THE OTHER SIDE. m.-THE VALUE OF A LABOUR PARTY. H UMANITY
cannot stand still.
"The bright procession Of eddying forms"
passes on, and if there can be no absolute guarantee of what we call "progress," there is no pause in man's effort to shake off forms of society that morally dis- content him. And why should he be content with " Capitalism " ? It is a mushroom affair. Those deeper instincts of his which we call moral—his religion, his neighbourliness, his love of nature and the soil, his passion for self-representation—were formed long before he heard of it. And, with all its energetic life, the creations of the capitalist period have something rather horrible about them. The cities of Mansoul are Athens or Florence, not Birmingham or Chicago. In the worst of them, no doubt, we, who belong to the class that gives orders instead of to the class that receives them,* can, with the help of art, of travel, of comfort in the home and interest in the daily occupation, live a very tolerable life. Our minds are well fed ; fatigue, sorrow, apprehension, boredom, do indeed invade us, but we need not suffer a soul-starvation simply because our bodies have never had room to grow up in. Yet this is a common lot of the over- crowded town worker. At the worst many workmen's chil- dren "breathe from infancy up an atmosphere of morbid alcoholism and sexuality, furtive larceny and unashamed mendacity."t From that slow stain the inequality of wealth saves our children, but we need not pretend that it creates a stable or a moral society. Its defenders are not, as fiery Mr. Maxton would have it, "murderers." But now and then the conservative apology has a distant echo of Cain's. In raising the banner of equality, the Socialist leaves not only Christian idealism but average open-eyed philanthropy very little ground to fight on. It is true that the moment you analyse the notion of " equality " it begins to disintegrate. But so do all human ideals. The question is whether without such a hope, and a corresponding effort to realize it, any country could have held through the industrial revolution either without recurring periods of violence or a relapse into our discarded slave-morality. I say that such a fall would have implied final defeat for the Christian idea and a loss to the scientific movement of all its virtue.
Why, then, is this great community, with its genius for politics, its sense of the value of the middle course, so afraid of Socialism in British hands? Let it be reassured. There is a sense in which the whole country is used to Socialism, and reasonably content with it.
• The Decay of Capitalist Civilization. By Sidney and Beatrice Webb. t The same. For generations it has agreed to have its letters carried and distributed on Socialist principles. No one objects to be lighted, warmed, or taken to business Socialistically, as thousands of good Conservatives are, and not many, I suspect, would kick against the nation's iron roads (like its flint and granite ones) being run a little less for profit and a little more in the interests of British farmers, traders, and travellers. Shall we go too fast, at proceed in the spirit of confiscation ? Again I say temperament, character, national habit are the country's safeguards. If it is largely conservative in temper, so are the workmen. If it has an interest in avoiding over-rapid change, so have they. Take the abolition of luxury. Any policy which shut up too many country and town houses, restaurants, West-End theatres, or dressmakers' establishments, would create for a Labour Ministry a problem of unemployment as to which waiters' and tailors' and actors' and confectioners' trade unions would have an instant word to say. And no conceivable system of re-employment by the State would develop fast enough to overtake raw haste in creating unemployment. The luxury workers would have to be re-trained, and the new or the modified businesses would have to be adapted to them. A " trend " to simpler living would undoubtedly set in. Is that a bad thing ? Did not the country, under the pressure of war, throw away its luxuries as Harry East threw away his cigars when he became a prefect at Rugby ? Did so many idle people ever work so hard before ? And were they any the worse for it.? The country as a whole lived under a masked and moderate form of Socialism. The State fixed prices and frowned on profiteering, and vast industries were conducted by boards of civil servants, employers, and workers. The poor were never so well fed, the rich never so temperate ; while the idea of public service, which is the basis of Socialism, helped to unite and humanize our society. The country's and the world's needs in the way of food and the raw materials of industry, instead of being left to competitive trading, were largely thought out and regulated by the State. A model industrial city was planned and worked to admiration ; and an advance was made towards rationalizing the sale of liquor. Ideas of science, education, organization, in which with all its genius the British people is deficient, began to permeate the community. Many of these advances have been thrown away in the orgy of individualism which followed the Peace. But a new conception of State life had entered men's minds ; and of that ideal the Labour Party is the main existing repository.
There remains one boon more precious than all others which our imperilled society can only receive at the hands of Labour. That is international peace. The Great War left one legacy behind it which has proved fatal to the repose of Europe. It resurrected the spirit of Nationalism, and crowned France, the grand model of the Nationalist State, as its Demogorgon. Of that spirit there is only one powerful exorcist. As the dis- integrating influence of Bolshevism (which becomes increasingly Nationalist) passes away, the progressive element in Socialism—British, French, German and neutral—recovers its strength. As soon as it is con- solidated, two ideas of European polity will confront each other. The first is the return to the armed peace, with Britain as the leader of one great party host and France of the other. The second is the Peace International, with its roots in all the industrial countries. I should strongly deprecate the workmen acting in the spirit of separatism and ignoring, or even counter-working, those middle-class, societies which cherish equally with them the idea of the economic and the political peace. Nona the less, there are the two paths. The signposts of the one are disarmament, free trade, the organization of international life. The direction of the other is exclusive patriotism, " defensive " armaments, and the partisan League, sustained, like the diplomacy of the War, by secret agreements on a military basis. "Patriotism is not enough." So spoke, with her dying breath, one of the martyrs of the War. Unheeding, the old priesthood prepares a new sacrifice, bloodier than the old. What is there, save the workman's policy of a European Entente, to stand between the victim and the altar ?
H. W. MASSINGIIAM.
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