THE NEW AGE, August 8, 1907, I-

! Page 233. THE

SOCIALISM I b AND THE

1 ARMY,

R. C. K.

ENSOR.

AN INDEPENDENT SOCIALIST REVIEW

OF POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND ART

Edited by

A R. GRACE and HOLBROOK JACKSON

DELICIOUS

COFFEE

FOR BREAKFAST& AFTER DINNER

In making, use less quantity, it being so much stronger than

ordinary COFFEE.

No. 674 (New Series. Vol. I. No. 15.] THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 1907. ----- -

THE OUTLOOK. The Cromer Vote.

We are exceedingly sorry that the Labour Party thought it necessary to oppose the vote to Lord Cromer. Mr. Grayson, it is true, made an excellent speech, the tone of which contrasted most favourably with the ill-humoured snarlings of Mr. William Red- mond. The new member for Colne Valley, we are glad to see, made no attempt to belittle Lord Cromer’s work or to pick small holes in his record. He con- fined himself to asking whether it was reasonable to give £50,000 to a comparatively well-off public official, while old-age pensions were denied to the starving veterans of industry, on the plea that we could not afford them. As a debating point, this is extremely effective, and indeed unanswerable ; but we doubt if Mr. Grayson really supposes that, if Lord Cromer’s grant were refused, a single penny of the money saved would go to any purpose for which we Socialists care. It is not really want of money that delays old-age pen- sions, but want of will and dread of powerful vested in- terests. It would be very easy to turn Mr. Grayson’s argument round the other way, and ask whether it is reasonable to refuse £50,000 to a man who had ren- dered great services to the Empire, while we are pay- ing about £600,000,000 a year to people who have done nothing for the -Empire except live on it. It will not do for Socialists to be stingy in their treatment of public servants. Doubtless a general redistribution of wealth would lead to less disparity between the in- comes of those at the top and those at the bottom of the service. But, while our present system lasts, it is most important that the man who gives his services to the nation instead of seeking his fortune in commerce or speculation should receive something like the market price of his abilities. Compared with those of whom Mr. Grayson spoke, Lord Cromer may be considered a rich man, but, compared with what he might have been had he chosen to devote his energies to the pursuit of riches, he is decidedly a poor one. It is essential that our public servants, especially those intrusted with such tasks as the government of Egypt, should he free from all temptation to allow themselves to be made the tools of wealthy speculators. Against such temptations Lord Cromer has honourably set his face. It is not the least of his claims to our gratitude that he has restored the economic prosperity of Egypt by hard and honest work, and has refused to allow her to be ex- ploited by that cosmopolitan finance which has worked SO much mischief in other parts of the Empire. Never- theless, Mr. Grayson’s appeal should be remembered. Lord Cromer has given much to the Empire, but no man can give more than his life. Thousands of poor men have given their lives for us in Egypt and else- where. What have we done for them or for their children ?

The Ethics of Intervention. The standing problem of international ethics-the

question of what degree of misgovernment, disorder or incapacity justifies other Powers in interfering in the internal affairs of a nation-has been before US in many

forms this week. In the Far East, Japan is busily engaged in turning Korea into a Japanese Egypt. The unfortunate Emperor has been deposed, and who- ever is chosen as his successor will be, WC may be sure, to the Japanese, much what the Khedive has been to Lord Cromer. In Mo- rocco, a massacre of Europeans has forced France to take vigorous action, action which may probably end in making Morocco another Algiers. Meanwhile, our own House of Commons, in discussing the Foreign Office vote, was mainly concerned with the ill-treatment of natives in the Congo Free State, and the disorders of Macedonia under Turkish rule, in regard to both of which the Government was called upon to take vigorous action. Now it is clear that we Socialists arc forbid- den by our professions of internationalism to be non- interventionists. We can no more admit the claim of a nation to set up a ring fence and deny the right of anyone to interfere with what goes on inside it than we can admit the claim of an individual to do the same. The conscience of the civilised world has a clear right to coerce King Leopold into introducing at least a cer- tain minimum of humanity into the administration of the Congo, nor can anyone expect the French Repub- lic to allow Frenchmen to be massacred and the tri- colour to be insulted without taking measures of self- defence. Even in the case of Korea, there is much to be said for the view that the people are likely to prosper

more under Japanese protection than under their own feeble rulers. But, since there is a permanent temptation for big Powers to seek excuses of the wolf- and-lamb order for bullying small ones, it is most desirable that if this principle is to be admitted it should be applied with thorough impartiality. How can Europe coerce King Leopold or Abdul Hamid or the Sultan of Morocco with a clear conscience,. if it leaves the far darker and more formidable iniquities of the Tzar unpunished? Yet Sir Edward Grey, who speaks so sternly of Belgian and Turkish atrocities, sees no shame in allying his country with a Government stained with crimes compared with which the worst offences charged against these peoples are light. We must confess to great astonishment and no little indignation at the fact that no member of the Labour Party took the occasion of the Foreign Office vote to protest against the infamy and dishonour involved in the “ agreement ” on which Sir Edward cynically congra- tulated himself from his place in the House. Cer- tainly, if any such agreement has been entered into, our hands are hardly clean enough for us to set about reforming Macedonia or the Congo without an appear- ance of scandalous hypocrisy.

Belfast under Martial Law. Mr. Birrell is but following the precedent set by Mr.

Asquith at Featherstone and his Tory successor at Bethesda in using. the forces of the Crown to compel

226 THE NEW AGE. AUGUST 8, 1907

the Belfast strikers to submit to their masters. Of course, this is not the way it is put ; there is the usual talk about the necessity of keeping order and the like. But it is quite clear that the troops with whom the Ulster capital is flooded are there not as the impartial guardians of the peace, but as the protectors of the capitalists and their blackleg lackeys. The police could not be thoroughly trusted to do this dirty work, having some of the feelings of Irishmen and democrats underneath their uniforms. So their places are being taken by soldiers who are believed to be prepared to do the work of “Pinkerton” retainers more obedi- ently. What will be the end of this policy it is difficult to foresee. The Government probably hopes to goad the men into acts of violence, which may afford an excuse for crushing them in their master’s interests= The men of Belfast are not of the kind who are likely tamely to submit to being treated as the inhabitants of a conquered city to be ruled by martial law, and it is quite possible that blood may flow before the soldiers leave the town. In this case, we can only warn Mr. Birrell that the country will hold him personally re- sponsible for every drop of blood shed by the forces of the Crown in defence of his friends the shipowners’ in- terests. Mr. Birrell has had full warning ; he has been told in the House by men of views as diverse as Mr. Curran and Mr. Sloane that his action is endangering the lives of his fellow-citizens. He refuses either ex- planation or opportunity for discussion. Should the worst happen, there can be no question as to his direct responsibility.

The Abolition of the House of Commons.

It is doubtful whether the present Ministers will suc- ceed in either mending or ending the House of Lords. The abolition of the House of Commons is an easier task, and it must be admitted that the Government has carried it out pretty effectively. Belfast is the latest addition to tabooed subjects. Mr. Curran was not al- lowed to move the adjournment of the House, and Mr. Birrell "deprecated discussion” an the grievances either of the strikers or of the police. So that we may, now take it that industrial disputes, like miscarriages of justice, the distribution of honours, foreign policy, and the government of our great dependencies and pro- tectorates are unfit subjects for the consideration of the popular branch of the legislature. At the same time, Supply, the ancient constitutional opportunity for ventilating grievances and criticising Ministers, has almost ceased to exist. for discussing the highly

NO opportunity has been given controversial questions raised

by Mr. Bums’s administration of the Local Govern- ment Board, and Mr. Crooks was not allowed a chance of raising the question of the discharges from Woolwich.

And all this is done with the hearty concurrence of the "damned compact Liberal majority,” that same compact majority which the other day cynically ate its election pledges, and voted solid for the taxes on sugar and tea. Doubtless it is very convenient for the Pre- mier to have a dutiful phalanx of followers kept in line by a secret fund, who can be trusted to vote black or white as he bids them, and to drown the voices of those who wish to do the will of their constituents instead of the will of the party caucus. But in such circum- stances it is not easy to see what useful purpose a House of Commons serves. why not give Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman a dictatorship for life? With a little judicious distribution of peerages and election expenses the thing might be managed,

The Navy and its Critics.

Under present conditions, we must be thankful for small mercies, and we may congratulate ourselves that the state of the Navy was pretty thoroughly discussed this week. On the whole, we think the Ministers made out a fair case alike against those who accused them of reducing the fighting effectiveness of the Navy and against those who attacked them for not doing so. It would seem that the panic which some of the Tory papers and the dissentient minority of the Navy League have been attempting to create has little justification,

The Government is keeping the Navy up to the standard required by our national safety. As to the strategic policy of the Admiralty, which is really the policy

not of the Ministers but of Sir John Fisher, there are of course wide differences of opinion among experts. There are some who think the plan of putting all our money on huge "Dreadnoughts" and the like a mis- taken one, and believe that the multiplication of smaller craft would serve our purposes better. But for the accusation of “starving” the Navy, there seems very little foundation in fact. As to the other class of critics, represented by Sir Randall Cremer, who blame the Government for not cutting down the sea forces of the nation, they are weak alike in numbers and in argument.

An invincible Navy is an absolute necessity to us, especially while our Army is so negligible a quan- tity. The nation will never tolerate any ‘party that shows symptoms of a desire to tamper with our supremacy

at sea, a supremacy upon which not only our Empire but the very bread we eat depends. We are glad to see that the Labour Party displayed no such desire. Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Summerbell intervened in the debate, but only to insist upon the need of better conditions for the workers employed by the Admiralty. Neither hinted at a reduction of the fleet ; indeed, it may safely be said that any serious reduction would endanger both their seats even more than it would endanger the Empire. It is one of the advantages of having several Labour members returned for dockyard towns that they not only strengthen the party, but tend to keep it right upon the questions concerning which it has a traditional tendency to go wrong.

A Lesson to Tories. The result of the by-election at North-West Staffordshire

is a serious blow to the hopes of the Opposition. No doubt Mr. Stanley’s victory was in part a personal one. He was a strong candidate, had the powerful Miners’ Union at his back, and, though a “Liberal” Labour candidate, probably profited by the sensational triumphs of independent Labour elsewhere; Neverthe- less the check to the Conservatives is a serious one, and their failure, despite all the blunders of the Govern- ment, to recover the ground they lost last year must surely make the wiser members of the party doubt the wisdom of its present tactics. Those tactics are in direct opposition to those pursued in the past by the ablest leaders of Toryism, from Bolingbroke onwards. Disraeli, after the defeat of 1868, Churchill after that of 1880, Chamberlain after that of 1892, sought to restore the fortunes of their party by a strenuous appeal to the democracy, a forcible criticism of the Liberals for their inaction and mismanagement, and, above all, a vigorous advocacy of social reform. Had Disraeli or Churchill been leading the Opposition dur- ing the last eighteen months, had the Chamberlain of the “Social Programme” vigour,

of 1895 been in his full they would undoubtedly have adopted this

policy, for which surely no Government ever gave more opportunities, and we believe that they would by this time have established themselves in a strong position with the electors. But those who have now the con- trol of the party have thought it an easier and safer way to attempt to get up a scare on the subject of "Socialism.” The London municipal elections, per- haps, helped to confirm them in their delusion that this was a strong appeal to make. But London is not England, and the working men of the industrial North are not in the least frightened. They want Socialism, and the only effect of the attempt of the Conservative Press to tar the Liberals with the Socialist brush, is to make them vote Liberal under the very erroneous im- pression that the charge is true. Of course it is not true, as the electors who are duped by it will find to their cost. But the Tories have only themselves to blame for the result, since they insist upon giving their opponents such utterly undeserved testimonials.

