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Notes OF THE WEEK . U . .. FOREIGNAFFAIRS. By S. Verdad . . . TOWARDS NATIONAL GUILDS. By National Guildsmen . . THE COLLECTEDPAPERS ’OF ANTHONY FARLEY Edited by S. G. H. . EDUCATION FOR LIBERTY. By Kenneth Richmond NOTES ON SLAVONICAND OTHER NAMES. By P. Selver . THE FAILURE OF THE NATIONALCHURCH. By a Trade Unionist . . READERS AND WRITERS. By R. H. C. . Two Tuppenny ONES, PLEASE. By Katherine Mansfield . . We MODERNS. By Edward Moore . INTERVIEWS : V.-MR. JACOB EPSTEIN. By C. E. Bechhofer . . A DEFENCE OF TAILORS. By Dikran Kouyoumdjian AN INDUSTRIAL SYMPOSIUM. Conducted by HuntIy Carter . . . (62) Professor T. A. Smiddy. IN THE BARBER’S SALOON. By Anton Tchehov. (Translated by P. Selver) . . REVIEW. . . . . PASTICHE. By W. M. H., H. F. . LETTERS TO The EDITOR from E. T., A Soldier, ’ George Raffalovich, Frederick H. Evans, Meredith Starr, F. F. Fowell, Harry W. Leggett. MEMORANDA(from last week’s NEW AGE) . PRESS CUTTINGS . . . l atmosphere of faint distrust and positive tendency to regard us with pathos can be dissipated if we adopt the right means What are they? Put somewhat crudely they are that England should behave both in the war itself and in the political problems arising out of and connected with the war like a great gentleman. America, it must never be forgotten, is in the position of a nouveau riche among nations, -but of a nouveau riche aware of and fully entitled to a splendid future. ,What America, therefore, demands of England is ideals; and it is with practical idealism, above everything else, that we must repay America for her help unless we are to lose prestige by it For this reason, if for no other, we were delighted to see the passage in the official Admiralty report which counted ourselves fortunate in being-able to save the lives of German officers and men in the recent sea-fight ; and no less were we charmed by the courtesy of the Vice-Admiral of the Dover patrol in sending a wreath inscribed “To a brave enemy” to the burial of the German dead. Such acts are bath English in spirit and American in aspiration. That Lord Beresford and others of his sort- should regard such actions as exhibiting “maudlin sentimentality” and “shoddy chivalry” is nothing against them. Lord Beresford has always played in melodrama rather than in tragedy; and nature has cast him for a comic role. +*% No less, and for much the same reasons, are we glad to see that the adoption by the Government of the policy of Reprisals has aroused protests quarters. If not published, however, merely for export, they ought to put an end to the policy before it is any further pursued. Wreaking vengeance on the innocent is not in any event, likely to be effective, for the simple reason that it assumes in the enemy a disposition of mind which the original act has already disproved; and upon every other ground that can be taken Reprisals can he shown to be definitely wrong. By reprising upon illegitimate acts on the part of the enemy not only do we descend to his level (thereby robbing ourselves of the inestimable advantage of moral superiority); not only do we by implication declare that rule and order are no match for anarchism (thereby abandoning our cIaim to be re-establishing NOTES OF THE WEEK. WE are glad to see that the “Times Literary Supplement supports our view of Germany for the “Times” is not likely to be accused of writing with the hidden hand. We are to remember, says our authority, that Germans are men even if they are men possessed by a collective madness and we are to assure them the ,when their fit is over we shall treat them again as men rather than as madmen. This view, besides being obviously wise-for the alternative, as we have pointed out before, is a war of extermination-;-has-ample immediate evidence, and evidence, too, which accumulates from day to day. The strikes in Germany to which attention was drawn last week have multiplied insteadof diminished under the threat of General Groner that he would treat the “traitors” without mercy; and the appeals of the profiteers for more profits have redoubled with the prospect of the complete loss of their American shipping. But are not profiteering and threats against strikers common in England ? Precisely the same code-book of official language appears to be It follows, therefore, that in use in the two countries. the people of Germany are much the same as ourselves with only, perhaps, these differences in our favour : that we are somewhat less of a mere population and more of a people ; and that we can be driven to a rebellion How soon, however we may be deprived of these distinctions nobody can say; but when they are gone our superiority will have gone with them. *l* America’s entry into the war will in all probability shorten the war-confining it, let us hope, to the harvest of this year-but in all certainty it will bestow upon us another boon, the boon of ensuring peace when once peace is re-established. The obligation we shall thereby have put ourselves under to America need not e onerous or humiliating unless we choose to make it so. America’s present attitude towards England is inevitably, it is true, a little suspicious, as the “Times’ ” Washington Correspondent has been careful to point out; and it threatens at any moment, with much justification to become a little patronising; but all this in many law in the world); and not only do we maintain instead of breaking the horrible circle of crime and reprisal, reprisal and crime, the end of which is a whirlpool down which civilisation will infallibly be sucked ; but, worse than any of these things, if any can be worse, we reveal ourselves as in character no better than the worst of our enemies. For in what, after all, is character in such great events as are now occurring shown? Not, we may remark, in what a nation does when there is no particular reason for doing otherwise; but in what a nation may be provoked to do. Under the provocation of popular fear and Prussian ambition we have seen our wretched German cousins become temporarily bestial and insane; and we may therefore regard their character as defective in precisely these directions. But if under the provocation of the spectacle of their crimes we too may commit crimes, the By all difference of character between us is trivial. means, therefore, let us continue the war, since war is the ultimate instrument of law; but reprisals, being not war but revenge, ought at once to be foresworn **+ We were wrong, it appears, in supposing that Ireland would not form a topic of conversation between Mr. Wilson and Mr. Balfour. On the contrary, the stone which the builders rejected seems now to have become ’the head of the corner. There is nothing new, however, in the conclusions to which even Unionist politicians and the “Times” have come. All that is new about them is that these people at length have come to them. When, therefore, we find the “Times” writing that “neither Englishmen nor the Empire at large will tolerate much longer the continuation of the present mischievous unrest in Ireland,” and direct their eyes, not as formerly, to all Ireland, but to the northeast corner of Ulster; and when the “Times’ ” ‘American correspondent reports that the “one fixed fact” is that the United States can never be completely friendly with England until the Irish Question is solved; our surprise is at the lateness of the discovery rather than at the discovery itself. A moderate estimate, we have very often said, of the cost of Ulster’s “loyalty” to England would prove that we owe to Ulster a good part of the present war and its prolongation by at least a year. And how much more we are to pay for Ulster is, as the “Times” admits, a matter of irritable calculation. We cannot, however, count upon escaping the consequences of Unionist follies with nothing more serious than broken pledges. The fact is that someone must surrender, publicly, explicitly, and, if needs be, under real duress. Who and what is that one to be? It cannot be upon this occasion all Ireland; for the sober truth is that neither our new Allies nor the Empire will countenance any further coercion of Ireland in the interests of Ulster and party Unionism. It must needs, therefore, be Ulster itself and the Unionists who conspired with her treason-felony. Ulster may therefore fight, but Ulster, for once, will be wrong. The “coercion” of Ulster is now a necessity. Some notion of the new duties laid upon England by the entry of America into the war seems to have penetrated the mind of Mr. Lloyd George, for in his speech at the Guildhall on Friday, not only did he promise an immediate settlement of Ireland, but attention to the extension of self-government in India. These are surely remarkable days when Russia is becoming republican and India is promised something approaching a constitution! The magnitude of such events is, however rather in their future than in their present ; though it is natural €or politicians to magnify their share in them. For in its present form the problem of India is identical with the problem of Ireland, and, for that matter with national problems everywhere ; consisting, as it does, in the tendency of a people Leftwards against the movement of a Government which is always towards the Right. The Maharajah of Bikanir, who appears to be no mean political philosopher, was quite explicit in his analysis of the “unrest” in India. It is composed he said, of two parts; or, as we should say, of two wings : “legitimate” unrest, or the moderate Left proper, and “extreme” unrest; and it was the business of the Government to conciliate the former, or to incur the penalty of seeing them unite with the latter There the whole secret of government is in a nutshell; and there, we are afraid, it will remain if our domestic nabobs have their way, as they have had it so many times-before. For our nabobs the secret of government is power; and, as in Ireland so, no doubt, in India they will recommend stern measures, even-handed justice, rigour and all the rest of it, with the certainty of driving the Left still further Left into the arms of the gods and beasts who mix in the Extreme. India, however, is not Ireland; and we must pray that for once our nabobs will be set aside when they begin to play with fire. \ Upon the same occasion Mr. Lloyd George opened a speculation to which he had already made a stimulating reference in his recent address to a Suffrage deputation. He did not believe, he said, that England would entrust the immediate problems of peace to a Government composed of a single party any more than she had been able to trust to a party Government the problems of war. And on Friday he somewhat elaborated the text by a criticism of the party politician (Satan rebuking sin !) and by again forecasting what would amount to a nonparty Government, if his forecast were realised, for the period immediately following the war. This, if you please, is almost a declaration of political war ; and we have no doubt, however it is received by the public, that the party politicians will consider it as such. The implication is obvious that not only does Mr. Lloyd George mean, if he can, to continue in office until the war is concluded, but to resume office for the reconstructive period at the head of another ad hoc Cabinet., It is useless, we are afraid, to urge the objections that anybody with Labour sympathies must take to such a prospect. Mr. Lloyd George with all his elasticity of principle, is fixed in one respect, namely, in his distrust and misunderstanding. of Labour. And the outlook for Labour, if Mr. Lloyd George’s dream comes true, is, therefore, gloomy in the extreme. What, on the other hand, it is perhaps not entirely useless to urge is the danger the nation runs in consenting to the formation of another Coalition Government under the disguise of non-partisanship. It would be something, no doubt, if a Coalition Government were really the coalescence of parties in a united attempt to think nationally; such, in fact was the declared object of the present Government and the-excuse by which it procured public consent to its assumption of power but it is a horse of another colour when the Coalition turns out to be no more than a mechanical combination of the party-chiefs with only one object in common, that of stifling all criticism from the House of Commons The decline of the House of Commons under a Coalition of this kind is inevitable, and it has been rapid. We venture to say that at no period of its history has the House of Commons been more powerless and contemptible than it is to-day. Nevertheless, we must come to the conclusion, if the first peace Government should prove to be a Coalition upon the present model, that contemptible as the House of Commons is to-day it will become more contemptible still to-morrow. But what, then, is needed to save us from this threatened fate? It is not, we reply, a “nonparty” Government formed after a party election has been fought; but a non-party election, such as we have often urged. Let there be at the end of the war an Election without party organisation. Let every constituency urged to return, without distinction of party, be a representative man of whom it need not be ashamed; and let the Government be selected from the House of Commons by the votes of its members, and thus really represent the House as well as the country. There is no other way of producing a real coalition Government than by ensuring ourselves a real coalition parliament ; and there‘ is no other way of securing a real coalition parliament than by holding a real non-party. election. The elector who votes for a party-candidate of any description at the coming Election will deserve the Government he will surely get. Nothing that we can say, or that anybody can say, will now affect the food difficulty that is at last howling upon our door-steps. the Government has chosen to gamble with the situation, and the dice are still in the air. Upon the manner in which they will fall depends all we engaged ourselves in the war to defend. It is shrewd of Mr. Lloyd George to confine the responsibility of himself and his Government to the few months during which he has been nominally as well as actually in office; but it can be no less Shrewdly observed that he was, if not the nominal, the virtual chief, of every Government that has been in power since the war began. He must, therefore be held to have inherited the responsibility he would fain transfer to the shoulders of those colleagues who preceded him. In his speech at the Mansion House on Friday he was magnanimous enough to remark that the submarine menace had been a source of worry to the Government for at least two and a half years; but in almost the same breath he affirmed that if the shipping measures now taken by Sir Joseph Maclay had been taken a year ago, we should now have twelve months’ supply of wheat in the country Why, then were they not taken by a Government in which Mr. Lloyd George was easily the most active and most powerful Minister? was it that the plans now being put into operation by Sir Joseph Maclay had never occurred to anybody? But they appeared in their entirety in these columns well over eighteen months ago. Was it that Mr Lloyd George could not get them adopted by a Cabinet that preferred to wait and see? The mere threat of his resignation was a command. We can only suppose that, like his colleagues, he drifted, hoping that something would turn up; in short like the men he now denounces he gambled upon the luck of England. What the consequences may be, if the toss is lost, and if we are truth-. informed upon the situation, we prefer not to think better, for such a disaster to wait and see than to exercise our minds in older only to suffer twice. But they will not be such as the wealthy and complacent Mr. Strachey cheerfully contemplates-“the loss of a percentage of our population by starvation”--without producing reactions upon the war, and, perhaps, even upon the people who have brought the country to this pass. Never will it be forgotten that with the exercise of only a little intelligence by