the world has discovered 
 that tJiere need he no more war? 
 
 Is it not because they know now that Life 
 can be anything that they, the Peoples, choose 
 to make it? 
 
 Is it not because the Peoples have begun to 
 understand that Life is not a mechanism so 
 arranged that it can only work in a certain 
 fixed way? 
 
 That is the true Democracy, the true Rule 
 of the People, showing its bright face at length 
 after many false Democracies have aped its 
 beauty and brought discredit upon its name. 
 * * * * 
 
 80
 
 The Aim of Living — Life or Death? 
 
 Jf the object of Life is to live, and not to 
 die, then war is an enemy which man must 
 trample underfuot. 
 
 There have been ages in which diseases were 
 regarded with dull resignation as necessary 
 evils, scourges sent by God. We have broken 
 with that tradition. We refuse to accept them 
 as part of the mechanism of life. We have 
 discovered the causes of many diseases. Some 
 have been wholly, others partly, conquered. 
 The rest we shall conquer. 
 
 In the past it was held that plague, small 
 pox, scrofula, could not be got rid of. The 
 future will ask with amazement how it could 
 ever have been thought impossible to get rid 
 of war. 
 
 There have been ages when it was taught, 
 and by many believed, that the object of Life 
 was not to live, but to die. Li those ages it 
 was asserted that what befell us here on earth 
 was unimportant, that those who died were 
 more fortunate than those w'ho lived on. This 
 was never believed save by a few fanatics, but 
 so long as it was the general profession of 
 
 81
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 belief, protests against war could be no more 
 than cries in the wilderness. 
 
 Crafty rulers took advantage of this paralys- 
 ing creed. Weak rulers bowed to it. Men 
 sacrificed their lives for faiths at which the 
 next age smiled. Lands were ravaged in the 
 interest of doctrines that have now faded out 
 of mind. 
 
 When wars of religion ceased, another fetish 
 was set up, a Moloch, claiming victims, not 
 for the glory of (lod any longer, but in the 
 name of National Greatness. Still the Peoples 
 were deceived. 
 
 Mothers sought to comfort themselves for 
 lost sons, wives for dead husbands, by hugging 
 the cold delusion that their country was the 
 greater, though usually, after an interval, short 
 or long, it is agreed that all the lives sacrificed 
 were thrown away needlessly upon a folly or 
 a crime. 
 
 Men continued to kill and to be killed bv 
 other men with whom they had no quarrel, in 
 order that their rulers might be exalted, though 
 invariably, when this object was gained, they 
 
 82
 
 The Aim of Living — Life or Death? 
 
 found themselves more heavily burdened with 
 taxation than thev were before. 
 
 Tlie increase of a countrv's " greatness " 
 means ahiiost always that a. few grow richer, 
 whilst the many become poorer. Yet to help 
 the few on the road to riches, and to give 
 their rulers a prouder position, the many rush 
 " to their graves like beds," in Hamlet's 
 phrase. 
 
 "Tr Wr ^F ^ff 
 
 So lona, as these delusions cloud the intellect 
 of man, so long must wars continue. But these 
 delusions are passing, even as the religious fury 
 
 We are forming a fresh conception of 
 national greatness. We see that it is not to 
 be compassed by vastness of territory or by 
 force of armaments; not by forcing rule upon 
 unwilling subjects nor by bullying weaker 
 neighbours; not by volume of commerce, not 
 by wealth. 
 
 Only those nations can be great which honour 
 justice, and which love freedom; which seek 
 the happiness of all as the highest good ; which 
 
 83
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 by wi^e laws and sound administration allow 
 to all equal opportunities for the development 
 of such capacity as they possess; which scorn 
 to exercise sovereignty by force over vassal 
 provinces; and which desire to live at peace 
 with all the world. 
 
 President Wilson described the attitude of a 
 great nation when he said of the United States : 
 
 " We are the true friend of all nations 
 because we threaten none, covet the posses- 
 sions of none, and desire the overthrow of 
 none. Therein lies our greatness." 
 
 Evei-y year it becomes more and more un- 
 thinkable that a fi'ce nation should make war 
 for lust of power, territory, or commerce. 
 
 It is true that Britain and France not many 
 years ago came almost to blows over a dis- 
 puted swamp in Africa, and that civil war was 
 on the point of breaking out in Ireland in 
 1914. Of the former quarrel the Peoples in 
 France and Britain knew nothing. Had they 
 been consulted in cool blood they would cer- 
 tainly have brushed aside the notion of war. 
 In Ireland the cause of enmity was traceable 
 
 84
 
 The Aim of Living — Life or Death? 
 
 first to England's centuries of effort to treat 
 Ireland as a vassal province; secondly to the 
 folly of Ministers in attempting to force the 
 remedial measure upon a million Irish people 
 who did not want it. 
 
 In each case politicians muddled matters in 
 their blunderinjr self-seekiufj wav so that the 
 real issues were hidden beneath specious shams. 
 
 The same muddling led to the war between 
 Britain and the Boers in South Africa. Presi- 
 dent Kruger represented to the Boers that 
 Britain sought to steal their country. British 
 politicians played his game by bluffing and 
 blustering instead of appealing to reason and 
 giving reason time to sink into the Boer mind. 
 
 Would the Boers have fought if they had 
 known that in fifteen years' time they would 
 be forming part of a United South Africa on 
 equal terms with the British, and that the 
 Prime Minister of this United South Africa 
 would be a Boer? 
 
 If the British People had realised that the 
 aim in view was the creation of a South African 
 Union with self-sovernins rights, rights which 
 
 85
 
 The Meaning of Tue World Revolution 
 
 would be granted to Briton and Boer alike, 
 would they not have said that it wa;=> monstrous 
 to waste their young men's lives upon merely 
 hastening a consummation which would cer- 
 tainly arrive in course of time? 
 
 Those queries answer themselves. 
 * * * ^ 
 
 Free nations will not make aggressive war — 
 no, not though politicians muddle and mis- 
 represent. Wars between them can never arise 
 unless each party thinks the other has aggres- 
 sive designs. That misunderstanding must be 
 prevented by the Peoples themselves. No 
 nation ever wished for war until its mind had 
 been tricked and its anger roused bv lies. No 
 nation can be free while it is still liable to 
 be so enchained. 
 
 Wars there may be in defence of freedom. 
 Wars there will be with nations outside the 
 rank of the civilised, nations which will hear 
 no argument but that of force. Such wars are 
 regrettable. They may be, if you choose to 
 use the term, wrong; only the hypocritical or 
 the unduly hopeful can profess to believe that 
 the world will know them no more. 
 
 86
 
 The Aim of Living — Life or Death? 
 
 But of wars between nations, between 
 Peoples which acknowledge the same standards, 
 which interchange thouglits and expressions of 
 emotion as well as the products of their soil 
 and handiwork, which profess allegiance to the 
 same creeds — of such v.ar^, if we will it so, 
 there need be nu more. 
 
 War means the cutting short of lives which 
 might be lived out in enjoyment of love and 
 duty, of toil and pleasure, of the world's in- 
 finitely varied charm and interest. War brings 
 misery upon women, hardship to orphaned 
 children, grief and a sense of meaningless 
 bereavement into almost every heart. 
 
 Sometimes I have thought, " Perhaps we 
 exaggerate the pitifulness of war." Death in 
 battle is not, in itself, dreadful. It is often 
 sudden; it may befall when the blood is hot; 
 seldom is any" pang feh. Even the suffering 
 of the wounded is more easily to be faced than 
 the horror of a lingering agony in the grip of 
 some atrocious disease. 
 
 When we turn away sick at heart from 
 casualty lists, from the sad record of those 
 killed in action, the thought may occur to us, 
 
 87
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 " There were the same long strings of names, 
 there was the same mourning and weeping in 
 the Crimea (to go no further back than sixty 
 years). Now those who mourned have died or 
 have forgotten their pain. Nothing is left of 
 it ; it has passed like a bubble on a swift flowing 
 stream. And so it has been throu^'li all the 
 ages, each has mourned and been swept away. 
 Do we do well to pay heed to these lamentations 
 over the victims of war? 
 
 Again we must ask ourselves these questions : 
 " Do you look upon Life as a mechanism, or 
 do you believe that we can make it what we 
 choose? Do you say that the object of Life 
 is to live, or to die? " 
 
 Surely you will answer that the object of 
 life is to live, to make the most of our energy, 
 to count life well worth the keeping, so long 
 as we do not cling to it as those who fear to 
 die. Death with honour kept bright is far 
 above life with shame, ])Ut free nations must 
 be well satisfied that honour is in question 
 before they will make war. Seldom do wrongs 
 press so heavily upon nations as to be unbear- 
 able without striking a blow. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 88 I
 
 The Aim of Living — Life or Death? 
 
 Next after the pitifulness of war comes its 
 troublesomeness, and this supplies another set 
 of reasons for ending it. War is the universal 
 meddler. His red finger is thrust into every 
 pie. Apart from the suffering and damage 
 which are inseparable from war, irritation and 
 loss are caused by the chief business of exist- 
 ence being handed over to stupid and tyrannical 
 men. 
 
 War brings to the surface all the folly that 
 resides in human nature, and lets it rampage 
 unchecked. Oflicialism of the most venomous 
 species is encouraged to play fantastic tricks. 
 No individual rights are respected. Orders are 
 given and liberty disappears. 
 
 Politicians in a state of spluttering fury strive 
 to convince their own and neutral nations that 
 they were not to blame. Commanders of armies 
 issue bulletins announcing all their successes 
 and none of their defeats. The People permit 
 themselves to be treated as if they were im- 
 beciles or savages who will swallow every 
 absurdity and to whom it would be dangerous 
 to tell, with manly candour, the truth. 
 
 On each side fantastic atrocity stories are 
 
 89
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 related. Very often these are exact replicas 
 one of the other. At first thev are encouraged 
 by leading men. They create panic. I have 
 seen whole populations of small towns and 
 villages on the march, fleeing from the 
 imaginary cruelties of their country's foe. 
 Then leading men discourage them. The word 
 goes round to spread them no more. 
 
 That is an example of " the creation of 
 opinion." It is impossible to oppose such 
 folly. It is unsafe to keep a steadily-balanced 
 mind. Any man who refuses to be deceived by 
 stories which are generally accepted is liable 
 to abuse and insult. If any Christian were bold 
 enough to preach Christianity in war-time, he 
 would be solemnly tried and shot. 
 
 Standards of rioht and wrong are altered. 
 Kind-hearted people gloat over massacres and 
 wholesale drownings. Savage acts which at 
 any other time would cause disgust are 
 described with chuckles of satisfaction by men, 
 and by women too, who would be afraid to 
 kill a bird. 
 
 In all departments of life the Government 
 interferes more. The Freedom of Life departs. 
 
 90
 
 The Aim of Living — Life or Death? 
 
 What people may do and may not do is laid 
 down for them. Fussiness delights in causing 
 the greatest possible sum of trouble. 
 
 ^ ^ tt Wt 
 
 Inter anna silent leges ran the Latin 
 aphorism. " War suspends law." It suspends 
 many other of our safeguards. It says to 
 Liberty, "Wear chains"; to Reason, "Be 
 Silent "; to Religion, " Forget God." 
 
 The Romans kept the doors of the Temple 
 of Janus, their double-faced god, open when- 
 ever they were at war, closed during peace. 
 It might be wise, so long as war lasts, to close 
 all our Churches, and only to open them when 
 their precepts are not being so openly flouted. 
 
 Violent contrasts between principles and 
 practice in the life of civilised nations are 
 dangerous. If wars continue amongst civilised 
 peoples, principles will fall into contempt, 
 civilisation will perish. 
 
 It is no longer possible to persuade nations 
 that certain actions can be wrong at one time 
 and ridit at another; that divine law is above 
 human, but that human law may at any moment 
 
 91
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 over-ride the divine. If " Might is Right 
 and " KiUing no Murder " become familiar 
 maxims, depend upon it they will be acted upon 
 in peace and among private persons, as well 
 as among nations at war. 
 
 But chiefly and above all other reasons, 1 
 find the reason for the universal outcry that 
 war is insanity, that war is unnecessary, that 
 wars must cease, in the knowledge now more 
 widely diffused than ever before that wars 
 benefit the rulers of states and never bring 
 anything save misery to the People ; that by 
 wars more than by any other agency the desire 
 of the People to make existence natural and 
 rational has been defeated, and the extravagant 
 pretensions of Ruling Classes deplorably in- 
 creased. 
 
 92
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TUE END OF KINGLY RULE. 
 
 Popular Government will stop war. — Tlie Prince 
 Consort in 1851. 
 
 If war, then, is one of the chief means by 
 which tlie People are kept in subjection to and 
 exploited by rulers and ruling classes, war 
 must be abolished before that subjection and 
 exploitation can be made to cease. 
 
 But how is it possible to abolish war? 
 
 Let us see if w'e can answer that by examin- 
 ing how other customs and institutions have 
 been abolished. 
 
 How, for example, was slavery abolished? 
 For thousands of years, ever since Man had 
 written history or left his handiwork to tell it 
 for him, slavery had been regarded by the mass 
 of mankind as part of the necessary mechanism 
 
 93
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 of life. From time to time protests were raised 
 against it. All that the mass of mankind said 
 was, " Very dreadful it seems, when you look 
 at it like that. But what can we do? We did 
 not invent slavery. It has always existed. It 
 always will exist. It is no use talking about 
 it." 
 
 Yet the heart of mankind was influenced by 
 the protesters more than it knew. At last man- 
 kind said, " Yes, they are right. It is an 
 abomination. It must go." Slavery ceased 
 because the world ceased to believe it neces- 
 sary. Opinion killed it. 
 
 Human sacriiices, lights between men and 
 men, or between men and beasts in the arena, 
 the burning and torturing of men and women 
 by the Church for the crime of daring to ques- 
 tion its doctrines — all these and other crimes 
 against the happiness of mankind were once 
 spoken of just as we once spoke of slavery, 
 just as we speak of war to-day. They were 
 called painful necessities. When people ceased 
 to consider them necessities, they ceased to 
 exist. 
 
 94
 
 The End of Kingly Rule. 
 
 Duelling died by the same process. Personal 
 combat was not entirely an evil. It caused 
 slanderous tongues to keep silence from fear. 
 In certain events it added dignity to the rela- 
 tions between man and man. It gave no 
 security that right would triumph over wrong, 
 but neither does law. On balance, however, 
 duelling was seen to be an inefficient, uncertain, 
 unjust method of settling disputes. Slowly its 
 foolishness was borne in upon the minds of 
 men. Then it ceased. 
 
 TT W w * 
 
 So it may hap with war. So it will hap, if 
 we disabuse our thoughts of the belief that 
 wars must be. So lon^ as we sav " War is 
 pitiful, war is insane, war brings to us, the 
 People, much suffering and no benefit, but war 
 is an evil which we cannot cure," so long 
 wars will continue. Opinion will cause their 
 continuance. 
 
 The acceptance of war as an evil which we 
 cannot cure is based in most men's minds upon 
 the conviction that " force is the dominant 
 factor in human affairs." Even so shrewd an 
 intellect as that of the famous Lord Dufferin 
 
 95
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 went astray here. The words I have just quoted 
 are his words. 
 
 They are, of course, true. The world is 
 ruled by force ; always has been ; probably 
 always will be. But not always by force applied 
 in the same way. 
 
 There was a time when individuals who had 
 a great deal of force did as they pleased with 
 the persons and property of those who had less 
 force. But this predominance of individual 
 force gave place to the authority of communal 
 force. 
 
 Communities banded themselves together for 
 mutual protection. They agreed to use their 
 united force against those who broke communal 
 rules. The use of force was thenceforward 
 forbidden to individuals. It was vested in the 
 Police. Force remained the " dominant factor 
 in human affairs," but now force was applied 
 in a different way. 
 
 It is said sometimes that public order and 
 public safety depend, not upon Force, but upon 
 respect for law. In one sense that is true. The 
 power which is vested in the Police can only 
 
 96
 
 The End op Kingly Rule. 
 
 prevail when the great majority respect law and 
 uphold the police. Until opinion has come 
 round to the view that the use of force by 
 individuals is needless and unprofitable, there 
 can be no establishment of communal force. 
 
 But even when respect for law is established 
 among the great majority, force is still the 
 dominant factor. No community has ever 
 abolished the Polce. In every community there 
 is a minority which respects nothing but force 
 and against which Police protection is neces- 
 sarv. 
 
 Cl 
 
 * * * * 
 
 The growth of respect for law caused the era 
 of individual force to give place to the era of 
 communal force, but a vast machinery of 
 judges, magistrates, prisons and policemen was 
 required to enforce respect for law upon a 
 large number of people. 
 
 The mere existence of this machinery suffices 
 to make the law respected. So the mere know- 
 ledge that superior forces are ranged against 
 it will suffice to prevent even the most warlike 
 and aggressive oligarchy from drawing the 
 sword. 
 
 97 
 
 D
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 It is not too much to say that Britain, if her 
 statesmen had been resoUite and bold, might 
 have prevented the Franco-German war and 
 the European War which, as a direct conse- 
 quence of the other, broke out in 1914. 
 
 Had Britain in 1870 warned the Emperor 
 of the French that if he provoked Germany to 
 fight, Britain would fight with Germany, the 
 Emperor would have abandoned his provocation 
 and Bismark would not have had the oppor- 
 tunity of forcing a fight upon him at a moment 
 when France was unprepared.* 
 
 If in 1914 Mr. Asquith and Lord Grey had 
 responded to the appeal of the President of 
 the French and had declared that Britain 
 would aid France in the event of a conflict 
 between France and Germany, as a result of 
 the differences between Austria and Servia, 
 Germany would, as President Poincare 
 believed, " have modified her attitude." 
 
 The show of force would have been enough 
 in each case, aa it is among individuals, who 
 are ruled by that rather than by apy innate 
 
 * See "Memoirs of Sir Robert Morier," chap, xxiii. 
 
 98
 
 The End of Kingly Eule. 
 
 respect for law. When law superseded per- 
 sonal violence, force was not dethroned. It 
 was regulated, in accordance with opinion 
 which held such regulation to be not only desir- 
 able, but possible as well. 
 
 K war is to cease among civilised nations, 
 it must be stopped by the same process as that 
 which stopped war among individuals. This 
 does not mean that Force will cease to be 
 the dominant factor in international affairs. It 
 only means that Force will be applied in a 
 different way. 
 
 Never yet, when opinion has decreed both 
 the desirability and the possibility of a change, 
 have means been lacking to bring the change 
 about. But no change has ever been made 
 until the world believed that it could be made, 
 in addition to holding that it ought to be made. 
 
 TV* TP TP 
 
 Look back at history and we find it consists 
 almost entirely of wars, first between tribes and 
 villages, next between towns and small states, 
 then between nations themselves. We find, on 
 further examination, this also : that never have 
 
 99 
 
 d2
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 wars been waged at the instance, or for the 
 benefit, of the tribes, villages, towns or nations, 
 but in the interest of their rulers. 
 
 All through the ages men and women have 
 been deluded into thinking that war was not 
 only necessary, but just and splendid and 
 honourable. They have not considered their 
 own advantage. They have not asked them- 
 selves : Have we any desire to fight with our 
 neighbours? Can we gain anything by con- 
 flict? Is there any reason for war? 
 