The Advance of Japan.

Those who expected that Japan would require a few years’ rest and recuperation after the strain of the Russian

war, have found themselves much mistaken. Already

AUGUST 8, 1907 THE NEW AGE. 227

ready her activities are expanding formidably in more than one direction. She is making secure her hold on Korea, destroying such last fragments of independence as. the war left. For this none but the Pharisaical will blame her. One cannot help feeling a little sorry for the deposed Emperor, whose declaration of neu- trality, while the Russian and Japanese armies were. marching and fighting up and down his country, was the solitary touch of humour which enlivened the tra- gedy of the war. But, whatever sympathy one may feel for the Koreans, it must be admitted that Japan has fairly earned the right to regard Korea as her own. Her sword delivered it from the sovereignty of China, her sword saved it from becoming a Russian province, her, sword will now guard it, while she develops its re- sources. How she will develop them is another question;

along with many better things, Japan has learned from the West the industrial system in its capitalist. form, and she practises it with all her native energy and all her native ruthlessness. We may expect some vigorous exploitation of the unfortunate Koreans in the immediate future. But the trouble in Korea becomes insignificant when compared with the issue, which has arisen lately between Japan and the United States, and which seemed for a moment likely to lead to a breach of the world’s peace. It is true that all immediate dan- ger of such a disaster seems to have blown over, but one cannot shut one’s eyes to the fact that this is the sort of dispute which almost inevitably recurs, because both parties are from their own point of view, perfectly right. On the other hand, it is not to be expected that the Japanese, immediate@ after inflicting a crushing de- feat on a great European Power, will consent to be treated in America as if they were members of an in- ferior race ; on the other, it is quite natural that the Cali- fornians should object to being swamped by yellow men with an alien type of civilisation and a lower- standard of life. What will be the ultimate solution it is diffi- cult to say. But, if it should ever be brought to the test of war, we fancy that the United States will have to put her house in order pretty quickly, if she is to hold her own. At present her rulers are disposed to trust to bumptious rhetoric backed by plenty of dollars-a poor equipment with which to confront the victors of Mukden.

The Industrial Outlook. THE International Housing Congress is for the first time holding its deliberations in this country, and the net outcome of its deliberations will, we believe, be to strengthen the hands of thorough-going Socialists. To go in for Housing Reform in a half-hearted manner is merely to -add value to landed property, to create un- earned increment to present to landlords. It has ‘already been found abroad that town-planning without land purchase leads landowners to demand inflated prices. Landowners have not sufficient power of collective action to combine for town-planning themselves, but are quite ready to take advantage of the power and intelligence which collective action by public authorities places at their disposal, to put money in their pockets. It should be the business of every Socialist to defeat this object. It must not be forgotten that as yet we are only in the first stage of emancipation from private owner- ship. We buy our tramways and our public parks, our electric light and our milk depots by borrowing money upon which we pay interest, and which we must repay to the last cent. We are getting now, not public owner- ship, but public management and public control. These things are good, of course, and lead to public owner- ship by the repayments of capital, but they lead to it by a road which puts a heavy burden on the ratepayers and taxpayers of the present-time. We trust that the time is not far distant when we shall obtain powers of com- pulsory purchase in return for what will be avowedly not payment but compensation on a scale calculated to avoid Injustice to small holders. To buy land worth £20,000 a year from one man for its full capital value is not just, but folly. To pay that man an annuity of £20,000 a year would be comparatively rational on

the understanding that ownership was secured by the community at his death. But to pay that man an annuity of say, £1,000 a year as compensation for his disturbed life would be real justice, and to an appreciation

of that justice we must educate the community. It is the tribute to ownership we pay as rent and interest that clogs our development, and it is that tribute we must get rid of. No housing reform of any extent can be effective that does not recognise this. For instance, practically all Lambeth, Southwark, and St. Pancras, to name only three outstanding cases, require rebuild- ing to fit them for habitation by healthy men and women. How, except by Socialist legislation, which will com- pensate and not merely transfer capital, are you going to get the money to do it?

Everybody who is interested in education will read with attention the reports of the Second International Congress on School Hygiene opened by Lord Crewe on Monday. It would seem at first sight a roundabout method of improving the sanitary conditions of our schools to hold international congresses at intervals of three or four years ; but constitutional procedure is like the peregrine falcon-- it must perform all its aerial evolutions and strategic ritual even when the quarry is only a grasshopper. If, however, such congresses suc- ceed in advertising the fact that physical education is ten times more important than mental and moral educa- tion, the exclusive preoccupation of our educationists with the latter may be somewhat modified. On the whole, it is certain that we know a great deal more about physiology than we do about psychology. With such material as we have in the teaching staff of our elementary schools, it is nothing less than criminal to demand intellectual and moral qualities before the physi- cal qualities have been attended to. We wish that the clairvoyants would describe for ‘the world the hideous. cripplings and distortions that are inflicted on children’s minds by the present stupid procedure. People of any insight recognise plainly enough that in comparison with the harm done to the physique of the young, the harm done to what we may call their psychique is in- finitely greater. Our plea at present is, therefore, that we had better walk warily in the matter of intellectual and moral education, and turn our attention to things in which we are likely to be less like bulls in a chinashop shop. On the physical side, it is undeniable that the neglect of years has had a disastrous effect. Almost everything is still wrong in our elementary schools. It is true that the buildings have been immensely im- proved, but serious overcrowding still exists. The play- grounds are often little more than prison yards for exercise ; the desks at which the children sit are often as bad as a rack : the ventilation of a good many schools is no better than that of sweating dens ; and as for the physical exercises which figure on the time- tables and do duty at election times as dust for the eyes of the public, everybody acquainted with the actual working of elementary schools knows perfectly well that they are in most cases an unmitigated fraud. We heard only the other day of a large boys’ school at which on an average ten minutes a week only was de- voted to physical exercises; and such a school is by no means an exception. Medical inspection is un- doubtedly necessary, and a little elementary knowledge of hygiene might be demanded of teachers. But the serious obstacle to the physical regeneration of the young is the overcrowding of the time-table with worse than useless subjects of intellectual (save the mark) in- struction. If the prospect of a military invasion, such as Mr. Griffiths loves to dangle before our eyes for the year 1912, had the effect of sweeping the rubbish out of the schools and of substituting a genuine physical training, we could almost find it in our hearts to welcome the scare. Let us hope the present Congress will succeed in alarming somebody.

Unfortunately for the authority of the medical pro- fession, however, there appears to be as little unani- mity amongst them as amongst the psychologists. The transfer of the care of children from the wrangling pedagogues and brawling sectarians to wrangling physiologists and obsessed doctors would sometimes appear to be a jump from the frying-pan into the fire. At

228 AUGUST 8, 1907

the British Association on Monday we had the edifying spectacle of a free intellectual (if it was intellectual) fight over the claims of alcohol. Something like a bomb was exploded by Dr. Dixon, who announced that cirrhosis of the liver was not caused by alcohol, since Scotsmen were exempt from the disease, and most ex- emplary U.K.A. cats were liable to it. The whole dis- cussion is of value only as demonstrating what every- body knows already, that the ways of doctors are past finding out. Until, however, alcohol is in the hands of the State we see little practical issue of pious resolu- tions.

The Training Colleges. ONE would really think that the educational authorities of this country were of all people the most hysterical. Dealing with them is exactly like dealing with a nerve patient. "They can and they can’t, they will and they won’t ; they will be damned if they do, they’ll be damned if they don’t.” Ever since 1902 the whole system of education has been thoroughly morbid in its personnel and morale. Mr. Balfour, Sir William Anson, Mr. Birrell, and now Mr. McKenna, have all had a pretty bad time with the pedagogues, official and officious. There is no doubt in the minds of the few sane people who watch the whole dismal controversy that the Government is mak- ing the best of a trying situation. They are pestered to death with memorials and deputations from their Nonconformist supporters on the one hand ; and bom- barded at fashionable functions by bishops and clericals generally on the other. Their public and private life is made a nuisance ; and we are driven to admire the courage of Mr. McKenna who actually in the face of all this promises another Education Bill for next Session. The new regulations for the Training Colleges strike us we confess,. as eminently reasonable and fair. Everybody in the educational world, unless he is con- genitally incapable of recognising the facts, knows perfectly well that serious technical injustices have been done in the past by reason of the ineligibility of Non- conformist students to enter the Church training col- leges. Every year, about 5,000 young people win a "King’s Scholarship” entitling them to admission to a training college ; find that only about

but when they come to apply they 700 of the 5,000 residential places

are open to them unless they happen to belong to one or other of the religious denominations. This in itself is a disability comparable only to the disabilities put in former times upon Catholics and Jews. Of course, un- denominational students may go, if they please, to a day training college; but nobody who knows both in- stitutions would hesitate for -a moment to prefer the residential college if he could get in.

The contention that such colleges belong to the de- nomination is, of course, untenable for an instant. No doubt the Church found a good deal of money in the early days ; but from 1842 to 1864, and still more in recent years, the actual subscriptions to the colleges made by the Church have dwindled almost to nothing. The Church authorities never, we believe, took a con- sistent line on the subject of State grants. It was open to them, as to the Catholics, to refuse absolutely the acceptance of public money ; and their moral position

if not their financial position, would have been immensely strengthened. But the State and its money are like the importunate camel in the tent of the Arab. Having had its nose admitted, it is only a question of time how soon its whole body will be inside, and the original owner of the tent outside. From the moment the Church authorities accepted a single farthing of State money their independence was gone.

We confess that on many grounds we regret it, but there is no help for it now. It would have suited us far better that there should be side by side with State colleges not one or two denominational colleges, but dozens of different ones. It is as Professor Petrie observes, an absurd incongruity that England should have two hundred religions and only one system of elementary education. It is even more absurd that we

should have only one type of training college, since elementary education, after all, is made by elementary teachers, and given a variety of type in them, variety would have followed in our elementary schools.

