mous dictum-but to make us familiar with the best men that have lived in the world. Here are his words:

You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught with reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these scientists owe their being. Not taught thus literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures.

The sifting of human creations!

E

nothing less than this is what we ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially this means biography; what our colleges should teach is, therefore, biographical history, that not of politics merely, but of anything and everything so far as human efforts and conquest are factors that have played their part. Studying in this way, we learn what types of activity have stood the test of time; we acquire standards of the excellent and durable.

The sense for human superiority ought, then, to be considered our line, as boring subways is the engineer's line and the surgeon's is appendicitis. Our

colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for cheapjacks.. The best claim we can make for the higher education, the best single phrase in which we can tell what it ought to do for us, is, then, exactly what I said: it should enable us to know a good man when we see him.

With William James's simple but conclusive definition of the goal of higher education I leave the subject of pedagogics-and it could not be left in better hands.

NGLAND to-night is a land of tired men and worried women. Five days of general strike have passed without a single shot being fired or a death reported; but never, even in the darkest days of the war, has the social, economic, or political structure of this nation been subjected to such terrific strain. At every moment during these five days there have been chances for some false step which would have precipitated a conflict such as has not been witnessed in this island since Cromwell and his Ironsides swept away the Stuart monarchy. That some spark has not yet fired the powder magazine-I use the qualification advisedly, because we who watch through the small hours in London's newspaper offices know that every telegram which arrives from the provinces may mean the beginning of a new era in British history-constitutes a remarkable tribute to the self-control of this race. Before me as I write lies a copy of The Outlook of June 1, 1921, in which I wrote, dealing with a general strike which had then failed to come off: "It is when the stage is set for revolution, . . . when a general death struggle between capital and labor is brewing, .. that that steadying instinct, the heritage of centuries of rights won by political action instead of force, comes into play." Those words are as true to-day as they were five years ago.

Steadying instincts again come into play. But much water has flowed down the Thames these past five years. Then Britain had emerged from the war, battered but triumphant and confident. Lloyd George's "Land fit for heroes"

had not yet become a mockery and a bitter jest to be bandied about. Hardly a man in the whole country saw clearly how long and how wearisome England's process of national convalescence was going to be. It has taken just these five years for England to reach the parting of the ways.

When the general strike began at midnight on Monday, May 3, it meant that the haves and have-nots of the population had decided to try conclusions. It is absurd to say, as the London "Times" said editorially, that the strike represents the efforts of four million trade-unionists to rule the nation. It represents the effort of at least fifteen million people for the trade-unionists have families-to establish the principle that if there is not enough to go around there will have to be a change in the methods of sharing what there is.

TH

HE indication that the people in general recognize this, even if the Government and the newspapers do not, is shown by the extreme gravity and anxiety evident on the faces of people in all ranks of life. Youths of eighteen who were children when the war ended, and who know nothing of suffering and bloodshed at first hand, are the only people in London who go about smiling. For them this week has meant pleasurable them this week has meant pleasurable excitement, whether they are volunteering from Mayfair homes to drive strikebreaking motor busses, or whether they breaking motor busses, or whether they lounge around Hackney streets waiting for something to turn up which promises a prospect of action. Generally speaking, neither working class nor upper and

middle classes have accepted this struggle with enthusiasm. Both know too well what it means.

Consider and examine for a moment the position of a typical member of each class.

First of all, take the average tradeunionist, say a carpenter. He is supposed to be striking because of sympathy with miners who have refused to accept wage reductions. In all probability, our carpenter has never seen a miner in his life. He cannot hope to understand the complicated, technical arguments which have raged about the question whether the mine industry can afford to continue paying present wage rates. He knows only that his union has told him to strike because a general strike is the only means of avoiding wage reductions throughout all industry. To-night this carpenter is not too badly off. He has collected a couple of pounds due on this week's wages, and the supplies of food for his house have not given out yet. But his wife has been told at the local co-operative store that credit won't be granted in this strike, and she knows that by next Saturday the one pound which her husband will receive in strike pay cannot by any possibility be stretched to cover rent and food for seven days. Both the carpenter and his wife see the prospect of first themselves and then their children going hungry. Will he go back to work when the pinch comes, or will he, thinking that for the first time in British history a definite struggle has been joined between the haves and have-nots, proceed to go out and get food by fair means or foul? To-night this is the

thought which is passing through the minds of three out of four trade-unionists.