 They have fought blindly, insanely. Their 
 rulers have stirred up artilicial hatreds; at the 
 prick of manufactured passion they have abused 
 one another as barbarians, as breakers of law 
 and customs, as cruel and treacherous foes. 
 While tliev are at war, thev are unable to 
 imagine a return of friendly relations. They 
 think that for ever the feud will be kept up. 
 
 Yet as soon as fighting ceases, sometimes 
 even before it ceases, their rulers are calmly 
 bargaining, their generals are exchanging com- 
 pliments, their statesmen are telling each other 
 with placid shrugs and deprecating smiles how 
 foolish it has all been. After a momentary 
 
 100
 
 The End op Kingly Rule. 
 
 dazed astonishment, the nations which have 
 sacrificed their best young Hves and bent their 
 backs beneath the burden of heavy payment, 
 accept the new conditions and plod on, hood- 
 winked as before. 
 
 So history becomes what Gibbon called it, 
 " a record of the crimes, follies and misfor- 
 tunes of mankind." 'Only now are there signs 
 that people are about to break the chain of 
 habit, and, the scales dropping from their eyes, 
 to see war as it is, a damnable farce acted for 
 the profit or the pastime of governing men. 
 
 " There is nothino- either ^ood or bad but 
 thinkinf^ makes it so." 
 
 There is nothing needful or needless but as 
 opinion proclaims it. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Time was when opinion held that Divine 
 Right entitled Kings to shape with irresponsible 
 sway the destinies of their people. That 
 peoples should rule themselves was laughed at 
 as a fond imagining. Now in free countries it 
 is the claim to Divine Right which causes 
 laughter. No armed risings could have brought 
 
 101
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 about the change, no beheadings, no driving 
 of monarchs into exile — nothing but opinion. 
 When that alters, Divine Right dissolves into 
 air, " and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, 
 leaves not a wrack behind." 
 
 To put an end to war is only possible if man- 
 kind believes it to be possible. Further, that 
 possibility depends upon opinion in all civilised 
 countries denouncing, as a dangerous impos- 
 ture. Divine Right. 
 
 So long as the People in any country consent 
 to this imposture — consent to be ruled in the 
 interest of sovereigns, instead of ruling them- 
 selves in their own interest, so long will wars 
 be deliberately provoked. 
 
 They will be planned in order to add king- 
 dom to kingdom, to increase the power and 
 dignity of monarchs and their counsellors. 
 They will be designed, when kingly power is 
 faihng, in order to restore dynastic prestige. 
 They will be undertaken in times of internal 
 discontent and disorder, so that the intoxication 
 of misguided patriotism may cause domestic 
 broils to be forgotten; wars will be used as 
 
 102
 
 The End of Kingly Rule. 
 
 an obstacle to progress, as a bar against liberty, 
 as an instrument for keeping the People in sub- 
 jection and riveting the chains of tyranny upon 
 their limbs. 
 
 TT 'TP 'rr "TP 
 
 Man learns his lessons painfully. He seldom 
 drops the hot iron until it has burned his hands. 
 He lets the bodies of dead forms, once useful, 
 rot and cause a pestilence. 
 
 Monarchy, the rule of one man, called King 
 or Emperor or what you will, is amongst 
 civilised nations a dead form of government. 
 A small nation in an early stage of growth; 
 when needs are simple and duties plain, submits 
 easily to be ruled by one strong man. He 
 makes the people's laws, settles disputes, leads 
 them into battle. If under his rule they 
 prosper, they willingly obey him. Should he 
 lack vigour or betray their trust, they drive 
 him out and choose another King. 
 
 As the nation's energies become more 
 various, its modes of thinking more difficult 
 to control, its relations with other kingdoms 
 closer and more complex by reason of increased 
 
 103
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 numbers, the King calls in advisers. So 
 government, as we know it, begins. 
 
 The advisers do not consider themselves 
 advisers to the nation. They are the servants 
 of the King. He engages and dismisses them 
 as he pleases. They are concerned with the 
 advancing of his interests, not of the people's 
 welfare. That rarelv enters into their thoughts. 
 
 n 
 
 The mind of the nation broadens. Its will 
 seeks to express itself. It chafes against Kingly 
 rule. Kingship has become hereditary. It is 
 no longer an office held by the people's will 
 or consent. The Kinf? is seldom a strong or 
 able man. But a theory of Divine Right has 
 been invented by lawyers and priests, who fawn 
 upon the monarch, drawing from him their 
 power and wealth. A race of courtiers has 
 sprung up also which looks to the King for 
 lands and offices. 
 
 The soil is the People's heritage no longer. 
 Free men have become vassals, serfs. They 
 have no part or lot in governing the land which 
 was once theirs. They must pay taxes. They 
 must fight and die in the King's quarrels. 
 
 104
 
 The End of Kingly Rule. 
 
 When foes over-run the land, they suffer. 
 Then' wives and children are basely ill-used. 
 Their houses are burned, their crops and 
 orchards destroyed. Yet when the territory 
 of neighbouring states is seized and added to 
 their kingdom, they reap no benefit. It swells 
 the revenue and puffs up the dignity of the 
 King. 
 
 -re" 'ft' *^ Hfr 
 
 So discontents are born, revolts plotted. 
 The right of self-government comes to grips 
 with the " divine right " of Kings. Far-seeing 
 sovereigns acknowledge themselves the holders 
 of a trust. Countries where, as in England, 
 convenience is valued more highly than logic, 
 advance step by step in the process of trans- 
 ferring power from King to people. Other 
 countries are torn by violence and drenched in 
 blood, as France was drenched and torn 
 through the long agony of her Revolution, as 
 Russia is beina torn and drenched to-dav. 
 
 Thus Commonwealths or Republic are erected 
 upon the ruins of thrones. England is a 
 Republic with a hereditary President. His 
 influence depends upon his personality. His 
 
 105
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 usefulness lies in an age-long tradition of 
 respect for the Throne : also in the avoidance 
 of that conflict and that fruitless expense of 
 energy which accompany elections to the Presi- 
 dential Office. 
 
 Upon the men who claimed Divine Right and 
 the foolish millions that admitted the claim lies 
 the shame of towns destroyed and ravaged 
 country-sides; of homeless wanderers in misery 
 and want; of men slaughtered in droves and 
 heaped in nameless graves; of hundreds of 
 thousands maimed and shattered by the devilish 
 instruments of scientific war. I have seen 
 these pitiful sights in France and Russia, in 
 Poland and Italy. I have had burned into my 
 memory the hideous suffering and waste of wars 
 waged by nations in arms. 
 
 The war has left behind it many seeds of 
 change, some to germinate slowly, some to 
 sprout up at once. The settled order in Europe 
 has been broken up. It will never be restored 
 in the same shape as before. 
 
 There will be seed-time and harvest, blossom- 
 time and fruit-time, green quiet lanes for lovers 
 to walk in, the chatter and patter of children's 
 
 106
 
 The End of Kingly Rule. 
 
 tongues and toes. Nature will be a mother as 
 beautiful as ever to those who love her in all 
 moods. There will still be " the sun, moon 
 and stars, brother; likewise the wind on the 
 heath." But many things false and many 
 things pompous will be sought in vain. Among 
 them, shall we not count the foolish belief in 
 Kingship, that dead form of government, 
 lingering long behind the belief upon w'hich it 
 was founded, that only begetter of the world's 
 most piteous and barbaric war? 
 
 107
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHAT ARE NATIONAL INTERESTS? 
 
 If we only fought for our convictions, there would 
 be an end of war. — Tolstoi, " War and Peace." 
 
 And when Kingship has gone? When Divine 
 Right has been put away, along with w^itch- 
 craft and miracles, in museum of curious 
 beliefs. Will war then automatically cease? 
 
 By no means. It will not cease until the 
 civiiised world regards it in the same light as 
 we now regard slavery and duelling and human 
 sacrifice and the Inquisition and other crimes 
 against human happiness. Nor will it cease so 
 long as that which was the most fruitful cause 
 of wars between Divine Right Kingdoms is 
 allowed to poison relations between free 
 peoples: so long as "national greatness" is 
 made the aim of government, instead of the 
 
 108
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 well-being of all the individuals who compose 
 the nation. 
 
 Not only the Ministers and Ambassadors of 
 Sovereigns, but also the statesmen of free 
 nations are apt to set before themselves the 
 misguided ideal which Prince Gortchakoff, the 
 Eussian statesman, confessed to following, the 
 ideal of " increasing his country's position and 
 prestige." 
 
 That is the ideal, whether they express it 
 openly or not, of all Ruling Classes. Thereby 
 we see both why they are so clumsy, and how 
 twisted from its true purpose is the theory of 
 good government. 
 
 To imagine that the men and women of any 
 country desire for it " position and prestige " 
 in Prince Gortchakoff's meaning would be to 
 misunderstand human nature. Here and there 
 accident may produce in any nation writers 
 of unbalanced judgment, like those who held 
 that " just as the greatness of Germany is to 
 be found in the governance of Germany by 
 Prussia, so the greatness and good of the world 
 are to be found in the predominance there of 
 
 109
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 German culture, of the German mind — in a 
 word, of German character." 
 
 Such lunacy — for it is lunatic to wish the 
 whole world reduced to one level of ideals and 
 ideas — does not make any impression upon 
 nations. But it does appeal to sovereigns, to 
 soldiers, and to Ruling Classes. It is by them 
 that the desire for national glory is cherished. 
 
 * * 41^ * 
 
 Let us strip national glory of its tinsel and 
 see what there is underneath. 
 
 Suppose a man were to proclaim that his 
 object in life was to increase the position and 
 prestige of his family. He would be voted a 
 pompous ass, or else pitied as being not entirely 
 sane. 
 
 Suppose he endeavoured to compass this 
 object by doing all he could to injure other 
 families, to set them at enmity, so that they 
 might weaken one another, to damage their 
 business and stand in the way of their advance- 
 ments? 
 
 Suppose, further, that in the struggle for 
 
 110
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 position and prestige all members of his family, 
 except its heads, became poorer and had to 
 resign themselves to losing sons and husbands, 
 or seeing them come home maimed and broken 
 men. Even if the madman's family bore with 
 him, what would the community say? 
 
 He would quickly fall, would he not, into 
 the hands of the law? He would be accounted, 
 not only a nuisance, but a danger; he would 
 be locked up. 
 
 Yet statesmen who practise such methods 
 and avow such aims are honoured as great 
 men. Is there not surprising inconsietency 
 here? 
 
 Do not say impatiently, *' The cases are 
 altogether different," and so dismiss the 
 enquiry. Think it out. I believe all will come 
 to this conclusion — that the cause of the in- 
 consistency can be traced to the survival among 
 free nations of the old and damnable idea of 
 government which belonged to Divine Right 
 of Kin^s. 
 
 These Kings, with a very few exceptions, 
 
 111
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 devoted themselves to increasing their own 
 countries — ^that is to say, their own positions 
 and prestige. They were hke owners of estates 
 whose sole desire should be to extend their 
 properties and who should take no pains to 
 keep the people living on them healtiiy and 
 content. 
 
 When in free countries the People took rule 
 into their own hands, they ought to have made 
 it clear that the object of ruling was thereby 
 changed. No longer was statesmanship to 
 be the art of making nations great. It was to 
 be the science of making individuals happy. 
 No lojiger was the energv of ^overnin^ 
 men to be directed towards the aggrandise- 
 ment of an abstraction called " the country," 
 but to the solution of the problems, concrete 
 and painful enough we know, which weigh upon 
 the lives of men and women. 
 
 Government may still have to concern itself 
 with the relations of those men and women to 
 the men and women of other countries; with 
 what Lord Beaconsfield aptly called " home 
 affairs in foreign parts." There must be a 
 policy for the regulation of those affairs. 
 
 112
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 But the aim of foreign policy must not be 
 to increase the " position and prestige " of 
 an abstraction, " the country." It must be 
 to increase the happiness of the men and women 
 who really are the country. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Bear with me if I seem to labour this dis- 
 tinction. It is a distinction which must be 
 kept very clearly in mind if we are to discover 
 the origins of wars and to decide whether it 
 is possible to end them. 
 
 In modern times wars have nearly all arisen 
 from the practice of speaking about the 
 . country's interest as if it were different from 
 the interest of the men and women who 
 inhabit the country. This practice is, among 
 free nations, a legacy from the days of Divine 
 Eight rulers, in which " the country " had 
 interests separate from those of its people, and 
 not only separate from, but superior to them 
 — I mean, the interests of its King. 
 
 One thing can "be said with certainty. War 
 never served the interest of any people. The 
 mass of men and women have never drawn 
 
 113
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 any advantage from it. In no case can history 
 show us that the men and women who in any 
 war gave their Uves and their children's Uves, 
 and lost their means of livelihood, and saw 
 their houses destroyed, and into the bargain 
 paid heavy taxes to meet new expenses, were 
 ever considered when terms of peace came to 
 discussion, or were in any way recouped for 
 their sufferings and loss. 
 
 Sometimes nations have fought, as the 
 Netherlands did against Spain, and as Belgium 
 did against Germany, in defence of freedom 
 and the right to call their land their own. 
 Sometimes other nations took their part, as 
 England took the part of Belgium. But in 
 such wars nations do not fight for advantage. 
 They know that they must suffer; they face 
 suffering with a grim, sad resolve. 
 
 The need for such resolve arises seldom. It 
 never could arise if there were no " divine 
 right " monarchs, and if the guiding principle 
 of government were to safeguard the happiness 
 of men and women, not to increase the prestige 
 and position of that abstraction, "the 
 country," " the state." 
 
 114
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 The Peoples of free countries must instil this 
 principle into those whom they choose to rule 
 in their name. Nations do not covet, do not 
 set their hearts upon domination, do not desire 
 to increase their position and prestige. What 
 they, the men and women who compose nations, 
 desire is to live their lives in the way they 
 choose, or as near to their choice as may be 
 possible. And they are ready to grant to all 
 others the same liberty. 
 
 *= # * * 
 
 In short, free nations will never seek for 
 Glory, as Kings do. Yet it is not safe to say 
 that there vvill never be again among free 
 peoples aggressive w^ars. For indeed all wars 
 are represented to be aggressive wars. A Ger- 
 man who knew the mind of Bismarck wrote 
 in 1875 that the German Chancellor had 
 " resolved to extricate himself from the com- 
 plications at home by foreign action," but that 
 it was not easy for him ' ' to create a situation 
 in wdiich Germany seemed to be the attacked 
 party." That is a necessary part of the war 
 game as played by statesmen and diplomats. 
 Each side must be able to complain that it was 
 
 115
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 attacked; usually the assertion is made that it 
 was attacked unawares. _ 
 
 This is part of the process by which the 
 people are deluded not only by rulers, but by 
 statesmen. It is futile to trust to the dislike 
 which free nations feel against aggression so 
 long as they can so easily be deceived. 
 
 In the deciding of what touches national 
 honour lies the most dangerous risk of war. 
 Appeals to nations to take up arms on this 
 ground meet with a dangerously ready response. 
 Even free nations may be influenced to feverish 
 violence by the folly of unstable or obstinate 
 politicians, by the cunning of ambition or of 
 greed. 
 
 In the days of duelling " honour " was made 
 a fetish to which sacrifice of blood and life 
 must be offered. To the same exaggeration 
 have governing men, for pm^poses of their 
 own, carried the worship of " country." When 
 people are told that " the country's interest " 
 demands this, that, or the other, they cannot 
 check the assertions; they do not understand 
 what is meant. They accept it because, if 
 
 116
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 they did not, they would be reviled as un- 
 patriotic. 
 
 We cannot repeat to ourselves too often that 
 no country can have any true interest save the 
 interest of the men and women who belong to 
 it. It is because nations overlook this that 
 there is so often risk of war on account of 
 " national honour," 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Danger often resides also in the extent to 
 which governments, often for purposes of per- 
 sonal profit, support even with the authority 
 of free nations the adventures of capital, the 
 projects of contractors, the schemes of those 
 who have money to lend or goods to sell. 
 
 It is impossible to suggest any rule for 
 judging appeals to governments by individuals 
 who consider that they have been wronged, 
 and that through them their countries have 
 been flouted. Eveiy appeal of this nature must 
 be judged upon its merits. For wanton un- 
 provoked attacks redress and apology must be 
 exacted. But to use the People's power to 
 assist individuals to make money (even by fair 
 
 117
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 dealing, which in such operations is often lack- 
 ing) is to betray the People's interest. 
 
 President Wilson has warned those citizens 
 of the United States who engage in business 
 in the countries of Central or South America 
 that they do so at their own peril. He refused 
 even to act sternly towards Mexico when up- 
 wards of two hundred American subjects had 
 been killed there. His argument was : " These 
 men knew Mexico was insecure. They went 
 there to make money. It is not worth while 
 sacrificing many thousands of lives to avenge 
 them." 
 
 Is that a refusal to accept one of the duties 
 of Government? Perhaps it is. But like 
 refusals have been made by all the Powers, 
 when they have had no interest in claiming 
 compensation or inflicting punishment. Presi- 
 dent Wilson is the first ruler to say openly, 
 " We renounce and abhor the practice of 
 making war, either to vindicate national honour 
 or for the support of business men." That is 
 a significant sign. 
 
 I beheve this view of President Wilson's 
 
 118
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 would be approved by almost everybody if it 
 were presented to them individually and coolly. 
 Yet it is an easy task for any public speaker 
 to arouse enthusiasm for war upon these very 
 grounds. Acts from which men and women 
 would shrink as individuals may be committed 
 by them when they lose their individuality and 
 become merely units in a crowd. 
 
 Opinion must be so changed that crowds 
 will listen to suggestions of war with the same 
 impatience and the same puzzled astonishment 
 as would be felt if an orator proposed to-day 
 to burn * ' heretics ' ' at the stake ; to offer up 
 human sacrifices; to abolish law courts and 
 revive trial by personal combat or by the ordeal 
 of walking over hot bricks. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 As soon as Opinion undergoes this change, 
 as soon as it is agreed that national interests 
 are the interests of individual men and women, 
 wars will be near to ceasing. Then the oppres- 
 sion of nationalities will end. Then it will be 
 considered as monstrous to refuse to any body 
 of men and women the right to choose their 
 own form of government (so that it be not 
 
 119
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 harmful to others) as it is considered monstrous 
 now to fetter the freedom of individual men 
 and women to choose their own ways of life. 
 
 When Italy was struggling to free herself 
 from the grip of Austria, and of other bar- 
 bai'ous incompetent rulers — a grip which was 
 cramping and hateful to the Italian People — it 
 was suggested that Lombardy should decide by 
 a plebiscite whether she wished to remain under 
 Austrian rule or not. Queen Victoria protested 
 that " it would be a calamity for ages to come " 
 if a People were allowed to choose its own 
 form of government. To-day we stand 
 astonished at her selfish indignation; selfish 
 because she put the narrow views and interests 
 of the Trade Union of Sovereigns before those 
 of men and women. To-day we say that it is 
 a calamity when Peoples are hindered from 
 choosing their rulers and their form of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 But it is not enough to say this. We must 
 act accordingly. We must search our own 
 hearts and ask ourselves if there be no beam 
 in our own eye. We must spread the truth 
 
 120
 
 What ARE National Interests? 
 
 that Government is a means, not an end in 
 itself; that poHtical systems were made for Man 
 and not Man for any poHtical system. 
 