However, the fault lies at the door of the denominations that were too stingy and too stupid to pay for

their privileges. The fact is they wanted privileges and they wanted to be paid for them ; and such an ordinary greed must encounter its Nemesis at last. The fierce discussions that have taken place ‘over Mr. McKenna’s new regulation leave us, therefore, quite unmoved; The evil was done a long time ago, and it is as well that the colleges should recognise it. AS for the assumption that Nonconformists really find it impossible to enter Church colleges, we do not grant it for a single moment. The Church colleges are much too anxious to get promising pupils to inquire too closely into the strict churchmanship of its students. And the students themselves are much too indifferent to denominational squabbles to make a case of con- science of their admission. As Dr. Macnamara knows very well (though in his letter to the “Times” he did not say so), a good proportion of the students in Church training colleges at this moment are no more Church- men than Dr. Clifford or Mr. Silvester Horne. Only a little while ago, while public controversy was raging with its usual ignorance, a private religious census was taken of the students in one of the Church colleges. Nearly half of the total number turned out to be Non- conformists of one sort or another ! So much for the tyranny of the Church ! And so much for the con- science of the non-churchmen !

Despite the outcries of the neurotic administrators of education, Mr. McKenna’s new regulations only add another touch to the process begun long ago ; and regularise and admit a state of affairs already in full swing.

Mr. Strachey; Society and the Individual.

IN the “National Review” for August, Mr. St. Loe Strachey has printed his presidential address to the British Constitution Association on “The Problems and Perils of Socialism.” It is not out” intention to answer here all the points raised by Mr. Strachey. Some of them have been considered ad nauseam in dozens of Socialist publications ; and others deserve a lengthier reply than we can here find room for. The point we shall confine ourselves to making is the dis- tinction so often missed in the discussion of Socialism between the claims of society and the claims of the individual.

Mr.-Strachey identifies liberty with individualism and State servitude with Socialism. His one serious com- plaint against Socialist proposals is that they may en- danger the individual. In the good, old-fashioned style of John Bull, he protests that the “air of Socialism is too close and heavy for a freeman to breathe“; what is needed is the free air of individualism. Now, the first thing to be said against such a position is that Mr. Strachey is discussing not sociology but meta- physics. the

Individualism as a logical pole, a concept of mind, is useful enough as an intellectual counter;

but in actual fact there is very little practical individual- ism in even the most individualistic of modem societies. Further, the individualism to which Socialism is op- posed is in no sense the individualism for whose fate Mr. Strachey trembles. On the contrary, it is simply a technical term descriptive of a mode of economic pro- duction. Individualism in the sense of personality and vivid individuality is one thing ; but individualism in the political and economic senses is a horse of a totally different colour.

Just as individualism is loosely used in a double sense, so is Socialism. The meaning uppermost in the minds of Socialists when they use the word is a form of economic production the antithesis of the existing form. Politically and economically, Socialists have no more to do with the problems of character and individuality in Mr. Strachey’s sense than, let us say, the advocate of

AUGUST 8, 1907

machine production as against manufacture. Of course, it happens that intelligent Socialists are inevitably con- cerned with such problems; but they are concerned with them as men and not merely as Socialists. Broadly speaking, Socialism proper is no more than a suggested alternative to the existing mode of production. Its main and essential feature is the proposal to transfer the ownership of the great means of production from the private person- to society at large ; and its main justification on economic grounds is its demonstration that such a transfer would immensely improve the character of production, as well as facilitate what all men desire-a more equitable distribution of wealth.

But the confusion does not end with the mere mis- taking of economic individualism for human individual- ity, and economic Socialism for human equality. What is at issue is the value of the respective claims of the individual and society. Everybody knows that the whole tone of British ethics, if not the very basis of ethics itself, has required the self-abnegation of the person. In England, particularly, such a doc- trine has been very heavily handicapped owing to the strong native strain of Ishmaelism. In spite of the unfavourable soil, however, it must be admitted that the categorical imperative of Kant has at last penetrated the minds, if not the acts, of our countrymen ; and Mr. Strachey would probably be one of the very first to affirm that, in comparison with Others the Self is nothing, and ought to be sacrificed. Mr. Sidgwick’s great axiom, for example, that “we ought always to prefer the greater good of another to the lesser good of ourselves" would certainly command the assent of the British Constitution Association ; and particularly when that “other” is the whole of society.

We may frankly confess that we claim to be better individuals than that. Mr. Sidgwick’s axiom we chal- lenge from beginning to end ; and, if need-be, we shall repudiate the whole basis of British ethics. But, be it observed, we do so not a whit more emphatically than the British Constitution Association. For finding that the moral axiom so belauded by the ethicists tends (to everybody’s surprise) to get itself adopted, the very ethicists themselves now turn and virtually advocate its exact contrary. Remember that we are now discussing Socialism and Individualism in their human meanings, and no longer in their economic meanings. What, we ask, was the logical and inevitable outcome of an ethical propaganda of self-suppression, self-sacrifice, and self-control for the sake of others? Was it not, in proportion as it became effective, necessarily a means to the very kind of Socialism now deplored by Mr. Strachey ? You cannot continue for generations the preaching of self-annihilation for the sake of the com- munity without at last inducing some sort of result: and the result has obviously been to lower the value of the individual exactly to the extent that the value of society has been raised.

majority is a majority, therefore it has the right to con- trol a minority. In truth,. there is no such right, and democracy, or government by the majority, is no more sound than aristocracy, or government by the minority. Whoever demands sacrifice as a right is a tyrant and a despot, whether he be an individual or a sovereign state. Let us have done with such shibboleths and in- tellectual shallows. Mr. Strachey probably desires much the same thing as ourselves, namely, a nation of first-rate individuals. The question for him, as well as for us, is whether a reorganisation of industry on a Socialist basis would not prove the means, and the only means, of bringing that end about.

Socialist Policy and the Revolution.

HOWEVER widely the writers on the question of a Socialist Party may differ with regard to that issue, they all seem to be agreed that Socialism must and will be brought about by peaceful political means alone. The English Socialist movement as a whole seems to adopt this theory, which is, in fact, rapidly assuming the character and proportions of a dogma. For. my own part, for reasons which I will endeavour to state, I disagree entirely with this idea and with the policy which is based upon it.

The basis of this belief in the realisation of Socialist aims by peaceful political methods is somewhat unsub- stantial, but it really arises from the fact that the latter part of the nineteenth century did undoubtedly witness a great change in the old attitude of the State towards industrial problems. The classical political economy has been thrust overboard by the pressure of actual facts ; Liberals and Tories have thrown principle to the winds and passed laws restricting the free play of capitalist industry ; there has been a great development of municipal activity, which has transferred many necessary services from private to commercial owner- ship. The broad truth of these statements cannot be disputed, and on this foundation has been built up the dogma that the revolution is to be by Act of Parlia- ment. Mr. Bland calls the barricade “a reduction to absurdity of the whole Socialist case,” and the average English Socialist, steeped in the constitutionalism of his Liberal or Tory days, applauds lustily.

On this question of ethics most Socialists take a very different view from that of Mr. Strachey. Mr. Strachey, together with all the belated Victorians, is a Socialist in the personal sense and an individualist in the economic sense. He wants to see vivid and powerful personalities at work in our industrial system, and sucking doves in our ethical and social system. We, on the contrary, are Socialists in the economic sense and individualists in the personal sense. Our desire and belief is that through economic Socialism we may arrive at conditions favourable to individuality. Hence we are doubly opposed to Mr. Strachey’s position

mics. We oppose his ethics and we oppose his econo- His ethical propaganda (we speak of the “Spectator"

Now, I conceive that the proper answer to this argu- ment is not to make light of Truck Acts and municipal trams, but to point out its fundamental fallacy, which, as I hold, lies in supposing that our ruling classes will tamely allow themselves to be municipalised out of their dominant position. As Kautsky has said : “This idyll is only valid if we take for granted that only one of the opposing forces, the proletariat, grows and gains in strength, while the other side, the bourgeoisie, remains stuck in the mud.” Most emphatically no !

Can we take this for granted? To do so would be to overlook

the whole trend of political and economic development.

Neave's is too Socialist to suit our taste ; his economic

propaganda is too individualist. We are Socialist where he is individualist and individualist where he is Socialist.

Finally, however, we deny the predominence of value, either of Society or of the Individual. Society has no more right to suppress the individual than the individual has to oppose society. In either case it is force against force, greed against greed. The funda- mental dogma of democracy as defined and accepted by Mr. Strachey in this very address is that because a

Easily assimilated by the most delicate. Con- tains all the essentials for flesh and bone-forming in

an exceptional degree --- Quickly and Easily

Prepared

When, at the last general election, the Labour Party emerged into active Parliamentary life, the angry out- cry of the capitalist Press was out of all proportion to the actual significance of the event. Since that time an active anti-Socialist campaign has been carried on by the usual methods of misrepresentation -and mis-statement,

with a goodly admixture of downright falsehood. Liberal and Tory leaders have gone out of their way to attack Socialism in general, and the Labour Party in particular. The L.C.C. elections, which, after all, were only an incident in the campaign, marked a new departure in English politics. Every interest which felt its position menaced, from ground landlords to railway companies, joined in the reactionary onslaught. Profuse expenditure, combined with a Press and poster campaign which descended to a level usually associated with the politics of Chicago and New York, procured the complete overthrow of a party not conspicuous for its friendliness towards Socialism. The triumph of reaction has been followed by a singularly mean attack upon Socialist Sunday Schools.

With regard ‘to foreign politics, the capitalist parties have leaned steadily to reaction. Liberal papers did not attempt to conceal their glee when our German com- rades lost seats at the Reichstag elections. The pre- sent Government intends to conclude, or perhaps has already concluded, an agreement with Nicholas the Doubly Damned and his gang of pogrom-organisers. High Tory clerical papers have loudly praised the anti- Labour policy of a Radical free-thinker like Clemen- ceau.

To sum up, there can be no doubt that, since the appearance of the Labour Party, reaction in this coun- try has been much more outspoken and determined. To Socialists, the anger and alarm of the possessing class seem rather absurd, for there is nothing very alarming about the Labour Party, with its program of having no program, but the very establishment of a party financed by the hated Trade Unions seems to the reaction a danger and a menace. The measure of their wrath now gives us a faint indication of what it will be when the revolutionary movement has captured Parlia- ment. What Engels wrote sixty years ago has been proved true by the recent course of English politics. “In proportion as the working man determines to alter the present state of things, the bourgeois becomes his avowed enemy.”