our rulers, not merely starvatian, but even the fear of it, might have been spared the nation. Meanwhile, we must await the fall of the dice. In a recent issue of THE NEW AGE (of which, by the way, the present is the first of its eleventh year) Mr. Belloc recorded as a landmark in history the admission by Mr. Hodge that “capital is entitled to its dividend ” To this milestone on the road to Dover which, in this connection, we take to be the complete mergence of the Labour leaders in the Capitalist parties was added a week or two ago the no less epochmaking announcement by Mr. Walsh that the Labour party had no quarrel with the rich merely because they were rich, but for some other and, to us, undiscover- able reason altogether. And to make a Stonehenge of the landmarks, Mr. Roberts has now delivered himself of the colossal and prehistoric opinion that an industry must be made prosperous before high wages can fairly be demanded of it. Speaking as a member of the Government in defence of Mr. Prothero’s new Bill for endowing agricultural landlords, Mr. Roberts said that “as a Labour agitator he had demanded high wages and good conditions, but he realised that they were not obtainable unless an industry were prosperous .” The plausibility of the fallacy is. as obvious as the convenience of setting a cart to draw a horse; and its uses to Capitalism will be endless. It is something more than a paraphrase of Mr. Hodge’s historic bray, it adds particularity to it byrequiring every industry as an industry to be prosperous; in other words, paying now and prospectively. Who is to define prosperity, who is to determine when an industry has reached that point, who is to judge whether in the event of higher wages being conceded, such prosperity will not be endangered-are questions for other minds than Mr. Roberts’ to settle. It is enough for him that prosperity must be secured before higher wages and better conditions may be demanded; and it is enough, by a strange coincidence, for the owners of industry as well. But is it not a landmark to weep over, this unconscious but nevertheless fatal surrender by a former “Labour agitator” of every principle that once glimmered in his mind? We record it without even the satisfaction of having been provoked to indignation by it. We are getting past feeling the blows of Labour upon Labour. On Saturday of the week before last Lord Derby, the War Minister, issued a notice to the Medical Profession to hold themselves in readiness to proceed where he should direct them. By Wednesday of ’last week hot only was the notice withdrawn, but it was withdrawn by Lord Derby himself over his own name and in terms that can only be described as humble. The phenomenon of a complete surrender of the War Office, of the War Office during war, of the War Office under Lord Derby (we have arranged the surprises in an ascending series, be it observed), is so rare that it deserves to be examined and, above all, explained. To begin with, we cannot attribute the triumph of the Medical Profession to any peculiar merit of its own. Its personnel, we should say, is of no greater intelligence initiative, or sense of public duty than the personnel, say, of the elementary teaching profession. Again, it cannot be said that the Medical Profession had, of its own foresight and responsibility, anticipated the demands of the War Office and so rendered the action of Lord Derby superfluous. On the contrary, Lord Derby’s directions were reasonable and were such as the Medical Profession had long been urged in vain to apply to themselves. What, then, was it that enabled the Profession, with only a moderate record to its credit and with many neglects to its discredit, to compel Lord Derby to withdraw his orders and to defy him to lay hands upon a single member of the British Medical Association ? The answer is plainly a matter of interest to Liberals above all, to those who are even now seeking a means of safeguarding personal liberty and looking in the wrong place for it ! For what doctors can do any member of any profession should be able to do. Who are doctors to be exempt from the dictation of State officials like Lord Derby? Having, we hope, sufficiently established the value of our reply, we will now offer it. The Medical Profession is able to defend its members against the tyranny of the State because the Medical Profession is in certain respects an autonomous economic National Guild. National Guilds, in short, are a defence for personal liberty when every other defence-law, parliament, public opinion, and Mr. Massingham-has failed. Doctors recommend them ! Foreign Affairs. By S. Verdad. IT cannot be denied that there is a striking lack of enthusiasm in the English Press with regard to the intervention of the United States. A few of the socalled “extreme’ ’ Radical organs are profuse in their praise; but, with these exceptions allowed for, the comment I have made holds good. Compare what was said when Italy joined us; compare what was said when Roumania joined us. The resources of the United States are incomparably greater than anything which Italy or Roumania could have thrown into the scales against the enemy; but our newspapers and our public men displayed greater enthusiasm over Italy and Roumania than they have done over the United States. I venture to suggest the reason. No public man, certainly no journalist, on this side of the Atlantic has had sufficient experience of the United States to be able to appreciate in just measure that altogether peculiar combination of idealism and shrewdness which together constitute American politics. We are now to have experience of both, and the mere logic of the cornbination is already upsetting the theories of our ruling classes. That is a fundamental fact on which it may well become more and more essential to lay great stress. si** Liberty in general, the freedom of small nations, equality of opportunity, the brotherhood of man-these expressions in the mind and mouth of an American are not rhetorical sops to an atrophied conscience, as they are almost invariably in this, country, though not in France. The application of logical principles in practical life is a capacity which the American shares with the Frenchman. with us the case is rather different. Of late years actual, practical democracy has become less and less among us, though an indefinite amount of lip-service has been paid to it. It is amusing, for example, to find Lord Salisbury saying a few days ago, in connection with the new franchise measure, that the people who want to broaden the basis of the franchise are no true friends of democracy; or words to that effect. That is how the English politician talks. Mr. Balfour has occasionally spoken in that strain; and, though he is less tinctured with the spirit than most of the Conservatives with whom he is associated, his mind has been prepared, by years of political experience, for speeches without action. He himself can act, and has often acted, without waiting to deliver himself of the customary formulae, and the suppleness of his intellect will no doubt enable him to act as a suitable medium for conveying American views to the Government at home. His influence, too, let us hope, will be used to impress our politicians with the immediate practicality of American political idealism. Lord Northcliffe, in a notorious speech, openly said that strong American representation at the Peace Conference was not desirable, on the ground that the German-Americans might exert too great an influence. This statement is particularly unhappy in view of the attitude of the German-Americans towards their adopted’ country. To take one example, Representative Kahn, who piloted the conscription measure through the Lower House of Congress last week, is of German birth. Now, if a naturalised German in this country had been elected to the House of Commons and had tried even to take part in a debate, what would or would not Lord Northcliffe’s papers have said of him? What would the Midletons and Lansdownes and Curzons have said; and their subservient organs in the Press ? We have observed enough since the beginning of the war to know what the answer would be. Further there are innumerable reactionary bureaucrats in our official departments whose views must be considerably modified if we are not to come into collision with our new Allies. There have been furious protests in the American papers from time to time with regard to the stopping of letters and newspapers from enemy countries ; and it is unquestionable that the Bulgarian, Turkish, German and Austrian papers afford unparalleled opportunities for discovering what is really passing in Central Europe. Americans will now expect our over-drastic regulations to be revised. It is not our business (to quote the most common form of protest to say what the American people shall or shall not read. It is worth noting that the commercial black list has already been removed. We are informed by Reuter and the other agencies that the American Government has itself drawn up a restricted black list of firms which are suspect, and that this list places fewer firms on the index than our own. The American list is to be followed. , *** In drawing up many of their regulations respecting mails, censorship, trading with the enemy, holding up ships for examination, the issue of passports, and so on, OUT officials have conscientiously believed themselves to be actuated by the highest motives. They are, or rather have been, unable to understand the American point of view on these matters simply because their anti-democratic feelings led them to shrink, quite ununconsciously, from publicity, from equality of treatment -in a word, from humanity and the “do as you would be done by” spirit. Mr. Balfour has had several conferences with the President and with officials. Cabling from Washington on Friday last, the Exchange Telegraphs correspondent says, quite innocently : “Mr. Balfour is amazed at the amount of publicity given through the American Press regarding the Conferences.” Well, no doubt Mr. Balfour would be amazed at publicity, after his experiences at the Admiralty and the Foreign Office. Owing to the inability of stupid officials to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate publicity-between things the public ought to be told in its own interest and things which ought to be kept State secrets-the principle has been adopted of telling the public as little as possible about anything . This will not suit America, nor ought it to suit us. Our own public is probably the least informed of the larger belligerent States. The Americans, to give an instance or two, knew all about the “tanks,” and saw photographs of them, before we did ; they knew the actual tonnage sunk by German submarines; they knew officially that British and French Missions were to visit America before a word was said about them here. So, by the way, did the French. And so, incidentally, did the enemy, through that convenient international clearing-house, Switzerland. *** It must stop, all this policy of secrecy, of over-‘ control, of treating the British public as if it were as servile as the Prussian. The healthy publicity given to Mr. Balfour’s Mission in America will do nobody any harm; but it will render essential, as time goes on, a more genuinely democratic sentiment among the ruling classes on this side. It is quite characteristic of these same ruling classes that a Home Rule Act, passed just before the war, should have been held up ever since, despite countless negotiations, despite a sanguinary revolt, despite a frank apology by Mr. Lloyd George himself on the tactlessness of the War Office despite proposals and counter-proposals exchanged during the last two years. It is equally characteristic that one of the first unofficial acts of Congress after the arrival of Mr. Balfour was to send a cable to Mr. Lloyd George, signed by 140 odd Congressmen, conveying a strong hint that the Irish question ought to be settled. The “Morning Post,” affair. furious, retorts that this is a purely English That is an attitude, a type of mind, which America’s intervention in the war will shatter for evermore. Towards National Guilds THE distinction between economic power and industrial power may be made clear, perhaps, by an illustration It was frequently the case in the Southern States of America during the period of slavery for a slave of unusual ability. and character to be made the practical manager of an estate and to be selected for that purpose partly by his owner and partly by his fellow-slaves. In this position his power of industrial control, exercised with the consent of his fellows and therefore to that extent representative of them, was considerable. Provided that the work of the estate was properly done-that is, to the satisfaction of the owner-the owner was indifferent as to the hours worked by the slaves or as to the conditions they liked to impose upon themselves. A considerable measure, in short, of industrial control was shared by the owner with his slaves, who had thus in their hands the very boon that Capital is now offering to Labour here. But what was it that was lacking to make slave-labour under those circumstances free labour? With so much industrial control in their possession why did not the slaves secure their freedom? Why did not industrial control lead to their emancipation? The answer is that they had industrial power but not economic power. In a word, they had not the power to give or withhold their labour at their own sole discretion. But in the absence of the same power in our Trade Unions, precisely the same general result would be brought about if industrial control were now given to them. The control of industry is something other than the control of that which controls industry, namely, Capital; and no amount of industrial control has any direct effect in bringing about the control of Capital. Why, indeed, should it have, since the two things are upon different planes? One, Capital, is the source of which the other, Industry, is the outcome. And since the economic factor of Capital controls Industry, and not vice versa, it is useless to hope that the control of industry will lead to the control of Capital. Capital, on the contrary, must be met upon its own ground. As an economic factor it can be countered and checked and ultimately controlled only. by another economic factor ; and that factor is not the control of industry, but the control of Labourpower. There are, as we all know, two economic factors, and two only: one of them is Capital and the other is Labour. Capital, however, is organised, definite, and forms a Monopoly. Consequently it can give or withhold itself upon its own terms. Labour, on the other hand, Is at present unorganised, indefinite, and has no monopoly. Consequently it cannot at its own discretion give or withhold itself. But the power to give or withhold is economic power; and industry is only one of its subsidiary activities. Hence the first condition of exercising industrial power is to possess economic power. Labour and Capital are the two sole sources of all commodities. Without one or other there would be no commodities produced. Whoever, therefore, controls one or other controls all production. To control implies the power to give or withhold., Capital alone at present possesses that power. Hence Capital controls pot only production,, but the other factor of production namely, Labour. By creating a monopoly of Labour in Trade Unions, Labour becomes possessed of the power to give or withhold itself. In other words, it thereby obtains control of production. And since, of the two factors, Labour and Capital, Labour is vital and intelligent, Labour acquires control of Capital at the same time that it acquires control of itself. For reasons already given, we are now able to dismiss the idea of joint industrial control as a step towards the emancipation of Labour. There still, remains to be considered a form of control which is not joint, hut single. Suppose, for example, that Capital offers to Labour (through the Trade Unions, of ‘course) the control