 When these become commonplaces of 
 thought, governments which enforce their rule 
 upon millions of unwilling subjects will be 
 tolerated no longer. Nor shall we permit those 
 who rule over lands which have been freed 
 to disturb the peace with their trumpery dis- 
 cords. The rulers of small half -civilised 
 countries, like the countries in the Balkan 
 Peninsula, will be sternly warned that their 
 squabbles and covetings must cease. The 
 Balkan Peoples would raise no protest. They 
 have no interest in these petty schemings. If 
 their rulers proved unruly, the Peoples should 
 be invited to speak their will. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 The possibility of aboHshing war depends, 
 therefore, first upon the civilised nations 
 ceasini? to believe that war is a necessary evil; 
 secondly, upon the transforming of Divine 
 Right monarchies, which make war for their 
 own selfish ends, into Republics or Limited 
 
 121
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Monarchies in wiiich the sovereign is a here- 
 ditary President, deriving his title from the 
 People's will; thirdly, upon free nations aban- 
 doning the pursuit of prestige and position and 
 forcing their elected governing men to govern 
 solely with intent to increase the sum of human 
 well-being and happiness; fourthly, upon all 
 Peoples being at liberty to choose the form of 
 government which they prefer. That will be 
 the true Democracy. 
 
 :^ # # # 
 
 Hitherto the reasoners who hold that war 
 cannot be ended have been allowed, to ride 
 off on too many unsound, tottering arguments 
 which could be knocked from under them by 
 a single blow, as this argument of " force the 
 dominant factor" can be. 
 
 These reasoners have been used to declare, 
 for example, that no nation could ever com- 
 pletely understand foreign politics. No nation 
 completely understands finance, except in so 
 far as it is affected by taxation. No nation 
 understands completely its domestic politics. 
 Yet these matters are admitted to fall within 
 their province of decision. Even if nations 
 
 122
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 were incapable of understanding foreign 
 politics, that would be no ground for declaring 
 that they must leave this field to experts. They 
 are not expected to follow that course in regard 
 to legislation and finance. ,, , 
 
 But nations are not incapable of following 
 foreign politics with intelligent interest. Every 
 one can do so who takes the trouble to read 
 a little history and knows his wav about an 
 atlas. 
 
 Foreign affairs are no more difficult to grasp 
 than home politics. The only reason why 
 nations fail to grasp them is that they are not 
 explained to them in an intelligible way. Often 
 the men who explain them do not understand 
 them themselves. 
 
 In truth, the motives which govern rulers 
 are simple enough, vrhile the motives which 
 govern Peoples are the same in all countries, 
 and the sfimidi to which they respond, the same 
 also. The problems which arise out of the 
 clash of rulers' ambitions and personalities 
 could be stated to any public meeting as simply 
 and clearly as those which arise out of the 
 
 123
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 struggles between Capital and Labour or the 
 opposition between Protection and Free Trade. 
 
 But no speaker ever states them simply and 
 clearly in popular form. The truth is never 
 told to the People. They imagine that there 
 is a mystery about foreign affairs which they 
 need not hope to penetrate. That is why 
 foreign affairs are so badly muddled in all 
 countries. They are handled by men who mis- 
 conceive the object of government, and who 
 are allowed to work behind a curtain which is 
 never lifted save when their nmddling and mis- 
 conception have brought upon their country 
 the curse of war. 
 
 * « # # 
 
 No question of " national interest," no 
 punctilio of " national dignity " can make it 
 worth while for men to leave their homes, their 
 w'ork, their life, in order to become machines 
 for slaughter and food for cannon. If thev 
 were persuaded to do this willingly, the decep- 
 tion would be cruel enough. To force it upon 
 them, whether they will or not, is an outrage 
 to which Mankind is surely not going always to 
 submit. 
 
 124
 
 What are National Interests? 
 
 " There were a good many causes pre- 
 disposing us to the belief in the desirability 
 of a League of Nations. One of these was 
 that there must be a universal desire on the 
 part of the labouring classes to avoid military 
 service in the future. It could not be 
 possible that the mass of mankind desired 
 compulsory military service." — Colonel Sir 
 Mark Sykes, M.P., in the House of Conunons, 
 August 1st, 1918. 
 
 There is nothing worth fighting for except 
 the liberty to live in one's own way, and no 
 people ever wishes to interfere with that liberty 
 in any other people. It is only by ambitious 
 rulers and statesmen, backed up by soldiers 
 and by writers, whether of books or of news- 
 paper articles, that such plots are hatched. 
 Now the Peoples must refuse to be cozened 
 any longer into supporting them by the sacrifice 
 of everything they live for. They have been 
 fooled long enough. 
 
 125
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE RIGHT KEY TO HISTORY. 
 
 King:; climb to eminence 
 Over men's graves. 
 
 — Austin Dobson. 
 
 Yet we dare not be too hopeful even now. 
 In the age-long struggle of mankind towards 
 the light and warmth of Freedom there have 
 been many set-backs. False steps have been 
 inadvisedly taken, false hopes kindled. Dis- 
 appointment painful to bear has followed. 
 
 So often has this happened that there is 
 excuse for those who doubt whether mankind 
 can ever escape from bondage to one or other 
 of those myriad shapes of fraud and supersti- 
 tion, of authority and dogma, whether self- 
 imposed or clamped upon it by force, which 
 have dogged its footsteps from the first syllables 
 of recorded history. 
 
 126
 
 The Eight Key to History. 
 
 History in my view of it is to be regarded 
 as the record of man's struggles against these 
 foes; against hallucinations alfecting his judg- 
 ment, efforts to enslave him, delusions deli- 
 berately fostered in order to exploit and plunder 
 him, all the evils which have hindered him from 
 leading a natural rational life. 
 
 Here, I suggest, is the key to the otherwise 
 confused and unexplainabie welter of events 
 which History offers for our consideration. 
 Eead without any key, without any philosophy, 
 these events are both puzzling and tedious. In 
 one of Mr. Ian Colvin's witty, though barren, 
 because merely sophistical, pamphlets ("Take 
 Cover ") he makes game of a Socialist clerk 
 who " doesn't hold with history." 
 
 " Never took to it," says the clerk. " No 
 large ideas, all confusion, wars, kings, treaties 
 that mean nothing. What is the Norman Con- 
 quest to me or the Wars of the Roses? A 
 jumble wath no meaning in it." 
 
 That clerk put into words, perhaps in spite 
 of his creator, just what all of us must at times 
 have felt about history, if we have thought 
 
 127
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 about it at all. How should they feel other- 
 wise who have no clue to its labyrinthine paths, 
 leading in all directions without, as it seems 
 to them, any common trend? 
 
 Many have tried to see in history a record 
 of Progress. They can only succeed in this by 
 turning a bright light first upon the uglier 
 features of the Past, and then upon the fairer 
 features of the Present. If we weigh as fairly 
 as we can with our imperfect scales any one 
 age against any other, we find the balance 
 fairly even. Sometimes there are more cruelty, 
 fraud, foolishness of certain kinds; sometimes 
 there are less of these kinds and more of others. 
 Against a larger bulk of admirable qualities in 
 some directions must be set off a smaller bulk 
 in other directions. So the mass results stand 
 even. The total weights of good and bad 
 remain much the same. 
 
 Progress, Nietzsche wrote, " is merely a 
 modern idea, that is to say, a false idea." * 
 Macaulay, whose wisdom struggled with his 
 Whicf^ishness, like the sun bursting everv now 
 
 -■- "Antichrist," p. 129. English translation, edited by 
 Dr. Oscar Levy. 
 
 128
 
 TuE Right Key to History. 
 
 and then through murky clouds, said in his 
 " Machiavelli " :— 
 
 '* Every age and nation has certain charac- 
 teristic vices. . . . Succeeding generations 
 change the fashion of their morals with the 
 fashion of their hats and their coaches, take 
 some other kind of wickedness under their 
 patronage, and wonder at the depravity of 
 their ancestors." 
 
 Clever Disraeli, who fooled the simple Eng- 
 lish by playing down to their ignorance and 
 their prejudices (as in his famous dismissal of 
 Darwinism by the phrase "I am on the side 
 of the angels "), could not in his earlier, 
 honester years pretend to find any ground for 
 believing that the world improved. 
 
 " Enlightened Europe is not happy. Its 
 existence is a fever which it calls Progress. 
 Progress to what? " (Tancred, Book III., 
 Chapter 7.) 
 
 When an archaeologist tells us that the aver- 
 age child of Nineveh, seven centuries before 
 Christ, was better educated than the average 
 
 129 
 
 E
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 child of to-day; when a President of the British 
 Association with Sir William Ramsay's breadth 
 of view " supposes it will be generally granted 
 that the Commonwealth of Athens attained a 
 high-water mark in literature and thought which 
 has never been surpassed "; when a student of 
 Mr. Edmond Holmes's culture concludes that 
 " since the historic dawn of civilisation in 
 Egypt, India and China, little or no progress 
 other than material has been made " (The 
 Tragedy of Education, 1913), how can we 
 accept the cheerfully thoughtless opinion that 
 every age has brought and is still bringing us 
 nearer to perfection? 
 
 Other philosophies have been suggested. 
 The Roman historian Polybius (204-822 B.C.) 
 believed that the key to all history was the 
 " great idea " of mankind made politically one. 
 The domination of one rule over the entire 
 known world had been experienced under 
 Alexander of Macedon at the end of the brief, 
 brilhant civilisation of Greece. Rome secured 
 for a short while a like domination over a wider 
 surface, and the same " great idea " is found 
 
 130
 
 TuE Right Key to History. 
 
 a century later in the history of Diodorus 
 Siculus : — 
 
 " Throughout the acts of all men, regard- 
 less of place or period, there runs a desire 
 to bring all human activities under the con- 
 trol of one state." 
 
 This fancy persisted through the ages of 
 Charlemagne, of the Popes who sought uni- 
 versal sovereignty, of the Empire which pro- 
 fessed to derive its " rights " from the Papacy, 
 and of Napoleon, spurred on partly by vast 
 ambitions, partly by the enmity of other rulers 
 who saw in him only an " upstart," to attempt 
 the domination of Europe. The same notion 
 of world-empire, though now regarded as 
 maniacal, inflamed even in this age the minds 
 of Prussian professors and generals, and was 
 in large part the cause of the world war. 
 
 At first glance, therefore, this key to history 
 looks promising. But it does not, of itself, 
 explain enough. It must be considered as one 
 onlv of the manifestations of that " will to 
 power " which has caused the whole of man- 
 
 131 
 
 e2
 
 The Meaning of The World Eevolution 
 
 kind to suffer throughout the ages upon the 
 compulsion of a few. 
 
 Between the petty tyranny of a village head 
 man and the dream of world-wide sovereignty 
 born in the diseased imagination of rulers and 
 statesmen there is no difference in kind. Both 
 are due to that exaggerated self-consciousness 
 which tills lunatic asylums with the victims of 
 what doctors call megalomania. 
 
 No animal save Man is afflicted by this pitiful 
 obsession. The other animals fight for food 
 if they are hungry, for the possession of mates 
 and the safety of offspring, for their individual 
 security and well-being. Man alone is moved 
 by the desire for short-lived " greatness," by 
 the ambition to acquire superfluous wealth 
 which he can put to no profitable employment, 
 by the itch to order others about. 
 
 Stranger phenomenon still, it is not only 
 those so afflicted whom we see through the 
 ages struggling to satisfy their foolish hunger 
 for prominence. We see, fighting for them, 
 sometimes willingly, sometimes upon compul- 
 sion, myriads of men who have no interest 
 
 132
 
 The Right Key to History. 
 
 whatever in the attainment of their selfish and 
 usually criminal ends. 
 
 # # * # 
 
 Contemplating such fantastic self-immola- 
 tion, all who use their reason must agree with 
 Smollett, who, in the person of Roderick 
 Random, 
 
 " could not help expressing his astonishment 
 at the absurdity of a rational being who 
 thought himself highly honoured in being 
 permitted to encounter abject poverty, 
 oppression, famine, disease, mutilation and 
 evident death, merely to gratify the vicious 
 ambition of a prince by whom his sufferings 
 were disregarded and his name utterly un- 
 known." 
 
 Roderick was moved to this outburst by the 
 boasting of a French soldier that " he had had 
 the honour of seeing Louis the Great, and of 
 receiving many wounds in helping to establish 
 his glory.** 
 
 ** I observed that if his situation were the 
 consequence of compulsion, I would praise 
 
 133
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 his patience and fortitude; if he had taken 
 up arms in defence of his injured country, 
 he was to be applauded for his patriotism; 
 or if he had fled to this way of life as a 
 refuge from a greater evil, he was justifiable 
 in his own conscience (though I could have 
 no notion of misery more extreme than that 
 he suffered); but to put his condition on the 
 footing of conducing to the glory of his 
 prince was no more than professing himself 
 a desperate slave, who voluntarily underwent 
 the utmost wretchedness and peril, and com- 
 mitted the most flagrant crimes to soothe the 
 barbarous pride of a fellow-creature, his 
 superior in nothing but the power he derived 
 from the submission of such wretches as 
 him." 
 
 Loyalty was lauded by kings and their sup- 
 porters as a notable and necessary virtue for 
 the reason that it serv^ed as a drug to deaden, 
 as in the case of this French soldier, and of 
 how many millions of others in every land, the 
 good sense and self-interest of their dupes. 
 When the instruments of royalty could no 
 longer count upon devotion to the persons of 
 
 134
 
 The Eight Key to History. 
 
 princes, they changed their note and preached 
 " patriotism." 
 
 They pretended now that what profited 
 monarchs and Ruhng Classes profited the 
 People, as stark a sham as the kindred lying 
 suggestion that " we have now only People's 
 wars." 
 
 " Nowadays princes and governments do 
 not cause wars. The era of Cabinet wars is 
 over. The factors which militate against 
 peace are to be found among the Peoples 
 themselves." — General v. MoUke in the 
 German Reichstag during the Army Bill 
 debate, 1890. 
 
 No People has ever profited by war. There 
 has never been a community of which the in- 
 dividual members wanted war. They have 
 shouted for it standing together as a crowd, 
 and being intoxicated by eloquence or by 
 cunningly-provoked anger. But what the great 
 mass of men and women have always desired 
 as individuals, and what they desire to-day, is 
 to carry on their occupations without hindrance, 
 to provide for the satisfaction of their needs. 
 
 135
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 to live in decent comfort with their families, 
 
 and to enjoy the simpler pleasures, undisturbed 
 
 by vain ambitions, undesirous of unnecessary 
 
 wealth. 
 
 * « * • 
 
 History shows us this desire thwarted con- 
 tinually by those who snatch at power, who are 
 not content with the existence which I have 
 just outlined, who seek to impose their mastery 
 or their beliefs upon masses of their fellows; 
 to draw advantage for themselves, or for the 
 institutions which they represent, by subjecting 
 these masses forcibly to their will. 
 
 Attempts have even been made to exhibit 
 history as the glorious creation of tyrants, 
 bigots and tricksters. Carlyle, the victim of 
 a disordered stomach which soured the idealism 
 of his earlier years, changing a generous affec- 
 tion for mankind into cantankerous dislike, 
 declared that 
 
 " the history of what man has accomplished 
 in the world is at bottom the history of the 
 Great Men who have worked here." 
 
 This theory he supported, not by argument, 
 
 136
 
 The Right Key to History. 
 
 in which Carlyie was never strong, but by 
 imaginative rhetoric, which to-day sounds thin 
 and hollow, while the examples which he chose 
 for the illustration of his theme are seen to 
 be strangely ill-fitted to sustain it. 
 
 Of his heroes half were men of letters — 
 Shakespeare, Goethe, Johnson, Rousseau, 
 Burns. Of these only one had any hand in 
 making history, and we know that Rousseau 
 would have been horrified by Robespierre's 
 employment of the methods of the Spanish In- 
 quisition to force upon the French People a 
 distorted version of his philosophy. 
 
 Of Carlyie 's remaining heroes, Mahomet, 
 Luther and Knox were religious fanatics who 
 helped to bemuse and infuriate mankind, throw- 
 ing heavy obstacles in the way of natural and 
 rational existence. Napoleon, by Carlyle's own 
 admission, allowed the charlatan element in 
 his character to get the upper hand. Cromwell 
 failed so completely to shape and guide the 
 revolution which placed him in power that he 
 accomplished just nothing at all of any lasting 
 
 character. 
 
 # * « # 
 
 137
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Only, I submit, by keeping constantly in view 
 the perpetual struggle between the mass of 
 mankind and a small number greedy for rule 
 or riches, or eager as zealots for some doctrine, 
 Bome way of life, to constrain as many as 
 possible into agreement with them; only by 
 regarding the events which history chronicles 
 as the ups and downs of man's battle for 
 liberty of development, can we read into it any 
 connected interest, any coherent meaning. 
 
 Civilisation has not freed Man from his 
 oppressors. It has only changed their names 
 and their outward seeming. A tribe living 
 under what we call savage conditions is usually 
 subject to the capricious authority of one or 
 a few men; this authority rests upon brute 
 force. If it displeases the tribe it can be by 
 brute force destroyed. 
 
 Later the venom of superstition is injected. 
 Then authority secures itself by this buttress, 
 that it has divine sanction, and that to refuse 
 it allegiance is to disobey God. 
 
 When that delusion has been painfully eradi- 
 cated, there arises another. We then see, in 
 
 138
 
 The Right Key to History. 
 
 place of brute force, in place of superstition, 
 the tyranny of the vote. Politicians claim for 
 majorities the same " rights " as were formerly 
 exercised by autocracy and priestcraft. Free- 
 dom of thought is limited by barriers against 
 the expression of ideas which are held by the 
 leaders of the majority to be inconvenient. 
 Individual liberty of existence is closely circum- 
 scribed. 
 
 Some have suggested that it is natural to 
 man to be the victim of princes, priests or 
 politicians. " He will always," they say, " be 
 in subjection to some self-constituted despotism. 
 He invites tyranny to set its foot upon his neck. 
 He is so easily duped, so readily exchanges 
 one form of exploitation for another, so angrily 
 protests when the chicane and self-interest of 
 his oppressors are pointed out, so innocently 
 makes himself the victim of blatant advertising 
 or unblushing jobbery, that it is useless to hope 
 his state of enthralment can ever be ended." 
 
 ' ' The truth is men are very much hke sheep : 
 gregarious by nature, willing to follow any 
 leader, to obey anyone bold enough to assume 
 the command; their consent is never asked; 
 
 139
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 they are ordered and obey. Force has always 
 been kin<?. Miiihts have been rights." 
 
 That passage from George Henry Lewes 's 
 Life of Robespierre " expresses what many 
 have feU. Yet all through history we see that 
 King Force has been steadily and frequently 
 overthrown. We see that the fight against 
 might being right has never died down. 
 
 All through history man has striven against 
 exploitation in every one of its forma. Like 
 Proteus, it has changed its appearance many 
 times, but has been fought with in all its dis- 
 guises. In time each succesive form of dupery 
 has been exposed and overcome. This seems 
 to me to prove that man is by nature a free 
 being and that he will always struggle to 
 develop unhindered. 
 
 How else, I ask, can we explain his un- 
 ceasing conflict with oppression, save by ad- 
 mitting his instinct for liberty, his unfailing 
 reaction against efforts to numb this, and to use 
 his labour and strength for ends which do not 
 profit him, to keep him tied and bound with the 
 rope whose strands are Force, and Fraud, and 
 Fear? 
 