It may be urged against me that many middle-class people are throwing in their lot with the proletariat, and working courageously for Socialism. That is true, of course, but what sections of the middle-class respond most readily to revolutionary ideals? To quote Mr. Wells, who lays an extravagant amount of stress upon the opportunities for propaganda among middle-class people, “the engineer, the architect, the mechanical in- ventor, the industrial organiser, and every sort of maker," in short, the intellectual proletariat. But this class is as much economically dependent upon the capi- talist as are the manual workers, and has just as little control over the instruments of production. And in this fact lies the whole fallacy of the “peaceful political"

theory. Economic evolution is going on, the con- centration of capital is proceeding at an unprecedented rate, the class domination of industry is becoming more and more complete. As the proletariat grows poli- tically, so does the capitalist economically. Every ad- vance of the democracy will be contested more and more desperately, with less and less regard for that fiction of constitutionalism with which Socialists seem so much in love. (Neither Liberals nor Tories have ever hesitated

to suspend the constitution when they wished to coerce Ireland.) Readers who desire to know of what positive blood-thirstiness our governing class is cap- able, should read the accounts in the back files of the newspapers of the Trafalgar Square riots. The rich will fight US to the death, not only for their wealth, but for what is still dearer to them, the power of dominating

men which wealth affords.’ If Socialists capture political power by peaceful

means, the fight will not be ended. Such an event will simply be the signal for desperate measures. The popular government will find itself confronted by a de- liberately organised economic crisis, or it will be assailed

by armed force. The army and navy are officered by members of the dominant class, and though Socialism may make headway among the rank and file, the re- action will find men ready, as it has found them before, to shoot down the people and the leaders of the people. A peaceful Socialist 22nd of February will inevitably be followed by a violent capitalist 2nd of December.

In the face of such a situation the theory of peaceful evolution would break down, and it is for just such a situation that we must prepare. To fight with-the vote is well enough, so long as the other side is prepared to respect the rules of combat, but a ballot-box. is a poor defence when the reaction has “put the bayonets on the agenda.”

This article is not an appeal for mere Impossiblism, it is simply a plea for the adoption’ of a courageous policy which shall accord with facts. Let us continue our propaganda, let us get Socialists into Parliament, but also let us unceasingly impress upon the people that a day may come, nay, inevitably will come, when they will have to fight for freedom, if not with the rifle, with the deadlier weapon of the political strike.

SYDNEY HERBERT.

Respectability in Architecture. Of the large buildings now just completed, or in course of erection, which are changing the outward aspect of Central London, the new War Office and the new Government Offices in Whitehall are by far the most important. Their architects are respectively Mr. William Young and Mr. James M. Brydon, both of whom died while their buildings were in course of erection. It is right that these two examples of archi- tecture should be considered together, because almost every word which could be said of the one would be equally true of the other. If there is anything to choose between them perhaps the War Office is a little the better of the two. But that is neither here nor there, since both of them are buildings which can- not make any particular claim to architectural distinction;

they are, on the other hand, ponderous platitudes in the sphere of architecture, devoid alike of imagina- tion or inspiration, while remaining examples of unimpeachable architectural respectability.

This phrase is not used in any derogatory sense. When one thinks of the nineteenth century and the horrible nightmares of architecture which it gave us, culminating, as we in our innocence supposed, with the Birkbeck Bank, until the South Kensington Museum appeared as a kind of aftermath to give the lie to any such optimism, one feels it is something to have at last achieved respectability in the art. Moreover, it is right in a way that English architecture should be respectable. The English nation has for a long time exhibited a genius in that direction, and it is fitting accordingly that two buildings of national importance should give expression to this trait in the national character. As such they are buildings of historical importance, symbolising modern respectability, just as the South Kensington Museum might, for similar rea- sons, symbolise anarchy and confusion. If these build- ings are not works of genius it must be because our national ideal is not normally favourable to the exhibi- tion of genius. I do not know anything about the personality of the architects of these two buildings ; but I imagine that when they went to receive their commissions they wore tall hats and frock coats, and were careful to have a crease down their pants. If you say: “What has this got to do with architecture?"

the -link I answer it has everything to do with it. It is

to-day between architecture and the public. The man who desires to build must in a great measure take his architecture upon trust, and naturally he will place confidence in that type of man who in per- sonal matters most approximates to himself. An age which has ceased to interest itself in ideas is of neces- sity held together by the mere conventions and ex- ternalities of life ; and so to-day we get just so much good architecture as is compatible with such an ideal, and by such means does architecture become the ex- pression of the age. Great architects are. bon to-day

as in every other age, but conditions are against their success. One social ideal brings one type of man to the front ; another brings another type. brings us architectural genius ; another the respectable practitioner.

This difficulty of a false national ideal obstructing the advance of art is peculiarly the case with architec- ture. Literature, painting, and music do not suffer in the same way. The exponents of these arts may regret public taste and be compelled to struggle against it, Rut granted such an one can make sufficient to keep body and soul together, he can produce, though he live in a garret to do so. But the architect is not SO fortunately placed. He must get a client before he can build, and to, get clients he must before all things keep up appearances:- He must mix in society and he must -keep an office ; and he must pay all expenses until he can establish. himself, which in London, the respect- able practitioners tell us, will take ten years. So that it comes to this, that in modern society the success is guaranteed of only such architects as can bear this financial strain. Of the rest some work as ghosts who from time to time drop into dead men’s shoes, while others abandon the profession. The problem of archi- tecture is that it is both an art and a profession, and so combines the difficulties in both.

The two buildings before us are before all things examples of professional architecture. Their failure is not the failure of great architects wrestling with adverse conditions and seeking ever to overcome the limitations which they impose upon them ; but the failure of men who frankly accept the conditions which surround architectural practice in our day. The style of these buildings is that of the later Renaissance, Even here, in the choice of a style, the cloven hoof of professionalism in architecture comes out. The Re- naissance is before all things the professional style of architecture. It was under the auspices of the Re- naissance that the architect as a designer who did not execute first emerged. The architects of the Renais- sance left off doing actual work themselves on their buildings, and betook themselves to drawing-offices. This had a profound influence on the development of architecture, which ceased to be a craftsman’s art and became a draughtsman’s art. And looking to-day upon the Renaissance it is wonderful how they gradu- ally shaped architecture to the requirements of a drawing-office. One by one all those features which must be executed by the actual designer on the build- ing were dropped in favour of such as readily lent themselves to explanation by drawings. It was thus architecture came to lose the romantic feeling and be- came mechanical. A succession of architectural pe- dants arose who gradually reduced the residuum to a system of rules and proportions which they proceeded to apply to all buildings regardless of structural neces- sities. It may now be understood why such a style recommends itself to the “professional” architect. For dull mediocrity it has this advantage over all other styles, it can all be nicely arranged on drawing-paper ; it can be traced, blue printed, and passed through the rolling mill of the quantity surveyor without suffering any apparent depreciation in the process. This is not the case with other styles. You cannot treat Gothic or Byzantine in this way.- You can only draw these up to a certain point, after which you will have to take the mason, the carpenter, the metal worker, and the carver into your confidence and explain to them how this and that ought to be done. If you are very exacting, per- haps you will have to do a little bit of actual work yourself. If you are prepared to do all this you may still, in spite of adverse conditions, succeed in pro- ducing more or less creditable work ; but. such con- duct, it is unnecessary to add, is scarcely consistent with the dignity of a professional calling, and men who do things of this kind have no right to expect to succeed.

After this, it is scarcely worth our while to consider these two buildings in detail. Incidentally, however, one may ask what right have all those charming dam- sels to sit on dwarf pedestals, and masquerade upon the pediments of the War Office? Would not

dragoons or hussars have been more fitting for the sculp- ture ? And again, I should like to say that the vermicular work which forms the base of the Government Offices, suggesting, if it suggests anything, sections of human intestines, very much offends our taste. It is a species of architectural degeneracy, the revival of which it is difficult to forgive. If we must have academic Renaissance, at least let us have its purer forms.

A. J. PENTY.

I Ask Not Less. I ask not less

Of you, love, than the whole-- Your beauty and your tenderness,

The lights and shadows, of your soul.

Since give I must, What give I in return?--

Not wisdom ; all my wit is just To look into your eyes and learn.

No grace nor gift To furnish you delight--

No talent pure enough to lift Into the sanction of your sight.

Not joys, for they Are merely sprung from you ;

Nor fading sorrows laid away For ever out of touch and view.

Yet, O my dear! One gift is mine, indeed--

One passion fit for you to hear, One virtue fit for me to plead !

From you to me Come earth and heav’n afire--

I bring you my humility, My need, my worship, my desire.

GERALD GOULD.

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THE NEW AGE AUGUST 8, 1907

A New Party in England. UNDER this title, in the “Nation” of last week, Mr. C.F.G Masterman ventures upon prophecy. “The Labour Party,” he says, “is going to be a Socialist Party. It may come in time even to call itself a Socialist Party. . . . . It is coming to-day with the force of a new religion. . . . It will follow the ap- pointed course of all political parties and religious up- risings. . . . It will confront and be broken by a Society in England which has confronted and broken innumerable similar uprisings of the common people.”

Mr. Masterman, however, is at once too sanguine and too pessimistic. uncertain l

Political prophecy is notoriously and while we agree with him that the La-

bour Party is going to be, if it is not already, a Socialist Party, we are very far from agreeing that the Labour Party will be the only Socialist Party, or that the Socialist Party will inevitably be “confronted and broken” by a Society in England.

As our readers are aware, we have been at pains to point out more than once that the Labour Party is not only predominantly Socialist, but will become increasingly

Socialist so long as it remains in a hopeless

minority. On the other hand, it is also evident that the Labour Party is socialist only in a comparatively narrow and circumscribed economic sense- On all matters relating to industry, it is certain that the present

Labour Party may be trusted to carry out the main industrial proposals of Socialists in general But it must be remembered that every modern State has problems which do not directly come under the head of industrial problems; and on such problems it is quite possible that the Labour Party, however Socialist in economics, may take a line which is, anything but Socialist in the higher sense. On the question of the Citizen Army, for example, the present Labour Party, we contend, has taken a thoroughly ill-advised and even undemocratic line. So far from, being Socialist in the sense that a whole nation may be Socialist the Labour Party on this occasion- showed itself hopelessly sectarian and reactionary. Socialists in the full sense would certainly have found themselves in the opposite lobby to Mr. Macdonald on the Army Bill, though on industrial questions they would have voted together. And it is inevitable that innumerable such subjects of legitimate difference should arise even amongst pro- fessed Socialists, since it is so far only on economic issues that Socialists are really united. Hence, while we re-affirm our belief that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party, we also repeat our belief that, in the nature of things, the coming Socialist Party must be vastly wider than the present Labour Party.

Again, the return of Mr. Grayson as an independent -Socialist for Colne Valley has been enormously over- valued, by Socialists no less than by non-Socialists. Those who had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Grayson speak in the House of Commons (when Sir Edward Grey courteously gave place to him), or in the Caxton

Hall on Wednesday evening, will recognise in him an accomplished political speaker. As an elec- tion campaigner he would be worth a thousand votes a week to the Labour Party. But as Mr. Philip Snowden pointed out, Mr. Grayson is not only without administrative experience, but there was not a single item on his election programme to differentiate it from the programme of dozens of the plain Labour members. Moreover, in a speech at Crofton Park, Mr. Grayson identified himself with the Labour Party to the unfor- tunate extent of supporting their antagonism to the Citizen Army. Under-the circumstances, therefore, we feel less inclined to regard Mr. Grayson’s return as a Socialist victory, than to regard it as a victory for the name of Socialism. Again, Mr. Snowden pointed the only moral of the Colne Valley election, namely, that in future the I.L.P. need no longer conceal its Socialism from the eyes of the Trade Union world.