Secondly, take a typical middle-class professional man-say a man earning ten pounds weekly as manager of a department in a publishing house. He also has a family, and his salary does not leave him very much margin for savings. The strike of the mechanical departments has brought about a complete cessation of his firm's activities. This week his salary has been paid. Next week it may or may not be. Shall he volunteer to run a motor bus at the trade-union wages the company is willing to payand perhaps have his head broken by a half-brick thrown by some ruffian? Shall he stand aside, letting others fight it out, but seeing his own fundamental problem of existence-how to secure sufficient food-trend inexorably along with the same parallel as the carpenter's? Or shall he exercise such power as he possesses on the Government to capitulate or to compromise before the general strike?

Thirdly, take a typically fairly rich man. He is not a country squire any longer, but owner and operator of a factory which nets him even in these days some £5,000 annually. Life, on the whole, is fairly pleasant for this man. He manages to keep his town house, and his country house, and several servantsin a word, to live normally far removed from any possibility of want. A week's strike has closed his factory and a few

contracts have been canceled. This is

only a mild irritation. But meanwhile his overhead costs are going on. His reserves will stand the strain for several weeks, but he cannot get away from the disagreeable fear that his banker may be unable to carry him along when the reserves are exhausted. This man sees quite clearly that if worst came to worst and civil war ensued he would stand to lose comparatively more than either of our two other typical cases. Shall he who carries some real weight with the Government agree to fight to a finish once and for all? Shall he take a chance that his Belgravia house will become as derelict as mansions in Moscow which twelve years ago were as prosperous as his own? Or shall he decide for safety first? It might be said that all these questions were raised and answered in August, 1914. But they were not. Then instinct took Britain into war, and reason began to function afterward. Today there is little glory to be had, whatever is done-and England from top to bottom has learned that you cannot eat glory, anyhow.

For all my three classes this decision is

not something academic. It has got to be faced now, and has been faced this week. Not fifty feet from where I write the owner of a small paper factory is automatically pulling dandelions out of the lawn of his suburban home; but I would know from his concentrated expression, even if he had not told me so an hour ago, that he is worrying about the future. For the blight which the general strike is laying upon life here is not any joke. We in London feel it chiefly as yet as an inconvenience. The milkman comes as usual; but your usual store cannot deliver your orders, and you must walk to fetch your food or get it in your car-and gasoline has already gone up. Tubes and busses are running skeleton services manned by volunteers, but there are no taxis. Half the theaters are closed. There are no newspapers as we knew the term last week. We do not know at what moment our gas and electricity may cease functioning. And, above and beyond these things, the great above and beyond these things, the great basic industries of the country have slowed down. As a newspaper man I do not need to see Stanley Baldwin's face, which has aged five years in the past five days, or to hear Ramsay MacDonald's weak voice over my telephone, to realize that the country is very seriously worried. It hasn't got the wind up. The Government's control of essential services has functioned fairly well; but the country is running on momentum, and the depleted reserve is not being replenished.

YET with all this the strike's first week

has in no way resembled social revolution. London's magnificent policemen have been reinforced by reserves, but not one of them carries a revolver. Troops are being ostentatiously kept off the streets. England's classes have largely kept to their water-tight compartments. No mobs from London's East End invade the West End. Yesterday a member of the New York "Herald Tribune" staff happened to be in Stepney, which is a distinctly slum and lower-class neighborhood. Everything was as quiet as Sunday. But a delightful study of comparative values was provided by an overheard remark of one girl to another: "Go dahn into Poplar? Not half! I ain't ahskin' for it!" To the average middle-class mind Poplar and Stepney are as alike as two peas. A Stepney are as alike as two peas. A friend of mine who has a Rolls-Royce car lost his way yesterday in South London-in Old Kent Road. He couldn't find a policeman to direct him, but three strike pickets courteously rode five blocks with him to show him the proper turning. Domestic servants retain their habitual politeness.