 140
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE TOWARDS THE LIGHT. 
 
 The great principle, that societies and laws exist 
 only for the purpose of increasing the sum of private 
 happiness. — Macanlay, Essay on Machiavelli. 
 
 Never has the battle been easy. Many have 
 been the repulses suffered. The corrupting 
 influence of Power, the cruel selfishness of 
 Greed, the impositions of religious system, the 
 vain imafjinini^s of those who seek both the 
 explanation and the chief good of Humanity 
 in supernatural spheres — these and other evils 
 are both subtle and strong. 
 
 No sooner has Man freed himself from one 
 set of chains than the forging of another set 
 has be^un. It seems sometimes as if the 
 elements in Man's nature — of imposture and 
 tyranny on the one side, of credulity and 
 patience on the other — were fated to defeat 
 
 141
 
 The Meaning of The World Eevolution 
 
 every effort to make life more natural and 
 rational. 
 
 Something of this despondency was felt by 
 Matthew Arnold when he wrote the stanzas, 
 stirring in their wistful beauty nevertheless, 
 which he called " Revolution " : — 
 
 Before Man parted for this earthly strand, 
 While yet upon the verge of heaven he 
 stood, 
 God put a heap of letters in his hand, 
 
 And bade him make with them what word 
 he could. 
 
 " And Man has turned them many times; made 
 Greece, 
 Eome, England, France; yes, nor in vain 
 essayed 
 Way after way, changes that never cease. 
 The letters have combined, something was 
 ' made. 
 
 But ah ! an inextinguishable sense 
 
 Haunts him that he has not made what he 
 should ; 
 That he has still, though old, to recommence, 
 
 142
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 Since he has not yet found the word God 
 would. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 One day, thou sayest, there will at last appear 
 The word, the order, which (Jod meant 
 should be. 
 Ah ! we shall know that well when it comes 
 near; 
 The band will quit Man's heart, he will 
 breathe free." 
 
 Whether " the word " can ever be put 
 together, we know not. But, whatever excuse 
 there may be for doubting whether man's self- 
 consciousness, the one faculty which distin- 
 guishes him from other animals, is compatible 
 with contentment, it is both foolish and dan- 
 gerous to make this a reason for opposing all 
 
 change. 
 
 # # # # 
 
 If a traveller obliged to bear a heavy load 
 were told, " It is useless for you to shift your 
 burden from one shoulder to the other; that 
 makes it no lighter," he would reply that, if he 
 did not frequently alter the incidence of its 
 weight, he would sink beneath it. 
 
 143
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 " True," he would say, " shifting it makes 
 the burden no Hghten, nor does it shorten the 
 journey, but it brings me partial, temporary 
 ease." Were it not for shif tings of the burden, 
 that is to say, for revolutions, for changes in 
 beliefs and svstems, for fresh beginninas and 
 the casting off of ancient weariness, Man would 
 have no ease at all. 
 
 There is, therefore, no cause for discourage- 
 ment in history's record of faith misplaced, of 
 hopes unfulfilled. That faith, those hopes, 
 were needful to sorely burdened mankind. 
 Even exaggerated expectancies may be good if 
 they help us over difficult places in our road. 
 
 As we climb mountains, we are often mis- 
 taken when we say, " There is the top; when 
 we reach there, we shall be above the world." 
 We arrive, and see beyond still other summits 
 far above us. Again, and again maybe, we 
 deceive ourselves. But such deceptions help 
 us to persevere. They shift the load. 
 
 •fr •Jt' ^P ^ff 
 
 Many, when they hear the word Revolution, 
 shudder. It means change, and most of us 
 
 144
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 hate changes. It suggests to their minds the 
 confused noise of civil tumult and garments 
 rolled in blood. They think inevitably of the 
 French Revolution, of street fighting in small, 
 blood-thirsty South American States, of battle, 
 murder and sudden death. 
 
 That is to mistake local incidents for general 
 tendencies, to suppose that revolution means 
 no more than the upsetting of a system, the 
 deposition of a King. 
 
 Here or there hghting and bloodshed are sure 
 to be caused by any new idea spread over a 
 wide surface. " No change of a vast kind 
 can be other than a stone of stumbling to those 
 many persons for whoin the beaten ways of 
 life alone are tolerable, and who, when these 
 ways are broken, are bewildered and lost." 
 What Froude wrote of England at the Eeforma- 
 tion period is true of all peoples at all times. 
 Those who resist the stream of tendency pro- 
 voke reprisals. 
 
 This should be pondered. " If a great 
 change is to be made in human affairs," wrote 
 Burke, " the minds of men will be fitted to it, 
 
 145
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 the general opinions and feelings will draw 
 that way. Every fear, every hope will forward 
 it; and then they who persist in opposing this 
 mighty current in human affairs will appear 
 rather to resist the decrees of Providence than 
 the mere designs of men. They will not be 
 resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate." 
 
 It is from the exaggerated value put upon 
 inveterate custom that those disturbances result 
 which in many minds represent by themselves 
 the meaning of Revolution. They are, in truth, 
 no more than small parts of the really great 
 revolutions, incidental to attempts at forming 
 " the word, the order, which God meant should 
 be," to the changes in belief and practice 
 which occur from time to time, and, by bring- 
 ing " partial, temporary ease," enable Mankind 
 
 to stagger on. 
 
 # # # « 
 
 If thev are examined closelv and sincerelv, 
 all these great revolutions are discerned to have 
 had the same object in view, that object being 
 to increase liberty of thought and action, to 
 obtain for the mass of mankind more elbow 
 room, to make human life more natural and 
 
 146
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 rational. For a time, in certain departments, 
 or for certain people, they have most of them 
 succeeded. Forward goes Mankind with 
 renewed energ}'. One shoulder is freed from 
 the weight which galled and bore it down; the 
 other shoulder scarcely feels the load. 
 
 Unhappily there begins at once, although for 
 some while it may not be noticed, the operation 
 of the forces which are opposed to human life 
 being either natural or rational. 
 
 Pride, ignorance, superstition; the craft of 
 rulers; the charlatanry of seekers after riches, 
 the cunning of priests ; all the elements of Man- 
 kind which aim at personal profit or the advan- 
 tage of an institution rather than at the general 
 good, come into play and form a damnable 
 alliance. Little by little they get Mankind into 
 their grip afresh. At last the burden becomes 
 once more intolerable. It must be shifted 
 again. 
 
 ^F ^F "i^ ^F 
 
 One fundamental change was marked bv the 
 beginning of the Christian Era. The teaching 
 of Christ brought together in an exquisitely 
 
 147
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 beautiful and moving form the dreams and 
 lon<7in2s of an ase which found it impossible 
 to believe any more in gods and goddesses 
 who were not even dignified or respectable, 
 and yearned for a warmer creed than that which 
 doomed the dead in subterranean chilly exile 
 to dreary lamentation over their lost places in 
 the sun. Allowing for Eastern hyperbole, no 
 more excellent rule of life than Christ's has 
 ever been framed. 
 
 This perhaps explains what would, without 
 such explanation, be both startling and unin- 
 telligible ; I mean the rapidity of the process 
 which converted teaching aimed at making life 
 more natural and rational into a system as 
 unnatural and irrational as the world has ever 
 known. 
 
 The forces which I have enumerated felt 
 themselves threatened by a dangerous enemy. 
 The Christianity of Christ, though enshrined and 
 practised throughout the ages, and still to-day, 
 by a few to whom its beauty made appeal, was 
 transformed for the mass into Pauline dogma, 
 an unsatisfying blend of commonplace morality 
 
 148
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 and Byzantine metaphysic, a useful foundation 
 upon which to erect a hard-and-fast theological 
 and theocratic system akin in every particular 
 to that which Christ tried vainly to destroy. 
 
 When the final stages of the gradual revolu- 
 tion which broke up the Roman Empire were 
 reached, Christianity had in it enough of power 
 and beauty to charm the barbarian imagination 
 and had not yet been quite petrified into a 
 system without a soul. 
 
 The Barbarians represented the forces of 
 reality and sincerity against so much that was 
 artificial and meaningless in the Roman system. 
 They were simple, elemental. They completed 
 what the founding of Christianity had begun, 
 the sweeping away of a civilisation that had 
 outlived its usefulness. 
 
 4i: # # # 
 
 From that time until the sixteenth century 
 the Church held swav. During some twelve 
 hundred years its system grew in power. It 
 held the Western world in fee, doing good as 
 well as evil, for men are always better than 
 the doctrines they profess. The arts of archi- 
 
 149
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 tecture, painting and music developed under its 
 encouragement. Cliaracters of rare nobility, 
 lives of shining devotion, lovely and kindly im- 
 pulses gleamed bright at all times among the 
 dark and hateful activities of a corrupt, perse- 
 cuting, power-seeking, material Church, in 
 league with all the other forces which light 
 against simplicity and freedom. 
 
 All efforts to induce reform from within were 
 vain. As well expect a rotten apple to become 
 sound. The sixteenth century found the long- 
 ing for truth and reality very strong. The 
 system which had scarce been challenged in a 
 thousand years began to crumble and decay. 
 
 The Reformation was only one result of a 
 change in men's minds which was destined to 
 affect every department of human life. All 
 falsehood had become wearisome and intoler- 
 able. All authority claiming to exist of its 
 own inherent rifjht was henceforward to be 
 questioned. 
 
 In the next century we English cut off the 
 head of one King and chased another out. In 
 the century after that the French grubbed up 
 their system by the roots. All the nations 
 
 150
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 which are still vigorously alive felt and acted 
 upon the impulse towards sincerity, towards 
 justice, towards the genuine and away from the 
 conventional, the sham. 
 
 Wherever the anti-natural, anti-rational 
 forces resisted attack, decay was enthroned. 
 Wherever they were, even for the moment, 
 conquered, there was a rush of healthy new 
 growth. 
 
 Reaction, however, followed swiftly. The 
 French were not yet of a sufficiently tough 
 fibre to spell out their new word. The insanity 
 of "la gloire " was in their blood. Napoleon 
 supervened. The Ruling Classes stood together. 
 Graduallv the old svstem, or something like it, 
 was everywhere restored. The excesses of the 
 friends of freedom drove many back to the 
 older modes of thought. Everywhere men 
 grew weary with struggling. It was only by 
 slow degrees that popular government got itself 
 established, and even then there clung to it 
 far too much of the cobwebbv rubbish of 
 monarchical days. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 And at this period, as I have described on 
 
 151
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 an earlier page, occurred a development which 
 checked the steady advance towards more 
 natural, more rational existence. This was the 
 rise of the Factory, the sudden disorderly 
 growth of cities, the emergence of the Pluto- 
 crat, the creation of a wage-earning class. 
 
 Lecky, a historian of calm, almost frigid 
 judgment, tells us that with the coming of 
 Industrialism " the war between capital and 
 labour began. Wealth was immensely in- 
 creased, but the inequalities of its distribution 
 were aggravated The contrast between 
 extravagant luxury and abject misery became 
 much more frequent and much more glaring 
 than before. The wealthy employer ceased to 
 live among his people; the quarters of the rich 
 and the poor became more distant, and every 
 great city soon presented those sharp divisions 
 of classes and districts in which the political 
 observer discovers one of the most dangerous 
 symptoms of revolution." 
 
 Politicians are seldom political observers. 
 Dealing chiefly with the superficial and the 
 commonplace, their minds, even if acute above 
 the average, which is unusual, become subdued 
 
 152
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 to what they work in. The RuHng Class was 
 intent upon httle beyond winning party 
 victories, maintaining its interests and privi- 
 leges, avoiding change. Even Mr. Charles 
 Whibley, the last of the High Tories, who 
 dreads democracy as Canadian lumbermen 
 dread a forest fire, who would use the Euling 
 Class, if he could, as a bulwark against popular 
 rule, feels compelled to write of that class thus : 
 
 ** We have been governed of late by men 
 who thought the means of politics far greater 
 than the end, and who played the game with 
 a feverish eagerness and in complete indiffer- 
 ence to the welfare of the country. . . . 
 They effectually deceived the people. Their 
 words were pompous, their manners grave. 
 . . . But all the while they devoted long 
 and laborious days to the business of intrigue. 
 ... It was the duty of each one, so they 
 thought, to get as high an office as he could, 
 to get it as quickly as possible, and to hold 
 it against all comers." 
 
 So, hating the new Franchise Bill, Mr. 
 Whibley is nevertheless constrained to admit 
 that it will effect one beneficial change. " It 
 
 153
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 will at least rid us of the Old Gangs, who, with 
 the aid of party funds and with a complete 
 devotion to parliamentary intrigue, brought us 
 to the pass in which we stood at the outbreak 
 of the war." 
 
 ^F ^F 'It' ^p 
 
 The Ruling Class, being thus occupied, did 
 not discover the " dangerous symptoms of 
 revolution." It has not discovered them yet. 
 It had warnings, even from its own members, 
 but these fell on stopped-up ears. 
 
 Lord Randolph Churchill was one of those 
 who tried to unstop them. He was not either 
 by character, by culture, or by intellect, a front 
 rank man. The low standard of brains ruling 
 among politicians can be no better illustrated 
 than by the rapid rise to a leading position of 
 this clever young man, possessing ability such 
 as great numbers of young men in all classes 
 could have matched; or, to take a later 
 example, by the extravagant praise bestowed 
 upon such a Minister as Lord Haldane. 
 
 That Lord Haldane as War Minister permitted 
 military business to be set in order, especially 
 
 154
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 the business of shipping an expeditionary force 
 to France and expanding the Army which 
 existed, is most true. But is it a proof of 
 shining merit to act upon the best professional 
 advice? Evidently . . . amoni^ War Ministers. 
 Among them Lord Haldane shone. 
 
 That Lord Randolph Clmrchill had vigour 
 and some insight is not to be denied. The 
 speed with which he advanced himself was due 
 mainly to the absence of these qualities in his 
 competitors, and to the influence of his position 
 as a Duke's son with a family seat in Parlia- 
 ment; but it must be set to his credit that he 
 proved himself an accurate reader of some of 
 the signs of his times. 
 
 " The w^orking classes," he said in 1883, 
 *' are quite determined to govern themselves, 
 and will not be either driven or hoodwinked by 
 any class or class interests." 
 
 Again, in 1885, when he repeated his view 
 and a friend urged that " the working classes 
 must have leaders," Lord Randolph answered : 
 " Yes, but they will not want aristocrats." 
 
 tF •«• It" V 
 
 155
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 The Ruling Class did not believe this. It 
 fancied itself indispensable. It supposed that 
 by changing its tone a little, by making a few 
 " concessions," by scrambhng a few places and 
 honours among the " Labour men," it could 
 keep its knee upon the nation's chest. 
 
 It suffered from the same delusion as that 
 which afflicted the Emperor Napoleon the Third, 
 who believed he could maintain his hold upon 
 the masses in France by shaking hands with 
 '* working men " in blouses, these men being, 
 in fact, agents of the police dressed for the 
 part. 
 
 The British nation, it is true, obligingly 
 accepted this position for a time, and seemed 
 to like it. But that time is past. The nation's 
 respect for the " titled, landed, and official 
 classes " has turned to anger. Their incom- 
 petence, their offensive assumption of 
 superiority, their preferring of party to prin- 
 ciple, their blindness to what was afoot both 
 at home and abroad, have sapped the belief 
 in them completely. 
 
 " Each age is a dream that is dying, 
 Or one that is coming to birth," 
 
 156
 
 The Struggle towards the Light. 
 
 sang Arthur O'Shaughnessy in his "Music- 
 makers' " ode. And often the dead dreams 
 seem Hke nightmares, while those new-born 
 have about them the radiance of eternal hope. 
 
 Once more we have reached the point of 
 Eevolution. Once more Authority is called 
 to account. Its acts are to be judged, not by 
 the standard which itself set up, in order that 
 its failures might be lightly regarded, but by 
 standards of reality and usefulness. We have 
 dwelt in a fog of pretence and deception long 
 enough. There is no more any belief that the 
 Old Gangs aim at Joseph Chaniberlain's ideal 
 of good government : "to secure to every man 
 his natural rights, his right to existence and a 
 fair enjoyment of it." There is a very strong 
 suspicion that they are opposed to the attain- 
 ment of such an aim. 
 
 Their solemn frivolity, their agreement to 
 keep blinkers over the eyes of the People, their 
 ingrained insincerity alike in word and action, 
 have created universal distrust. 
 
 We echo Wordsworth's cry : — 
 
 157
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 " Earth is sick 
 And Heaven is weary of the hollow words 
 That States and Kingdoms utter when they talk 
 Of Truth and Justice." 
 
 Those lines were written more than a century 
 ago. We have been made more sick and more 
 weary by another hundred years of chicanery 
 and exploitation. " Enough of Ij'ing," we cry; 
 *" let us strip away humbug and see things as 
 they are." 
 
 158
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT. 
 
 More crimes and blunders have been committed 
 within these four walls (the walls of the Cabinet 
 Room at 10 Downing Street) than in any other place 
 in this island. — John Bright to John Mvrley. 
 
 We have seen that the great revolutions in 
 the thought of mankind affect all men who 
 have reached pretty much the same stage of 
 civilisation, but that they affect different bodies 
 of men in different ways. That revolution 
 which has been preparing for so long a time 
 and is now upon us will not react upon all 
 countries alike, though it will have features 
 common to all. 
 
 Everywhere there will be attempts to sub- 
 stitute for Industrialism on a capitalist basis — 
 that is to say, for the system of production 
 which allots to those who own the capital, means 
 
 159
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 of production, buildings, machinery and to those 
 who undertake the management the largest 
 possible profit, and to the workers the smallest 
 possible; which exacts from the workers long 
 hours of what is for the most part mechanical 
 drudgery, and puts the relation between em- 
 ployer and employed upon a wage-slavery basis 
 — everywhere there will be attempts to sub- 
 stitute for this soulless and deforming institu- 
 tion some more natural, more rational plan. 
 
 Co-operation will be tried. State ownership 
 will be tried. The theory of Syndicalism which 
 postulates the local owning and managing of 
 local means of production by the workers or 
 their nominees, and Guild Socialism, an inter- 
 esting variant of the same principle, are sure 
 to be put to the test. 
 
 For, everywhere, there is the same disgust 
 with the results of unchecked competition, 
 everywhere there is a readiness to experiment 
 with systems more agreeable with that brother- 
 hood of all men in which we profess to believe. 
 
 Everywhere, too, there is coming, I believe, 
 
 160
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 a reaction against the over-elaboration of the 
 machinery of government. 
 
 What has happened is what happens to an 
 erection of playing-cards or of wine-glasses 
 when it is piled too high. Its own weight 
 brings it down. The field and functions of 
 government have been enlarged so widely and 
 rapidly as to impose a strain too severe. 
 * * * * 
 
 Mr. Balfour spoke in the House of Commons 
 (July 18, 1917) of '* the vast complicated 
 machinery of permanent officials by which alone 
 you can carry on the colossal business of 
 government." 
 
 Of government in the most recent sense, yes. 
 