But the question of an advanced and full Socialist Party is very little nearer solution for all the cackle of the political hens. The problem of the industrial basis of the Socialist State we may regard as settled but where on any political Socialist’s programme or, in- deed, in the official literature of any Socialist Society can we find definite and systematic views on subjects such as Education, War, Imperialism Tariff Reform India, the Civil Service, or Ireland?’ Individual Socialists have individual opinions any one of which may or may not be generally adopted when the time for making a full Socialist programme is ripe. present such general views are difficult to find.

But at What

is needed is a vigorous and sustained discussion of the higher outstanding issues of Socialism, with the in- tention of coming to responsible conclusions about them. Only when such issues have been generally and openly discussed will it be possible to run political can- didates as independent Socialists without incurring the charge of of Labour.

being Labour Socialists ashamed of the name

AUGUST 8, 1907 233

SOCIALISM AND THE ARMY:. ANOTHER VIEW. By R. C. K. ENSOR.

IN English politics there are at least two temptations into which Socialists fall more easily than other men.

enemy is likely to invade us. The gain would be slight ; it would be easier, safer, and equally possible simply to starve us-out. For. as Moltke once remarked, a foreign One is crude- reasoning’ from foreign analogies. Our,

movement in its highest aims is international ; in a real sense the Socialists of France and Germany, England and the United States, are fighting one battle. Know- ing this, we are tempted to forget, and often do forget, how many-sided, how far-reaching, and how subtly vital are the differences between the conditions in dif- ferent countries, and how infinitely diverse must be our methods. The second temptation is one which waylays us not as an international party, but as a small new English party among large old ones. The political world is like a vast machine-room, full of ready-to-hand engines hard at work. They were not set going by us, nor for our purposes ; yet we persuade ourselves that by just putting, our hand on one of them its revolutions will become our act, and will serve our ends instead of its owner's. This is the old fable of the fly on the wheel ; and sometimes it passes into the tragedy of the child playing with fire.

Of these two temptations, the Social Democratic Federation has oftenest fallen into the first, and the Fabian Society into the second. Having thus different

-tendencies to error, they do not often err in company. What are we to make, then, of this tendency to agree on the army question -to adopt, in opposition to other English Socialists, the solution of universal compulsory military training, of the “armed nation” ? We know that in the discussion upon Mr. Haldane’s Army Bill Mr. Will Thorne moved- an amendment setting out this view, but the Labour Party did not support him. They cannot both have been right-the one man and the twenty-nine. Was his the true vision of the future, and were they still blind, with eyes unpurged of Radi- calism ; or were they the wise Socialists of practical instinct, and he the one perverted doctrinaire? With great personal respect for Mr. Thorne, I suggest that the latter is the true answer. I suggest that in advocat- ing the “armed nation,” both the S.D.F. and the Fabians are wrong ; they have each succumbed to their characteristic temptations. The S.D.F. advocate it because, under radically different conditions, the Social- ists in France and Germany advocate it. The Fabians (some leaders, that is, for the Society has still no official pronouncement) advocate it because they hope to secure the national physical culture, which we want, by push- ing the national military training, which Lord Roberts wants. The plain common sense of the Labour Party and the I.L.P. has helped them to show, not for the first time, a truer Socialist wisdom than either.

The main arguments of the “armed nation” were ably stated by Mr. Cecil Chesterton in a recent number* of THE NEW ACE. They are four. (1)

It would give us “a citizen force capable of defending the country

against any possible invasion” ; (2) “an army which it would be practically impossible for the governing classes to use against the people” ; (3) a useful uni- versal physical training ; (4) a live interest in general social reform on the part of the military authorities. Let us examine these arguments in order.

Against the first must be set the whole weight of the Blue Water School. For Continental States the danger is invasion, and they want the biggest army they can get to repel it. For us it is nothing of the kind, and we want something quite different. Primarily we want an invincible fleet. Supplementarily we want a small, efficient expeditionary force to garrison India and Egypt, and to deal those counter-attacks abroad which are sometimes indispensable to a scheme of defence. Such a force (the need of which Mr. Chesterton recognises) must be professional, and a universal “citizen” force

Power would not merely have to throw an army across, but to throw over, until it returned, a continuous stream of those supplies and reinforcements without which no modern army can keep the field. But, lastly, suppose an army does invade. It will not be large ; no Power has transport enough. But it will be terribly efficient. The French or German conscript is not merely a man taught to shoot. He is a man who has been trained to march forty miles a day for a week on end, carrying from sixty to seventy pounds on his back. Against such a force we need not numbers but efficiency. “trained citizens,”

To employ

to massacre them. except inside fortresses, is, simply No argument can be drawn from

Switzerland, whose mountains render the whole country a chain of natural fortifications. In short, a huge slightly-trained non-expeditionary force is not at all what we want for military purposes.

Well, then what of its next recommendation-that it will be “practically impossible to use against the people” ? If Mr. Chesterton inquired of some Swiss Socialists he would, I think, learn something to his advantage. He would learn that the Swiss National Militia has been as available against strikers as any soldiery. Or let him go to Belgium, where the system has some features resembling his--i.e., there is a regu- lar army, and outside it there are Gardes Civiques, or “compulsory volunteers,” in whose ranks all the civil population must serve, auspices.

under predominantly civil Has he realised that it was these very Gardes

Civiques who shot down the Belgian Socialists in the streets during the great movement of 1902? But the truth is, that all such hankerings after a disobedient soldiery are out of place in a democracy, however sensible they may be in Russia. Any military force, label it what you will, must have discipline, and is in- efficient in proportion as it has not. The soldier’s busi- ness is to obey orders-“ his not to reason why.” It is our business as Socialists in a democracy to control the Government and to see that the soldier gets proper orders. The way to prevent Featherstones is not to stop having disciplined soldiers, but to stop having Asquiths at the Home Office. We must recognise honestly our democratic responsibilities, and leave behind us the romanticism of the barricades.

And so we come to the third and fourth arguments. The third is that of enthusiasts for physical training. I am as seriously enthusiastic for physical training as anybody can be. But to get it through military train- ing is too like Falstaff’s supper-very little bread to an intolerable deal of sack. Rifle-shooting itself can barely be called an exercise at all, though its demands on time are considerable. No doubt an elaborate military drill is a real exercise, but to be of use it requires enormous time-far more than a citizen can rightly spare. Mr. Sandow would do the job for him in a sixth part of the drill-sergeant’s time, and do it far better. To train a man to be a soldier is, in short, a most roundabout, slow, and inefficient way of training him to be a human being. And what of the women-do thev need no physical training? Or are they to be citizen soldiers, too? Here the fourth argument intervenes. Mr. Ches- terton claims as the “inevitable result” of his system that “ those responsible for the military organisation of this country would be compelled to become extreme social reformers." There is undoubtedly something in this; but how much, and also how little: is not entirely a matter of speculation ; one has the example of Germany. I have no wish to minimise the importance of those matters in which Germany is ahead of us, because

makes no difference to it. If our fleet is defeated, no of the interest which- her military bureaucracy has been

* July 25. obliged to take in enabling Germans to be healthy men in order that they may be efficient soldiers,. I will not

234 AUGUST 8, 1907,

pause to inquire how far this zeal has owed its fruitful- ness to the wide co-operation of a University-bred intel- ligence, which in England we do not possess. Take it all as it stands, and ask how it contents you. It cer- tainly does not amount to “extreme social reform,” and the taint of its origin, as well as its price, is un- pleasantly obvious. Do you really think that, in order in democratic England to rouse interest in people as human beings, the necessary, or even the best, way is to rouse interest in them as food for powder? Surely we must make a humanitarian appeal to the nation, not a backstairs bargain with the Tory-militarist class. Who is really going to get the best of such a bargain? Who usually- gets the best of a bargain between lambs and wolves ?

SO much by way of criticism. There is not space here to do more than very briefly explain the anti-militarist position and state what I conceive to be some essentials of army reform.

Anti-militarists. urge that the maintenance of any huge military force by Great Britain is quite unneces- sary, and means an enormous waste of the people’s money and wealth. If history appears to show one thing clearly, it is that reckless military effort-indulg- ence in armaments far ‘beyond what a prudent calcula- tion justifies-- is never practised by a nation with im- punity. Again, they argue that the way to combat the war spirit is to withdraw civilians as much as possible from military avocations. I know that some retort by holding up conscription as a peacemaker, arguing that a nation will shrink from war if every citizen has to bear the brunt of it. This may be true of an invadable country with conscription ; it scarcely applies to an England with military training. In such an England the prospect of invasion and of a cam- paign in which every citizen must actually fight and do hard, dangerous work would be as remote as it is to-day. But the “opera-box" evil with us to-day--

view of war--a great would be tenfold worse if the boxes

were filled by people whose interest in war’s opera had been whetted by their own private theatricals. No doubt some anti-militarists exaggerate. There may, for instance, be little harm in Boys’ Brigades. At a certain age every child “plays at soldiers.” But few people who at a public school have attentively observed the functions and effects of the school cadet corps will deny that full-dress playing at soldiers has a militarist influence.

I conceive we have to fasten our attention as re- formers chiefly on the small expeditionary army afore- said-the Regulars. Outside it we do need some penum- bra of partly-trained men to fill its gaps in emergencies. But the penumbra need not be enormous ; my impres- sion is that even Mr. Haldane’s is needlessly large, and that his scheme goes dangerously far in the direction of militarising civil life. In the Regulars we need many reforms. The rank and file require better pay, a full right to marry, freedom from military law in time of peace, better housing, the abolition of canteen abuses, more help after discharge, and a host of minor improve- ments. But from a military point of view, it is not the men who turn out worst, even as things are. In the reports of our victories and defeats one phrase recurs like a keynote : “The men were splendid.” It is the officers, whose inefficiency, right through the regiments and up to the War Office, covers us with shame. I wonder that Mr. Chesterton does not mention what is certainly one of the most needed changes here--the abolition of the regimental career, of the system of keeping each officer from the start till he is a major, i.e., for perhaps twenty years, attached to one and the same regiment, and one and the same narrow club of officers, the Mess. Just imagine a naval officer having to be from midshipman to commander a member of the same ship’s crew. No wonder that the social side of life dwarfs every other, that snobbery and favouritism and cliques are rampant, that an officer cannot be keen on his work for fear of unpopularity.

One word more. Advocates of the “armed nation” sometimes claim that theirs is necessarily the Socialist solution. There is no such necessity in the case. The Socialists in conscript, invadable countries have adopted

the proposal for very good reasons, which do not apply to England. With us there are two main opposed tendencies-the Tory-militarist, which is working hard for conscription (the thing, not the name), and the anti-- militarist, which formerly was identified with the Radicals

and still has in England many sincere Radical sup- porters. Whatever a Socialist does, he cannot help aid- ing one or other of these tendencies. -It is senseless to denounce him as a Radical or a Tory for that reason. A fellow-Socialist has as much right to call me a Radical as to call Mr. Chesterton a Tory-as much and no more. I hope he will not fling either epithet, for I am sure that either will. be misapplied.