So far as physical violence is concerned, both sides have fought in kid gloves. The Government forces have been extremely tactful, and the Trade Union Council has given strikers strict orders against any semblance of disorder or provocation. The five days of the strike have seen a good many paving stones flying about, one or two. nasty clashes between police and mobs, and some cases of property damage. These incidents have increased day by day, like the curve on a fever chart. The Trade Union Council claims that most of the excesses have been acts of sheer hooliganism committed by men who are not trade-unionists at all. This, like most generalizations, is probably partly accurate, partly misleading. But its insis tence upon this point has been so marked that I do not believe the majority of the people look upon the strike as in any sense a social revolution.

IN the broader sense, of course, that is

exactly what it is. As a rule, movements which flare up in other countries germinate slowly in England. Every responsible labor leader may swear that no challenge is intended to constitutionalism; and it is certainly true that social and constitutional revolution need not necessarily be synonymous. None the less concerted. idleness on the part of four million men, backed up by the sympathy assent of ten million or so other people out of a population of forty millions, means that three-eighths of the nation has echoed G. K. Chesterton's "Song of the Wheels," written during the railway strike of 1911:

Call upon the wheels, master, call upon the wheels;

We are taking rest, master, finding how it feels.

Yea, the wheels are mighty gods-set

them going then!

We are only men, master, have you heard of men?

These are the have-nots. They may not intend a challenge of government as such, but fundamentally they are challenging any government based upon the capitalist and economic philosophies as we know them to-day. They have reached but not crossed their Rubicon.

I do not rule out the possibility of compromise at this hour, or even at a later one. As a matter of fact, I am quite sure both Cabinet and Trade Union Council, despite their professions of confidence, are frightened by the specter they have evoked. Unless there is to be civil war, any ending of the strike now must partake more or less of the nature of a compromise, however

much it may appear a superficial victory for one side or another. But at long last the challenge has been made. This very

fact has carried a step further the reorientation of the progress of the British body politic, with all that this implies, in

its effect upon the British Commonwealth of Nations and, indeed, the world.

London, May 9, 1926.

T

NO every revolt, whether it be economic, political, or literary, there is a cause. It may succeed; it may fail; but there were explosives before the explosion.

Nine out of ten strikers in Britain would tell you that the miners have been locked out; that an unfair reduction in their low wages has been demanded; that the standard of life, not only in Britain, but throughout Europe, is threatened; and that the workers must support the miners lest the wage-earners as a whole be crushed.

I should not be candid if I did not confess frankly that successive British Governments have furnished reasons for the strikers' point of view. Great Britain was fifty years late settling the Irish Question. And a heavy price did she pay for her procrastination. She is twenty years late over reforming her coal mines. If the miners are stubborn, be it not forgotten that the managers have failed to manage.

Losing patience, Ireland removed her case from the High Court of Parliament and won it by violence. The question now is whether Labor shall be permitted to follow this precedent. It is the gravest constitutional question that has ever arisen in Britain since her history began.

P. W. WILSON

continue to furnish a subsidy. The strike is therefore a demonstrable endeavor by private citizens, acting in conspiracy, to compel Parliament to put public money into their own pockets.

Labor has every right to debate the matter in the House of Commons, to vote in the House against the Government, and to organize a vote in the constituencies. But it is not by the vote that Labor is proceeding. It is by a stoppage of work.

tion is, then, whether an assumption of sovereignty by the Trade Union Congress would or would not be an advance towards a larger well-being.

In Russia precisely this revolution was accomplished. The Duma, or Parliament, was abolished. The Soviet, or Trade Union Congress, took its place. Does Britain wish to change her House of Commons for a Soviet?

And the stoppage actually in- T

cludes the printing of Parliamentary reports. In words that will be quoted for all time to come, Mr. Speaker Whitley has declared that, even if the electric light is turned out, the House shall sit and conduct its business.

A Parliament is only possible where there is this freedom of deliberation. For this liberty of debate the House of Commons fought the Stuarts. It was the attempt of the King to arrest the five members that plunged England into civil war. And to-day no messenger from the King is admitted to the bar of the House without the consent of the Speaker.