 But all who have had to do with machinery 
 know that, as it becomes more complicated and 
 vaster, it needs highly skilled attention and 
 must be very carefully adjusted to its purposes. 
 The Party System has prevented the machinery 
 of government in the British Empire from being 
 either designed with foresight or regulated with 
 precision. Parties hurriedly botch up contriv- 
 
 161
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 ances for vote-catching, caring not how tiimsy 
 and impermanent they may be. They pile storey 
 after storey on to the card-house, heedless of 
 the certainty that it must collapse. 
 
 The desire for more and more government, 
 like the desire for more and more medicine, is 
 a symptom of disease. The cry for the State 
 to do everything assumes that individuals are 
 incapable of managing their own concerns, 
 educating their children, making provision for 
 sickness and senility, and so on. 
 
 It is true that bare subsistence wages have 
 reduced the independence of the proletariat by 
 making it impossible for the mass to do more 
 W'ith their scanty earnings than exist uncom- 
 fortably. It has been necessary on this account 
 to regulate by law many matters which under 
 a system more just and humane would not have 
 called for legislative interference. Save for 
 this, the notion that Members of Parliament 
 and officials can order the life of a nation better 
 than the individuals who compose the nation 
 could never have taken hold. 
 
 However, this assumption of the People's 
 
 162
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 dependence upon " the State " suited politi- 
 cians in democratic countries no less than it 
 suited despotic rulers. 
 
 Sir Donald Wallace, in his " Russia," 
 describes with admirably acute terseness the 
 attitude of the Tsardom and the official caste 
 in that country : — 
 
 " It treated the people as minors incapable 
 of understanding its political designs and only 
 very partially competent to look after their 
 own local affairs. . . . 
 
 ** The officials systematically treated those 
 over whom they were placed as a conquered 
 or inferior race. The State thus came to 
 be regarded as an abstract entity with 
 interests entirely different from those of the 
 human beings composing it." 
 
 That is an attitude not differing in essence 
 from the attitude of most governing persons 
 in " free " countries. 
 
 Lord Chatham, in the eighteenth century, 
 ** considered mobs in the light of raw material 
 which might be manufactured to a proper stuff 
 
 163 
 
 f2
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 for their own happiness in the end." The view 
 is not extinct to-day, 
 
 * * * * 
 
 There exists a deplorable, because dangerous, 
 confusion of mind regarding government, 
 regarding the relation between the People and 
 " the State." This results in large part, I 
 think, from failure to grasp in full the differ- 
 ence between monarchical and popular systems 
 of government. 
 
 Monarchs found their claim to sovereignty 
 upon Divine Eight. They consider their 
 dominions as Clod's gift oi- trust to them. 
 Therefore thev sav, as Louis the Fourteenth 
 said, " 1 am the State," " L'Etat, c'est moi." 
 Therefore they regard any diminution of their 
 dominions as a personal loss. They resist by all 
 means possible the desire of any part for 
 separation. They are eager to extend their 
 " properties." 
 
 Popular government must be based upon the 
 consent of the governed. Such a strife as 
 the American Civil War was not democratic, 
 but monarchical, in character. The object of 
 
 164
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 the Northern States was to force by arms the 
 Southern States to remain united with them, 
 a monarchical motive, if ever there was one. 
 Yet this is not generally perceived. 
 
 Take another illustration. It would be no 
 loss to the British People if India should cease 
 to be a part of the British Empire, though it 
 might be disastrous to the Indian Peoples, which 
 would probably start fighting among themselves. 
 Those who speak as if India would be a loss 
 to the British People do not appreciate the con- 
 sequences of Britain having ceased to be a 
 monarchical State and having become a 
 Republic with a hereditary President or figure- 
 head. 
 
 When a monarch speaks of the " interest of 
 the State," his meaning is plain. He means 
 my interest. When the phrase is used in a 
 country popularly governed, unless it means 
 the interest of the People, it means nothing 
 at all. 
 
 Those who assert the right to choose their 
 own form of government must necessarily con- 
 
 165
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 cede this right to others, or else adopt the 
 principle : — 
 
 That those shall take who have the power, 
 And those shall keep who can.*' 
 
 The confusion of mind in this direction is 
 lamentably illustrated by the case of Ireland. 
 The South of Ireland, desiring Home Rule, 
 ought by the theory and practice of popular 
 government, to have Home Rule. Only the 
 Party System and the predominance of a Ruling 
 Caste prevented this from being agreed to many 
 years ago. 
 
 But the necessary corollary to Home Rule 
 for the South of Ireland is that the North of 
 Ireland shall be free to say : " We do not want 
 Home Rule ; we want some other form of 
 government . ' ' 
 
 For the South of Ireland to oppose the North 
 separating itself for purposes of government 
 is as illogical as was the opposition of the 
 Endish electorate to Home Rule in the South. 
 Behind each illogicality lurked the monarchical 
 argument : ' ' You must not take away what 
 
 166
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 belongs to me. I will not have my property 
 divided up, my influence weakened, my taxes 
 diminished." 
 
 The only theory of " the State " which can 
 be reasonably applied to countries where the 
 Peoples rule, or could rule if they chose, is 
 that People and State are identical. 
 
 It is idle to argue that anything which injures 
 the People benefits the State. In the wars of 
 the eighteenth century vast numbers of English- 
 men lost their lives abroad, and the burden 
 laid upon Englishmen at home was enormous. 
 That war which was concerned at the outset 
 with the Spanish claim of a right to search 
 British ships cost sixty millions and benefited 
 the People not at all. The next war cost ninety 
 millions and was equally barren of result so 
 far as the People were concerned. 
 
 Lord Chatham was said to have raised the 
 British State to an unprecedented height of 
 greatness. Most historians repeat this shallow 
 and false view. The result to the People was 
 a debt of £150,000,000, greatly increased 
 
 167
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 taxation, general poverty and distress. The 
 
 monarch and the Ruling Class kept up their 
 
 prestige and influence at the People's very 
 heavy cost. 
 
 The scramble for Africa in which all the 
 Greater Powers of Europe engaged during the 
 later years of the nineteenth century, could be 
 justified by none but the monarchical argument. 
 The interests of Peoples were not considered. 
 If they had been, it could never have been a 
 possibility that France and England should fight 
 over a small area of malarial swamp. 
 
 Nor have the People's interests, as yet, ever 
 been made the chief consideration in any 
 country. The monarchical idea of the State 
 has persisted in the slowly moving minds of 
 the preposterous persons who have held high 
 office, even in popular governments. 
 
 ^ •JF Ti" ^ 
 
 Russia has already broken with the evil tradi- 
 tion of despotic and diplomatic intrigue. Other 
 Peoples will follow. People's Rule will admit 
 no distinction between the interests of a com- 
 
 168
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 munity and the interests of the men and women 
 who are members of it. 
 
 It was a distinction invented by RuHng 
 Classes, who gained by it, since they considered 
 themselves to be the State as much as the King 
 had once claimed to be. It has been the cause 
 of incalculable sutlering; it has filled the world 
 with misery and dread. Now the fraud of it 
 has begun to be discovered. 
 
 The Stuart Kings could count upon the 
 response to appeals for " patriotic " support 
 from the English nation in wars undertaken by 
 them for purely private and personal reasons, 
 such as the war against Spain in revenge for 
 the refusal of the hand of a Spanish Princess 
 to the Prince of Wales. Yet even the German 
 Emperor was sane enough to know that he must 
 call upon the German na.tion to fight, not for 
 him and his, as they really did fight, but " in 
 defence of their own interests," which were 
 not threatened. 
 
 Everywhere the hollowness of politicians' 
 appeals to patriotism is being discerned with 
 equal clearness. We cannot now be deceived 
 
 169
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 so easily by statesmen like Thiers, who, while 
 pretending to desire peace, was always crying 
 out that France was being humiliated and 
 wronged; or like Asquith, who, within a few 
 weeks, during the spring of 1915, made an 
 " eloquent " speech declaring that the future 
 Europe must be based, not upon " the balance 
 of power," that deceptive and discredited make- 
 believe, but upon " a partnership of nations," 
 and then made a treaty grounded upon nothing 
 else but that same " balance of power " which 
 
 he had affected to despise. 
 
 # # # « 
 
 No doubt in each of these, as in all cases 
 where politicians spoke with two voices, 
 " reasons of State " would be alleged. Which 
 is just as if the directors of a company should 
 deceive the shareholders, and then plead that 
 they considered the interests of the company 
 more important than the interests of the people 
 who owned the shares. In such an event the 
 directors (especially if they were discovered 
 to have gained personal profit) would soon find 
 themselves in gaol. We may come in time tx^ 
 sending some of our fraudulent politicians and 
 officials there. 
 
 170
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 For it has also begun to be understood that 
 the more " the State " is exalted in the internal 
 sphere of poHtics, the more will the plague of 
 Officialdom be mcreased. I suspect that the 
 cause of the decadence of nations, which has 
 been so variously placed, lies more in that 
 increase of Officialdom than in any other cir- 
 cumstance whatever. 
 
 The decadence of nations is not connected, 
 it seems to me, with any change in the character 
 of the mass of the People, except so far as 
 their character is changed by governmental 
 weakness or folly. What is called the decad- 
 ence of nations is really the decadence of 
 governments. 
 
 Trying to do too much and, as a consequence, 
 doing too little, doing the wrong things and 
 neglecting those which should be their first 
 concern, they sink, by reason of their own 
 excessive complication and weight, into 
 lethargy and impotence and decay. 
 
 Only those Peoples can be free and pros- 
 perous which are suspicious of governmental 
 activities, which resist the tendency of officials 
 
 171
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 to form themselves into a caste, to multiply 
 forms and restrictions, and to behave a.s if 
 their position were privileged above ordinary 
 citizenship. 
 
 Only those communities will safeguard their 
 contentment which refuse to allow the squabbles 
 of statesmen, the maniac ambitions of self- 
 seeking adventurers, or leaders drunk with 
 power to cloud their true interests and embroil 
 them in troubles. " It is always the people 
 who pay when there is fighting for power," 
 cried a poor woman in Moscow during Russia's 
 agony. There sounded the voice of truth which 
 shall guide mankind to a wiser, happier state. 
 * * * # 
 
 It may be that for a period there will be 
 even a worse plague of Officialdom. Arnold 
 Bennett is troubled by this fear. The plague, 
 then, must either pass or destroy us. " The 
 less government the better," will, I believe, 
 be the cry of enlightened democracy. 
 
 We have been learning for a long time, and 
 the monstrous growth of Officialdom during the 
 v.'ar bore it painfully in upon us, that authority, 
 
 172
 
 Too Much Government 
 
 unless it be jealously bestowed, and hedged 
 about with strict limitations, is a curse and 
 a disaster to mankind. 
 
 There are very few who can safely be trusted 
 to exercise authority with good sense and good 
 feeling, whether the authority be that of 
 parent, schoolmaster, official or despotic ruler. 
 ** All persons possessing any power," Burke 
 wrote, " ought to be strongly and awe-fully 
 impressed with an idea that they act in trust." 
 Shelley hit upon the same universal and 
 elemental truth in the lines : — 
 
 "Power, like a devastating pestilence, 
 Pollutes whate'er it touches." 
 
 Shakespeare had already put the case from 
 a satirical and less furiously indignant angle : — 
 
 " Man, poor Man, 
 Dressed in a little brief authority. 
 Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven 
 As make the angels weep." 
 
 Set against these condemnations, the saying 
 of Mettemich that his chief aim was " to 
 strengthen authority," flashes a vivid light 
 
 173
 
 The Meaning of The World Eevolution 
 
 upon the clash of interests between the People 
 and those who deem themselves bora to rule. 
 
 As a means of abolishing this clash of 
 interests, we must make an end of the pomp 
 and circumstance which are harmful legacies 
 from the old days of monarchical government. 
 
 * 
 
 The men who serve the community as execu- 
 tives and administrators, ought to do so from 
 a sense of public duty, not from ambition, from 
 greed of power or gain. 
 
 Possibly that is too much to expect. If so, 
 the People must check any tendency to ostenta- 
 tion in those whom they elect to carry on 
 the business of government. This must not be 
 a business attractive to carry on by reason of 
 its raising men above their fellows, putting 
 them into a position of patronage, providing 
 them with incomes larger than they could earn 
 in any other walk of life. 
 
 Indeed, the occupation of managing public 
 affairs should, ideally, be made unattractive. 
 It might be advisable to hang every Minister 
 
 174
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 upon the termination of his term of office. All, 
 certainly, who have been guilty of gross mis- 
 management or flagrant lack of foresight should 
 be punished. Responsibility must be brought 
 home to individuals if good government be 
 desired. 
 
 The English People have allowed bureaucrats 
 and politicians to build up a system which so 
 cunningly prevents anyone from being found 
 individually responsible for anything that 
 observers have fancied we did not care whether 
 we were well governed or not. The chief aim 
 of officials is to avoid taking decisions. This 
 pusillanimity poisons public life. To it w^e owe 
 the habit of government by committee, which 
 results in marrowless compromises, poor- 
 spirited delays, all the inconveniences and 
 disasters of nerveless indecision. 
 
 To make up their minds and to act is an 
 agony for men of weak fibre. Such men have 
 lately composed our governing class. They 
 have been persuasive talkers, but most un- 
 satisfactory doers. What Cardinal Bourne has 
 called " the domination of a capitalistic and 
 oligarchic regime," led to so pitiful a parody 
 
 175
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 of government that the cry for change has, 
 from being sectional, become general, and 
 change is bound to come. 
 
 tF tF tt tt 
 
 An American writer, Mr. Irving Bacheller, 
 has suggested that " all the troubles of this 
 world have come of inherited superiority." 
 If he had f^aid " artificial superiority," he 
 would have been right. We see, however, a 
 great deal of " artificial superiority " which is 
 not inherited, but impudently asserted by 
 " new men." There is more of it in some 
 Republics than can be found under some 
 monarchies. 
 
 When I paid a visit to the late President of 
 the Portuguese Republic, I could not but 
 remark the royal state which this pleasant old 
 gentleman kept up, or which was kept up for 
 him. He lived in a palace. There were the 
 usual ante-rooms to be passed through. The 
 upholstery was of the usual palace kind. There 
 was a politely ceremonious private secretary 
 to receive and usher me in. There were 
 flunkeys. 
 
 A few months later I was invited to the 
 
 176
 
 Too Much Government. 
 
 house of Sir Robert Borden, Prime Minister 
 of Canada. The contrast filled me with con- 
 tentment. 
 
 A charming, simple home, not different from 
 that which Sir Robert occupied before he 
 became prominent in politics. No pretentious- 
 ness, no flummery, no assumption of 
 " superiority." That is how the leaders of 
 democracies should live. A Minister of State, 
 the President of a Republic, even a hereditary 
 President, should go to his office like any other 
 man, and, when his work is done, return to his 
 home and become a private individual. 
 
 The palace tradition must be dropped. Court 
 dress and decorations, ministerial receptions 
 and dinner parties, all the trappings and the 
 suites of Officialdom, are unnecessary; more 
 than that, they are harmful. We suffer in this 
 as in so many other ways, from the burdens of 
 a past which we have outgrown. 
 
 These trimmings of the business of govern- 
 ment often attract the wrong men into it. They 
 grow accustomed to the illusion of power and 
 
 177
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 superiority. They cling to office without shame, 
 and without regard for the nation's interest. 
 
 The only men fit to exercise power in public 
 life are those who are ready at any moment 
 to give it up; who would prefer to give it up 
 and become private citizens. Sir Robert 
 Borden represents this, the highest type of 
 governing man. I have known but two others 
 who shared with him that honour. 
 
 Those two were General Louis Botha and 
 Dr. Jameson. Each of them remained in public 
 life during the early days of Union Government 
 in South Africa because he honestlv felt that 
 a duty was laid upon him. Each would have 
 chosen, as Sir Robert Borden would choose, 
 if their choice had been free, to return to 
 private life. They stayed, as Sir Robert B(jrden 
 stavs, because their countrv needed them. 
 
 When I hear it tritely said that democracy 
 necessarily produces demagogy, that the nile 
 of the People is bound to result in a lowering 
 of the standards of public life, I think of these 
 men who w^ere the Ministers, which means the 
 
 178
 
 Too Much GoveRxNment. 
 
 servants, of democracies far more advanced 
 than ours in England, and who showed them- 
 selves to be men of higher character, as well 
 as higher capacity, than any who have held 
 office among us under our " capitalistic and 
 oligarchic regime." 
 
 179
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE NEW FORMULA. 
 
 However much we may smile at tliose who venture 
 to-day to put the dictate; of morality and humanity 
 above eating and drinking, riches and orosperity : 
 who can be happy only in an atmosphere in which 
 not force, but justice, rules: who wish for an 
 ordering of the world not in violent opposition to 
 their religious professions : who interpret peace on 
 earth as a peace of the conscience and the soul : yet 
 these are, after all, the ultimate ainas for which we 
 must all strive and without which this life would not 
 be worth living. — Dr. Dernburg, formerly German 
 Colonial Secretary. 
 
 The practical modes by vrhicli the Eevolution 
 will express itself cannot be exactly foretold. 
 Nor need they greatly concern us. They are 
 not the really important matter which we are 
 considering. 
 
 O" 
 
 The really important matter is the shifting 
 
 180
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 of the burden, the turning of the letters in 
 Man's hand in a fresh endeavour to find 
 
 " The word, the order, which God meant 
 should be." 
 
 That is the aspect of Revolutions which has 
 permanent interest, the only aspect in which 
 they are capable of endowing the world with 
 any gift of enduring value. 
 
 It is not the bricks and mortar of Revolutions 
 which lend them their permanent interest, it 
 is their influence upon the mind of Humanity. 
 We do not think of the establishment of the 
 Church, of the rules of conduct of the Early 
 Saints, of the Decrees of General Councils, as 
 the essential matters in the Revolution begun 
 so nobly by Christ and spoiled so pitifully by 
 St. Paul. We think of the Woman taken in 
 Adulterv, the " Whatsoever ve have done unto 
 the least of these my little ones," the Sermon 
 on the Mount. 
 
 What will make this age of ours glow in 
 history and thrill the ages to come? Not that 
 we passed this or that law, aboUshed this or 
 
 181
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 that privilege; but that we are seeking a new 
 formula of civilisation. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 The formula based upon the account of God's 
 nature and the world's creation given in Jewish 
 literature, which was adopted by the early 
 Christians in despite of Christ, and which was 
 in undisputed possession for the best part of 
 twelve hundred years, has lost its hold upon 
 us. 
 
 We no longer believe that God is a Being 
 of like passions with ourselves, but less just 
 and reasonable than we are; or that He created 
 Man to be Lord of Creation; or that the sun, 
 moon, and stars were set in the sky for man's 
 convenience. 
 
 Copernicus and Galileo began to demolish the 
 old formula centuries ago. The geologists with 
 their hammers struck it some irreparable blows. 
 Lamarck and Darwin and Wallace, with their 
 discoveries in evolution, forced those who 
 clung to it to admit that it was true for them 
 only in a figiu-ative sense. 
 
 In the beginning, interpreted with humble 
 
 182
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 goodwill, the formula proved capable of having 
 erected upon it a civilisation of some value. 
 As it hardened, as it was more closely sys- 
 tematised, the life went out of it. 
 
 So long as men believed in a Personal God, 
 the Maker and Director of the Universe, some 
 strove for love of Him to be just and merciful 
 in their dealings; others were constrained by 
 fear of Him to keep a check upon their base 
 inclinations. 
 