of workshop conditions, including timekeeping, sanitation, piece-rates, etc., etc. Capital may indeed very likely say to Labour under the coming circumstances something as follows : “We recognise your right to a share in control; particularly we recognise your right to the control of your own labour, since that is your affair while Capital is ours. Leaving exclusively to us, therefore, the control of Capital, we offer to you, the Trade Unions, either directly or through workshop committees, the control of your own Labour. That department shall be yours exclusively ” What is Labour then to say? We may remark, at the outset, that in form this offer is a little better than the offer of joint control, since in form it recognises the separate and independent existence of the economic factor of Labour as wielded by the Trade Unions. But we must instantly add that the superiority exists in form only; for in substance, as it turns out, it differs in no sense from the joint control we have been discussing. In the first place, it is control of industry and not of Capital; and it has therefore every disadvantage that we have urged against putting the cart of industry before the horse of Capital. In the second place, it in fact associates Labour jointly with Capital in the conduct of industry exactly as if the association were joint in name. In the third place, it relieves Capital of the trouble of organising Labour, while leaving to Capital the real control of Labour and of all-its products. In the fourth place it is not even the control of Labour but the control of industrial processes and arrangements made for Capital’s convenience. Such a committee, in fact, would be the policeman of Labour in the interest of Capital. Finally, it leads to nothing but more control of industry, without ever trenching upon the control of Capital. In a word, except for the convenience it may be to Labour as a means of increasing the comfort of their servitude, it is a concession of no value, least of all, economic value. We should therefore advise Labour before accepting it to estimate it at its true worth. Thank you for nothing is the proper reply to such a gift. Having now weighed and found wanting the two kinds of offers of control likely to be made by Capital, *the question arises whether Labour can make no positive suggestion of its own. If the offer of joint control is to be rejected, and the offer of single control is to be despised, what else but an impossibility position will Labour be in if it devises no other means of accommodation? Bluntly to refuse to accept any profferred form of association with Capital in industry, while no less stubbornly refusing to make any alternative offers, seems on the face of it an impracticable attitude to assume. we may be sure that Labour will have the charge rubbed into it, and that a good deal of Labour opinion will succumb to the rubbing. To meet the charge effectively, therefore, we shall need to be well grounded in the first principles of the present situation of Capital and Labour and to keep them constantly as well as clearly in mind. Remembering that the object of Labour is the control of Capital, and that the sole means to this end is the monopoly of Labour by Trade Unions (economic power, in short) ; remembering further that, according to theory and fact, Capital has usurped the premier power in industry and now dominates Labour through its weakness; the situation at this moment is as follows : Capita:, having usurped the throne of industry from its rightful occupant, Labour, now finds the cooperation of Labour essential and is prepared to make offers of conciliation; but only upon the terms that Capital shall retain its usurped throne: Is there any doubt what the moral answer of Labour should be? Being weak, it cannot as yet refuse to serve Capital altogether, since only at the hand of Capital can it keep itself alive at all. But being proud and aware of its title to the throne, what it ought to do and can do is, while continuing to serve, to keep its spirit of independence. Since the initiative of industry lies exclusively with Capital, the responsibility for industry must lie with Capital also. We are, in short, opposed to Labour accepting the smallest responsibility that does not involve the initiative as well. On the other hand, what power can properly be exercised by a party that is without the initiative and is yet of necessity a partner in the action? The answer is the Power of the Veto. And with that we will deal on another occasion. NATIONAL GUILDSMEN. The Collected Papers Farley. IN looking over Anthony Farley’s papers, which he left in admired confusion, I am struck with his almost complete absence of introspection. In a single phrase, he noted this faculty or disposition in Montaigne, remarking that it was contrary to his own nature. He was vividly interested in the outside world, in stir and movement of every kind, national, political, economic and social, but himself he seldom related to any of them, thereby taking a detached view of life that probably accounts for his obscurity. A profound sense of humour, not without cynicism, may have held him back. He abhorred any kind of attitudinising, and was completely free OF that finesse so necessary to ‘public life. If not, however, demonstrative, he was not unemotional. On the contrary, he wholly hated cruelty and oppression, and the more subtle the cruelty and the more formal the oppression the more intense was his hatred. He revelled in the unseen work of small committees where formative influences really find expression but when the public work began he would quietly withdraw never interfering save by letters of encouragement or admonition. Towards the end, his mind dwelt more and more upon the degradations of the wage-system. If one may say it of a mind so healthy and resilient, wage-slavery became an obsession. Amongst his intimates, he was never tired of advocating a secret brotherhood pledge to wage-abolition but he would frankly admit that the only reason in favour of secrecy was that he personally preferred to work that way. It is not surprising that, even to his friends, he was an elusive and puzzling personality. Iwas, however fortunate enough to discover one document, which I found in the cover of a disused diary (he always started a diary and never got farther than March), in which we get rather more than a glimpse of his inner life. In preparing these papers for a wider circle of readers than he ever anticipated, I have . hesitated whether to place this at the beginnirig or the end. On the whole readers will better appreciate his notes and memoranda if they have first read the only account that Anthony Farley ever wrote of his own soul. S. G. H. 1.-AB INITIO. Even in the days of my tutelage, and certainly since , I came of age, I have been conscious of two impulses always so divergent that the one has impeded when it did not nullify the other. We are all of us, I suppose, subject to “two minds,” which perpetually leave us in doubt and difficulty about our next step. But, generally this hesitation comes from an intelligent grasp of outside factors, the consistency of our nature not being affected. It is a choice of externals; a deliberate, decision to go this way or that. The choice once made, the course once taken, we move forward, neither looking back nor lamenting. I have been struck all through my life that the Englishman’s material success is largely due to his faculty for swift, almost instinctive, decision to go where there is most prospect of wealth and aggrandisement. It is not imagination; it is rather of Anthony the athlete’s quick understanding of the handicap, the clear eye that realises at a glance the lie of the country, the problem in concreto. It would, of course, be foolish to deny the gift of imagination to the English; their literature instantly gives the lie to this hypothesis, which we Kelts in a rather superior way too frequently assume. The truth is that the English imagination shrinks back affrighted from English practicality, finding expression in a literature and art that ministers to the joy and comfort and (I must add) self-complacency of success. English literature assumes the wealth of its patrons; it knows nothing of the peasant spirit of a Burns or the anguished cries of the Irish singers. An English literary man at a Burns anniversary dinner betrays his real nature, However sympathetically he may chant the hero’s praises, he analyses the Scottish poet as though he were a strange and interesting insect of abnormal habits-not to say morals, over which he glides with what he deems to be discreet address and arch aplomb. On looking back, I cannot make up my contrary mind whether to envy the English their powers of hard, unrevised decision, or to hate them for it, since they heedlessly miss so many joys of life. There it is : my contrary mind ! These two impulses are not of external growth they belong to my nature, deriving, from birth and heredity, on the one hand, the other being, in part, its natural reaction; and, in part, a trained response to an early and alien education. As the twig is bent, so the tree grows. Happy twig to be bent in one definite direction But how if it be tugged, now this way, now that ? As I listened. last night to the liquid cadences, so soft and musical, of Hennessey’s brogue-he is over from Dublin to see his wounded {boy-I wondered if I had not lost rather than gained by going to an English school and acquiring the English accent. My tones and turns of phrase seemed to divide me spiritually not only from Hennessey but from Ireland Not without a slight trace of emotion did I find myself wishing that I could respond in his own verbal accents, a little fearful that the difference in tongue bewrayed deeper differences in spirit and outlook. As the night passed, I found myself once again dropping into the brogue. I pulled myself up suddenly, deeming it to be perhaps a little insincere. My mind switched off in quite the contrary direction, and the question superciliously forced its way in whether, in fact, Hennessey did not envy me my English ! All my life it has been the same. I hate it. How can I see life steadily when my vision perpetually oscillates to and fro across the Irish Sea? Did I wish it, I could not root out those childish memories and impressions that entered into my being, subduing my thoughts and emotions to their motley environment, drab of aspect, sad of note, a. sense of dreary fate, of gods bestriding the mountain tops, of golden hopes against which we were warned by some spirit that crossed the Lake in the never-ending drizzle, that came dawn from the mountains cloaked in heavy mist. I remember clambering up Mount Camlagh to John Magrath’s cottage, its roof a tangent off the decline, so that if one walked down the mountain side in the dusk one might peradventure step on it, and fall through on the table, a hole in the roof through which‘ you had come, a star or two visionable warning us that life is a futile muddle. John, a red-haired giant, would take my hand, lead me through his “petaties,” and’ show me the dwarf foot-prints of the “little people.” Or he would bring out his fiddle and sing Gaelic songs, which he would laboriously translate, stopping to cross himself if a single magpie passed over and looking anxiously for its mate to come the same way to avoid‘ bad luck. Then there was Ellen Molley old and shrivelled, hairy of chin, a beggar, to whom I gave a treasured penny, lest she should fall on her knees and curse me with uncanny volubility-a curse I feared in my heart, even though I knew it was impotent. I remember, too, Jerry Sadler, the village “natural,” slouching, knock-kneed, his lips muttering incoherent words, or snatches of doggerel. On a warm night in July, when the sun seemed too lazy to set, I stood on the edge of the bog, across which, from the Orange Lodge, boomed the Orange drums, truculently demanding revenge and dominance, my heart throbbing wildly, oppressed with the sinister and the fearsome. Back to my mind come the warm afternoons when, with Micky Barry and Ted Lisburn, I would walk the lanes, -the hedge-rows flaming with “bloom, ” the flax indolently waving its yellow bulbs as the breeze stirred it. Micky would tell us of former ‘days, when Ireland was peopled with heroic Kings and proud vassals, “when Malachi wore the collar of gold, which he won from the proud invader.’’ He had been taught to recite “Rich and rare were the gems she wore.” I think I almost learnt it from him. Pictures of an heroic age were conjured, and once, in boyish exaltation we marched with martial step, deeming ourselves most truly the sons of kings, the effect wholly spoiled when we met Ned Ferguson and Tom Carlyle lustily singing the “Protestant Boys. ” My parents, tenderly watchful though they were, could not shield my childish sight and mind from everything sordid. Traditions, culled from peasants’ conversation, the boyish dreams and exaltations they engendered, a nascent patriotism so pathetically immature the immanence of spirits and ghosts, banshees and leprachauns--all these strained our childish imaginations to perilous degrees, yet making us mentally alert, watchful for omens, other-worldly. Had it stopped there, Ireland might have bred out of my generation an army of saints and artists. But; so fate ordained, squalid misery, bitter oppression, so fearful in its iron legality, inevitable as a decree of the Greek gods, events that salted our dreams in unquenchable tears, were to be superadded. From the secluded harbourage of our village, my father took me West, where I cannot recall. We alighted at a forlorn wayside station, deserted save for a tattered and talkative porter and a policeman who smartly saluted my father. We mounted a bedraggled jaunting-car ’and, in a few minutes, were driven through a little village of mud cottages, a square-built police-station, with barred windows, at which we stopped for a few minutes whilst my father entered, and a large church, which seemed to have thriven on the misery of the surrounding architecture. Finally, as the darkness crept down the brown stoney road, rutted to danger-point, we turned sharply into a carriage-drive, and were soon in a large, comfortable room, heavily furnished, family portraits hanging on the wall. Particularly do I remember a glass cabinet containing a variety of war-medals, coloured ribbons attached, the end of a pike, a “turnip” watch, with gold fob-chain and other family relics which I have forgotten. A big-bearded man addressed my father by his Christian name, whilst a portly woman and a bevy of jolly girls caressed me, removing my coat and muffler asking questions about my mother and countless other relatives and friends. A few mornings later, my father took me for a walk. I remember poignantly the boisterous gaiety of the family by its contrast with what so swiftly followed. About half-a-mile away, we turned down a lane which led to a little clearing. I saw half-a-dozen policemen rigid at attention, with drawn batons. Beyond, I saw a small farm-house, from which men were removing the furniture and effects, throwing everything carelessly in a heap on a grass plot. At the door, impassive, was a bailiffsuperintending the eviction, occasionally issuing an order in gruff tones. I saw a man near the bailiff intently watching him, his right hand clenched, a stout blackthorn in this left. Gradually, I became conscious of men and women standing round, some glowering in surly silence, others shouting in anger. Then a big feather-bed was thrown incontinently on the heap, to be followed by the dismembered posters. As they lay there, they seemed to decree that the evicted tenant must never more, in this life, stretch his weary limbs and sleep. Quite unwittingly, my father set light to the magazine For some minutes, he had looked on, saddened, twitchings on his face telling of pain and disquiet. He stepped up to the bailiff and asked by what authority was this done. Sharp and snarling came the answer : “I’m John Armstrong, bailiff, and whoever interferes in the Queen’s business does it at his own risk.” Invinciblelaw ! But my father’s intervention emboldened the others; the bailiff was promptly assailed with fierece imprecations and threatening fists. I saw a woman suddenly come from out the door, glittering black eyes that shone in a framing of coal-black hair, that hung in ropes and wisps down her back. I heard her shrieking oaths and curses, the men round giving bay in deep tones like an angry surf. The police moved up, as my father, tear-stained, took my hand, and led me away. An unhappy and disquieting picture, withal, to be planted in the mind of a sensitive boy, stepped in the heroic legends and supernatural beliefs of his people. Yet another ordeal awaited me. At the railway station, on our return home, we encountered a crowd of peasants, old men and women, middle-aged men and women, prematurely old, girls, deep-busted, stout legged, bare-footed, and a group of young men, looking uncomfortable in bowler hats and new suits. Shrill and excited talk filled my ears and stirred my curiosity. The train drew in ; the youths awkwardly sought escape from a surfeit of kisses, caresses and handshakes by jumping into the carriage, each with a bundle of clothes and odd personal gear. The engine whistled, the doors banged, the train moved with increasing momentum. From the receding platform came the piercing keen of women bereft of their young. I asked my father where the boys were going. To America, ‘Tony, where I trust they may be happy ; but we must pray to God that he will soften the hearts of our rulers that the others may stay at home and also be happy.” ‘Then he lapsed into silence, his thoughts far away. Perhaps he was “in communion with God” ; perhaps he was calculating whether the price of flax would rise as labour grew scarce. To John Magrath, ‘in his cabin on Mount Camlagh, I soon brought my story of events SO passing strange. It was “moist weather,” so we went indoors where the peat smouldered on the open hearth above the chimney a coloured portrait of Dan O’Connell. On a little bench near the window were some religious books and a well-fingered Mitchel’s “History of Ireland. ” (He once read to me from it the bitter story of the siege of Limerick.) When I had told him of the eviction and the young emigrants, I asked him tu explain why these things should happen. “Indade, Masther Tony, mebbe I’d better say nothin’.’ ’ “Och, now, John, tell me; I declare I’11 never say a word.” And so John told me many things. Of ancient tribal days and ways, of the Plantation, of the Famine, of Dublin Castle and the Pale, of English Government, of the Clearances, of the meeting on Tara Hill, which he attended, of Dan O’Conell’s great speech, which even yet thrilled him. Red John, so strong and gentle when sober, long since gone to join the ghostly retainers of Hugh of the Red Hand of Ulster, All too soon, I was rooted out of these surroundings, put upon a boat whose oil lamps stank-the smell is in my nostrils as I write--and so, with all convenient dispatch, planted amongst young barbarian English school-boys, whose thoughts had never travelled beyond cricket-bats and fishing-rods Education for Liberty. THERE is undoubtedly a gap, as “R. H. C.” observed in reviewing a book of mine on educational history, between the sound principles that the great educators laid down and the available- means for their realisation. Human inertia counts for a great deal, and the muddle of our social order counts for a great deal; but it is the business of education to dispel human inertia and to start the reformation of the social order, not to demand a humanity so reformed and ordered as scarcely to need educating. Comenius and Froebel have shown us an education that would sow the seeds of farreaching reform, and we have not succeeded in applying it, though we pay abundant lip-service to it. Something else must be necessary, : something that Comenius and Froebel left out, and we are still leaving out. I write this article in the hope-of persuading myself that I have some idea what it is. An indefinite idea is all the better for a rough, preliminaryattempt at a definition, and I should define the neglected factor in education, provisionally, as the training of the unconscious mind. There is a certain amount of sense, mixed up with a great deal of rubbish, in the modern quackeries of thought-control by self-suggestion. They do, rather fitfully, make powers available that were not available before, and this for aduIts who are already (on my present hypothesis ) miseducated into a lop-sided reliance upon conscious function alone. But let it be clear that I am not arguing, on any hypothesis, for one function or section of the mind as against another. The essence of education is to develop a balanced harmony of function. If we can find out that we are leaving any essential department of mind-activity undeveloped, it is our business to see to its development in relation to the rest, not to displace any of the proved essentials in its favour. Development of the conscious mind is a proved essential. We cannot have too much of it. But my hypothesis is that this is not enough. Consciousness is a response to known and recognised stimuli-that is not a definition, but it will serve the purpose in hand. Unconscious mind resolves itself loosely into two divisions which I will call, for the sake of having words of some kind to use, the subconsciousness and the superconsciousness. I will roughly class as subconscious all the habitual reactions of mind that do not need to invade the conscious strata, and as superconscious the non-habitual reactions that lie ahead of the present conscious purview-such as the mathematical “instinct” in boys who have not been taught mathematics. It is an instructive fact that most calculating boys have lost their special faculty on being taught mathematics in the ordinary way. As regards mathematics, teaching has not only failed to educate their superconsciousness, but has thrown it out of commission. I have a suspicionthat these rare cases represent an emergence into partial consciousness of superconscious faculty which everyone possesses in some degree, and that we are continually repressing this type of faculty instead of training it as a guide for conscious thought. The whole course of evolution shows the working of some such faculty. Life in itself appears to be characterised by a certain power of unconscious calculation, not in response to known stimuli, that tends to advance its own self-expression. It is a commonplace of evolutionary thought that civilised man has for all practical purposes come to the end of experimental variation in the physical region, if we except changes in the internal structure of the’ brain that probably accompany our present mode of variation, which is directed towards the ampler functioning of mind. But when we say “mind” we do not mean the same thing as when we say “the mind”; and the distinction may point to the neglected essential in education Education is satisfied if it develops “.the mind.’’ It leaves out an all-important function of mind as a whole-this superconscious reaching out- for contact with things not consciously realised. Men of genius, great or small, seldom owe anything of their superconscious development to their education and many of them never fructify till they have succeeded in forgetting their education. Rational method in teaching, now advancing steadily towards general understanding and acceptance, liberates in increasing degree the consciousrational processes ; ’but it may inhibit the superconscious workings even more effectually than the formalism which it replaces. Formalism could stimulate the superconscious mind to healthy revolt ; modern method may lead it only too willing a captive. To evolve a system of method that would include the training of superconscious faculty, we should have to consider how that type of faculty can best be persuaded,to operate in those cases in which it is possible to bring it under observation. Such, for instance is the case of a writer who is planning out the general structure of a book. He does not, and cannot, as a rule, think it out deliberately; it comes to him, at a sooner or a later stage, as he ploughs on. But he can induce it to come sooner rather than later by deliberately suggesting to himself that it should come, and (this is curious) mentally fixing a time, at a reasonable distance, for its arrival. In the same way, any given chapter “writes itself,” without conscious planning, if a similar preparatory appeal to the unconscious ismade. It would seem that the superself conscious visitant, like any mundane helper; can make and keep an appointment, and prefers to do so whenever an appointment can be made; though willing, it is not always able to respond to an emergency call, and it gets discouraged if its opportunities are left entirely to chance-still more, if conscious- interference and worry persistently impede and entangle its plans. This is an easy and a practical aspect of the very complex problem presented to us by the unconscious mind and I suggest that teachers should try a few simple experiments to discover whether a practical application cannot be found. In my own experience, it has always paid to put before a class the materials for any bit of elementary constructive thinking, and then to leave an interval of a day or two before trying to work out a generalisation. Further, it seems to make a real difference whether the ti-me for this consciousworking out of the idea is definitely appointed in advance. Many teachers know that a couple of minutes spent, at the end of one lesson in a subject, in foreshadowing what is to be done at the next lesson, are an uncommonly good investment of time. The foreshadowing process ought to be extended experimentally and careful records kept of the results. This is a small and practicable beginning for a course of investigation which I believe might carry us far. If education is to mean the liberation of faculty as well as the implanting of information and of habits, it is worth while to see whether we cannot liberate faculty at its source. I suspect that we are still blocking up the source while we assiduously dig deeper and broader channels to encourage a better flow. It is not to be expected that the workings of unconscious constructive imagination in childhood will show immediate evidence of Creative Mind ; on the, contrary, a great deal of rubbish comes to the surface. And it ought to come to the surface, because then it can be skimmed off. Again, when the skimming process has left a residue of clear thought, this will not be at all the kind of thought that a formalist teacher will welcome It will be the kind of thought that leads, ultimately, to personal and original views, not to sheepish acceptances. But this is the kind of thinking that we need, and the earlier and the more consistently it is developed the sooner it will find its social bearings-the less likely it will be to become merely anarchic. There is latent anarchism in all of us, underneath a surface of conformity; that is the measure of our lack of liberty. The anarchist has an inner, superconscious sense of something (he cannot define it, or he would not be an anarchist) for which it would be worth while to smash the whole structure of conscious conceptions. He would be a very valuable citizen if that sense of his could have been educated to the pitch of self-expression And, as I have said, he resides in all of us. KENNETH RICHMOND. Notes on Slavonic Names. By P. Selver. Jugo-Slavs : i.e., Southern Slavs (“jug” in Serbo-Slovenes Croat = the south), including the Serbs, Croats and in all, a papulation of over twelve millions. The difference between the Serbs (a convenient word for all those of Serbian race, whether from the kingdom of Serbia or elsewhere) and the Croats is mainly a religious one, the Serbs belonging to the Greek Church, while the Croats are Roman Catholics. In the same way, although they speak what is essentially the same language, the Serbs use mostly the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Croats write in ordinary Latin script, with. the addition of a few diacritic signs. Of late years there has been a decided movement towards a union of these artificially separated elements, which would then, by a process of gradual assimilation, contain also the Slovenes. Since the war, this has developed into a scheme for founding an independent Jugo-Slav State with possession of the eastern Adriatic coast. According to the programme of the Jugo-Slav Committee, the national territory of the Jugo-Slavs consists of :-(I) Serbia and Montenegro; (2) BosniaHerzegovina ; (3) Dalmatia and the Dalmatian archipelago ; (4) Croatia and Slavonia, including Rieka (Fiume); (5) the country of the Drava in Southern Hungary,and the district known as the Banat; (6) Istria, the Istrian Islands and Trst (Trieste) ; (7) Carniola and Gorizia ; (8) Southern Carinthia, Southern Styria and the adjoining regions in Hungary. SoKoLs.-The name given to Slav organisations, whose primary object was, like the German Turnvereine merely physical culture, but which have in course of time developed strong nationalistic activities. The first Sokol was founded at Prague in 1862, and the movement spread rapidly, first to other towns in Bohemia, and then to such Slav provinces as Galicia and Croatia. Since then, Sokols have been established in all Slav countries and wherever Slavs have settled. At the present time there are close on 700 Sokols in 37 different countries, with a membership of nearly 14,000. In connection with the Sokols international gatherings are periodically held for the purpose of gymnastic displays and other spectacular demonstrations. The fifth meeting, which took place at Prague in 197, lasted from June 27 to July 2, and was attended by 80,ooo spectators. The Slav word sokol means “falcon,” and no doubt the founders of the movement attached some figurative meaning to the name, which is emphasised by the feathers worn in the cap of the Sokol costume. WENDS OR Sorbs--The latter name approaches more exactly the native appellation). A scanty remnant of what once was an extensive Slav papulation in Central Europe. They now form an isolated Slav settlement in the middle of an entirely German population, and are found to the number of about 150,000 in the so-called Spreewald district of Brandenburg and in Lusatia (Lausitz). Even this small Slav tribe is not homogeneous, but falls into two branches, one dialect approximating to Czech, the other to Polish. The and other Wends are mostly peasants and factory hands, but for about 50 years a miniature literary movement has existed in the Wendic centres of Bautzen and Kottbus. SLOVENES.-The name given to the Southern Slav population of Carinthia, Styria, and even parts of Southern Tyrol (their presence in the latter district especially has, of recent years, caused the Germans in, Austria great concern about Slav encroachment). The Slovenes are also found scattered in the adjacent parts of Italy and Hungary the total population amounting to about 14 millions. Their chief centres are the towns of Ljubljana (German : Laibach), Cedovic (German Klagenfurt), and Gorica (German : Gorz, but now better known by its Italian name, Gorizia.) The Slovene language, which during the nineteenth century has been undergoing a process of purification from the foreign elements with which it had been long disfigured, is most nearly akin to Serbo-Croat, but whether it will be possible (or advisable), as the JugoSlav scheme proposes, to eliminate the existing differences so that it will cesse to exist as a separate language is still a matter for speculation. UKRAINIANS.