Not less determined has been Parliament to resist coercion by any organized body of the people. No procession is permitted within a mile of Parliament when in session. And for any persons to seek by compulsion to overawe Parliament is treason-felony. In the opinion of all of Britain's responsible statesmen, this is the situation which was developed.

ABOR has long had its legislature, with an executive responsible to that legislature. The legislature of Labor is the Trade Union Congress. The executive is the General Committee. It is this General Committee which has called the general strike.

If the General Committee prevails, it means that authority over national finance has passed from Parliament to the Trade Union Congress. Any such transference of sovereign authority is described by the historian as a revolution. A revolution, like every other phenomenon, must be judged on its merits. No one to-day condemns the French Revolution or the Revolution amid which was born the United States. The sole ques

HE trouble in the mines is a failure to meet foreign competition. Now, whatever else is or is not true of the Soviet Republic, one thing is certain-it has reduced industrial output and decreased industrial efficiency. Russia may recover from the blow. But after seven years of peace the recovery is only beginning, and it is due, not to Communism, but to the gradual abandonment of Communism.

With her crowded island, Britain cannot face seven years of production cut to one-half, as in Russia. It would be no remedy. On the contrary, it would mean famine. To substitute a Soviet for the House of Commons would be, judging by Russian experience, a desperate aggravation. of the disease.

Hitherto all changes in the British Constitution have meant a broader franchise and a direct election by voters, safeguarded from intimidation. The change to a Soviet would mean, as in Russia, a restricted franchise and an indirect election.

For the Trade Union Congress no citizen has a vote unless he holds a trade-union ticket. Almost all women are disqualified, with practically the whole middle class. Former Prime Minister MacDonald himself is ineligible to vote or to be voted for in the Soviet, as suggested. And the entire body of intellectuals in Britain would be subjected to political obliteration.

The Trade Union Congress itself, if substituted for Parliament, would not be free. It would be liable to precisely the same coercion which to-day menaces the House of Commons. Governed by a Soviet, Britain would still have to be ready for general strikes.

It is arguable that, with authority

transferred to the Trade Union Congress, Parliament might continue as a survival, like the Privy Council. Conceivably, the King might remain on his throne. But there would have arisen in Britain what to the Merovingians would be known as

majority is as near as the minority to the seat of power. The majority includes the army, the navy, and the air force. And it has shown itself to be capable of a rapid and powerful organization.

I

NDER the circumstances, I need not consider what would be left of the British Commonwealth if the strike were to succeed. The general strike has already failed.

But there remains a serious issue which will have to be faced. The entire body of strikers, outside the mines, has broken contract. Each wage-earner quitting work without notice has rendered himself liable to an action for

damages. Each union official so persuading the wage-earners is not less liable. And the damages run to hundreds of millions of dollars.

To recover these losses from Labor is impossible. But it may be taken as certain that the trade union will be subject in the future to a strict control. Its immunity from action in the civil courts will be challenged and possibly canceled. And it will be debarred absolutely from imposing on its members a political levy.

These are prophecies. I admit it. But no organization, however powerful, can make revolution and fail without paying the penalty for its reckless folly.

WILL not tire you with statistics. The population of England sixty years ago was enough for its small area. Since that time the number of inhabitants has doubled.

Belgium is generally believed to be the most densely populated country in Europe. That is a mistake. According to the World Almanac (1926), the population of England per square mile was 701 persons, while in Belgium there were only 648 persons.

Germany and Italy had about half that number, while France had only 184 people per square mile. China and India have much less than half the English population per square mile.

Now this being so, it follows that England must "watch her step" if she successfully supports her prodigious family.

The American farmers who read this can scratch their heads over what would happen if there were 700 people on every section of land in the Middle West. The State of Iowa now has 45 inhabitants per square mile, and is sitting up nights with her troubles.

Then England was a highly organized country, raising only half her food, but making things for all the world, furnishing ships for over half the world commerce, and financing world loans both public and private, the proceeds generally being spent in England. If she financed a railroad in Argentina, she held the majority of the bonds and the stock, and sold the railroad its equipment.

