force and elaborate sociological theories, they succeeded cleverly, and even cunningly, in expressing the social and industrial discontent and wrongs of the manual wage-earner in all sorts of programmes of a more or less socialistic character. They did this by a deft and energetic manipulation and increasing control of the 'machine.' They have succeeded too well. They have unquestionably captured the machine, but they have failed to bring along with them the rank and file of the workers. Nor could it be otherwise. Three plumbers may collaborate in any locality to form a branch of the Plumbers' Union, and may co-operate with the utmost loyalty to improve their status and increase their wages—as plumbers. One of the plumbers, however, is a Roman Catholic, another is a dissenting Protestant, the third is an Agnostic. No two of these three will agree on the subject of religious education in the public elementary schools. Or, again, one comes from Belfast, the second from Cork, and the third from Manchester. It is scarcely likely that they will agree on Home Rule. Or, in the third hypothetical case, one has been a sailor and knocked about the world, and has realized with Kipling that 'there ' ain't no buses running from the Bank to Mandalay,' another has never been far beyond the reach of the parish pump, the third is a revolutionary syndicalist and dreams dreams of an International Communist Republic. They will hardly come to a common understanding on the subject of Imperial Federation. And so we may go over the whole gamut of political as distinguished from industrial questions, and realize that industrial and political organizations are not, and cannot be, co-ordinated. It is no reply to this objection that the political questions which divided parties before the war are effete or do not interest the 'downtrodden wage-earner.' Other political problems will arise, demanding a solution, utterly unrelated to industrial organization or aims. Again, leadership is a factor which none can afford to ignore. In leadership the Labour Party is bankrupt before it opens the campaign. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald is impossible. His astuteness and industry are beyond question, but he lacks the flair for properly estimating great issues. He is the product of that narrow parochialism which characterizes a certain type of his countrymen, and his quaintly-mingled, unconscious hypocrisy and dogged persistency on a fatal course have earned for him an unpopularity which on other counts he scarcely deserves. When all is said and done, he is of considerably higher intellectual stature than the average Labour leader. Mr. Arthur Henderson has suffered the fate of HumptyDumpty. The country for a time mistook for statesmanship the mere average competence of a very ordinary trade union official. Mr. Henderson is not only not an asset to the Labour Party, he has become a weight round its neck. The Labour ministers may be discounted in these estimates as they are either rapidly becoming back numbers' or their ministerial positions will deprive them of the popular power essential to an Opposition chief. Mr. J. H. Thomas is mentally agile and readily verbose, but nine-tenths of his influence springs from the fact that he is the General Secretary of one of the most considerable unions. Mr. Robert Smillie, the President of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, who ought to be the most powerful Labour leader in the country, is notorious in Labour circles as being the most impossible and unfortunate of parliamentary candidates. His pacifism is well-known, and nobody thinks of him as leading a victorious party. Not to extend the list further, let me say that whatever else the Labour movement has produced, it has not produced a single personality that could for an instant command a national following. Unity of command under a chief of genius has been found essential for the Allied armies on the western front. Unity of command under a chief of acknowledged superiority will be found no less essential for any political party in its electoral battles. As an opponent of Mr. Henderson's party, I do not contemplate, therefore, with any anxiety the approaching general election. The parties which on the whole represent the essential administrative capacity to conduct the affairs of the nation and the empire must, in the first place, be democratic both in their opinions and in their sympathies, that is to say, they must have a real trust in the people as a whole. All the old class barriers and safeguards for preserving political power as a monopoly of a caste, or for maintaining the jobs that are worth having as the privilege of a class, will be as useless in the coming period as a feudal castle against modern artillery. The second essential factor is that we should embark loyally on a programme of sane and carefully thought-out reconstruction VOL. 228. NO. 466. 