-AISO known as Little Russians (a rather patronising appellation which might well be dropped) ; Malo-Russians (which is the same thing, malo, a Russian word for petty small Ruthenians (their current name in Austria After the Russians, the most numerous of the Slav nations, more than 20 millions in Russia (scattered over a very wide area from Volhynia to the Sea of Azov) and over 3 millionsin Austria (Galicia, Bukovina, and part of Northern Hungary). The Ukrainian problem resolves itself mainly into the question whether the Ukrainians form a distinct race from the Russians or not. It is claimed that the Ukrainians inhabit a region which is probably the early home of all the Slav races, and that, racially and linguistically, they have remained more purely Slav than the Russians. The fact that there is a Ukrainian population in Austria complicates matters, inasmuch as the Austrian Government for fairly obvious reasons) has not altogether disapproved of this national movement, and in many indirect ways has encouraged it. Thus, the most exhaustive Ukrainian grammar (that of Gartner and Smal-Stockyi), which by a series of minutely tabulated details aims at proving that Ukrainian is an entirely separate language, and not a dialect with a few trifling deviations from Russian, was subsidised by the Austrian Government. Hence, the opponents of the Ukrainian claims urge that what differences do exist are artificially exaggerated for the purposes of plausible propaganda. On the other hand, the fact remains that the Ukrainian movement did actually originate in Russia, and spread to Austria at a later period. Shevtchenka, the most inspiring influence of the Ukrainian nationalists, had no associations with Austria at all. SLOVAKS.-A branch of the Czech race, from whom they are politically separated by living in Northern Hungary under Magyar rule (about 2 millions in number). This political separation. together with a fatal’ Slav propensity for minor nationalist movements, has induced a strong tendency towards further isolation by linguistic and racial barriers. Thus the Slovak language, which in its natural form is certainly only a dialect of Czech, from which it differs in a very slight degree, has been artificially rendered more distinct by a new orthography and a modified vocabulary. Czambel, a Slovak scholar, urged the Slovak claims for a distinct nationality by attempting to show unconvincingly that they are Southern Slavs in origin, and not Western Slavs-like the Czechs. But the Czechs have not forgotten that Kollar and Safarik, two of the most prominent personalities in their national revival, were Slovaks, and by keeping in touch with Slovak literature ture try to counteract the advantage that the Magyars have taken of this anomalous cleavage. The Failure of Church. the National By a Trade Unionist. COMPLAINT often made of the absence of the working is classes, particularly men, from Church Life, and this is my reason for dealing with a subject which might perhaps be considered outside the purpose of Trade Unionism. It is generally admitted that the National Church has in many respects failed to achieve the results which its relative position with religious life of the country should have enabled it to accomplish. Many reasons for this failure are advanced, but the one that I am about to give is seldom brought forward. For twenty years I have been in close touch with the Trade Union movement. In that period it has been my privilege to meet and work with many of the leaders of an important section of it. With many I have discussed the apparent lack of religion in the workers. A large number of these men with whom the subject has been discussed are earnest Church workers, and I venture to think that their opinions are of great value, since they are chosen representatives of their class. +Generally speaking, they are a broad-minded class of men of some education and possessing great earnestness for the uplifting of their class, and it is the result of these conversations I propose to give below. What, then, is the prime cause of the failure of the National Church I answer: The clergy system which the reformation and other causes have evolved. Such a system as we are about to discuss ought never It is the cause of much of the to have been tolerated. failure of the clergy, and, as a result, the failure of the Much, again, is due to the patronage system Church. which obtains, and for the continuance of ,this wicked system the Church of England clergy ’are largely to I cannot trace any movement on their part for blame. its abolition. Surely, the men most affected should be -the pioneers for reform ! I want to be quite clear on one point before proceeding further. It is. that I am not attacking the clergy of the National Church as a whole. I thoroughly believe that the majority of the priests, despite their disadvantages of recruitment and patronage are able and earnest men. But there are hundreds who are lazy and selfish-these constitute the weakness, and do almost as much harm to the Church as their hard-working brothers do good The strength of a cable depends largely on its smaller links; if they be weak the utility of the whole is jeopardised. Generally speaking, the work of the clergy in towns-particularly the larger -ones-is excellent, However great their labour, howeverexcellent their example to the laity their work is perhaps only felt in their own parish. In the adjoining country parish you will possibly find the type of man whom I have already described as lazy and selfish. Now, let me state a few of the contributory causes of this failure of the Church through its clergy system. I (I) The habit nowadays is to look upon the priesthood as a profession-using profession in the sense that it is a calling from which to ensure an income. Now I regard it as fundamentally wrong and against all Christian teaching to think of the priesthood as an alternative, say, to the Army, Navy, Law, or Medical professions. And yet it is done. In certain social circles a boy is frequently given the. choice of the ‘‘professions” as against a purely business career. Should his family get a hint that a patron of a good living is disposed to lend a favourable ear later on, the boy will most likely be constrained to choose the cloth. It is a matter of small moment that he has no inclination for a spiritual life, or that he has no particular gifts which would tend to make him a good shepherd of souls. Instances of the kind are common, and known probably to most people, but here is one that exactly illustrates my contention and tells its own story. In a large village in the north of England the patronage of the local living is in the hands of the squire. the second son of the As a result, for generations squire is educated for the Church, and when the time comes he is presented to the living, worth about 900 per annum. The last rector was the second son of a dead and gone squire. He openly confessed that he had no calling to the priesthood, but neither had ,he to any other profession-in point of fact, he preferred a life of ease-and was not to be despised and rejected. Throughout his long rectorship he attended every race-meeting of note and was often away from his flock for weeks together, his place being taken by a reverend schoolmaster. When at home he cut short the service, gabbled out the beautiful prayers, and dismissed a minute congregation without a sermon. Me had neither time nor inclination to prepare one. This went on for years. It was apparently nobody’s business to inform the bishop; probably no one dared, for the village belonged almost entirely to the squire. Lest it should be urged that this was an isolated case, I will add that a far worse one occurred about the same time in a parish not‘ ten miles from the other. The Church would most certainly have been spared these two scandals had a proper system of clergy recruitment obtained. (2) A cry often goes up concerning the inadequacy of the stipends of the clergy, but it is rare indeed that one hears a word of any attempt to level up matters by the reduction of the “fat” livings. These latter are a deadly curse to the Church and in exact opposition to Christ’s teaching. How utterly absurd, if not insulting it is for such clergy to preach to badly paid labourers and sweated women that poverty is a right and proper thing, that people’s thoughts should not be set on earthly things that picture palaces and public houses are snares of the devil,, when that man or woman cannot spend on their pleasures in a week what the reverend gentleman will probably expend on his dinner wine. How useless to appeal for support for the poor clergy when one may daily see the parson with a comfortable living in his motor or carriage! Then his big house, his servants, and his frequent visits to local society functions and at-homes are not in keeping with Christ’s teaching. What hypocrisy it must and does seem to the worker to be told how to spend his Sunday by a cleric who draws anything from L500 to for the oversight of a parish numbering frequently under 500 souls ! Six hours’ work is probably weekly limit, and, to all intents and purposes, his he leads the Iife of a retired wealthy business man who devotes a similar number of hours to the local bench. It may be argued-nay, it is-that the money was left for the stipend of the incumbent of this particular living, and cannot be lawfully diverted to another. True for the moment, but it could be voluntarily diverted. In the suburb of a big manufacturing town where I live, a good hardworking priest is trying to build a church. The district has a population of 15,000. His precarious stipend is under ;f;200, and in half a dozen years or so he has raised only for his Within two miles of him an old clergyman has purpose. drawn over per annum for years. His charge numbers 400 souls. If ;6600 of this Ago0 were voluntarily surrendered, two endowments of A300 each could be provided in the more populous district, and the work of the Church furthered. Is it too much for a priest of Christ’s Church, who has been expressly told to give up all, to surrender part of his large income for the work of God? You cannot expect the laity to move if their teachers do not. If voluntary surrender is impracticable (and I fear it is too Utopian ever to expect it), then get the law altered. If this is not done the disendowment of the Church will be brought more and more to the front of the political platform by those outside the .Church, who see in rich benefices a prize worth striving for. Later on, I will endeavour to show how this unequal division of Church income should be overcome. I need not dwell further on the point now, the disadvantages of “fat” and “thin” livings are, I h ope, sufficiently obvious. (3) Christ was careful to choose His apostles from practically all ranks of the community, and quite a goodly proportion were from the working classes of those days. It mattered not whether they were educated or illiterate so long as they were earnest. But nowadays things are different. I have a large circle of friends in the working class world, but I can only call to mind one case in which the son of a poor man became a priest of the Church of England. On the other hand, in a much narrower circle of non-conformist colleagues, and a still smaller number of Catholic friends, I can count numerous examples of men from the working-class world becoming ministers and priests respectively. Why- is this? Is the Church following the teaching of its Head in making it difficult for a poor man to become a priest? The answer is in the negative. The priesthood of the Church of England is largely a preserve of the middle and upper classes, many of whom are good, earnest men, but many are indolent and easy-living. Moreover, it is practically impossible for a priest from these classes to enter into and appreciate the monotonous life of the workers. And if they cannot it is small wonder that they fail where non-conformist ministers and Catholic clergy are successful. The former are largely drawn from the workers themselves; indeed, it is rare to find men from .the upper classes in their midst, and the Church of Rome is catholic indeed, and, I say it with envy, their clergy-in England, at any rate-are a model upon which the National Church might well build. Come rich man, come poor man, the embracing arms of the priesthood are open, and ”the Catholic Church thus gets the best of earnest manhood for her service. No fat livings tempt the man who is out for a profession whilst the strict rules of Mother Church see to it that the rich priest lives in no wise (differently from his colleague drawn from the poor classes, and if he has more of the world’s goods either his church or his congregation benefit. The .small stipends in the Catholic Church cannot even tempt the working classes, for an average artisan could earn double. The result is that men-rich and poor-make worldly sacrifice to serve their Church; and this, I take it, is what Christ would have, and His Church on earth is the gainer. Rut how many earnest priests are lost to the National Church because they cannot ever hope to obtain the necessary education? If the work of the Church is so important, surely we should have the best craftsmen. Can anyone suggest that we do get the best when the door is shut on so many of the Church’s sons ? (4) ’Look through the advertisement columns of a Church journal in which the help of assistant clergy is sought, and see how frequently a degree conferred at one of cur older universities is expressly stipulated. I have no quarrel with a university training; indeed, I would that such were open to every lad, but since it is not, it cannot he too strongly deprecated that the ‘lack of such a degree should operate as a deterrent to many earnest but poor men going into the Church. It would at all times be preferable to have a non-’Varsity but earnest priest to a highly educated but insincere one. Some fine work is done without pay by comparatively uneducated local preachers in the non-conformist world. (5) On all sides I think it is agreed that a successful Church must have powerful leaders. There is much to be said in favour of episcopacy, and the Church of England has reason to be proud of its spiritual fathers in God. Considering that the appointments are made by politicians, it is remarkable that the standard is so high. The bishops, as a whole are devoted, painstaking men, anxious for the good of their high office. On’ every-hand, the cry comes that they cannot perform their multifarious duties as they would, owing to the huge and unwieldy dioceses which often comprise two large and populous counties. The fact is admitted by all earnest Churchmen,. yet the difficulties in the way of an increase of the episcopate are so large as to discourage, efforts to alleviate the trouble. If we consider the enormous increase in the population of England since, say, Waterloo year, and then count up the small increase in the episcopate, the Church stands condemned by its own failure to grapple with its internal affairs Let me give a concrete case. Until a few years back the Bishopric of Worcester comprised two counties of great importance, and included one of our four greatest cities. After a heart-breaking struggle, Bishop Gore succeeded in founding a new See with Birmingham as its centre, incidentally becoming its first Bishop. Undoubtedly as a result, the Church has gone forward in the huge Midland metropolis but there is still Worcestershire and the greater part of Warwickshire left for the Bishop of Worcester to cope with. The corning of the motor has helped matters, but until its advent there were many parishes in this diocese in which the, oldest inhabitant could not remember a visit of the Bishop ! For some years now a proposal to divide the diocese has been in the air ; but, Unfortunately, the war nipped in the bud a promising scheme Already ’A40,000 has been subscribed, but at least ;Ggo,ooo is required before parliamentary sanction can be given. Meanwhile, the work of a’s Church is apparently to be hindered. But it need not be so. It is not essential that a bishop should have from A2,500 to 65,000 per annum. If the present bishop could not now adapt his expenditure to half the present income transfer him to another See, and appoint two men who could-one for the County of Worcester, the other for the remainder of the diocese. Again, I quote our Catholic friends, and ask whether their work in England is retarded because, forsooth, a large income is necessary. It