 When the belief in this Personal God 
 weakened, and from most minds died away, 
 and when moreover the political economists, 
 unchallenged by the Churches, taught the 
 abominable doctrine that it was right for the 
 strong to get all they could for themselves, and 
 that interference in behalf of the weak was 
 " unscientific," then the only basis left for 
 civilisation to rest upon was a basis of false- 
 hood and cruelty. Civilisation began at once 
 to topple over. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 What has been the thought at the back of 
 the mind of the ' ' highly civilised ' ' concerning 
 
 183
 
 The Meaning of The World REvoLUTioif 
 
 what the Scottish catechism calls " the chief 
 end of man? " 
 
 The thought has been that the really im- 
 portant matter is to be well off and well con- 
 sidered, to increase riches, to elaborate luxury, 
 to secure all the comfort and enjoyment 
 possible, to have a good time. 
 
 The more " civilised " a class or an indi- 
 vidual became, the more firmly one found this 
 doctrine held and followed. The mass of people 
 never consciously adopted it ; they had no 
 leisure for thought. But it affected them. 
 
 The huge cities that have spread their 
 monstrous, gangrenous growth since the rise 
 of the Factory, attracted and injured the 
 country bred folk. Here were set up among 
 the Many the same measure and the same ideal 
 of civilisation as were current among the Few 
 who believed that they alone were truly 
 civilised. 
 
 So the poison worked downwards, but not 
 deeply into the souls of the mass, only into the 
 less vital parts of their organism. So long as 
 
 184
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 the energy of men and women is fully occupied 
 in procuring the simpler needs of life, they 
 are proof against much that harms those who 
 have leisure. It was the shielded Comfortable 
 Class, from which was drawn the Ruling Class, 
 which suffered the most, because it profited 
 the most, from the degeneration of the Chiis- 
 tian formula and the consequent decay of the 
 civilisation founded upon it. 
 
 This degeneration, this decay, have forced 
 men to examine afresh into the problem of their 
 relations to one another and to the Universe. 
 We have been trying to find out what we can 
 believe, and out of this inquisition a new 
 formula is being evolved. 
 
 That is the roo;t of the matter. The details 
 Jf the practical measures to which the new 
 formula of civilisation will give rise are of 
 secondary importance. They will work them- 
 selves out, in some respect clumsily, in some 
 too hastily, but on the whole, as I believe, 
 sharing as I do Charles Dickens's " faith in the 
 people governed," not in the main harshly or 
 with vindictive injustice. 
 
 185
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 There might be excuse for vindictiveness, 
 for that " kind of wild justice " which we call 
 Revenge. 
 
 When we reflect on what the mass, now 
 becoming conscious of its power, has endured 
 in discomfort and suffering, in contumely and 
 privation; when we walk the mean, dark, 
 noisome streets where they have lived, whole 
 families often in one or two rooms; when we 
 think of their heart-sick and foot-sore searches 
 for employment, their pitiful entreaties to be 
 allowed to win bread for wives and children, 
 the insolence and cruelty which they have 
 suffered because they dared not show resent- 
 ment; when all this, and more, make indigna- 
 tion burn hot within us, we are inclined to 
 say : ' " Now let those who have always been 
 the Comfortable learn what being the Under- 
 dos means." 
 
 o 
 
 But that is a bad thought. Revenge harms 
 those who indulge it far more than those upon 
 whom it is wreaked. The latter may for a 
 while bear scars upon their bodies. The former 
 have for ever scarred souls. 
 
 186
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 There is in the British nature a sweetness 
 of blood, an essentially decent and honourable 
 strain, which makes me sure that a square deal 
 all round will be the object of the Revolution. 
 
 Just as after years of war the desire " to 
 win " was replaced by the desire for a Peace 
 which should be fair to all Peoples, which 
 should start the world off again upon a basis 
 of finer sincerity and friendlier feeling, so the 
 thought of class warfare is fading before the 
 brighter ideal of a social system which shall 
 give everyone his or her chance, which shall 
 neither favour nor oppress any. 
 
 ■* * * * 
 
 If Class warfare is still spoken of and recom- 
 mended, as it is by Lenin in Russia, this is due 
 chiefly to the opposition offered by the bour- 
 geoisie, the Exploiting and Ruling Classes, to 
 any re-laying of the social foundations. 
 
 These classes argue that, if they did not 
 oppose change, they would be like geese which 
 should run to the goose-girl when she cried, 
 " Dilly dilly, come and be killed. 
 
 > J 
 
 'Twould be wiser if they would read history, 
 
 187
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 perceive that change must come, and make 
 the best of what may be a bad job for 
 " moneyed worldlings," but will be a good job 
 for millions who have hitherto consented to 
 be downtrodden for the advantage of the well- 
 to-do. 
 
 Many among the boiirgeuisie are resolved to 
 do this, and here again we touch the heart of 
 the Revolution. What we have seen coming 
 for many a year, w'liat we shall soon see in 
 operation, is, as I have already insisted, far 
 from being merely a change of system ; it is 
 a change of heart. That is what makes it in- 
 teresting and valuable. 
 
 'to 
 
 What we call " the Revolution in England," 
 the contemptuous dismissal of James the Second 
 in 1688, deserved neither of those epithets. 
 It was a domestic episode, a political necessity. 
 So was our short experience of Commonwealth 
 government. Even our Reformation had been 
 little more, so far as it went in Henry the 
 Eighth's time. 
 
 A passionate longing for more truth, more 
 freedom, for more " elbow room " and less 
 
 188
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 unnatural, artilicial constraint, that was the 
 cause of the Reformation in Germany. It was 
 feh at that time in Enghmd only by a few 
 eager spirits. 
 
 The nation saw these few pursued into the 
 closets where thev gathered to read the Bible, 
 saw them threatened and tormented by the 
 Pharisees and the Scribes, saw them thrown into 
 prison and burned at the stake, with an in- 
 difference hardly to be distinguished from 
 approval. 
 
 The nation did not take kindly to the new 
 faith, and when Mary came to the throne 
 restored the Mass, as John Richard Green says, 
 
 with a burst of enthusiasm," and permitted 
 the burnings to begin again. Slowly, slowly, 
 the leaven worked. The whole lump was not 
 leavened until many years had passed. Behind 
 the English Reformation there was no great 
 principle in the minds either of the King and 
 his councillors or of the People at large. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^f, 
 
 •Jv* *«* •n' TT* 
 
 But now behind the World Revolution there 
 is a great principle. This principle is taking 
 
 189
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 possession of the nation's mind. During many 
 generations it has struggled for mastery over 
 the active force of selfishness in the class which 
 owns, exploits and governs, over the passive 
 force of custom among all who worship the 
 God of Things as they Are. It is the principle 
 which Christ taught : ' ' Whatsoever ye would 
 that men should do unto you, do ye even so 
 unto them." 
 
 It is the principle of sincerity and freedom, 
 of justice, and brotherly love, the same prin- 
 ciple as that which has, though often clouded 
 by weakness and self-seeking and resentment, 
 produced all the great revolutions and reforma- 
 tions aimed at relieving the pressure of the 
 burden upon the shoulders of mankind. 
 
 The Principle is laughed at to-day, as the 
 enemies of the People always have laughed at 
 it. They call it " unpractical," they denounce 
 it as "dangerous." Force and guile are 
 declared to be the only influences which have 
 weight in human affairs. 
 
 But the world, sickened with the reek of 
 bloodshed, listens for some work of hope and 
 turns away from the Denying Spirit. 
 
 190
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 " Believe in the good and it shall come 
 unto thee; have faith in the Unseen, and 
 the seen shall become unto thee as a testa- 
 ment from invisible beauty. 
 
 " There is strength in righteousness and 
 ecstasy in the power of good; the hater of 
 evil endueth a nation with power divine. 
 
 " The age of faith is before us, the morn- 
 ing of sincerity is dawning upon the deluded, 
 and the day of deliverance is at hand. 
 * * * * 
 
 " * 
 
 Every civilisation has endured for a season, 
 then been swept aw^ay to make room for a new 
 one. What w^e are watching now is the death 
 of the civilisation based upon belief in the all- 
 importance of material wealth, upon the theory 
 that the heart of man is evil and that the 
 struggle, not for life, but for riches and luxury 
 and powder, is a necessary condition of his 
 existence. 
 
 Struggle for life is the law of Nature, but' 
 the scramble for superfluity is unnatural and 
 
 ^^ From " Psalms of the West," by the Hon. Rollo Russell, 
 7th Edition, Longmans, 1/-. 
 
 191
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 therefore unhealthy. The unhealthiness and 
 unhappiness of social conditions resulting from 
 the old, selfish, material formula was lamented 
 by poets and prophets all through the nineteenth 
 century. Keats bade the nightingale — 
 
 " Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget 
 
 What thou among the leaves hast never 
 known, 
 The weariness, the fever and the fret 
 
 Here where men sit and hear each other 
 groan ; 
 Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs 
 Where youth grows pale, and spectre thin, 
 and dies 
 Where but to think is to be full of 
 sorrow 
 
 And leaden eyed despairs." 
 
 Matthew Arnold saw himself and his fellow- 
 men as — 
 
 ( ( 
 
 Light half-believers of our casual creeds, 
 Who never deeply felt or clearly willed. 
 
 Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds. 
 Whose vague resolves never have been ful- 
 filled." 
 
 192
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 Life was " a long unhappy dream and 
 " close-lipp'd patience " was Man's only 
 friend — 
 
 " Sad patience, too near neighbour to despair." 
 
 And all the seers and singers who pierced 
 to the cause of the Age's dis-ease and un- 
 happiness (one sign of this unhappiness being 
 the feverish hunt after distraction and pleasure) 
 have hoped for the change of heart which 
 alone could bring health and contentment back. 
 
 Whatever violent, rash words may be spoken, 
 whatever crimes or blunders committed in its 
 name; however the hot, unruly passions of 
 • men may obscure the message which, if God 
 be what we think Him, must certainly be of 
 God ; however confused and fumbled may be 
 the working out in detail of Reconstruction 
 schemes, let us never forget the principle 
 behind it all : let us cling to the thought that 
 all gropings towards a better state are the out- 
 come of that clTange of heart which really is 
 the Revolution. 
 
 Let us not lose sight of the wood for the 
 
 trees, 
 
 * # * * 
 
 193
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 t)ome may sny, "The trees will soon prove 
 to have been of spoiadic and short-lived 
 growth." If you are drawn to that way of 
 thinking, recall the shallow judgments formed 
 in all ages upon the changes that have most 
 profoundly affected the destiny of mankind. 
 " There are no pages in history more instruc- 
 tive and few which are more humiliating and 
 depressing " than those which record these 
 judgments. 
 
 The triumph of Christianity in the Roman 
 world, the force of the Reformation in Europe, 
 the French Revolution, the Prussian snatch at 
 world-ascendancy — all fell as surprises upon 
 the governing classes everywhere. 
 
 Have the latest signs of changing faith and 
 sentiment made themselves felt yet? Not 
 among those who frame their plans as if the 
 world after the war were to be no different 
 from that far off world which existed before 
 it. " Nor would they believe though one rose 
 from the dead." 
 
 Deaf thev are to the stirrings of the new 
 spirit. Blind to the evidences on every hand 
 
 194
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 of the leaven already working, to the writing 
 on the wall wdiicli tells those who have failed 
 to guide and protect the People : "Ye are 
 weighed in the balance; ye are found wanting. 
 Your reio'n is o'er. 
 
 j,_ ^1 1^ (I <Jr 
 
 Yet even to these the new spirit will show 
 mercy. Many of them strove, according to 
 their lights, to govern well. Some of them 
 gave proof of a nobility of nature which 
 redeemed many faults. They were victims of 
 the old spirit, the bad spirit of competition 
 for superfluities, of letting every man alone 
 to struggle fo]- himself, to crush or to be 
 crushed; the bad old spirit which taught, as 
 C'loush's bitinu" lines reveal its teachinos, that — 
 
 Thou slialt have one u'od only : who 
 Would be at the expense of two? 
 
 No graven images mav be 
 Worshipped, except the currenc}'. 
 
 Swear not at all; for, for thy curse 
 Thine enemy is none the worse. 
 
 At church on Sunday to attend 
 
 Will serve to keep the world thy friend. 
 
 195 
 
 g2
 
 Tee Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Honour thy parents : that is, all 
 From whom advancement may befall. 
 
 Thou shalt not kill : but need'st not strive 
 Officiously to keep alive. 
 
 Do not adultery conunit, 
 Advantage rarely comes of it. 
 
 Thou shalt not steal : an empty feat 
 When it's so lucrative to cheat. 
 
 Bear not false witness : let the He 
 Have time on its own wings to fly. 
 
 Thou shalt not covet : but tradition 
 Approves all forms of competition." 
 # * * * 
 
 In spite of their training in an evil school, 
 there were many, I repeat, either belonging 
 or akin to the Governing Class, who tried to 
 turn towards what seemed to them, in the dim 
 betravinrj li«ht which reached their blinkered 
 eyes, to be the right way. Many have now 
 torn their blinkers off, and are ready to take 
 their places in whatever fresh social system 
 may succeed that which is passing away. 
 
 195
 
 [■■■a lM iw^^tmtmBism\id.HAiu i 
 
 The New Formula. 
 
 This is the most inspiring and encouraging 
 aspect of the Coming Eevolution. 
 
 I do not speak now of the " conversion " 
 of pohticians, of such announcements as — 
 
 " The world will go forward in the full 
 radiance of the perfect day." — Mr. Lloyd 
 George. 
 
 or 
 
 " The workers must have a more free, 
 more self-developed and humaner life." — 
 Mr. Asquith. 
 
 These may mean something or nothing : 
 more probably nothing. 
 
 I set much more store by such a speech as 
 that of Mr. W. L. Hichens, brother of the 
 novelist and Chairman of Cammell, Laird and 
 Company, a famous armament and shipbuilding 
 firm, made at Greenock in January, 1918. 
 
 Mr. Hichens said that since the outbreak 
 of the war State control of industry had ad- 
 vanced by leaps and bounds, and now after 
 many years we were back at the State regula- 
 tion policy of the Elizabethan era. 
 
 197
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 "For the past 400 years wc had tried 
 one expedient after another — t^ta'te control 
 of wages and prices, co-operative guilds, the 
 home industries system, the big factory sys- 
 tem, economic industrialism — only to end 
 where we began. 
 
 " But the fact that these experiments 
 failed in the past was no evidence that they 
 would not succeed to-day. Might it nut be 
 that the solution of the industrial problem 
 lay beyond mere intellectual and legal 
 formuhT, beyond all economic laws and 
 doctrines, and depended on our attitude 
 towards social existence — in plain terms, our 
 moral code? 
 
 "The god of industry, according to the 
 political economists of the early nineteenth 
 century, was the golden calf, and an un- 
 restricted scramble for the good things of 
 this world was what they set before each 
 individual as the law of life. Such a doctrine 
 strikes at the root of the social organism. 
 
 " No man can serve tiro masters. He 
 cannot serve himself and the community. 
 
 198
 
 The New Fox^mula. 
 
 He can only serve himself by serving the 
 communi'y, and this is sxvrely the only sound 
 foundation on which industry can rest." 
 
 TT vP TT TT 
 
 Here are some of Mr. Hichens's su^j^estions 
 
 for laying this foundation : — 
 
 CO 
 
 *' No business is entitled to make unlimited 
 profits. No one class is entitled to benefit 
 unduly at the expense of another. The prin- 
 ciple of the Excess Profits Tax should there- 
 fore be retained. 
 
 *' It follows that the reward of Labour 
 must also be determined by the State as repre- 
 senting the community. 
 
 " The workers are clearly entitled to have 
 an effective voice in reijard to the general 
 conditions under which their work is carried 
 on. 
 
 " Establishment of an eight hours' day as 
 a first instalment towards still further reduc- 
 tions. Each worker who has been with a 
 firm one year and kept good time, to be 
 given a holiday on full pay." 
 
 199
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 This would not long ago have been denounced 
 as " fantastic ideahsm," as " crude sociaHst 
 theorising." Now Mr. Hichens' ideas are 
 commonplaces among the most energetic and 
 intelligent of our business men. 
 
 230
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE KE-BIRTH OF RELIGION. 
 
 Teach a child what is wise, that is morahty. 
 Teach him what is wise and beaut ful, that is rehpion. 
 
 — r. H. Huxley. 
 
 When I love God, I love a kind of light and melody 
 and fragrance. — Saint Augustine. 
 
 That ideas of this order have become com 
 monplaces is due in large part to the stirnng 
 of that re-birth of rehi^ion in which the World 
 Revolution has already found vigorous support. 
 
 s 
 
 By religion I do not mean wearing better 
 clothes on Sundays than on weekdays, and going 
 to church, and subscribing to missions for the 
 conversion of the heathen a long way off, and 
 pretending that the whole of ancient Jewish 
 literature, together with the varying accounts 
 
 201
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 of Christ's life and the polemical contributions 
 of Saint Paul and others to early Christian con- 
 troversy, were the direct work of the Almighty. 
 
 Eeligion is nothing unless it is a living, com- 
 pelling force, a bond uniting all who are in- 
 iluenced by the sense of brotherhood, all who 
 know that it makes for their own greater happi- 
 ness, as well as for the greater happiness of 
 others, to be helpful, generous, open-hearted, 
 instead of regarding mankind either with sus- 
 picion and grudging justice or as sheep to be 
 fleeced. 
 
 Eeligion in this significance has been in many 
 minds awakened and in many others 
 strengthened by the war. From nothing written 
 about the war have I dissented more utterly, 
 even violently, than from the phrase of John 
 Galsworthy that one result of the madness of 
 Europe will be " the death of mystic Chris- 
 tian it v." 
 
 What is mystic Christianity? 
 
 To my mind it is the Christianity wliich is 
 independent of creeds and churches, of pres- 
 
 202
 
 The Re-Birth of Religion. 
 
 byter and priest. It has no need of official, 
 hierarchical interpretations and ceremonies. It 
 draws its comfort and inspiration from the 
 words and life of Christ. 
 
 Mystic Christians may belong to churches and 
 recite creeds. Many do. But their hearts and 
 minds rise high above them. Although in 
 humility they may submit themselves to disci- 
 pline, they attach no more than a secondary 
 value to exteinal usages. Their religion is a 
 part of themselves. They have standards which 
 neither man nor circumstance can change. 
 
 All the beauty which Christianity has brought 
 into the world we owe to mystic Christians. 
 All the harm which has been done in the name 
 of Christ must be laid to the chaige of those 
 whom I Vv'ill call Systematic Christians. Sys- 
 tematic Christianity has always been a com- 
 promise between (a) the " unworldly " ideal 
 of life which Christ proposed to His hum])le 
 followers, and (h) the keeping up of a rich and 
 powerful and dignified caste of officials, at the 
 head of a vast societv, only to be held together 
 by " worldly " inducements and suppressions, 
 and by " practical " means. 
 
 203
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 Christ was a mystic. He founded no society. 
 He did not, like Mahomet, proclaim authority 
 or promise rewards. He did not, as Moses did, 
 set up the liclion of a chosen race. His teach- 
 ing was directed to one end only — the happiness 
 of individuals, which each must win for himself, 
 and which must he a state of feeling indepen- 
 dent of external aids or hindrances. As soon 
 as " practical " men like Saint Paul took hold 
 of Christianity it began to develop upon 
 dififerent lines. Conversion was no longer a 
 matter of purely individual concern, but in- 
 volved the joining of a society, submitting to 
 officials, agreeing to perform certain acts of 
 obligation." In short, Christianity was taken 
 out of the realm of mystic idealism and turned 
 into a System. 
 
