offices were opened, and where the unemployed army was mobilised. The applicants were divided into companies each about 900 strong; each company was subdivided into four lieutenancies, containing 224 men and a lieutenant; each lieutenancy into four brigades, consisting of fifty-five men and a brigadier; while each brigade was divided into five squads. The squad, consisting of ten men and an officer, was thus the unit of the organisation. The companies were under the command of cadets appointed, like the lieutenant, by the Director, but the brigadiers and chiefs of squads were elected by the men. A regular schedule of pay was drawn up for officers and men. The cadets received five francs a day, the lieutenants four, brigadiers three, and the foremen (or escouadiers) two and a half francs a day of work, one and a half francs for a no-work day. The men themselves were paid at the rate of two francs for a working day, and one franc for a non-working day.

The non-working days—as will readily be imagined-soon began vastly to outnumber the working days; by the 15th of March the scheme was costing 20,000 francs a day, and on the 16th it was deemed advisable still further to reduce the non-workers' pay. Émile Thomas seems to have done his part of the work with considerable success; but although he could organise the applicants into companies and squads, and could thereby somewhat diminish the chances of fraud and disorder, neither he nor anyone else could provide them with work. But the stream of applicants showed, not unnaturally, no sign of dwindling. By the 21st of March 30,000 men had been enrolled; by the middle of April there were over 60,000; and before the end of May 115,000. Someone in derision proposed that they should be employed to bottle off the Seine. But gradually it seems to have begun to dawn upon the thrifty citizens of France that there was no special reason why they should be taxed in order to provide doles for the workless artisans of Paris. Moreover, industry was becoming seriously dislocated. The ranks of the unemployed' were swollen by deserters from the factories actually at work. Even a franc a day in the form of a gratuity proved attractive to some who were previously in regular employment. A prolongation of the fantastic experiment threatened France with industrial chaos if not with economic ruin. Moreover, the back of the Government was stiffened by the result of the elections which took place in May.

On the 23rd of that month the Director was suddenly ordered to substitute task for day work, to draft some of the applicants into the Provinces, and summarily to dismiss all unmarried men under twentyfive years of age who declined to enlist in the army, and all those who refused to work at their own trade under private employers. Thomas declined to be responsible for the results of this sudden change of front. He was consequently superseded and deported to Bordeaux, and on the 21st of June a proclamation in the above sense was issued. The

workmen loudly protested against the Decree, but their protests were unheeded, and on the 23rd a terrible insurrection broke out in the streets of Paris. The city was declared to be in a state of siege; General Cavaignac was appointed Dictator, and after three days of hard fighting the insurrection was at last stamped out in blood. Ten thousand insurgents were killed, 12,000 were taken prisoners. It was a ghastly lesson, but by learning it Paris was saved from a Socialist revolution. In destroying Socialism, however, the Republic of '48 had destroyed itself. Before the end of the year Prince Louis Napoleon was elected by an overwhelming majority to the Presidency of the Republic; four years later he transformed the Presidency into an hereditary Empire.

Can it be seriously contended that the story of the Ateliers Nationaux, thus briefly summarised, has no moral for the student of contemporary politics in England? The party at present in office contains, like the French Republicans of '48, two distinct elements: the political Liberals, apostolical successors of the Manchester School; and the Social Democrats, who regard with undisguised impatience the outworn formulas of doctrinaire Liberalism and look forward to the speedy realisation of a Social millennium. In the intermediate stage before we reach that millennium, the doctrine of the droit au travail is apparently destined to play a conspicuous part. The lessons taught to the Parisian artisan by Louis Blanc have been taken to heart by the out-of-work labourers of England and their more extreme representatives in the House of Commons. The consequences of his teaching are conveniently ignored. It is easy to affirm that the conditions under which the experiment of the Ateliers Nationaux was tried vitiate any argument which can be drawn from it. Nobody suggests that the circumstances of '48 are likely to repeat themselves in the England of 1908. But it is none the less important to insist that the Parisian experiment failed primarily, not by reason of the circumstances, but because it was based upon a principle or pretension which is radically and fundamentally false. The State may, of course, at its discretion, bestow upon its citizens any legal rights it can invent. But no citizen can demand employment from the State on the basis of a natural right' to work. To admit, still more to proclaim, such a 'right' can lead only to political confusion and economic disaster.

People who talk loudly about the duty of the State to provide work for the unemployed should be invited, in the first place, to form some definite conception of what the State is, and, in the second, to realise the sole conditions upon which labour can be employed. I am aware that the science of Political Economy is entirely out of fashion, and that its laws' have been consigned to a planetary exile. I have no apprehension that the exile will be permanent; and the more it is prolonged the more signal, I am convinced, will be the ultimate revenge of the dismal science.' John Stuart Mill in particular is

regarded as an economic fossil. But it is-in one sense-as true to-day as it was sixty years ago that 'industry is limited by capital,' or, in other words, that you cannot set labour in motion without recourse to the proceeds of past labour and abstinence. States and municipalities as a rule possess no capital of their own; if they want capital, it must be drawn from the pockets of the taxpayer or the ratepayer. But every penny which the Public Authority takes out of the citizen's pocket in the shape of taxes or rates diminishes pro rata his power to set labour in motion; and, things being as they are, there is at least a strong presumption that the capital will be withdrawn from 'productive,' and will, in the hands of the Public Authority, be devoted to 'unproductive,' expenditure.