REVIEWS. Army Reform and Other Addresses. By the

Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, M.P. 7s. 6d. net.)

(Fisher Unwin.

A Nation in Arms. Speeches by Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, V.C., K.G. (John Murray. IS.)

John -Bull’s Army from Within. Edmondson, ex-Squadron Sergeant-Major.

By Robert

Griffiths. 6s.) (Francis

Two conclusions seem to be common to the three books which have come under our notice this week. The first is that we want an army ; the second that WC have not got one. It is when it comes to a question of ways and means that the views of the authors diverge.

Mr. Haldane is one of the few politicians whose words are worth consideration by intelligent persons. A certain training in abstract philosophy has taught him to perform the delicate and rather perilous opera- tion known as thinking, an accomplishment quite un- known to the majority of the occupants of either Front Bench. In consequence, no one can read his speeches, as printed in the volume before us, without a certain sense of invigorating freshness altogether absent from the. utterances of all other prominent politicians, with the possible exception of Mr. Balfour, who has had some of the same advantage. Right or wrong, his opinions are opinions, the product of a vigorous brain applied to certain problems, and not mere repetitions of party catch-words or appeals to cock-fighting senti- ment.

But it must be admitted that, with some of the merits of a philosopher, Mr. Haldane displays some of the limitations of a politician. At the very beginning of his first speech; for example, he seeks to define the prob- lem which it is his duty to solve. And what is that problem ? How- to get an efficient army? Or how to get a democratic army? How to secure the nation against foreign aggression without endangering its in- ternal liberties ? Not at all ; the problem with which he is confronted is “ of the Army.”

the work of keeping down the cost Now such a statement as that damns

his scheme from the start. By all means let due economy be practised in military matters and all un- necessary expenditure cut down. But, after all, what we want for our money is a real army, and not the cheapest substitute that can be devised. There is plenty of money for the army ; the money we pay to support the ground landlords of. London alone would equip a very reasonable one. money, but in brains.

The deficiency is not in

On the whole, a careful reading of these speeches raises one’s opinion of Mr. Haldane-all the more so because one sees very clearly that his hands are not free. He seems generally to be ready to go as far in the direction of sanity and efficiency as the exigencies of party government Will permit.. But, alas ! the hand of the caucus is heavy upon him. He asks for a Citizen Army, but he cannot give us one because he knows very well that his party will never submit to the neces- sary condition -that every soldier shall be a citizen and every citizen a soldier. He demands a democratic army, but he cannot give us one, for he knows that the Liberals are quite as hostile as the Conservatives would be to any real liberation of the national forces from class control. So that he is obliged to confine himself

to mere tinkering, sometimes beneficent, sometimes mischievous, but never going to the root of the matter. While admitting that our whole system of military law stands in need of reform, he makes no attempt to reform it, but, on the contrary, extends its operations to those who have hitherto been free from it. In a word, with all his great talents, he lacks what all Liberal politicians lack-courage and imagination. And without courage and imagination we shall assuredly never have the army of our dreams.

From the inevitable defects of Mr. Haldane, Lord Roberts is naturally free. He is not a politician, and has neither Whips nor electors to consider before he confesses his faith. He is a peer, who, by one of those queer accidents which add a touch of interest to our annals, has earned his peerage instead of buying it. He is, therefore, in a position to speak his mind freely, and being a very shrewd Irishman, with a strong real- istic knowledge of the army, his mind is worth speak- ing.

Lord Roberts has many interesting things to tell US. He informs us, in effect, that our present army is alto- gether inadequate to our needs, that we are no better prepared for war than we were before the commencement

of hostilities in South Africa, that we only overcame the Boer by brute weight of numbers, and that in

the face of a powerful European enemy our defensive weapons would break in our hands. Coming from such a source, this warning can hardly fail to carry weight. Lord Roberts does not write or speak in the style of all alarmist, and, if he tells us that for practical purposes we have not at present got an army at all, we incline to the view that it is because he knows such to be the case.

The remedy which Lord Roberts and the National Service League, of which he is president, advocates is that which has often been defended in these columns-- the training of the whole people in the use of arms. He is careful to distinguish between such training and conscription of the Continental type. He does not want the citizen-soldier to submit to barrack life or to military law, and he expressly disclaims the intention of using him for foreign service, except upon his own voluntary enlistment. What he asks is that every able- bodied citizen shall receive such training as would enable him, if necessary, to defend his home against’ the invader. Herein he is in line with the Socialist Party throughout Europe, and we are con- fident that he is right. He, looking at the question from the point of view of an experienced general, has come to the conclusion that that is the only way of get- ting an efficient army. We, approaching it from a totally different standpoint, are convinced that it is the only way of getting an army compatible with real democracy.

But now, after Mr. Haldane and Lord Roberts have spoken, comes the voice of the inconvenient Mr. Edmondson, giving us a sudden and vivid picture of what our army is really like. The picture is not a pleasant one, and it leaves a decidedly disquieting remembrance behind it. It is true that Mr. Edmondson displays some of the defects of an’ unpractised writer and some of the bias of a man with a personal grievance. He classes big evils with small ones without sufficient sense of proportion. He sometimes blurs his picture by too much detail. One feels that, with half his material, a more expert hand might have made a better forensic case. Yet the very faults of his book plead his cause, for they mark the work of one who is not a writer but a soldier ; one who has been through the mill, and is writing about things he has seen and felt. And his charge that the army is being ruined by red tape and silly ceremonial, by class snobbery and the iniquities of military law, seems so fully made out that one does not wonder that it is hard to get the best type of citizen to join the colours.

We would commend the ex-sergeant’s book to Lord Roberts, because we think it might lead him to under- stand why a considerable part of the nation shrinks from his very reasonable proposals. It is not, we are sure, that Englishmen are not prepared to defend their native land, if need be, with their blood ; we do not

think so badly of our countrymen as that. What our people fear is being forced under the yoke, the galling nature of which Mr. Edmondson so vividly depicts. Let the -status of the soldier be free and honourable, and there will be no difficulty in inducing good men to accept it.

The object of an army, as Mr. Haldane, Earl Roberts, and Mr. Edmondson all agree, is fighting efficiency. It is not the brightness of a soldier’s but- tons on parade that matters, but his readiness for battle. It is of more importance that he should shoot straight than that he should salute gracefully. But you cannot get fighting efficiency except on a founda- tion of physical efficiency. And in the lower stata of our working classes, from which our army is largely drawn, that physical efficiency is too often lacking. The National Service League does well to demand “sound physical development” as a preliminary to military training. We hope to hear that it has amplified this demand by adding to its programme the feeding of school children and the total abolition of child labour.

The Religion of Consciousness. F. Reginald Statham. (Kegan Paul. 2s. 6d. net.)

If it were possible to improvise a religion we should certainly employ Mr. Statham among others. His book is extremely persuasive, and contains a good deal of honest thought. He has taken the advice of modern revolutionaries, and has “scrapped” the major part of the theologies. Though really an accomplished meta- physician, he denies himself the luxury of apriority, to which most accomplished metaphysicians succumb. On the contrary, he declares out and out for empiricism, on which he is not at all afraid of taking a religious stand. From the results of scientific research into the nature of Life and Matter, he concludes that the one is quite as mysterious as the other. The assumption that matter is gross and known, while life is ethereal and un- known, has no longer any support since the last analyses of matter have pushed it almost into metaphysics. At least, there is not in these days any room for the plug materialist with his cocksure assertion that matter is something fixed, definite, and certain. Materialism in its scientific sense is now quite as mystic as spiritualism in its religious sense. At the same time, the fundamental

SOCIALISM

INFIDELITY. MODERN INFIDELITY EXPOSED.

By R. CHISHOLM ROBERTSON. The author of this timely volume is a doughty opponent

of Infidelity and Socialism. Having for a period of 25 years held many IMPORTANT OFFICIAL POSITIONS in TRADES UNION and general LABOUR MOVEMENTS, he has a full knowledge of the connection of INFIDELITY with SOCIALISM, and of the attempts that are being made by their propagandists to identify them with labour. His book is written to expose and demolish the sophistries and fallacies of the foremost English and Continental Atheists. Many intelligent working men are keen students of controversial

works on ATHEISM and SOCIALISM, and this trenchant attack will be of service to them. The author has said much that is original, and said it with clearness, vigour, and convincing ability.

Price 2s. 6d. net. OF ALL BOOKSELLERS.

If there is any difficulty in obtaining a copy of their book, the Publishers will be pleased to forward one on receipt of 2/10.

London: S. W. PARTRIDGE AND CO,

AUGUST 8, 1907

fact of life is not expressible in terms of matter, but in terms of consciousness. While more and more the everlasting and indissoluble marriage of matter and life is brought home to us, more and more the necessity for expressing and valuing our life in terms of con- sciousness appears clear. Hence it is on the facts of consciousness that Mr. Statham properly seeks to base a religion. His deductions from our knowledge of con- sciousness involve, first, the recognition of a Supreme Consciousness, which others call God ; and secondly, the affirmation of a definite purpose of progress towards higher types of intellectual and moral existence. In short, he believes in the Life-force and in its progress towards brains.

In this view, of course, there is quite enough mys- tery to satisfy most imaginations. The raw verdict passed on such attempts to formulate the religion of science-namely, that they empty the world of mystery and wonder-is far from according with the facts. Mr. Statham, indeed, explicitly avows the circumambient and interpenetrating mystery of consciousness itself, and is even willing to admit the more or less direct intervention of the Supreme Consciousness at various well-marked stages of development. This, we need not say, while coinciding with mystic tradition and doctrine, is very far from being endorsed by most modern scien- tists, who prefer to see in operation the same laws yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

We do not think that Mr. Statham’s interpretations of the Scriptures are much more than the attempt to pour new wine into old bottles. He is fully aware of the danger, but nevertheless he appears to us to run into it deliberately. If anything is certain about the Gospels, it is that very little is certain about them ; and just as many sects have been founded on actual mis-translations of the original scriptures, so we believe that much of the original scripture itself is a mistranslation

of oral traditions and. doctrines. No one who realises the multi-coloured texture of the New Testa- ment will pay too much attention to the precise mean- ing of this or that text. Mr. Statham may persuade bibliolators that his interpretations are sound, but he cannot expect his aposteriorists to become bibliolators. To be quite frank, we may say that for the majority of thinking people to-day the Bible, together with its baffling portraiture of Christ, is no more authority than the Arthurian legends, with their baffling portraiture of Arthur. As a human ideal, indeed, it is quite possible to prefer either the one or the other.

The “Religion of Consciousness” is a sincere book, and a useful book, a book, moreover, of singular charm and clarity of style.

