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THE country is all too late beginning to realise the perils and the possibilities of Syndicalism. A general strike in the coal industry, following within a few months the disastrous railwaymen's strike of 1911, is stirring the feelings and thoughts of all classes in all civilised communities. Public opinion is not easily aroused in this country. "Le bal cherche le bon joueur" is a maxim equally true of politics and of tennis; but unfortunately the power of intelligently anticipating the trend of political events is a weapon rarely to be found in the intellectual armoury of the normal Englishman: the nation is often forewarned, she is seldom forearmed; and so it almost invariably happens that

VOL. CXCI.-NO. MCLVIII.

when the blow falls, England, all unprepared, is left to "muddle through somehow" as best she can. In this crisis, however, the danger is too imminent to be overlooked, too near at hand to be disregarded. It is obvious that a temporary suspension of the railway or mining systems spells commercial disaster, that a prolonged suspension must result in the starvation of the people. Why are the strikers "holding the nation to ransom"? Can nothing be done to stay the progress of the industrial Juggernaut? Is it not possible to establish a permanent settlement, or is Syndicalism destined to develop into Revolution? Such questions as these are freely asked, and no satisfactory

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answer seems to be forthcoming.

Before attempting to suggest a remedy, the political physician must diagnose the disease. What, then, is the objective of Syndicalism? It is clearly not merely to secure "recognition" of the Trade Unions as the sole representatives of labour in industrial negotiations, for if that were so, why were the railwaymen employed on the N.E.R. -which system had conceded the principle claimed-called out on strike? Nor is its purpose to secure a “living wage for underground workers, for miners are among the most highly paid industrialists in the country! The programme of the Independent Labour Party supplies the answer, and it is nothing short of this, the extermination of the capitalist, and the nationalisation, without purchase, of the means of production and supply.

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It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate that Radical oratory and Radical legislation have gone far to fan the smouldering fires of discontent into the fiercer heat of rebellion; and that no remedy for industrial unrest will be possible unless and until the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, has been repealed or has suffered drastic amendment.

Now, Revolution invariably proceeds along the line of least resistance. The coup d'état by which the end is ultimately accomplished, in the whole record of history, has never been the sudden and unpremeditated act of individual or

corporate impulse; it has without exception been the logical dénoûment of a slowly growing moral and political point of view, the final outburst, it is true, filling unsuspecting persons with amazement and alarm, but to minds skilled in discerning changes in the political firmament, appearing to be what in truth it always is, the inevitable effect of a welldefined and obvious cause.

Mistaking effects for causes is perhaps the most common error into which the human mind is prone to fall, and in no field of mental observation is this error more consistently committed than in the consideration of the trend of political movements.

The moral and social upheaval which accompanied the French Revolution, the American War of Independence, and to a certain extent the Great Rebellion in this country, in each case startled and pained the civilised world, and yet to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the final conflagration was seen to be the outcome of a slowly smouldering agitation against the uncontrolled authority of the French nobility, an English Parliament, and an English King, respectively. Charles I. and Louis XVI. mistook the warnings which were pressed upon them by the leaders of the movements for the idle vapourings of demagogues. On hearing the news that the Bastille had fallen, Louis XVI. cried in amazement, "Why, this is a revolt." "No, Sire," said the Duke of Liancourt, "it is a revolution."

Revolutionaries, however, have few scruples, and inability to feel the pulse of the nation cost each of them his head.

In truth, the revolution was effected, not when the National Assembly refused to withdraw from the tennis-court at Versailles, nor when the tea-chests were cast into Boston Harbour, but when the teachings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot in France, and Franklin, Otis, and Dickinson in America, as the late Lord Acton has pointed out, had sunk into the minds and laid hold of the moral conscience of the French and American peoples. When once a nation has grown content to disregard the moral and political principles which have hitherto obtained, before long an opportunity will be created to overthrow in practice principles which in theory have already become obsolete and untenable. Physical force, no doubt, is usually required to effect the change, but the potency of physical force, unless it is applied to attain objects which the nation as a whole conceives to be for its moral wellbeing, soon becomes devitalised. The fundamental distinction between the revolutionary movements in France and America on the one hand, and the Great Rebellion in this country on the other, a distinction which accounts for the permanent success of the movements in the former countries and the failure of the Great Rebellion to abolish the__immemorial government of England by King, Lords, and Commons,-will be found

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to be that in France, as in America, the principles underlying the revolution were in consonance with the change in moral outlook which had gradually overtaken the people, while in England the majority of the people were not in sympathy with the principles of Puritanism either at the time of their inauguration or at any subsequent period in English history.