may, perhaps, be contended that the Catholic bishops are ,celibates, and, therefore, so large an income is not required by them. Admitted : but better appoint only celibates to the English Church bishoprics than keep back the progress which is SO vitally necessary. Bishops often complain of their heavy expenditure, stating that a decrease in their income is impossible, since the upkeep of their huge palaces is an incubus which cannot be dropped, owing to the fact that they are expected to entertain on a large sale. The duty of entertainment should rest with the well-to-do laity, who should be glad to receive their bishop just as in non-conformist circles a visiting minister is always assured of a welcome from friends. The palace is an anomaly which should never have been allowed to continue for so long. Let them be sola and their proceeds devoted to a fund for increasing the episcopate. (6) It is largely due to the patronage system, which was suggested in Section 2, that the clergy are so often a failure. This statement may seem at first sight to be an extreme one, but let us look into it for a few minutes. Some years ago the trading in livings was a scandal which made the Church a very definite reproach to all sincere ‘Christians: I am not in a position to say whether this practice still obtains in a milder form, and so we will confine ourselves to the aspect of the system-or rather lack of system-of presentation to benefices. Speaking generally, livings are in the gift of (a) the State; (b) private people; (c> the bishop. In the case of (a) the living is a political appointment and as such to be condemned. With (b) the evil is greater, since livings are given to friends and relatives without regard for their fitness. A reverend gentleman has just died at a ripe old age, and in a memoir the fact is proudly mentioned that the livinga “fat” one-has been in the hands of the family without a break for over a hundred years! Later on we are told that “the living is in the family’s gift,” which explains the long continuity. I believe the last holder was a good, earnest man in his way, but for years he had been unable to do the work of a parish, not exceeding 500 souls, and had to have a curate to do it for him. The point that needs emphasis is that in these cases you may have a parish saddled and wrecked for forty years because of private patronage. A test for this question, and indeed all others in the Church, is this: If Christ came back to earth would this method of doing things commend itself to Him? Is this thing in accordance with Christ’s teaching? I suggest that the question here is very similar to that of the money changers in the Temple, and at least we know Christ’s opinion of them-and might profit by the lesson. (c) has now to be considered, and I think that undoubtedly the bishop should have the patronage of every living in his diocese. A good bishop would know his parishes, their requirements, and the man who would fit the position. It might be argued, perhaps, that the people of the parish should have some choice, but I strongly deprecate the non-conformist method of selecting the best preacher out of half-adozen candidates, and this point leads to the next evil to be considered. (7) If the people are not to choose their pastor, it should be at least their privilege to ask for his removal if he fails. It is recognised that no honest clergyman could expect to please the whole of his congregation. If, however, the number of people attending a service can be counted on the fingers of two hands, it is clear that something is radically wrong either with the parson or the people. The local church council should be able to ask their bishop for an inquiry into such a case, and should the minister be at fault, he should be removed. But at present he is fixed and immovable-very much so in some instances where the stipend is large and the work light. Again the wretched system of clergy appointment is the root cause, and again it must be said that no real measure of reform has ever been pressed forward by the men most affected. The experience of many of my fellowworkers is that in nearly every case where private patronage obtains, the wrong man seems to be chosen, especially in the villages, but he is immovable, and again God’s work suffers. Here, then, is a rough consideration of seven of the causes of the clergy’s failure. It is the consensus of opinion of numerous working-class men-not scoffers or men out to ridicule the clergy, but men who are, and others who would be, diligent sons of Mother Church could they conscientiously believe that the clergy were in deadly earnest and not treating the calling as a source of income and a respectable and easy profession. Remember, I have said there are thousands of good, earnest priests usually badly paid though their work is of the best. Why? Because it is done not for advancement, not for stipend, but for Christ’s sake. ’Could any better argument be adduced for abolishing the patronage system and the fat livings? I think not. (TO be concluded Readers and Writers, CHARLES MACFARLANE was a maker of books who died in 1858. Being, as we may gather, a pushing sort of a person with a fancy for regarding himself as a man of letters, he got to know a good many celebrities of his day, including many of the celebrities of all timeShelley, Keats, Walter Scott, and other lesser lights like Godwin Leigh Hunt Hartley Coleridge and Rogers. His reminiscences, which for some strange reason were not published in his own day, have now been discovered, edited and published by Mr. J. F. Tattersall Reminiscences a Literary Life. By Charles Macfarlane. of Murray. 10s. 6d. net), who writes a brief and sensible introduction. Besides being, so to say, in the trade himself, and therefore, somewhat free with his opinions of his fellow but master-craftsmen, Macfarlane was a Scotsman and a Tory, and both in a partisan sense. His nationality, that is to say, he assumed to be a part of his earned merit; and his political prejudices he was pleased to regard as principles, though, in truth, he appears never to have made any reflective use of them. Applying, however, all these angles to the incommensurable minds he met, he records his judgments with the air of a man of the world patronising his interesting but rather pitiable friends of the trade. Some of them, no doubt (he appears to be saying), have done very meritorious work, work that I couldn’t equal myself even; but such a lot of impossibles [addressing men of the world like himself you never saw. Shelley was not a bad sort of fellow. Come to think of it, he was really a gentleman. Keats, too, was a brave little man, with none of the namby-pambyism you would expect to find in him. But Coleridge and de Quincey Leigh Hunt, Rogers, and the-rest were, take them all in all, a queer lot of whom you never quite knew whether they were sane or feeble-minded. This is the kind of impression Macfarlane leaves on me of his attitude and I can only say of him that it is indifferent whether he reports well or ill of his victims. +** His book will be read, it goes without saying. Does not everyone read the contemporary columns of literary gossip which Macfarlane would have written had he been alive to-day? But of its value, as of the value of his successors I have no doubt.’ It has not only no value; but, to my mind, it is--of course, unconsciously -designed to write dawn the literary vocation to the level of an ordinary profession. In. the “New Witness ” recently, Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells have been having a stairhead discussion concerning the dignity of letters, Mr. Shaw contending for a proper and cultivated respect for literature, and Mr. Wells “damning” literature for the little his own is worth. The honours are with Mr. Shaw at present ; but the question is above the discussion. How is it possible; indeed, to maintain the dignity of letters, when, in the first place, anybody map write; in the second place, anybody may be sure of heaps of praise (even from Mr. Shaw, who has proclaimed more geese to be swans than even Mr. Wells); and, in the third place, when the whole newspaper world is more concerned to read about an author than to examine his works with the care due to food that may be ambrosia but equally well may be poison? It simply is not possible for the vast majority of the reading public; and, for myself, I frankly own that to be regarded as a writer would be, next to not being one, the most annoying thing in the present world. Macfarlanewas, as I have said, a journalist of to-day in this respect. Every great writer he met was at once great because everybody was talking about him and small because Macfarlane knew him ; but his greatness lay not in his work, but in the fact that he was known, while his smallness was real. It was ever thus; and thus ever no doubt, it will be. The immortal story of Lincoln’s secretary should always be before our minds if we would not become Macfarlanes. Asked if he had any recollections of Lincoln, the worthy replied that if only he had known that his chief had been a great man, he would have made a note of many of the things he had said. I should say, however, that the man was even then mistaken Even had he been told and hac! believed that Lincoln was great, his stories of him would have made Lincoln appear small. You cannot, as the saving is, get a quart into a pint pot. For us (may I say us?), on the other hand, who realise what power of mind, what strength of soul, what real stability of purpose are implied in the creation of a book or a poem to last as long as language, the dignity of letters does not depend upon the personal gossip the world picks up concerning writers. That, with the minds that delight in it, will pass, to leave only that part of the man which such minds have never seenthe vision, the power the will, the creative imagination It is on these and on the few who can discern them that the dignity of letters rests; and not all the gossip of the Macfarlanes or the “damns’’ of Mr. Wells will lower it. Farewell, gilly Macfarlane; you are no more than a man. 7 drew attention the other week to the fact that Humour has many degrees and that, in consequence, to call a man a humorous writer is only to begin to classify him. The same caution, however is necessary as regards each of the other moods or qualities of life and literature. Everyone of them is susceptible of classification in an ascending scale or hierarchy of values, the higher of which are rarely reached, and the lower of which are common. I am reminded to say this on reading Sir Rabindranath Tagore’s latest work, “Stray Birds’’ (Macmillan. 4s. 6d. net). Consisting, as it does, of three or four hundred separate aphorisms, each having its quality of simplicity, naivete. tenderness poetry, mysticism, humour, satire, or what not -the question recurred to me what the degree of excellence might be to which Sir Rabindranath Tagore has attained in any of these. For I have long felt uncomfortable in the presence of praise of Tagore, being unable to give my reasons for dissenting, and yet being too sure of my dissent to join in the praise. The reason, I have now come to see, is that Tagore is on the lower slopes of almost every one of the mountains of Parnassus ; but chiefly he revels (wallows were almost the proper word) in the marshy pool that lie near the base of the golden-peaked mountain of Pity. Let nobody from anything I may ever write or say conclude that I share with Nietzsche the smallest contempt for pity. Pity, like all the virtues, is always good, and good in whatever degree it is to be found. On the other hand, there are degrees of pity: and while Tagore is to be commended for feeling pity for small things such as are common to all, I affirm that the greater the object the less pity it will receive from him. Naturally, however, being disposed to pity, he must needs reduce all things to the scale on which he can pity them. Hence the diminishing effect which I find Sir Rabindranath Tagore has upon everything great which swims within his ken. Is it Indian philosophy he takes it into his head to write about At once Indian philosophy becomes small, the size of a pathetic attempt of some local society to think out the Universe. Is it Mysticism? At once we become aware that we are in a close and fetid atmosphere in which our heads swim in a puerile intimacy. Is it Love or Simplicity, or Truth or God, or the Universe? In any case, the result is the same : to reduce these concepts to the size of children’s playthings, and OUT feelings about them to an unpleasant glow of shame-faced sentimentality. That, I think, is one of Tagore’s secrets;, and the explanation of the hold he took on an age which I have often said was fast becoming infantile. Many of our contemporaries who were tiring of the labour of the classic, the manly simple, the arduously tragic, the brilliantly common sense, he took by the hand, promising to lead then to the heights they could not otherwise climb ; and most of them he has kept still in the valleys, where he, too, remains. His other secret I will not divulge, though I see that an American critic has divined it. But then, you see, in America they have had Mr. Ralph Waldo r. R. H. C. Trine long enough to discover it. Two Tuppenny Ones, By Katherine Mansield. Please. LADY : Yes, there is, dear; there’s plenty of room. If the lady next to me would move her seat and sit opposite. . . . Would you mind? So that my friend may sit next to me. . . . Thank you so much ! Yes, dear, both the cars are on war work ; I’m getting quite used to ‘buses. Of course if we go to the theatre, I ’phone Cynthia. She’s still got one car. Her chauffeur’s been called up. . . . Ages ago. . . . Killed by now, I think. I can’t quite remember. I don’t like her new man at all. I don’t mind taking any reasonable risk, but he’s so obstinate-lie charges everything he sees. Heaven alone knows what would happen if he rushed into something that wouldn’t swerve aside. But the poor creature’s got a withered arm, and - something the matter with one of his feet, I believe she told me. I suppose that’s what makes him so careless. Imean-well ! . . . Don’t you know ! . . FRIEND:. . . ? LADY: Yes, she’s sold it. My dear, it was far too small. There were only ten bedrooms, you know. There were only ten bedrooms in that house. Extraordinary! One wouldn’t believe it from the outside-would one? And with the governesses and the nurses-?nd so on. All the men servants had to sleep out. . . . You know what that means. FRIEND:. . . !! CONDUCTOR ; Fares please Pass your fares along. LADY : How much ’is it Tuppence, isn’t it? Two tuppenny ones, pleas-.. Don’t bother-I’ve got some coppers, somewhere or other. FRIEND: . . . ! LADY : No, it’s all right. I’ve got some-if only I can find them. CONDUCTOR: Parse your fares, please. FRIEND:. . . ! LADY : Really? So I did. I remember now Yes, I paid coming‘. Very well; I’ll let you, just this once. War time, my dear ! CONDUCTOR ’Ow far do you want ter go? : LADY : ’To the Boltons. CONDUCTOR: Another ’appeny each. LADY : No-oh, no ! I only paid tuppence coming. Are you quite sure? CONDUCTOR (savagely) : Read it on the board for yourself . LADY: Oh, very well Here’s another ‘penny. To friend) : Isn’t it extraordinary how disobliging these men are. After all, he’s paid to do his job. But they are nearly all alike. I’ve heard these motor ’buia affect the spine after a time. I suppose that’s it. . . . You’ve heard about Teddie-haven’t you ? FRIEND: . . . LADY: He’s got his. . . He’s got his . . . Now what is it! Whatever can it be. How ridiculolus of me ! FRIEND:. . . ? LADY : Oh, no ! He’s been a Major for ages. FRIEND: . . . ? LADY: Colonel?. Oh, no, ,my dear, it’s something much higher than that. Not his company-he’s had his company a long time. Not his battalion. . . FRIEND: . . . . Yes, I believe it is his regiment. Lady Regiment! But what I was going to say is he’s been made a , . . Oh, how silly I am! What’s higher than a Brigadier-General? Yes, I believe that’s it. Chief of Staff. Of course, Mrs. T.’s frightfully gratified