 It is one of the root weaknesses of man's 
 nature that systems always obscure the ideas 
 from which they arose. It is so much more 
 easy to accept a dogma than to follow out 
 a train of thought; to live by custom and pre- 
 cedent, and to attach merit to the performance 
 of duties which authority ordains, than to settle 
 for ourselves what we ought to do and to leave 
 
 204
 
 The Re-Birth of Religion. 
 
 undone, how best we can square our actions 
 with our ideals. The latter course calls for an 
 effort of mind and will which few are apt to 
 make. There is thus an inborn tendency to 
 take the former. 
 
 Which tendency is vigorously enforced by 
 the desire of those in authority to add to their 
 importance, to make their positions unassail- 
 able, to increase their gains. We often see 
 these motives powerfully moulding systems into 
 which there enter no elements of superstition 
 or of fear. How much greater does their 
 influence become when it is possible for 
 authority to claim divine sanction, to represent 
 itself as interpreting the secrets and as wielding 
 the judgment of God. , 
 
 Against the huge engine of Systematic Chris- 
 tianity Mysticism struggled in vain. Many 
 mystics by temperatment were goaded into 
 opposing the Church by the follies and wicked- 
 ness committed in the name of Christ. They 
 saw His precepts either ignored blandly or w^ith 
 ingenuity explained away by numbers of His 
 servants. They saw all the evils which He 
 rebuked flourishing among those to whom the 
 
 205
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 System gave power. They saw the rulers of 
 Churclies luving the uppermost rooms at feasts, 
 the chief seats, and greetings in the market, 
 and to be caUed ''Rabbi! Rabbi!" "Your 
 Reverence," " Your Lordship," " Your 
 Eminence," ^ "Your Ilohness," "Your 
 Grace." 
 
 Cup and platter are still made clean upon 
 the outside, while within they are full of extor- 
 tion and excess. Tithe of mint and anise and 
 cummin is scrupulously exacted, while " they 
 omit the weightier matters of the law : justice, 
 mercy and faith." The struggle for incomes 
 and titles is as lierce inside the churches as 
 without them. Read afresh the " Woe unto 
 vou, Sci'ibes and Pharisees," lament. It is of 
 world-wide and age-long application. Wherever 
 religious Systems exist, there exist the hypo- 
 crisy, the pettiness, the irreligion, on account 
 of which Christ thundered at the Pharisees and 
 Scribes. 
 
 Leagued with the rulers of States, depending 
 for their dignities and wealth upon subservience 
 to monarchs and statesmen, the Churches have 
 sold their mvstic Christ for emntv honours and 
 
 206
 
 The Re-Birth of Religion. 
 
 for Judas gold. They have rendered unto 
 Ca3sar not only the things which are Caesar's, 
 but likewise the things which are God's. In 
 all lands the apathy which Systematic Christians 
 showed year in, year out, in face of the threats 
 and armings and boastings which led to war; 
 their silence when Europe stood trembling on 
 the edge of the red, horrible pit; their standing 
 bv through centuries while all the doctrines 
 they are paid to teach were trampled under 
 foot, have proved their Systematic Christianity 
 to be lip-service. 
 
 You may reply, " What could they do or 
 say to turn aside the war? Men were in no 
 mood for sermons." No, truly. But why? 
 Because the Churches had failed to win their 
 ear, to influence their thought. Because even 
 men who kept up religious observances had 
 come to regard religiun mainly as a matter 
 of going to church on Sundays and paying rent 
 for a pew. 
 
 This was the penalty which Systematic Chris- 
 tianity had to pay for its success — its material 
 success — as a system. It could not raise its 
 voice for peace because it knew no one would 
 
 207
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 heed it. Nor could it admit that the teaching 
 of Christ embodied merely an ideal toward 
 which the world has made little progress in two 
 thousand years, since that would have been to 
 admit the failure — the spiritual failure — of its 
 system, spite of all its dignity and wealth. 
 
 The mystic Christian, having neither taken 
 pay nor garnished himself with any title for 
 teaching what Christ taught, and being further 
 under no obligation to i?peak or think accord- 
 ing to rule, is free to explain to himself as best 
 he can the discordance between his ideal and 
 the reversion of mankind to senseless bar- 
 barism. Mysticism does not attempt to be 
 logical. It deals of necessity with cloudy sym- 
 bols, not with hard and fast affirmations. 
 Mystic Christianity is not a code, but an atmo- 
 sphere; not a system, but a frame of mind. 
 
 A frame of mind v.'hich we cannot now dis- 
 sociate from any endeavour towards things 
 lovely and of good report, towards a life which 
 aims at simplicity and fair dealing, at kindli- 
 ness, at service, and at love. Many called 
 agnostics — atheists even — have been mystic 
 Christians following these aims. " Inasmuch 
 
 208
 
 The Re-Birth of Religion. 
 
 as ye have done it unto the least of these my 
 little ones, ye have done it unto Me." 
 
 All whose hearts have thrilled to the nobility 
 of " Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin 
 no more"; all who have felt the truth and 
 beauty of the Seraion on the Mount; all who 
 have tried, however stumblinoly to forgive 
 unto seventy times seven, to relieve and comfort 
 the poor and helpless, the aflhcted or oppressed, 
 and to keep themselves unspotted from the 
 world (which means, I take it, to settle ques- 
 tions of conduct according to a standard 
 different from the world's standard of profit 
 ar^d applause) ; all whose imaginations have been 
 stirred and sweetened by Christ's life and words 
 ■ — all these have breathed the atmosphere of 
 Mystic Cliristianity. 
 
 To say that this atmosphere, this frame of 
 mind, was dying before the war began, and, 
 when it is over, will be dead, seems so perverse 
 a misreading of the mind of humanity that 
 I believe John Galsworthy's choice of words 
 must have obscured his meaning. 
 
 Svstematic Christianitv has, indeed, been 
 
 209
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 dying for centuries. The seeds of deatli were 
 in its proud, presumptuous budy from tiie 
 moment it was born. Tiiousands of its officials, 
 from simple ministers to Popes, have striven 
 to endue it with the Spirit of Christ, but they 
 have striven in vain. Like all systems, it 
 accounts the spii'it less than the letter. Its 
 code, its discipline, its hierarchical pretensions, 
 are more to it than any atmosphere. By its 
 ineffectual struggles to strike a balance between 
 the principles it professes and the practice of 
 the worldlier kind of men, it has sunk more 
 and more deeply uito a bt»g of incongruous 
 ideas. 
 
 As a personal faith, not publicly proclaimed, 
 but cherished in the hearts of mystic Christians, 
 Christ's teaching sheds a glow upon the path- 
 ways of our puzzling life. To fall short of 
 compliance with that teaching is not to fall 
 into condemnation. No harsh discord sounds 
 between precept and practice. Erect the ideal 
 into a code and base a system upon it, then 
 at once false notes painfully jangle. Claims 
 are set up which cannot be substantiated. 
 Standards are proclaimed impossible to justify. 
 
 210
 
 The Re-Birth of Religion. 
 
 Judgments are delivered (Galileo, Tolstoi) at 
 which the world is forced to smile. 
 
 All systems, soon or late, die from the effects 
 of the same poison. They exalt the importance 
 of the frame above that of the picture. The 
 casket is everythimr, the jewel is ne^^lected. 
 Use and custom make systems appear to he 
 part of the necessary, settled plan of life, until 
 suddenly they are tested hy some momentous 
 choice. Then the wood of the trees which 
 went to build their temples is found to have 
 rotted. The wood crumbles, and the systems 
 cease to be. 
 
 Such a choice was offered to Systematic 
 ^Christianity while the nations drifted into war. 
 Think what might have ]:)een the result of a 
 united appeal by all the Churches for sanity ! 
 Not a voice lifted ! Not a protest uttered ! All 
 the officials of all the systems, from those who 
 live in palaces down to humble priests and 
 pastors, were silent at the most terrible turning- 
 point in human history. And so, while they 
 turned their heads away, tlie hideous, senseless 
 massacre began, each side calling upon its god 
 for succour, just as if the woild had slipped 
 
 211
 
 The Meaning of The World Eevolution 
 
 back thirty centuries to the days of the bar- 
 barous and disgusting clans w 
 recorded in the Old Testament. 
 
 barous and disgusting clans whose doings are 
 
 No system, after such an exposure of its 
 hollowness and timidity, could continue to be 
 as it was before. You may argue that Sys- 
 tematic Christianity has shown precisely the 
 same degree of timidity, and exposed the 
 hollowness of its principles, many times earlier. 
 Yes, but not in so strong a li^ht; not with a 
 world looking on which was so quick to mark 
 inconsistency as the world is to-day. Systems 
 fail many times ere they come to their last and 
 fatal ordeal. 
 
 Mystical beliefs are beyond reach of logic 
 or the happenings of the outward universe. 
 None need relinquish faith in God because men 
 are the dupes of ambitious rulers or the victims 
 of incapable statesmen. The knowledge that — 
 
 " We fall to rise, 
 
 Are baffled to fight better,'' 
 
 is sufficient to sustain the mystic against every 
 shock. 
 
 212
 
 The Ee-Birth of Eeligion. 
 
 That God's ways are too mysterious for us 
 to explain and classify is the conviction which 
 upholds many hearts amid the welter of our 
 old familiar world. But, m that case, why 
 support a system which pretends to explain 
 them? Why keep up a vast organisation which 
 pushes itself in between God and Man, yet in 
 the hour of burning trial gives God the go-by, 
 and is powerless in the service of mankind? 
 
 The world would be the richer for churches 
 within whose walls all could meet and worship, 
 proclaiming the fellowship and mutual goodwill 
 of classes no less than individuals, of nations 
 as well as smaller social groups. A common 
 profession of equality before the Unknown 
 Power, a common stretching out of hands 
 towards the darkness which awaits us all, would 
 go far towards sweetening human relations. 
 
 There was value as well as picturesqueness 
 in the comini^ together of villagers and ' ' the 
 quality " every Sunday in the grey old ivy- 
 covered church, kneeling down and confessing 
 themselves to their Maker, asking for kinder 
 hearts, more thoughtful patience, and perpetual 
 memory of the Golden Eule. 
 
 213
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 Much of the social unrest, many of the labour 
 troubles which have created bitterness and sown 
 distrust, miuht have been spared us had there 
 been a bond unilini^ all classes and bringing 
 them into an environment other than that of 
 conflicting interests. This bond the Churches 
 might have, and, according to their pretensions, 
 ought to have furnished. By attaching them- 
 selves to the wealthier and more powerful social 
 elements, they threw their opporturiily away. 
 
 "God for men, religion for women," says 
 the old Garibaldian in Joseph Coni-ad's 
 " Nostromo." The Churches have made 
 religion, not a living " bond," which was the 
 original meaning of the v;ord, but a lifeless 
 formality. Women may continue for a time 
 to draw comfort from formalism. Habit and 
 association keep every system an unconscionable 
 time a-dying. Men are by the colour of their 
 minds more mystic, less materially inclined than 
 women. They will more and more, after il gran 
 rifnifo by which Systematic Chi-istianity has 
 shamed itself, prefer to put their relations vrith 
 the Unknown Power upon a personal instead 
 of an official footing. Even those who accept 
 
 214
 
 rv 
 
 The Re-Birth of Eeligion. 
 
 the Systematic tlieuiugy will, many of tliem, 
 decide in future to approach God without pro- 
 fessional assistance, to rely upon His loving- 
 kindness rather than upon a mechanical miracle 
 and the stereotyped intercession of priestly lips. 
 
 215
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SYSTEM THE FOE. 
 
 The darksome statesman . . lest his ways 
 be found. 
 
 Worked underground. 
 Churches and altars fed him ; perji ries 
 
 Were gnais and flies. 
 It rained about him blood and tears. . . , 
 
 — Henry Vaughan, The Siliirist. 
 
 Thoughts on the decay of Systematic Chris- 
 tianity lead on to speculation in a wider held. 
 Authority, establishing itself by means of sys- 
 tem, was the poison which turned the desire 
 of the Churches away from mystic to material 
 aims. But authority is far more guilty than 
 that. To its perversion of the meaning and 
 the ends of life, to its monstrous claims and 
 ambitions, to the systems it erected for its 
 maintenance and increase, were wholly due the 
 letting loose of devastation upon Europe, the 
 
 216
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 cutting short by mechanical, hateful means of 
 tens of thousands of lives, all the pain and loss 
 and misery caused by this most barbarous of 
 wars. 
 
 w ^ w •ar 
 
 The more religion is systematised, the further 
 we have seen it depart from its original inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 The more justice is systematised, the less can 
 it be counted upon to hold the scales even. An 
 Eastern Cadi under a palm-tree, or the chieftain 
 of a clan settling disputes by his turf fireside, 
 were more likely to give sound decisions than 
 judges whose minds are generally marrowless, 
 or juries whom adroit, unscrupulous advocates 
 have done their best to befog. The machinery 
 of law courts myes an unfair advantage to the 
 rich suitor. Technical subtleties often out- 
 weigh the claims of equity and common sense. 
 
 The more government is systematized and the 
 number of officials increased, and their sense 
 of importance allowed to swell, the more cum- 
 brous are the obstacles to getting piiblic busi- 
 ness swiftly and sensibly done. Red tape, 
 having been brought in for the humble purpose 
 
 217
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 of " tidying up " papers, is eventiuiUy wor- 
 shipped and used to strangle any attempt at 
 rapid despatch or a vigorous, untrammelled 
 handling of affairs. System ceases to ])e an aid 
 to activity. It becomes an end in itself. More 
 importance is attached to respect for the 
 methods and traditions of the System than to 
 the woik which the Svstem was established 
 to do. 
 
 Every institution of man suffers earlier or 
 later from this hardening of the arteries. Every 
 institution dies from it. We can see it destroy- 
 ing schools and societies no less surely than it 
 destroys Churches and Governments. We can 
 see the artificial swallowing up the real. Cere- 
 monies increase while their rneaning shrinks. 
 Style outweighs matter. So huge a pile of un- 
 essentials, decorative or merely formular, is 
 erected that in time the whole edifice is bound 
 to topple over and come crashing to the ground, 
 unless, ati-ophied by a slow process of decay, 
 it dies unobserved lon« after it has faded out 
 of mind. 
 
 Sentiments as well as institutioPiS become 
 twisted by this disease. Systematize the senti- 
 
 218
 
 System the Foe, 
 
 ment of pity and you get a Charity Organisation 
 Society. The more the sentiment of Patriotism 
 is systematized, the more false and blind a 
 power for evil does it become. Love of country 
 is an emotion very meet and ri^ht to be 
 cherished. In most of us it is compounded of — 
 
 (i) Habit. 
 
 (ii) The influence of early memories and 
 associations. 
 
 (ill) The liking for the companionship of 
 people whose language we speak and to whose 
 ways we are accustomed. 
 
 (iv) The presence of those whom we love 
 and delight to be with. 
 
 An emotion so compounded is admirable and 
 worthy of all encouragement. But when love 
 of country is made, as it has been in Germany, 
 to serve the greed or ambition of rulers and 
 classes, when it l^ecomes harsh, vain-glorious, 
 intolerant, then corruptio optimi pessima. 
 Disease turns the fair flower into an abomina- 
 tion, harmful and offensive to the health and 
 nostrils of mankind. 
 
 I love England because when 1 say " Eng- 
 
 219
 
 •AriBSiinkdB 
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 land,"' there comes into my mind the picture 
 of a meadow, with hedges round it, where 
 cows stand knee-deep in flowers and grasses, 
 and near by a cool old house, yellow- washed, 
 with diamond-paned casements, dreaming 
 among gardens rich in scent and colour, rich 
 in spring blossoms of cherry, apple and pear, 
 rich in autumn fruits and in vegetables of a 
 succulence that no town dweller can even 
 fancy. Beyond the garden are crofts and corn- 
 fields through which a path meanders to a gi'ey, 
 old ivy-covered church in its quiet green God's 
 Acre, with thatched or stone-roofed farms and 
 cottages about it. I love England because my 
 blood sings to the music and the vigour of 
 English speech ; because there I meet more 
 friends than 1 meet elsewhere ; because I am 
 accustomed to the English mode of life and 
 the English character; because in England I am 
 "at Home." 
 
 I do not love England for the size of her 
 possessions, though it gives me a pleasing thrill 
 to see the Union Jack float in far-off corners 
 of the world. I do not love her for her vast 
 trading interests. I am proud to belong to a 
 
 220
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 nation which has given birth to other nations, 
 and which has never been afraid to stand up 
 for liberty, its own and that of others, and 
 which has led the way towards many changes 
 of value to mankind. But neither in the past 
 nor in this our own time do I think she can 
 be called faultless. I certainly do not share 
 the belief expressed by Cecil Rhodes in a will 
 which he made while he was still a young man, 
 that " the British race is the finest which history 
 has yet produced." 
 
 Nor do I agree with the late Lord Grey, who 
 wrote in his " Memoir of Hubert Hervey " : — 
 
 " In so far as an Englishman differs in 
 essentials " from men of other nationalities, 
 " he believes that he represents a more per- 
 fectly developed standard of general excel- 
 lence," regarding them as being " on the 
 whole not so excellent as himself." 
 
 That I call a Prussian attitude, an attitude of 
 intolerable, priggish conceit. 
 
 Lord Grev added that if this were not so, 
 the energies of Englishmen would be directed 
 
 221
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 to iiiakiii'4 themselves reseml)le men of other 
 natiomiKties. There is a want of logic here. 
 Almost everyone of us would rather be himself 
 or herself than anyljod}- else. This does not 
 imply, however, that we think ourselves 
 superior to everybody else. x\lmost certainly 
 we shall admit that others ai'e more excellent 
 than we are. Yet we do not direct our energies 
 to copying them. \\'e pjefer to be ourselves, 
 even though we mny not " represent so per- 
 fectly developed a siandaid " as others do. 
 
 An individual who claims to be above his 
 fellows is rii:htlv lauirhed at. A familv which 
 should pride itself upon its superiortiy to all 
 other families would be a lit subject for satire. 
 To me it seems equally fatuous that a nation 
 should exalt itself, saving, " We are the iinest 
 race on earth." Since I am an Englishman, 
 I would rather be English than anvthina else. 
 But to uive mvself airs about it, and to strut 
 around declaring the ]'mglisli race superior to 
 other races, would be a symptom, I consider, 
 of a mild form of insanitv. 
 
 The line of thought followed by Cecil Rhodes 
 
 222
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 in his vouth, and by Lord Grev when he had 
 not the same excuse, illustrates one of the evil 
 aspects of systematized, and therefore mechani- 
 cal, patiiotism. To contrast ourselves with 
 others and to plume ourselves upon our sup- 
 posed advantages is among individuals, and 
 among groups of individuals, either eccentricity 
 or the extreme of bad manners. If the mem- 
 bers of a club were to claim that their club 
 '* represented a more perfectly developed 
 standard of excellence " than other clubs, we 
 should say they were either crazy or ill-bred. 
 Yet Lord Grey contends that " independent 
 nations " ought to feel thus, and ought to put 
 forth their whole energy to prove it. This, he 
 claims, is " the moral justification for inter- 
 national strife and for war." 
 