If, therefore, the principles underlying 8 revolutionary movement, in order to achieve success, must reflect the moral aspirations of the people, what will be the probable outcome of the revolutionary wave which at the present time is sweeping over Great Britain? Will the appeal which it brings find a lasting echo in the moral conscience of the general public? And if so, are there to be found means ready to hand by which its exponents can give practical effect to the principles which they espouse? It is perhaps not possible at this early stage in the development of the movement to give a definite answer to the first of these questions. The revolutionary movement looms like a great vessel in the offing, too far away as yet for its true character and proportions to be clearly defined. And yet it may at least be asserted that its lessons have not sunk so deeply into the heart of the industrial classes as to have become ineradicable and abiding. The seed, indeed, has been sown abundantly, but the harvesttime is not yet; and the crop will never grow to maturity if

only men can be found with sufficient moral courage and enthusiasm to put their hands to the plough and root up the evil thing.

No student of modern politics, however shortsighted may be his political vision, doubts for a moment that this is so: the vague generalities in which the new doctrine is couched, the half-hearted response with which the trumpet-call has been met by those to whom the appeal is being made, and the eager canvassing of arguments for and against a "new morality" which is to provide for the people a new earth, if not a new heaven, are proof enough of this.

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It cannot be too emphatioally asserted that the fight for the "old morality" is not a lost cause. If the real danger with which the nation is threatened by "progressive principles can be brought home to the minds of the people, the reaction against what may be termed "Lloyd Georgism" will be both violent and certain. It is the state of political coma into which the educated classes have fallen, and which renders them quite unable to appreciate, much less to combat, the dangers which confront both themselves and the commonwealth, that makes it infinitely more difficult to accomplish the task of "educating our masters" in this matter. What is the danger? The danger lies in this, that whereas Englishmen from the earliest times have been proverbially law-abiding, the opinion is steadily gain

ing ground among members of widely different classes that legal and moral obligations are only to be considered binding when, and may be disregarded except in so far as, particular individuals or classes consider these obligations to be beneficial to themselves; and whereas the right to hold property and the right to personal liberty have hitherto been recognised by Englishmen to be essential to the maintenance of social and political freedom, the modern doctrine that it is justifiable, nay, praiseworthy, to violate these "fundamentals " in the interest of "the people" is vigorously defended as being in accordance with the principles of honesty and morality.

The magnitude and lawlessness of recent strikes indicate the widespread popularity of the new doctrines, while the action of his Majesty's Government in conceding, upon demand and apparently without mature consideration, the main principle for which the miners struck work, proves how potent is the driving force at the back of the leaders of Syndicalism. Mr D. A. Thomas, the leader of the South Wales coalowners, wrote as follows on March 2, 1912:-

"The proposals of the Government cannot fail to be regarded as of the most far-reaching, not to say revolutionary character. They concede absolutely the guaranteed individual minimum wage to underground workmen. If these Government proposals are to be enforced, as has been suggested,

by legal enactment upon any dissentients, it means that the Government are compelling the South Wales coalowners to agree to a breach of an agreement solemnly entered into within the last two years by the representatives of the workmen and themselves. That agreement, made in March 1910, for a period of five years, was recommended by the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, ratified by ballot by a three-fourths majority of the colliery workmen in South Wales, and afterwards signed by every one of the accredited representatives of the workmen upon the Conciliation Board.

"To pass an Act of Parliament forcing the South Wales coalowners to set aside this agreement goes to the root of collective bargaining, which is really the basis of Trade Unionism. The moral effect upon the community of such Government action can hardly fail to be weakening."

Nationalisation, then, is the keynote of present-day progressive policy, and by this term is meant, not that individuals should be endowed with new opportunities to win advancement and prosperity for themselves, but that the State, by stirring up one class to war against another, should ultimately annex all private property without in any way compensating those who are dispossessed by the process. Nationalisation, no doubt, must proceed by "easy stages," but already a start has been made with attacks on licensed property and land.

The principles underlying the programme of the Social Democratic Federation, the Independent Labour Party, and advanced Radicals, are substantially the same. They may possibly vary in degree but not in kind.

The main appeal of progressive propagandists is to disregard the rights of private property and personal freedom. With what objects were the following observations made by Mr Lloyd George, except to justify the acquisition by one class of the property of another? Speaking at Limehouse on Friday, 30th July 1909, he said: "The landlords are receiving millions a-year by way of royalties. What for? They never deposited the coal there; it was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales. Who laid the foundations of the mountains? Was it the landlords? And yet they by some divine right demand, for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks, eight millions a-year. When the Prime Minister and I knock at the door of these great landlords and say to them, 'Here, you know these poor fellows have been digging up royalties at the risk of their lives: some of them are old, they have survived the perils of the trade, they are broken, they can earn no more. Will you give something towards keeping them out of the workhouse?? They scowl at you; and we say, 'Only a halfpenny just a copper.' They say, 'You

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