FRIEND:. . . ! LADY : Hasn’t he ! He’s been most lucky-most mercifully spared . . . so far. But he’s back again, you know, and “over the top” every day. FRIEND : . . . LADY: Oh, my dear, everybody goes over the top nowadays Whatever his position may be. And Teddy is such a sport, I really don’t see how. . . . Too dreadful-isn’t it ! FRIEND: . . . ? LADY: Didn’t you know? She’s at the War Office, and doing very well. I believe she got a rise the other day. She’s something to do with notifying the deaths, or finding the missing. I don’t know exactly what it is. At any rate, she says it is too depressing for words, and she has to read the most heart-rending . letters from parents; and so on. Happily, they’re a very cheery little group in ’her room-all officers’ wives, and they make their own tea, and get cakes in turn from Stewart’s. She has one afternoon a week off, when she shops or has her hair waved Last time she and I went to see Yvette’s Spring Show. FRIEND:. . . ? LADY : No not really. I’m getting frightfully sick of these coat-frocks-aren’t you I mean, as I was saying to her, what is the use of paying an enormous price for having one made by Yvette, when you really can’t tell the difference in the long run, between it and one of those cheap ready-made ones. Of course one has the satisfaction for oneself of knowing that the material is good, and so on-but it looks nothing. No; I advised her to get a good coat and skirt. For, after all, a good coat and skirt always tells. Doesn’t it? FRIEND:. . . ! LADY: Yes, I didn’t tell her that-but that’s what I had in mind. She’s much too fat for those coatfrocks. She goes out far too much at the hips. I half ordered a rather lovely indefinite blue one for myself, trimmed with the new lobster red. . . . I’ve lost my good Kate, you know. FRIEND:. . . LADY: Yes, isn’t it annoying Just when I gat her more or less trained Bat she went off her head, like they all do nowadays, and decided that she wanted to go into munitions. I told her when she gave notice that she would go on the strict understanding that if she got a job (which I think is highly improbable), she was not to come back and disturb the other servants. CONDUCTOR (savagely) : Another penny each if you’re going on. LADY : Oh, we’re there. How extraordinary ! I never should have noticed. . . . FRIEND: . . . ? LADY : Tuesday? Bridge on Tuesday? No, dear, I’m afraid I can’t manage Tuesday. I trot out the wounded every Tuesday, you know I let cook take them to the Zoo, or some place like thatdon’t you know Wednesday--I’m perfectly free on Wednesday CONDUCTOR It’ll be Wednesday before you get off the : ’bus if you don’t ’urry up. LADY: That’s quite enough, my man. FRIEND: . . . ? ! We Moderns. By Edward Moore. TOLERANCE of ARTISTS.--NO matter what their conscioustheories may be, all artists are unconsciously aristocratic, and even intolerant in their attitude to other men. They are more blind than most people to the raison d’etre of the politician, the business man and the philosopher-these unaccountable beings who will not acknowledge the primacy of Creation and Beauty. But at last they magnanimously conclude that these exist to form their audience, not the subject-matter of their art-that is the modern fallacy ! CLIMATE E.-There’ are natures exquisitely sensitive to their human environment This man depresses them, they feel the vitality ebbing out of them in his presence ; that other brings exhilaration, at the touch of his mind their powers increase and become creative. It is a The first has a wintry, grey question of atmosphere. soul; the latter carries a sun-their sun-in his bosom. And these artists require sunlight and soft air, before the flowers and fruit can hang from their ’boughs. Every artist of this type should go to Italy or France and live there; or, failing that, create €or himself an Italy or France of friends. Others require the tempest with its lowering skies. But that is easier to seek they can generally find it within themselves. SENSIBILITY.--It may be wisdom for the man of action to smother his griefs, and follow resolutely his course. But with the artist it is different. He should not close his heart against sorrow, for sorrow is of use to him; his task is to transfigure it; thus he makes himself richer. Every conquest of suffering which is attained by isolating the pang makes the artist poorer ; the part of him so isolated dies : he loses bit by bit his sensitiveness, and how much does his sensitiveness mean to him ! The artist is more defenceless than other men, and he must be so. For his sensitiveness should be such that the faintest rose leaf of emotion or thought cannot touch his heart without evoking in him infinite delight or pain; and, at the same time, he should be able to respond to the great tempests and terrible moods of life Great strength, great love, great productiveness, these are required if he is to endure his sensitiveness; alas, for him, if he have them not,! Then he must suffer and suffer, until he has cut off one by one the sources of his suffering; until he has mutilated and lamed what is most godlike in him, and has made himself ordinary at last-or a Schopenhauerian. THE ARTIST’S ENEMY.--I waited once beside a lake, created surely to mirror Innocence, so pure it was. The passage of a butterfly over it or the breath of a roseleaf’s fall was enough to stir its surface infinitely delicate and sensitive. Yet tempests did not affright it, for it laughed and danced beneath the whip of the fiercest storm. And it could bury, as in a bottomless tomb, the stones thrown at it by the most spiteful hands; to these, indeed, it responded with a Puck-like, radiating smile that spread until it broke in soft laughter upon its marge So strong and delicate it lay and yet, it seemed, so defenceless. Yet what could harm it? Storm, shower, sunshine and darkness alike but ministered to it, and even the missiles of its enemies were lost in its boundless security. It seemed invulnerable I returned years later, and looked once, looked, and fled. For the lake had grown old, blind and torpid, so that even the light lay dead in it. Then I noticed that on every side, almost invisible, there were innumerable black stream.; oozing-infection ! The tragedy of the artist. UNIFORMITY.In the mien of children there is sometimes to be noted a national nobility and pride; they walk with the unconscious grace of conquerors. But this grace and freedom ‘soon disappear, and when the‘ child has become man there is nothing left of them : his bearing is as undistinguished as his neighbour’s. No- where, now, is nobility of presence and movement to be found, except among children, the chieftains of halfbarbarous peoples, and some animals. The further man departs from the animal the less dignified he becomes, and the more his appearance conforms to a common level : indeed civilisation seems, on one side, to be a laborious attempt to arrive. at the undistinguished and undistinguishable. Is Man then, the mediocre animal par excellence? Only, perhaps, under an egalitarian regime. Wherever a hierarchy exists in Europe there is more of nobility of demeanour than elsewhere. Equality and humility .are the great fosterers of the mediocre; and not only, alas, of the mediocre in demeanour. Who can tell how many proud, graceful and gallant thoughts and emotions have been killed by shame-the shame which the egalitarians and the humble have heaped upon them? And how much Art therefore, has lost? Certainly, in the minds of children there are many brave, generous and noble thoughts which are never permitted to come to Ye must become as little children --. maturity. THE DESCENT OF THEArtist--At the beginning of his journey he climbed daringly, leaping from rock to rock, exuberant, tireless, until he reached what he thought was his highest peak. Then began his descent, and, lo immediately great weariness fell upon him. A friend of his wondered, Is he going downhill. because he is tired? Or is he tired because he is going down’hill? , Immortality of THE Artist--an artist one day forgot Death, so entirely had he become Life’s, rapt in a world of living contemplation; and, established there, he created a form. That hour was immortal, and, therefore, the form was immortal. This is the “timelessness” of true artworks ; they are fashioned in eternity,” as Blake said, and so speak to the eternal in Man. HOSTILITY OF THINKERS.-when a thinker has a world of thought of his own, he generally becomes cold towards other thinkers, and to none more than to him whose star is nearest his own. It is necessary, therefore, that he should read, above all, the philosopher whose thought most closely resembles his, for to: ‘him he is most likely to be unjust We are the most ‘hostile to those who say what we say, but say it in a way we do not like. ARTIST AND PHILOSOPHER.-In all ages the philosophers have pardoned the artists their lack of depth, on account of their divine ’love of the beautiful. In our time, however, this only reason for pardoning them has disappeared, and they are now entirely deserving of condemnation. For the realists abjure equally thought --interpretation, and beauty-selection. To be an eye, with a fountain-pen attached to it; that is their aim, successfully attained, alas ! A single eye and not a single thought : the definition of the realist. ANEvil.-Art is at the present day far too easy of comprehension, far too obvious. Our immediate task should be to make it difficult, and the concern of a dedicated few. Thus only shall we win back reverence for it. When it is reverenced, however, it will then be time to extend its sway; but not until then. Art must be approached with reverence, or not at all. A democratic familiarity with it-such as exists among the middle classes, not among the working classes, in whom reverence is not yet dead-is an, abomination. THE OLD Poet--An old poet who had lived in the good days when poets were makers-of moralities and gods, among other things-lately re-visited the earth, and after a study of the very excellent exercises in literature to be found in our libraries, delivered himself thus :“How has our power decayed Into litterateurs have we declined who were creators. Perish all literature that is only literature Poets live to create gods ; to glorify gods should all their arts of adornment and idealisation be used. But I see here adornment without the object worthy of adornment; beautification for the sake of beautification Art for Art’s sake. These artists are only half artists. They have surely made Art into a game.” . The critics did not understand him, and, therefore, disagreed. The artists thought he was mad, besides knowing nothing of aesthetics. The moral fanatics acclaimed him vociferously, mistaking him for a popular preacher. Only a philosophico-artistic dilettante listened attentively, and said, a little patronisingly “He is wrong, but he is more right than wrong.” THE PLATITUDE -There should be no platitudes in the works of a sincere author. A platitude is an idea not understand by its writer-in one word, a shibboleth APROPOS THE cynic--he wrote with an assumption of extreme heartlessness, and the public said, “HOW tender his heart must be when he hides it under such a disguise !” But what he was hiding all the time was his lack of heart. Interviews. By C. E. Bechhofer. V.-MR. JACOB EPSTEIN. I FOUND Mr. Epstein hard at work in his studio. He was covered with clay and dust, and seemed not a little amazed at the prospect of being interviewed. He immediately referred me to the phrase which prefaces the catalogue of his exhibition at the Leicester Galleries’: “I rest silent in my work.” The working philosophy of any artist, he said, can be expressed in six or ten lines. I asked Mr. Epstein what this philosophy was in his case, but he answered, “I don’t know that apart from my sculpture I could ‘talk’ philosophy. After all, I am a sculptor and not a philosopher. Watts was what is known as a philosopher-artist, but his work was second-rate. ’ ’ “Has abstract art, then,” I asked, “a relation at all to life?” “It may have, or it may not,” answered Mr. Epstein; “but it does not necessarily have. What is essential is that the work should be true to the artist’s If the artist is good, the work will be conception. good; if he is bad, his work will be bad. For the individuality of the artist is expressed in every line of his work.” ‘‘What do you mean by ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in this connection?” “To begin with, a good work must be a true representation of the artist’s idea. It must be, I mean, harmonious in all its parts-true to itself. If it is so, I the work of a wise artist will be wise.” “And,” said, “the good work of a fool will be foolish?” “His best could only be called ‘foolish,’ ” said Mr. Epstein. “Then who is to judge,” I asked, “whether a work is really valuable or not? The artist himself cannot be allowed to judge by his own satisfaction, because the more foolish a foolish artist’s best work is, the more satisfied he will be with it.” Mr. Epstein agreed that the appreciation of the best contemporary minds might be taken into account. But suppose, I said, there was no one capable of appreciating an original artist’s work. “I do not believe,” Mr. Epstein said-rather optimistically for one who denied himself a philosophy --“that it is possible for an artist to be born so absolutely alone that there would be no contemporaries fit to proclaim him.” “But criticism is of no importance,” added Mr. Epstein; “you may take away criticism; the artist’s work remains.” “Certainly it remains for a time,” I said; “but to remain permanently, it would have to be preserved. ” “The artist himself would preserve it,” said Mr. Epstein. “And after his death?” I asked ; “then,, surely, the opinion of sensible people is a criterion.” “By all means,” said Mr. Epstein, “but all this is beside the point; all that matters is the work itself. ” “Still,” I said, “how is the world to judge a work? After all, the artist does not ignore us entirely, he does display his work to us.” “The spectator,” said Mr. Epstein, “will judge whether he enjoys contemplating it or does not enjoy it.” I suggested that there are, however, spectators who appear greatly to enjoy what is obviously bad art. “If they genuinely enjoy it,” said Mr. Epstein, “they are fools. But they may pretend to enjoy it, just because other people tell them they ought to enjoy it : and, when this is the case, their interest fades away at last; they find something else which they are told ought to be appreciated, and the bad work is forgotten and disappears . “But even this,” I said, “does not give us standards for comparison and judgment. And without them one can enjoy almost anything.” “Oh dear, ‘no,” said Mr. Epstein, “some things are quite intolerable. ” “Still, in the main,” I said, “it might be a matter of tastes. Tastes differ; what you enjoy, I do not necessarily enjoy.” “Have you seen my show?” asked Mr. Epstein, suddenly. I said I had. “Did you like my ‘Venus’? ” This question, as doubtless Mr. Epstein anticipated, put me in a terrible dilemma. I could not pretend I had liked the “Venus,” because it had only startled me. On the other hand, not to appreciate it seemed certain to rank me with the mob and the Philistine. I took the worst possible way out of my quandary. “Did you like ‘Venus’? ” asked Mr. Epstein again. :‘No,” I answered weakly; “and I don’t pretend to understand it.” This shocking blunder of mine had at least the good effect of putting Mr. Epstein into an excellent humour. “You are just like the newspaper critics,’? he said, sardonically; “you take the ordinary point of view of the newspaper critics ; they say, ‘It is all beyond me,’ and don’t take the trouble to think about it any more, as if it were not important that works of art should be understood You are like the public that goes to my show, and stands in front of the ‘Venus’ and the granite sculptures, and asks what they represent, what they mean, where did the artist first think of them, whom was he with at the time, how long did they take him to do, how much does the granite