7 SEPTEMBER 1907, Page 26

Socialism: its Fallacies and Dangers. Edited by Frederick Millar. (Watts

and Co. 6d.)—This is a new edition of a useful volume. Socialism justifies itself by complaints which are them- selves a proof that things are really mending. "A hundred years ago when drunkenness was common no one said a word against it." So it is with other evils. Because we are more alive to them, we are apt to think that they are worse. As to the remedies which Socialism proposes, what are they ? First and foremost comes the abolition of marriage and the family, and of course of religion with them. William Morris, who surely represented the highest intellectual development of the creed, thought religion a "sham," and the morality which accompanies it "stupid," "clung to with

ferocity" because its aim is the "perpetuation of property in wife, in child." As to its practicability, let any one read the story of the American social experiments. One community, we remember, split up because it could not agree whether a member could grow a flower for himself.