 According to Lord Grev's argument, Ger- 
 many was justified in making war in order to 
 *' stamp a great part of humanity with the im- 
 press of the German spirit," as General von 
 Bernhardi phrased it. 
 
 The plea that Germany had war forced upon 
 her was, of course, only put forward for the 
 
 223
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 quieting of the popular mind. It was not 
 defended by the leaders of German thought. 
 Herr Walt her Rathenau, a prominent captain 
 of industry, expressed the view of the more 
 intellectual German patriots when he said : — 
 
 " The basis of the conflict is a difference 
 in -fundamental ideals of life and duty. That 
 is the deep reason why war must go on until 
 it is proved which of these ideals is the true 
 one, and that is why Germans are willing 
 to die, and suffer worse than death, in order 
 to win." 
 
 Here we have love of country turned into 
 something altogether different from the senti- 
 ment which we analysed above. It has lost its 
 genial personal flavour. It is no longer an 
 individual sentiment. It has become a war- 
 cry. How has this occurred? 
 
 It has occurred, I think, in this way. Nations 
 have been taught by their Ruling Classes that 
 it is the duty of a " patriot " to fight for his 
 country. The mass of people accepted that 
 teaching without further ado. They did not 
 stop to think about it. It is true that the Ealing 
 
 224
 
 System the P^oe. 
 
 Classes have given up saying, as they once said, 
 "It is your duty to fight for us." They now 
 say, " It is your duty to fight for the State," 
 and invariably they endeavour to persuade each 
 fighting nation that it is the victim of unpro- 
 voked attack. Which shows us the Ruling Class 
 mightily afraid that their teaching may meet 
 with indifference or opposition ! But it has 
 only of late begun to be effectively questioned. 
 The mass of people have until recently believed 
 that it is the duty of " patriots " to fight for 
 their country whenever the Ruling Class tel/ 
 them it is necessary to do so. 
 
 But here and there, outside the mass of 
 people, are men who feel the need of intel- 
 lectual conviction. In order to satisfy and 
 entrap them, a solemn theory and explanation 
 of this " dutv " have been invented. Some of 
 the inventors are deliberate tricksters. Some 
 propound their theories as much for their own 
 satisfaction as for that of others. I have no 
 doubt Lord Grey and Herr Walther Rathenau 
 belong to the second category. War seems to 
 them, as it seems to everyone who thinks about 
 it, tragically foolish. They are forced to irv 
 
 225 
 
 H
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 and find some reason for continuini^ war. This 
 reason they and many otliers place in " the 
 need for strugde amono- nations as a means 
 of testing standards and ideals," and in the 
 securing of progress by the aid of those which 
 are proved to be the more worthy of accept- 
 ance. 
 
 This theory and explanation are not, I repeat, 
 produced for the mass of people. The mass of 
 people would be bewildered by talk of conflict- 
 ing ideals, and they would laugh at the sug- 
 gestion that they were upholding their " stan- 
 dard of general excellence " as superior to all 
 other standards. 
 
 The mass of people l^elieve that war is un- 
 avoidable because they have been told so. They 
 will a-s readily believe, when they are told that 
 it is foolish and unnecessary. The many always 
 take their beliefs from a few. In order that 
 changes may be made in human affairs, it is 
 only needful to persuade a few that they are 
 desirable. To prevent these few from being 
 persuaded of the folly and needlessness of war, 
 and thereafter from causing war to cease among 
 
 226
 
 System thk Foe. 
 
 civilised peoples, this notion of conflicting ideals 
 has been conceived and is gravely argued. 
 
 The necessity for such argument shows how 
 hardly pressed for ammunition are the defenders 
 of war. Successively they have had to abandon 
 the duty of fighting for God, the duty of lighting 
 for divinely appointed kings, the advantage of 
 fighting for territory, the advantage of fighting 
 for trade. Each of these defences has been in 
 turn thrown down. Now they endeavour to 
 screen themselves behind this flimsy pretence 
 of warring standards and divergent national 
 ideals. 
 
 , It is so nonsensical that I feel almost ashamed 
 to argue such a theme. By the tribunal of his- 
 tory it must be speedily dismissed. We were 
 taught, when we read the Bible in our child- 
 hood, that the Israelites had higher ideals than 
 the nations whom they conquered. If that be 
 true, then conquest was bad for those ideals; 
 they did not distinguish the Israelites when, 
 they emerged from the wilderness. 
 
 It is to this earlv teaching that we owe the 
 misapprehension as to wars being undertaken 
 
 227 
 
 h2
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 at the bidding of the Almighty, for the raising 
 of standards moral and religious. It gains no 
 support from a study of wars in general. If 
 tliere was any conflict of ideals between the 
 Athenians and the Lacedajmonians who 
 destroyed them with the help of a tag, rag and 
 bobtail of Peloponnesian allies, those of the 
 Athenians were the fmer. If the tribes which 
 overthrew the Roman Empire were setting up 
 any standard of civilised life, it was inferior 
 to that of Rome, even in her decay. 
 
 What were the fundamental ideals foui'ht for 
 by France and England all through their long 
 series of wars? Neither France nor England 
 had her standard of general excellence super- 
 seded. Each kept her national idiosyncrasies. 
 And now they fight side by side ! Only fifty 
 years back Prussia and Austria fought. Whose 
 ideal triumphed then? Or are their ideals still 
 distinct, and will they be obliged some day to 
 make war upon one another again? 
 
 Thig theory of war inevitable, war necessary 
 for the evolution and improvement of mankind, 
 ;s seen to be baseless as soon as we examine it. 
 
 228
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 In nine cases out of every ten wars are not 
 made by nations at all, but by rulers. 
 
 Peoples have fought, and fought rightly, for 
 freedom to live or worship or be governed as 
 they chose. Sometimes they have fought in 
 vain, as did the peoples of Melas against Athens, 
 and the Albigenses against the Inquisition. But 
 their sacrifices have not been vain. Liberty is 
 worth fighting for, worth dying for, when the 
 lack of it is felt as a personal indignity. Every 
 war for Liberty strikes a fetter off Liberty's 
 limbs. 
 
 Man has freed himself from many tyrannies 
 and superstitions. He asserts to-day more 
 boldly than ever before in his recorded history 
 the right of individual judgment. He repels 
 the claim of any official to stand between him 
 and the Divine Spirit. He derides the pretence 
 of rulers that they are appointed to rule Ijy 
 God. We are beating down at length the 
 priestly doctrine that our life in this world 
 is unimportant, and that all our activities shoukl 
 be regulated by the anticipation of a future 
 existence. Whether there be a future life or 
 no, we cannot tell. In either event it should 
 
 229
 
 TuE Meaning of The World Eevolution 
 
 clearly l)e our endeavour to live happily and 
 usefully and kindly here and n<jw. 
 
 But in place of the delusion that man should 
 sacritice himself for a place in Heaven, there 
 has grown up in these times a delusion equally 
 damnable — that individual men should sacrifice 
 themselves for the State. As much rubbish is 
 talked about Fatherland and Patriotism as was 
 ever talked about Predestination and Grace. 
 
 It seems there is always some greed of 
 authority, some ambition towards power at 
 work, persuading man that the future matters 
 more to him than the present. "We have still 
 to proclaim aloud that we hold the present to 
 be of more interest than any future; that the 
 freedom and happiness of the individual are 
 of greater value than any dream of gain to 
 rulers, any increase of domination, any delusive 
 shadow of advantage in years to come. 
 
 Those who fight for freedom fight for sub- 
 stantial profit, both to themselves and to those 
 who come after. Most w^ars, however, are the 
 outcome, not of revolt against oppression, but 
 of folly or incompetence or greed. Into most 
 
 230
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 wars Peoples are pushed without knowing what 
 the quarrel is about. It is only after war has 
 begun that they begin to hear the phrase 
 repeated parrot-like, "We are lighting for 
 national ideals." It conveys almost nothing to 
 their minds. They leave such abstractions to 
 be played with or turned to prolit by professors 
 iind writers of books. They have a shrewd 
 common sense which tells them that the phrase 
 is a phrase and no more. 
 
 Mill trounced in his " Political Economy '* 
 the vulgarity of mind which supposes ' ' inherent 
 natural differences " to exist between races and 
 nations. All Peoples who live under conditions 
 v.'hich are in the main the same (conditions of 
 climate and scenery, of food and soil) have in 
 the main the same standards and ideals. These 
 are simple enough. To get through life without 
 more than a fair average of trouble, without 
 losing caste or forfeiting respect. To keep on 
 God's side so long as this does not involve any 
 painful sacrifice of worldly advantage. To deal 
 lionestly and helpfully with friends and 
 acquaintances, and not too hardly with persons 
 outside that ring. To leave one's family with 
 
 231
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 some provision, even though it should only be 
 enough " club money " to pay for a decent 
 funeral. 
 
 These are the usual springs of conduct, I take 
 it,' among all Peoples. Only under the intoxi- 
 cating inlluence of words presenting unfamiliar 
 ideas in attractive guise do they even think of 
 standards and ideals. Thev are not at ease 
 with the thought. It is too misty to be grasped. 
 When war is over, the Peoples pick up again 
 the threads of daily life. Ideals and standards 
 remain on each side what they were before. 
 
 The theory that wars are caused by the 
 stubborn adherence of Peoples to conflicting 
 aims and principles breaks down, therefore, for 
 lack of proof. But even if there were in truth 
 this conflict, it would not justify slaughter and 
 maiming and all the hateful accompaniments 
 of war. The hollowness of the plea is at once 
 revealed bv the limiting of it to nations. If 
 it be a dutv to fight in order to force a certain 
 view of life upon those who are unwilling to 
 take it, why should such fighting not be done 
 by smaller groups, by individuals even? 
 
 232
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 There is more divergence of ideal between the 
 inhabitants of manufacturinc? to^Yns and those 
 who dwell in villages than there is between the 
 Peoples of any two countries. In the towns 
 unpleasant, monotonous, mechanical toil is 
 willingly performed in order that the diversions 
 of crowded streets may be enjoyed, bright 
 lights; varied, palate-stimulating foods; spec- 
 tacles of ail kinds. The country-folk for their 
 part prefer simpler joys, plainer food eaten with 
 appetite, early to bed and early to rise, labour 
 that chans'es with the seasons, brimjs healthy 
 fatigue, and can itself give more pleasure, with 
 a sense of completer living, more charged with 
 meaning, than a factory task. 
 
 Yet no one dreams of urging on the factory 
 workers to do battle with the tillers of the soil, 
 while if individuals whose " ideals of life and 
 duty " differ w^ere to shoot each other down, 
 or to throw bombs into one another's houses, 
 they would be sent to the gallows or shut up 
 in lunatic asylums. 
 
 Such battles as these did occur in earlier 
 stages of man's development. Now we speak 
 
 233
 
 The Meaning of The V>^oiild "Revolution 
 
 of those who foudit them as " savages." First 
 these savages were constrained to live at peace 
 because their combats were inconvenient to their 
 neighbours. Then the combative spirit died 
 away. Men grouped themselves for the purpose 
 of mutual protection in larger communities. 
 The family gave place to the tribe, the tribe 
 to the city state, the city state to the nation. 
 Within national limits fighting was forbidden 
 and severely punished. The only war which 
 anyone can be found to defend to-day is war 
 between nations; and then only by arguments 
 rooted in ignorance of man's nature and born 
 of a desire to plead some excuse for action 
 which proclaims itself both senseless and in 
 human. 
 
 For there is no more reason why nations 
 should fight than that families and tribes should 
 carry on blood feuds, or cities sti'uggle to crush 
 one another out. War amon^j nations is not 
 " inevitable " anv more than fighting between 
 smaller groups was inevitable. As soon as this 
 fighting between smaller groups became a 
 nuisance, it was sternly ended. Families 
 Gtopped individuals from fighting. Tribes 
 
 234
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 stopped families from lighting. Nations for- 
 bade tribes and districts to liii'iit. Now tlie time 
 has come for a still wider grouping of mankind. 
 Nations must found a community, and this com- 
 munity must stop lighting among nations — by 
 force, if force be required, 
 
 " But," you may object, " surely this will 
 mean setting up a more 'complicated system, 
 and investing officials with more authority than 
 the world has ever known before." 
 
 Surely not. 
 
 In no two countiies is there a more healthy 
 dislike of authority, a more stubboi-n resolve 
 not to submit to the tyranny of System, than 
 in the British Empire and the United States. 
 Yet it is these two countries which took the 
 first active and definite step towards a com- 
 munity of nations. By their Treaty of 1914 
 they agreed upon a procedure which made war 
 between them impossible. Tiiey agreed to sub- 
 mit all disputes between them to an Inter- 
 national Court which can take twelve months 
 to consider its award. Only give nations time 
 to think calmly over their quarrels, and they 
 
 235
 
 The Meaning op The World Revolution 
 
 will never make war. They never gain any- 
 thing by it. They only suffer, and pay the bill. 
 
 Ever since government was systematized and 
 authority pulled up to exalt itself, those who 
 proht by war have been allowed to push nations 
 into it. Thus the chief object of government 
 has been betrayed. 
 
 Men banded themselves together, first into 
 families, then into tribes, then into nations, so 
 that as individuals they might be better pro- 
 tected in the enjoyment of their property, in 
 their freedom of movement, in their liberty to 
 live unmolested and at ease. In order to this 
 protection there came into being " the State." 
 At once the process of systematizing began. 
 Authority seized every occasion to raise itself 
 above those who had set it in office. At last, 
 in our days, the State has forgotten the object 
 for which it was created. The monster lords 
 it over those who brought it into being. The 
 monstrous claim is advanced that the State was 
 not made by and for Man, but Man for the 
 State, and that he owes to it all his best energy, 
 all his devotion, even his life. 
 
 236
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 According to Treitschke, the State is entitled 
 to claim all the powers of the individual for 
 itself. Fichte, another German supporter of 
 madhouse delusions wrongly called philosophy, 
 declared that Virtue meant " the surrender of 
 personality " to the State, and Vice " to think 
 of self." These absurdities remind me of what 
 Professor William James said about professors 
 in Germany : — 
 
 " They think and write from each other 
 and for each other and at each other exclu- 
 sively. With this exclusion of the open air, 
 all true perspective gets lost. Extremes and 
 oddities count as much as sanities, and com- 
 mand the same attention." 
 
 It is an " extreme " to speak of the State 
 as if it had a separate existence apart from that 
 of the People, who are the State. It is an 
 " oddity " to suggest that a People should 
 undertake as a duty the forcing of their rule 
 or their culture upon other Peoples. Such 
 action cannot possibly benefit them, though 
 it may advantage " the State," which means 
 the men in authority who for the moment con- 
 trol the Government machine. 
 
 237
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolutioi* 
 
 Must I, because these men choose to embroil 
 themselves, or because they drift into war, 
 must I blindly support them? Yes, I am told, 
 because this is " patriotic." 
 
 Weil, it was ■' patriotic " for Englishmen to 
 die in the snows of the Crimea, and for Russians 
 to leave their bones in Manchuria. Yet now we 
 know the Crimean War was a stupid blunder, 
 and the ill-managed war of Russia against Japan 
 both a folly and a crime. We respect the 
 patriots no less, but v>-e say their patriotism 
 was abused. How can we know, if we accept 
 fighting for the State as a duty to be blindly 
 followed, that our patriotism will not be abused 
 also? What Germany of late called patriotism 
 is to-day ridiculed as ambition run mad. And 
 what is " the State " in this sense but the 
 voice of a monarch, the policy of a minister, 
 the tradition of a System? 
 
 Until we recapture the frame of mind which 
 regards Systems, whether religious or political, 
 with suspicion, and which jealously limits the 
 power of authority to stifle individual judgment 
 or reduce personal liberty, we shall suffer as 
 we are suffering to-dav. If ever a State or a 
 
 238
 
 System the Foe. 
 
 Church had proved itself so valuable to Man- 
 kind as to deserve self-effacing obedience, some 
 ar<:jument in favour of subordinating Indivi- 
 duality to Sj^stem might be advanced. But that 
 has never happened. " There is no instance 
 on record," wrote Buckle in his heroic frag- 
 ment of a History of Civilisation, " of any class 
 possessing power without abusing it." These 
 words should be constantly in our minds. They 
 should be written up in every Palace, in every 
 Parliament, in every public building. 
 
 Churches have clung to wealth and worldly 
 rank whenever they have been able to secure 
 them. The more powerful their organisation, 
 the less their power for good. While the 
 Catholic Church dictated to monarchs, it coun- 
 tenanced all vices. The Russian Church 
 possessed the most elaborate fabric ever created 
 by an ecclesiastical hierarchy, yet the moral 
 atmosphere of Eussia was malarial. 
 
 While Mystical religion brings men face to 
 fnce with God, teaching that those who worship 
 Him must v;orship Him in spirit and in truth, 
 Systematized rehgion persuades them that they 
 
 239
 
 The Meaning of The World Eevolution 
 
 can escape the consequences of their evil deeds 
 by confessing to priests, by burning candles, 
 by crossing themselves whenever they pass a 
 church or a holy picture, and by other mechani- 
 cal observances. Of necessity evil deeds 
 increase. 
 
 As for political systems, they merely commit 
 the crimes and blunders of individuals upon a 
 magnified scale. To attach more importance 
 to the continuance of a polity than to the happi- 
 ness of individual men and women is inhuman as 
 well as absurd. To speak of Peoples as 
 Mommsen spoke of the Celts on the Continent 
 of Europe in Caesar's time, and of the Irish 
 to-day, as " thoroughly useless in a political 
 point of view," is only possible to those who 
 mistake the meaning and significance of the life 
 of man. 
 
 We are here in the world for a short space 
 of time, to draw what content we may from 
 it. The longest life is but a flash, when we 
 think of the countless millions who have lived 
 through countless ages before us. Authority 
 the most absolute looks like the strutting of a 
 
 240
 
 System the Foe, 
 
 peacock, when we remind ourselves that in a 
 few years those who exert it will have been 
 forgotten. The best that any of us can hope 
 for is to enjoy health and love and labour; to 
 do and to receive kindness; and, when we lie 
 a-dying, to be able to look back and say : " 'Tis 
 a good world. We are glad to have lived in it." 
 
 Why, then, considering our infinite unimport- 
 ance, should any among us seek by system and 
 authority to create fears and bondage? Why 
 strive to enforce any belief or any allegiance, 
 remembering that of us and all our nostrums 
 e^ry trace will speedily be wiped out? Why 
 blow each other to pieces over a fantastic mis- 
 understanding, in order to bolster up some 
 crazed ambition ©r some futile claim? 
 
 Against the freedom and happiness of indi- 
 viduals no Church, no State, neither dogma 
 nor system, should be allowed to prevail. Let 
 us clearly understand, and pass the knowledge 
 on to those who follow us, that all these 
 organisms are parasites upon Humanity, seeking 
 their own nourishment and increase, persuading 
 man to forsake his true interests in order to 
 
 241
 
 The Meaning of The World Revolution 
 
 suppoi't them, making the world hideous and 
 us fools of Nature, causing the nations to sweat 
 and slay and struggle for objects which in the 
 scale of Reality shift the balance not at all.^ 
 
 These sinister powers the Revolution must 
 prune, root and branch together. Not until 
 they are kept in subjection, made servants 
 instead of masters, will Man breathe free. 
 
 242
 
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