3 A in the interests of the nation, irrespective of sectional interests. Briefly, there is only one power that in the long run can meet and overthrow the sectional demands of revolutionary syndicalism, and that is democracy, which has been described as ' government of all the people for all the people by all the people.' Thirdly, there must be a sanction for all governance. That is too frequently forgotten. We have long lost the sanction of a quasi-divine royalty. Gone, too, is the sanction of a great governing aristocracy. Nor have we any longer the sanction of an orthodox religious faith to which all practically yield a ready obedience. Where, then, shall that sanction be found if not in the same splendid fidelity to Motherland which is the supreme inspiration of modern France? Against the creeds of internationalism, cosmopolitanism, revolutionism, can alone be successfully raised the standards of nationality and empire. The lack of cohesion, the absence of a common principle, the striking divisions of opinion on some of the most vital matters referred to in the foregoing pages, was strikingly exemplified at the recent Trade Union Congress at Derby. Far more perilous however, from the point of view of political Labour, than these weaknesses was the extraordinary apathy of the rank and file of the delegates. By their votes, in the course of an hour they had abolished the House of Lords, nationalized the canals and internal waterways of the kingdom, socialized the mines, and declared in favour of the socialization of the milk supply of the country. Practically every one of these gigantic revolutionary measures was adopted without debate, and without any discussion as to ways and means. Resolutions were no sooner formally proposed than from all parts of the assembly resounded cries of Vote! Vote!' The delegates were anxious to 'get on with the business,' even though they apparently did not understand the full significance of the affairs to be discussed. It would have been tragic had it not been comic. What really aroused these Labour statesmen were the disputes between competitive and rival trade unions, or such questions as the relationship between the Congress and the General Federation of Trade Unions. VICTOR FISHER. COMMERCE AND EMPIRE I. Essays in Politics. By ANDREW MACPHAIL. Longmans, Green. 1909. 2. Nationality and Government. By ALFRED E. ZIMMERN. Chatto & Windus. 1918. 3. Commerce and the Empire. By EDWARD PULSFORD. P. S. King. 1917. 4. British Colonial Policy. By C. H. CURREY. Oxford University Press. 1916. 5. The Disclosures from Germany. from Germany. New York: American Association for International Conciliation. 1918. 6. Foreign Countries (Preference to Colonies). House of Commons Paper 296 of 1909. 7. Report of Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries. 1918. THAT HAT the present war may result in the establishment of some new international concord is the hope of most people; but those who take the lead in giving expression to this hope have hitherto confined themselves to formulating more or less elaborate projects for a League of Nations. These projects all involve the creation of international machinery for settling national disputes. That is certainly an ideal to be desired, even though the obstacles in the way of its attainment seem almost insuperable. But what is even more to be desired than the creation of machinery to settle disputes is the removal of conditions which tend to provoke disputes. Yet this aspect of the problem seems to have been almost entirely ignored by the leading advocates of the League of Nations. They are so intent upon designing a perfect machine for settling international quarrels that they rarely pause to ask whether it is not possible to diminish the range of subjects over which nations are apt to quarrel, and to press their quarrel even to the point of war in defiance of any international tribunal. Among the ultimate causes which led up to the present war perhaps the most dominant of all was the German conception that nationality and commerce go hand in hand, Pursuing this conception the German State assisted German citizens in their trade with the citizens of other nations in the hope of strengthening itself against the rest of the world. If the trade was profitable the riches accruing to German subjects helped to pay for more ships and guns with which to wage war when the time was ripe. Reciprocally it was calculated that a successful war, carefully planned in advance and launched at the right moment, could be used to secure increased trading facilities for German subjects, or increased control of raw materials for German industries. The evidence that this was, and is, the German attitude is overwhelming. It was indeed assumed by responsible German writers that as a matter of course commercial and national interests were parts of one whole. Thus, Herr von Jagow, in the course of the reply which he wrote to the embarrassing Lichnowsky memorandum, incidentally remarks: 'But to-day economic 'interests are no longer to be separated from political ⚫ interests.'* In pursuance of this policy of combining national and commercial interests the German nation-State thought itself entitled to plunder its neighbours for its own economic or commercial ends. Germany's policy of peaceful penetration in the economic sphere was but the forerunner of the war of aggression which she launched in 1914. This policy of the German Government and of the German people has met with universal condemnation in England and throughout the British Empire. It has been equally condemned in France and Italy. In both these countries before the war Germany's peaceful penetration was a far more important factor in the economic life of the country than it was in Great Britain. Especially in Italy was German financial and industrial influence becoming a matter of grave importance. Everywhere this influence was being used, not merely to secure profit for German private citizens who were adventuring their capital or using their talents in a foreign country, but also to promote the political interests of the German Empire. That the rest of the world is entitled to protect itself against this German policy no one questions, except perhaps the *See Disclosures from Germany,' p. 354. |