MARGINALIA. Whilst London Fabians, with that fine sense of the

pros and cons of an idea for which they are justly famed, are still discussing a Socialist Rendezvous, the

the advisability of forming Fabians of Mersey City, with the

help of course of other Socialists, have got to work, in the recently formed and now firmly established Clarion Club, and given the idea that practical turn without which ideas no matter how beautiful are worthless. Let us hope that what Liverpool has done to-day London and every large centre of population will do to-morrow.

ic- + * The Clarion Club is situated in a well-chosen central part

of the city. It has some three hundred members who pay a small monthly fee, for which they have the use of a taste- fully furnished and comfortable club-room, where meals at reasonable prices may be obtained and the newspapers and the latest literature of the movement seen. All the leading spirits of the advanced movements of the vast Liverpool district make the club their rendezvous, with the result that the city has, in addition to its Cotton and Corn Exchanges, an Idea Exchange. Attached to the club is an excellent restaurant decorated by members of the local Clarion Guild of Handicraft. where Socialist literature is on sale, as well as specimens of the craft-work of the Guild. The restaurant is of course open to the public, and from what I saw of the food, the tariff, and the general management, the committee of the Clarion Club seem to beat the commercial restaurateurs at their own game.

Perhaps this institution would never have existed but for Mr. R.H. Manson, surnamed Manzona the Lone Scout.- He is a

rare personality who manages wards life a profound

to combine in his attitude to-

His conversation is a pessimism with an hilarious optimism.

kind of Rabelasian-Jeremiad, and his energies result in Clarion Clubs, lucid lectures on the practical application of Socialist ideas, strange poems, whimsical philosophies that are far better than academic potions of the same order, and Pezzer’s Razzles. Of these last he is the sole originator and patentee. Manzona’s woeful comrades in Cimmerian darkness.

The Pezzers were

Bunthorne they had looked upon the world and found it “Hollow, hollow, hollow!” So under the leadership of the Lone Scout they would meet together presumably for mutual groanings, but which usually resulted in communal frolics. These meetings took place at such unfamiliar hours as mid- night, and sometimes the Pezzers would fare forth for a dark- ling ramble in the wilds of Wirral, where in some lonely churchyard, the night would be made glad by oration or by song. And to their everlasting credit the Pezzers once main- tained a right-of-way by removing the gate of the tyrant, which I believe was carried off, like the Gates of Gaza, on the back of the redoubtable Manzona himself.

+ + + It is pleasant to contemplate that by far and away the

most popular journalist in the North of England is a Socialist. As my Northern readers will guess, be is none other than Hubert Bland, whose Manchester "Sunday Chronicle” articles written under the pseudonym “Hubert,‘, are an in- tellectual institution in all the big towns between the Trent and the Tweed. “Hubert” probably has had more to do with the intellectual awakening of the workers of the North than any other individual journalist. And it is also to the credit of Hubert Bland as a Socialist that not for a moment has he modified his political views to suit the exigencies of commerce; and as a literary craftsman in all the years he has contributed a weekly article to the "Sunday Chronicle,‘, those articles have never fallen below a standard which is always excellent. Mr. Werner Laurie will issue in the autumn a volume of Mr. Bland’s essays and also a popular edition at one shilling of the same writer's admirable “Letters to a Daughter."

+ Among the books just published by Mr. Fisher

Unwin are a new book by Mr. W. C. Scully, the well-known writer of stories of South Africa, entitled

"By Veldt and Kopje“, and "In the First Watch, and other Engine-Room Stories," by James Dalziel. These stories range from comedy to tragedy in many parts of the world

and their incidents take place

* * - All those who are interested in the religious and Christian

aspects of Socialism would do well to procure a list of the useful series of pamphlets issued by The Community of the Resurrection,. Mirfield, under the title of "The Mirfield

edited by Rev. W. H. Frere and the Rev. Paul B. Bull.’ Besides dealing with questions relating to the theological ideas of the Community, some of which are reprints of religious classics, Father Bull has written several which give the religious view a practical turn in the Socialist direction ; one of these being an excellent tract entitled “What is Socialism?” The Mirfield Manuals are sold for one penny each, and published by Richard Jackson, Leeds.

* 3c 3c Students of the relation of ethics and social science to the

Christian religion, will also find much to interest them in "The Homiletic Review.” ‘The August number of this shil-

ling monthly, which is published by Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls, contains many scholarly articles on Religion and Labour by some of the leading religious thinkers of Britain and the Continent.

* * + In connection with the Exhibition of Cottages now in pro-

gress at Letchworth, The Garden City Company has issued at the price of sixpence, a most useful edition of “Where shall I live?” containing, besides plans of the model cot es and charts of the Estate, a series of articles by experts many sides of the vital question of Housing.

embracing The book is an

amazing sixpennyworth, containing as it does over 200 pages of printed and illustrated matter.

+ We have just received a copy of the Great Eastern Railway

Company’s Tourist Guide to the Continent., which I can recommend to all those who are contemplating holidays in Flanders and the Rhine. The Guide is illustrated with maps and photographs and sold for sixpence. Now that the Tourist Season has set in those who are preparing to devote some time to visiting the worthy places of England are reminded by the publications of the Great Central Railway Company of the excellent advantages offered to travellers on this system, particularly as to time and comfort, have occasion to visit the Midlands and

especially for those who the North.

Z ZION’S WORKS contain explanations of the BIBLE, which free mankind from the charge of Sin. Read the

principal Free Libraries “Dialogue’ Vol. IV., and first Letter,

vol. IX. In the

AUGUST 8, 1907 THE NEW AGE. 237

DRAMA. The Eighteenth Century.

The ancient adage that too many cooks spoil the soup is excellently well exemplified in the “Eighteenth Century"

at the St. James’ Theatre. It is a play by anonymous “authors," two, therefore, at least, and they are

"indebted for the central idea” to two other persons- that makes four--while a suspicion that Mr. Edward Compton may have had a finger in the pie certainly suggests itself. The central idea of the play is a well- worked out contest between the eighteenth and twentieth

centuries. Nicholas, ninth Earl of Laidlaw, is a graceless, selfish, rather brutal, dissipated man about town; only rather charming ; he is transported by means of a magic potion back to the eighteenth century, where he is reincarnated as his “rake-hell” ancestor. The fourth Earl of Laidlaw, the “rake-hell” afore- said, is a gentleman whose exploits have to be decently bowdlerised before ladies, and the idea seems to be to make the ninth Earl suddenly recognise the sordid futility and intrinsic ugliness of his own character and life by being shown the same thing (mutatis mutando) in all the overt brutality of a previous century. This is a very excellent idea, and one worthy of very serious treatment. One cannot, therefore, help regretting that the authors (some of them) have considered it desirable to sacrifice so much of the seriousness to smartness. The first scene takes place in Laidlaw Abbey in 1906, and on the whole goes very well. The necessary explana- tions about the “rake-hell” ancestor and the ancestor who invented the magic potion capable of transporting those who drink it to any century they wish are both got in very smartly through the medium of Laidlaw’s valet, Dormer, admirably acted by Mr. Eric Lewis. At the close of this scene there is a strong little bit where Stacey Trevor-Coke (Grace Lane), an heiress whom Laidlaw (Edward Compton) is about to cold-bloodedly marry for her money, confronts Laidlaw with a demand to know why he is marrying her. Laidlaw evades the question, and says marriage is “all right” if only it is properly treated-- she will go her way and he will go his, always remembering, however, to take a return ticket. The whole scene conveys a sense of veiled brutal- ity and sensuality very capitally acted without any ex- aggeration by Edward Compton. At the end the girl declares she cannot marry him unless when she asks him again his answer is what she thinks it should be. Unfortunately, while the man’s part here was very well written, the girl’s was stilted and artificial, and, indeed, but for the admirable acting of Grace Lane, would have fallen very flat. But the scene serves to display Laidlaw’s character; and a picture obligingly falling down, the magic potion is discovered, and Laidlaw and Dormer drinking it for a lark, disappear in darkness bound for the eighteenth century. In the second scene of Act I. Laidlaw and Dormer awake in 1745, and at first think they have stumbled into a fancy dress ball, and only by degrees realising the truth. Laidlaw has become his “rake-hell” ancestor. But the authors (some of them) begin to go badly, astray here. Instead of putting the twentieth century happenings into the eighteenth, they invent a whole new story, make Laidlaw wildly in love with Stacey’s eighteenth century representative, and cause him in an entirely stagey manner to “learn love through sorrow.” In fact, this part of the play has altogether too much kinship with the historic stage direction, “miser leans up against a side scene and grows generous.” Laidlaw’s new love is quite possible, but its mysteries are entirely hidden in that nobleman’s brain ; they do not appear on the stall side of the foot- lights. There was also rather too much farce both in this scene and in Act II., which also takes place in the eighteenth century. Dormer’s valet-ish reception of the whole situation has some genuine humour in it, but too much capital is made out of the contrast between the two centuries’ manners and customs. When Laidlaw cake-walks a minuet he is merely thought to be a little drunker than usual, and there is much fun in the eating of pepper-cakes and spiced ale for breakfast, making the twentieth century, of course, nearly die of choking.

Nevertheless, both this scene and the next went with a fine swing, and the costumes and dances were delightful, while the gradual growth in the twentieth century

Laidlaw of the eighteenth century Laidlaw’s point of view progressed steadily to the final catastrophe. One very good scene in the second act is that between Laidlaw and his affianced bride-a girl who loathes him, but is ready to marry him in accordance with her eighteenth century ideas of a “dutiful” girl’s life. But when Laidlaw suddenly is filled with horror and remorse, swears to give her up, and let her marry the man she loves, one can only suppose that in the smartening, commercialising process through which the play seems to have gone, the authors wrote in “Laidlaw

becomes filled with remorse” and forgot to work it out. The catastrophe is when Laidlaw, having been egged on to a duel, kills his man, and then, in horror, drinking the magic antidote provided with the potion, vanishes as he cries out in desperation for a “clean century.” Act III., in the twentieth century again, is false and sentimental, the seriousness of the play having been lost sight of in the desire to provide a nicely smoothed-over ending.

Whoever the authors are, they may congratulate themselves on Mr. Edward Compton’s interpretation of their efforts ; his acting was first-rate, and indeed but for him the eighteenth century parts of the play would not have held together. But in look, manner, and voice his transitions from the eighteenth to the twentieth cen- tury were perfect, and one can only be sorry that the sentimental love-interests were allowed to obscure the essential contrasts of the play. L. HADEN GUEST.

ART, Stage- Managed Art. THE British are a‘ remarkable people, they are so will- ing to be duped ; they accept just what is offered to them, with the one stipulation that they shall not be asked to think for themselves.

In art the trick is surprisingly easy. Hang a picture apart in a room where the lights are cleverly contrived, place chairs at a convenient distance of view, and, more important still, provide an explanatory booklet to give the meaning of the picture, written by the artist, or, should the picture be a religious one, by a dignitary of the Church-do this, and, in England, the success of the picture is certain. The crowd, the flower of British civilisation, will applaud, apparently unconscious that all this arrangement is the clever venture of. a dealer. For, after all, this stage-management of our art saves trouble.

The truth is, in looking at pictures people begin at the wrong end. An uneasy feeling lurks subconsciously in the Anglo-Saxon mind that in pictures there is some- thing they will not understand, and should a picture by chance accomplish its aim and bring them pleasure, their Puritan spirit demands that they turn away in sus- picion. Hence it comes about that they interest them- selves in pictures for the sake of the painter.