You cannot (as Mr. Harold Cox put it in the Debate on the Address)" spend money for the benefit of the unemployed without throwing other people out of employment. One sovereign will not pay for two sets of wages. Unless

you have work for the unemployed which the nation really wants done, it is a national waste to start it. But the Labour party asks, not that work may be done, but that an excuse may be found for paying wages. The Socialist

right to work means the right of one man to take another man's job.

The argument is unanswerable; but Mr. Harold Cox is an undiluted individualist, and as such is only too likely to share the fate of the pelican in the wilderness. Even Socialists however may be induced to listen to a warning which comes from so ardent a sympathiser as Mr. J. A. Hobson. Writing in the Manchester Guardian on the 13th of March, Mr. Hobson said:

The notion prevalent in certain Socialist quarters that any unemployed worker should be at liberty to call upon his municipality to find him work in his own trade at the union rate of wages cannot, of course, be seriously entertained. Such a proposal, were it otherwise feasible, would soon empty the factories and workshops, workers becoming unemployed in order to qualify for easier and securer jobs under the municipality. This would be disastrous not merely to the public purse and the private character, but to Socialism itself, for it would signify a great socialistic experiment with the least efficient material, drawn from the weakest and least organised trades, and the failure would be signal and complete.

Coming from such a quarter such an argument cannot be lightly set aside. Most sober and detached thinkers will indeed regard it as no less unanswerable than that of Mr. Cox.

It may be objected that I have been quick to expose the fallacies and dangers involved in a particular remedy for the disease of unemployment, but slow to suggest an alternative method of treatment. But the discussion of the general question is not within the scope of this article. I am concerned with only one aspect of it. We are confronted to-day by a clear and specific demand for the recognition of the doctrine of droit au travail. Political memories are

"House of Commons, January 30, 1908.

notoriously short, and my object has been, therefore, to recall the events of the February Revolution in Paris, and to expose the disastrous consequences which attended even a temporary recognition of that doctrine. The recent recrudescence of the problem of unemployment is, I believe, due primarily, if not exclusively, to three or four factors which in one form or another will be found to have been present whenever the problem has reached an acute stage: large Government expenditure of an unproductive character, a relaxation in the rigour of Poor Law administration, temporary industrial dislocation, and the multiplication of philanthropic agencies. But to extravagance in national finance must be added still more serious extravagance in local finance. If the growth of national expenditure is serious, that of municipal expenditure is alarming. Of late some check has been imposed upon ambitious local administrators; but there is only too much reason to fear that, with easier monetary conditions, municipal borrowings on a large scale will recommence. Closely connected with local extravagance is the factor of lax Poor Law administration, the significance of which can be missed by no serious student of the social problems of to-day. If the examples set at Poplar and elsewhere were to be at all generally followed, we should be face to face with a situation to which there has been no parallel in this country since 1834. A more delicate point remains to be touched. It is an ungracious task to cast a stone at those who are working with unselfish devotion in the sacred cause of charity, but it is difficult to resist the conviction-a conviction obviously shared by Mr. John Burns-that the multiplication of philanthropic agencies is a phenomenon to be closely watched in the interests of social hygiene. Some such agencies are above reproach; but discretion is not always proportionate to zeal, and it is beyond question that some charitable institutions unfortunately tend to exaggerate and intensify the evils which they are designed to mitigate. There is at least a substratum of truth in old Fuller's caustic criticism on the monasteries: These abbeys did but maintain the poor which they made.'

The doctrines on which, in this paper, I have endeavoured to lay stress, are, I am conscious, terribly old-fashioned, and to many whom I should be anxious to conciliate they may seem unnecessarily hard and unsympathetic. But it is sometimes necessary to insist on stern truths. In a problem which like that of unemployment' makes an appeal so direct and so piteous to the best feelings of humanity, the temptation to the economic short cut appears, at times, irresistible. But those who have had the most intimate practical experience in dealing with this and kindred problems are least inclined to yield to the temptation, and most persistently determined to trudge steadily along the dull and uninviting high road of economic orthodoxy.

J. A. R. MARRIOTT.

OLYMPIC GAMES

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE AND WHAT REMAINS TO Be done

PEOPLE have been saying to me for years' After all, your prophecies are coming true!' Developments have not been quite on the lines I framed, nor as one great organisation. In this Review of September 1895 I wrote: 'Lord Salisbury, while approving of some parts of the scheme, thinks they are much more likely to be carried out as separate entities than in a concentrated and as a perfect whole, which is my object.' I do not, however, despair, for some day the man will come along who will weld into homogeneous unity all those ideas which I have advocated under the term Pan-Britannicism, some of which are already in active existence and all of which could be coalesced into a great Racial Festival. Pan-Britannicism is what? It is the propagation of Federation on clanship lines, outside of political and commercial interest. It is the propagation of Federation on those loose but effectual principles which kept Greek kinship ardent and alive for hundreds of years though there was no formal bond of alliance. Upon this unwritten but common understanding the enemy who picked a quarrel with one Greek city or one Greek colony had to reckon with all the Greek communities scattered along the Mediterranean sea board. Like one man they sprang to arms, and the cause was sacred. The Greek Olympic Games were the outward symbol of this racial loyalty and cohesion. With the full sympathy of that farsighted man, James Knowles, I advocated in this Review athletic contests, intellectual contests, and a universal anniversary day for the Empire, all of which have come to pass; and there were other things advocated which have not been accomplished, but which are on their way. This is an electric age, and another decade or fifteen years will either see the other things accomplished, or the British Empire disunified.

I include under the Pan-Britannic Movement the United States of America, for it is the greatest of all the Colonies sprung from the Isles of the West. Some of my readers may smile, but I shall not argue the point, for facts all point to the truth that the American of the United States becomes more English than he was born; and