Up to the World War England had had sixty years of uninterrupted prosperity, accumulating a surprisingly large share of the world's wealth. This wealth was entirely in the hands of its political and financial aristocracy. The laboring classes only produced the actual goods which England shipped. They had no part in the great financial ventures which doubled England's capital every decade. For it must be understood that as London became more and more the world money center, the world was working more and more for the English moneyed classes, which operated all over the world, but always through London. Their stocks and bonds were in London safety vaults; so also were their shipping and bank shares.

During these prosperous sixty years the class lines between capital and labor were not softened. It is hard for an American to understand the class distinctions in England. If you are on a steamer sailing around the world and meet a globe-trotting Englishman on board, you find him a good fellow; he jokes with you and all but slaps you on the back at short acquaintance. But suppose you introduce him to another Englishman whom you have casually met. What a scene is enacted in cautious approach! Until each Englishman knows

the other's social position at home there is no hope of cordiality, and if the information finally obtained does not rate them both to their social satisfaction they will never mix.

It is the same way with English labor; a skilled workman is not in the same class with the man who waits on him, and the family nursemaid will not sit down at the same table with the cook. I don't mean to say that such class distinctions are like the castes in India, but you would be surprised at the distinct social divisions in England.

The English labor element during the said sixty prosperous years worked hard. on the organization of unions and the increase of wages. It succeeded in putting the price of employment higher in England than in any other European country. In 1906 I found that a mechanic was being paid per hour in England 20 cents, in Germany 15 cents, in Belgium 10 cents. On this basis, with the great prosperity of her capitalist class England was nearly holding her own in the export of manufactured goods. But there was little love lost between the manufacturers and the workmen. Very little corporation stock was owned by laborers and very little of their earnings went into homes or interestbearing bank deposits. Their wages, although the highest in Europe, did not permit them to accumulate much wealth, as they measured the wealth displayed by the capitalist class. They spent a substantial share of their possible savings in drink, in betting, and in careless living.

In

largely increased wages. It inflated all prices by abnormal demand. It issued British bonds by the billions and borrowed other billions from America. the latter transaction a vast amount of British-owned foreign stocks and bonds were sold to America, the income of which we now enjoy.

It is not recorded that the British workman saved much of his war prosperity. The war ended with his unions strong, his wages high, and his class consciousness increased. But the capitalist class was a squeezed lemon. Its job was to reorganize and finance peace-time commerce under the handicap of high wages, high taxes, and a depreciated currency. It simply did not have the power to do it.

Much of its old foreign trade was dead, and much was lost because of the competition of other countries. So unemployment appeared in England, to add to its worries and taxes. Wages came down, of course, but were always much higher than in Germany and Belgium, and England bought manufactured goods on the Continent because they were cheap. The lack of co-operation blocked

a realignment of labor and capital to meet the after-war problems; without such realignment and under such economic conditions, any country with a population of 700 to the square mile is in a dangerous position.

D

URING the seven years succeeding the Armistice England has "muddled along," but this time without getting anywhere except perhaps a little more deeply into trouble.

England, you know, has built herself up under free trade; although preferring British goods, she has held fast to the idea that trade is free, and she will buy in the cheapest market. Three years ago I saw in a Belgian steel works some railroad-car axles marked to be shipped to an English railroad. The axles could have been made in England, employing

goat." In their present temper the English-buying public, including labor itself, will not give up free trade. So there you are, and the problem of successfully supporting a population of 700 human beings to the square mile is just where it was five years ago. It may take a revolution to make either side give way, but I hardly think they are as badly off as that yet.

England is living off the fat of former accumulations, and can do so a while longer. The death tax is taking its half of the large fortunes, as the owners die. It is always the best half that is taken; the balance is scattered and loses its power to maintain England's position in the world of finance. The Government spends the tax money, and it is lost for

ever.

HEN a man becomes old, he fails here and there, yet in other ways he retains his vigor. Sometimes we say, "The old man is failing rapidly." At another time we exclaim, "He is holding his own remarkably well." So it is with England. When you consider England's unemployed people, her dissensions, her