In Sir L. Alma Tadema’s “Caracalla and Geta,” now exhibited at Mr. Tooth’s Galleries in New Bond Street things are more fortunate than is common. The popular

artist has written an eight-page booklet, with three photo-graphs of details, to explain what made him paint the picture. Thus it gains the anecdotal character that whets the artistic appetite.

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238 THE NEW AGE. AUGUST 8, 1907

NOW, personally, I dislike such short-cuts to the delight of a picture, having a belief that pictures are meant to be looked at and not talked about. It was only after I had done this, looked carefully and long, and failed to find that which I had come to seek-i.e., my own pleasure, that I sat down to read. I waded

through five pages of explanations ; I learnt the occasion of the picture-- a gala performance in the Coliseum in honour of Caracalla’s nomination as Antonius Caesar; I acquainted myself with the names of the figures who occupy the foreground ; I mastered the exact reason for the painting of each separate detail. Then, at bot- tom of the fifth page, I came to this paragraph : “I have from the very outset counted the number of my spectators as I painted them in, and have now reached a number approximating 2,500. Allowing that the columns and garlands hide as’ many more, this would give a total of 5,000 figures for the seventh part of the Coliseum which is shown in the picture, and for the entire building 35,000, the number usually believed to have found accommodation in the auditorium.” My brain reeled ! was it arithmetic or was it art? And these 2,500 figures, all painted in flat perspective and entirely without atmosphere had failed to bring to me the emotion of a crowd ! I recalled certain pictures by Goya, astonishing in vitality, thrown together hap- hazard as it were, which yet gave with-such vivid force the life-movement of a crowd. I remembered Velas- quez and his great historical picture “Las Langas,” in which, with his exquisite tact, he conveys the impression of two armies, with the beautiful motion of the row of upright lances, less than a dozen figures, a horse, and a small group of heads.

Then I looked once more at the “Caracalla and Geta.” I found it now just possible to follow the theme of its story ; but I was no nearer to what I sought-the ap- peal of the picture’s beauty. I found no quality in the paint itself, which is like water-colour without any of the freshness that belongs to that medium. The colour scheme seems left to chance ; the hard, ice-cream-pink festoons with violet pendant, the aniline greens, and the hectic flush that spreads over the canvas give an impression entirely disagreeable. There are none of the beautiful passages whereby a painter communicates his emotions to his spectator. In place of these there is perfect accuracy ! And I do not care a button about historical truth : I am not an archaeologist !

Yes, the first thing to be grasped about pictures is that they are not history, not even history ornamented with colour and design, but something different in their essence ; for, be it remembered, the one thing neces- sary in a picture is that it expresses emotion. Details have no use in art in themselves except as means of expression. Untiring research, Dutch patience, mathe- matical truth,-“ it is not art.

Caracalla and Geta” has these, but C. GASQUOINE HARTLEY.

MUSIC.. Two Recent Recitals. IT is a striking comment upon our national indifference to good music that we must go to the obscurer Halls to find it. We run so much after big, familiar things that we allow the really important events to happen, practically unnoticed, in places like the Steinway Hall and the Salle Erard. The other day Johanne Stockmarr gave an afternoon recital at Steinway’s, and although there were hardly any vacant seats it is sad to think that Miss Stockmarr should have had such a small proportion of the musical public to listen to her playing. Last summer, when Dr. Greig was in London, her per- formance of his beautiful Concerto in A was a revelation and a delight. She is a woman with the qualities of the distinguished artist : imagination, refinement, a delicate appreciation of poetry, a fine sense of proportion, and restraint. It is as exhilarating to listen to her playing a little piece by Greig as it is amusing to hear her inter- pretation of Chopin. the breath of the north

When she plays Greig one feels wind through a forest of pines ;

but when she plays Chopin one feels that the French drawing-room has somehow or other got to the edge of a Norwegian fjord, and the windows are open and

the room is a little chilly. It is an interesting exposi- tion, for, seen through her-temperament, there is noth- ing really decadent or luxurious in Chopin. She persuades you that one great poet of the senses was, as a matter of fact, an esoteric ; that his ecstasies were purely spiritual ; that his sentiments were the senti- ments of an inconsequent skylark. It is all delightfully wrong-- a temperamental inexactitude. But one can disagree with Miss Stockmarr with- out feeling irritated or annoyed at anything she does. Her personality has this very rare charm : that she com- pels, not merely our acquiescence, but ‘our delight, in opinions we don’t hold.

Mr. Joseph Holbrooke gave a concert in the Salle Erard on the same afternoon. He frankly announces that he gives his tickets away, so friends and foes alike occupy his seats, and I am sure nobody is bored. Even when one disapproves of something, as I did (for in- stance) of his setting of “Annabel Lee,” one can never confess to ennui. This particular item exhibited all the ways of going wrong in the art of song writing. It was intelligently sung by Mr. Howard Goodchild, but the imposition of ponderous musical thought upon a simple ballad like this is exasperating. Mr. Holbrooke’s treatment is typical of modern prodigiosity and extravagance, as exemplified in the writings of (say) Mr. Alfred Mallinson, Mr. Hamilton Harty, or Mr. Cyril Scott (some of whose words I happen to like very much), by whom the last thing to be thought of is the feeling of the poet, if he is alive enough to feel any- thing. Some writers of verse (like the late Mr. Dan Leno) are quite indifferent to massacred metres or dis- torted rhythms, but poets of a more sensitive nature, as (for instance) Shelley or Keats or, I am sure, my friend Mr. Yeats, would raise a fervent objection to the wanton behaviour of Mr. Holbrooke’s Muse. Rhymes disappear altogether, and any little secret assonances there may be expire in the din of a conquering noise. And this is inevitable when anything like definite tune (a charge of which Mr. Holbrooke is not always guilty) is employed in setting verse to music. (I speak now of the actual application of each musical phrase to the corresponding string of words; not of any subjective union between the music and the poetic idea.) Of course, in the lyrical garbage of fashionable songs it doesn’t matter what happens to metre and vowel and cadence ; -if one manages to find a pretty melody and neurotic enough harmonies the end is achieved and the sentiment crowned with the success it deserves. But in “Annabel Lee” Mr. Holbrooke has not even achieved the triumphant synthesis of Mr. Frank Lambert.

When the latter declared in the poetic rapture inspired by Bond Street that “the night has a thou- sand eyes,” he embraced the entire universe and flirted with all the theories of the Cosmos. But poor Annabel Lee hasn’t inspired Mr. Holbrooke to any- thing except to play the mischief with the poem and repudiate the art of Edgar Allan Poe. I really think that MM. Claude Debussy and Reynaldo Hahn are the only living composers who have a vestige of respect for a line of poetry.

Mr. Holbrooke is most unselfishly enterprising: He allows anybody to go to the Salle Erard and write

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AUGUST 8, 1907 THE NEW AGE.

impudently (as I have), if inclined ; but he gives him the opportunity of

Roger Ascham, saying nice things (if inclined) about

Frederick Kessler, Joseph Speaight, Ethel Barns, Ernest Austin, Richard Walthew, and others. Of these, however, I had only time to hear a couple of songs by Ascham and two little pieces by Joseph Speaight. The songs by Ascham were only fair, I thought ; the ideas were somewhat laboured and ineffectual, though in the lyric by -Althea Gyles he seemed to find expression more easy. One of the two little string quartettes by Joseph Speaight was completely beautiful, It is called “Puck,” and was played on muted strings. It is wayward and freakish, and of its kind the most charming music I have heard since Hubert Bath’s “Moon Child.” I hope it is not to be forgotten, for in it there is all beauty and joy and the great laughter of the world. X.

CORRESPONDENCE. For the opinions expressed by correspondents, the Editors do not

hold themselves responsible. Correspondence intended for publication should be addressed to

the Editors. and written on one side of the paper only.

PENSIONS FOR WIDOWS. To THE EDITORS OF “THE NEW AGE?

There is no harder lot than that of the wife of an artisan or clerk left a widow with two or three young children to rear to manhood. She is peculiarly the prey of the sweater, for to her “home-work” is almost a necessity. On her the burden of taxation falls with ever-increasing force, for the landlord can generally manage to transfer his on to her bowed shoulders. Her class is inarticulate, and it is only through philanthropic appeals and coroners’ inquests that we get an occasional glimpse of their lives of ceaseless struggle and frequent failure. I should like to see provision made e in the Old Age Pension Bill for the inclusion of all widows left with children under 14; the amount of pension to vary with the number of children. Incidentally’ it would be the concession of the principle of the (‘endowment of mother- hood.” Of course, we should still want Wages Boards to prevent the sweater from using the pension as a lever to force a reduced. rate of pay. H. T. HOLMES.

* * l

MR. BALFOUR AND LAND VALUES. To THE EDITORS OF “THE NEW AGE."

Mr. Balfour has overlooked the importance of degrees of difference. Between brackets I add to some sentences of the report you quote, words which I think make his defect clear.

[With many degrees of difference] we were all inheritors of wealth; even weekly wage earners [and sweated women and children] were inheritors of wealth, or a subsistence to which they had only in part contributed. Let them take the case of a retail tradesman who owned a house in a thoroughfare that became fashionable. His business oppor- tunities grew, and he made a great deal of money by the mere accident of the situation [substitute "part” for "mere"]. [With a large degree of difference] his wealth was as much due to the Society in which he lived as that of the owner of any site in the centre of the metropolis [a. competitor may build a more attractive shop in the same line close to the successful man, but cannot construct another piece of land]. The doctrine of unearned increment, if once really understood, [would be stated in another way by Mr. Balfour].

W. PARMENTER. + * +

MARIE CORELLI AND THE MODERN GIRL. To THE EDITORS OF "THE NEW AGE.”

Miss Farr’s strictures on the sensible advice to young women given by Miss Corelli made me think of the words:--

"Not easily forgiven Are those who, setting wide the doors that bar The secret bridal chamber of the heart, Let in the day.”

For a man to do such a thing is bad enough, but it seems to me inexpressibly sad when done by a cultured woman.

J. S. GREENWOOD. + + + *

THE CO-OPERATIVE GRANITE QUARRIES. To THE EDITORS OF "THE NEW AGE.”

Mr. John K. Prothero, in a letter relating to the joint-stock company termed the Co-operative Granite Quarries, Limited,

quotes “Mr. and Mrs. Webb” as pointing out that “Co-operative production” is the "necessary precursor” of Socialism. Without implying anything for or against the limited company to which Mr. Prothero refers, will you permit me to explain that it is neither my wife nor myself who has ever pointed out that Co-operative Production is the necessary precursor of Socialism. In fact, our view is the contrary.

quite I may refer enquirers to “The Co-operative

Movement in Great Britain,” by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), published by Sonnenschein at 2s. 6d. ; and to "Socialism’ True and False,” by myself, published by the Fabian Society at one penny.

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