weigh, and what did it cost him, what sort of tools did he use, how was he dressed when he was working on them, and so on. But all these silly questions and all criticism, in fact, do not matter. They excite comment and draw attention to the artist’s work, but that is all. The most favourable criticism will not make any one enjoy my work who is incapable of understanding or enjoying it.” In all humility, I asked Mr. Epstein if he thought his sculpture could be compared with “abstact music,” of which he had spoken. No doubt he said, “an analogy could be drawn between the composers work and mine; our psychology may run on similar lines. But these are only general terms ; they convey nothing. William Blake had the double gift, and yet was neglected in his day. My genius inplastic I have the most profound contempt for those who before my granite carving ask what I meant by it. Why on earth should I be expected to explain my sculptures? There they are,! They speak for themselves !” Defence of Tailors By Dikran Kouyoumdjian. I MUST confess that the idea of this essay is due to no inspiration of my own; but that the matter was broached to me in so indignant and sincere a manner by one immediately concerned, that, on thinking it over, and finding myself sympathetically disposed, I have made bold to write about it. Until then, I had never thought of a tailor as an individual, but only as a person to whom I went from time to time to re-dress my wardrobe; the frequency of my visits being, of course, dictated by my means for which, unlike Mr, Street, I shall make no complaint). It was on the last such occasion that I found my tailor so worried and absent-minded, that I let him take my measurements and meander through the commonplaces of the day as submissively as might be. At last, however, a casual reference of mine to the critical doings in Russia, gave him the peg on which to hang his indignant confidence. Flying off at a tangent to the war in general, he proceeded by forced marches to Germanism, and thence, bitterly, to Carlyle, as a pro-German-and the arch enemy of tailors and tailoring ! Mr. Smythe. had read “Sartor Resartus” for the first time the evening before. I am not going to reconstruct all the details of the conversation I propose to sift Mr. Smythe’s information mingle it with arguments and observations of my own, and present the whole as a collection of sentiments in a defence, rather than a manifesto, of tailoring. My reason for not reporting the conversation verbatim is that, though my friend is very careful of his speech, and has some nicety of judgment (of Carlyle he said, venomously that he was ‘‘a peevish hussy, disguising his shrewishness under a cloak of obscure philosophy and crack-jaw sentences”), he has a tiresome habit of repeating himself, and confusing his argument with biographical details, which will interest you, who have no acquaintance with him,, even less than they interestedme Any sentiments, however, which you may flatter me by thinking foreign to my temper, you may kindly put down to the influence of Mr. Smythe. It is a long time since I read “Sartor Resartus” myself; or, indeed, have come into closer touch with itsauthor than to glance at the covers of a uniform edition of his works on my bookshelf. Nor would I now, though writing on the subject of clothes, willingly read again “Sartor Resartus,” or any of its neighbours. For it seems to me that such a season, such a place, and such a cottage as de Quincey prescribes for the proper understanding of happiness art? essential for climbing Carlyle’s long and uphill roads in comfort. “Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any town” ; let there be an extreme virulence of winter outside, let there be hail, snow and wind, and let the curtains be snugly drawn within; “and near the fire . paint me a tea-table . . . and an eternal tea-pot. And as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out for oneself, paint me a lovely young woman, sitting at the table.” So, should there be anyone who would wish me to voyage through Carlyle he must let me be the locum tenens of de Quincey’s “paradise.” But in this defence, I have not Carlyle so much in mind as that world of men who, with him, have poured contempt on Clothes ; for “Sartor Resartus” is only the vanguard (and the genius) of a vast mass of disdain and‘ ridicule, as shameful! as it is insincere. What is this fetish of a man which these people have in mind when they deride clothes? (These people! by whom I mean those who dawdle in art and literature, who are and have been, in thought and practice, the principal offenders : for your dandy with words is as often as not a dandy in clothes.) None (my tailor speaks); it is only a hereditary taint in their minds, handed down from generation to generation, to despise tailors and tailoring ; to pour ridicule on their craft; to think of clothing A as a matter of no importance, tu think of it as the most negligible accessory to the proper business of life. They will put tailors in the pillory, and gibe and sneer at them with “snip” and “goose,” and such like; and will remain profoundly ignorant of the fact that the only recommendation of an ordinary intelligence to the society of his fellows or betters is that he be properly clothed, both in manner and matter; that Nature, neither in the one nor in the other, is a sufficient guarantee of respectability; that Mother Earth, unless she is aided by artifice, breeds the manners of a boor, that, unless she is clothed by Tailors, she shows man to be no more than, as the satirist has it, “a forked, straddling animal with bandy legs. ” I will fake you, reader, to a place where, as an observer of men, I often used to go. I will suppose that you have lately (fix the time when you like) acquired means, and. have dressed yourself in what you thought suited you best; you need no monocle-the smoke is screen enough you are no coxcomb-merely Mr. de la Rue. Here, then, are the arts, good and bad. Look around you ! Not at the one dressed in the soi-disant Victorian fashion he is in a category apart, a coxcomb in collapse. But look all around you, at men like yourself-but dressed differently! They make a show of it-this difference : they stare at you-how they stare at you ! It is not all superiority that stares. YOU are a fool, they say :‘you must be, for you must have taken at least five minutes in choosing your suit, and the tie you are wearing is not the same as the one’ you were seen in three months ago; of course, you are a fool. They are superior-they talk, they write. they paint, mark you! They are above thinking of such things. as clothes ! They soar upwards, sublimely indifferent to the sordid craft of the fig-leaf. Their bodies, then, are made to look like sacks, bulging and bagging at the caprice of every wayward limb ! collars are invented to look like strips of raw linen ties to flap fulsomely over the lapels of the jacket ; trousers t to bag and pinch and be a living reproach to the contour of the limbs they so successfully hide. Clothes were invented for fools and the fastidious, they say, and, since these are the majority, we have to follow suit. Naked and unashamed ! they say absurd y of our forefather. No: naked and ashamed, as soon as there was ingrained in him the first particle of reason; for it was not decency that clothed him, since he did not know its opposite, but Reason. Literature, then, is to blame; if not the whole, then a prolific branch of it. But far more to blame is journalism which knows not what it does (not that I have any mind to break a lance with it, for I should get well trounced for my pains). Journalism, with regard to tailors, is to blame bath in assumption and presumption It has an air; it debates seriously with itselfam I, or am I not, of National Importance? And when it has given itself the palm of necessity and righteousness, it does not go its ways in peace, but presumes to come judging of the Importance of other crafts; it judges tailors, mouthing its catchwords of "extravagance”and frippery”-denouncing “ them as of No Importance ! But the law is on the tailor’s side; for, above all trades and professions alone of them all, the tailor is protected by law; it is the craft legal par excellence:; for the law has it that it is unlawful for any person (or persons) to be seen in their natural state in any public place. Thus; the business of tailoring is of extreme national importance ; though, since the tailor, unlike the journalist has been so excessively modest, he has lost all the credit of his indispensable qualities. Let us take a look back at those superficialities of history which point unmistakably in the direction of our, argument. Three hundred years back, Sir Walter Raleigh was going to his death. What, pray, first comes into the mind when one thinks of Raleigh? That he discovered Guiana, that he was a brave soldier and sailor, a most excellent and learned gentleman, ” that he chose so plebeian a thing as a potato with which to link his memory to ignorant posterity? Long before these comes the picture of Raleigh, dressed in all the finery of velvet and ruffles, stepping gallantly into the bleach of a perplexity and sacrificing his gorgeous cloak to the mud, that the shoes of a Queen might pass unsoiled ! Much Pater, there comes “The First Gentleman of Europe Do you remember him because of his laws and government because of Mrs. Fitzherbert? because of Thackeray ’s graceful lessons on the vanity and fickleness of princes ? because of Beau Beerbohm’s history of him? because he was the son of the honest old man, who, to his dying wife’s request that he should not marry again, replied so pathetically : Non, non, j’aurai des maitresses? Much better because it is said that he spent a year upon a wardrobe which was the envy and pride of every second gentleman in E Europe. Take death ; I would make no jest of that which has jested so at us. But there was a time, now long past, when criminals and captives went to meet death in all the finery they could muster; when Croesus, condemned by Cyrus to be burned on the funeral pyre of all his chattels, adorned himself (later, so it proved, in vain) with all the treasures of Lydia, that he might die as he had lived, a king. But now the criminal or traitor must meet death in, as it, is called “a sober suit of black”; as though his long sleep was to be contained in no other urn but that of an eternal English Sunday. There is a writer who has not jeered at tailors; for in “Evan Harrington,” you can find perfectly defined the characters of the tailor and the Snob. There is Old Melchisidec white-haired portly, genial--with what an air he flaunts his craft at the table of every squire in the county ! There is young Evan himself, who will give up the company of Major or Marquis, and the hand of an heiress of dukes, when the time comes for him to take the inheritance of his father, and become a tailor. And it is pleasant to read of the snobbish wiles of his sister, the Countess Louisa de Soldar, to hide from the fine company that she is the daughter of a tailor; and the disgrace and confusion to which she is put in her attempt to save Evan from enslavement to “The Goose.” And who, in the end, blames Evan Harrington for preferring to be tailored than to being a tailor? Industrial Symposium. Conducted by Huntly Carter, (62) PROFESSORT. A. SMIDDY. (Professor of Economics and Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, University College, Cork.) Reviewing briefly the tendencies of Labour before the War, we see, in addition to the demands for better wages, other motives actuating the industrial unrest among the workers. And this unrest was not confined to the United Kingdom, but assumed very serious aspects in New Zealand in 1913 where a sympathetic strike on the part of the United Federation of Labour assumed such dimensions as to be on the verge of involving the Commonwealth of Australia, were it not for the manner in which the Australian Labour leaders held in the more impetuous classes of workers. For a month and a half in 1912 almost the whole coal-mining industry of Great Britain was at a standstill, owing tu a strike of miners involving about ~,ooo,ooo workpeople. This strike led to the Coal Mines Minimum Wage Act of 1912. In that year there were in Great Britain 857 strikes In Dublin we had the famous strike of 1913, and a strike of miners in Yorkshire involving 150,ooo workers. The builders’ strike in 1914, when the National Federation of Building Trades Employers of Great Britain and Ireland would have locked out all their employees on August 15, 1g1~---6oo,ooo-were it not for the advent of the War. The most significant strike of all was the coal strike in South Wales on July 15 1915, when the miners challenged the penal and coercive measures of the Munitions Act, and succeeded in having their essential demands conceded. It was a practical An protest against the conscription of Labour. They also succeeded’ in having the don-unionists excluded from the benefits of the strike. Yet this latter gain was an isolated event; but it shows what organised Labour might have achieved to its permanent advantage, and the chance it got of becoming a partner in industry with the State. Personally, I do not think, if this were realised, that Labour or the Nation would benefit by it, because Labour is not yet sufficiently trained and educated to assume such responsibilties However, the spread of education and increased knowledge among some sections of the workers brought within their horizon increased possibilities of comfort, leisure, and power. Some of the younger workers, with knowledge based upon an insufficient grasp of first principles, worked on the emotions of those (especially in the Welsh coal districts) who were surrounded with sordid conditionsof living which gave no scope to the development of the spiritual, esthetical, and moral aspects of their nature. The attitude of the demobilised soldiers towards their former conditions of work (animated as they will be by the martial spirit that sustained them in war) will be altered, and they will demand as a compensation for the sacrifices they made for international liberty a bigger liberty in the moulding of their own career and a larger share in the industrial prosperity they will help to achieve. These are not the only claims on an increased share of the nation’s production. We shall have, also, the claims of an increased number of women and unskilled and semi-unskilled workers for a continuance of the prosperity War conditions gave them. The industrial demobilisation of a large percentage of I stop-gaps and emergency workers will diminish the bargaining power of trade unions. When the time comes for the displacement of the unskilled workers and women, they may throw in their lot with the employers for the sake of retaining their posts and they will be gladly used by the employers as a lever against the demands of the demobilised soldier-workers and trade unionists for the purpose of bringing down wages and increasing the autocracy of the capitalist. Labour’s discontent will be intensified by the inability of the State to realise literally its promise to Pensions restore the pre-war conditions of industry. and allowances may be used by employers to reduce wages. These grounds of Labour discontent will lead to many strikes, but of a local and craft character. Many trade unionists will then have borne in upon them the fact that they must take a more unselfish and broader view of trade-union functions, interest themselves more in the needs of the unskilled and badly organized workers, and henceforth endeavour promote occupational and industrial unionism. Modern industrial organisation and scientific management have broken down the barriers between many skilled and unskilled trades, thereby taking the monopoly away from skilled and organised, workers. Again, many lose sight of the .fact that Labour is not a homogeneous mass, and that sectional oppositions of many groups of workers are a disintegrating force against Labour combination as a whole. So it seems that immediately after the War the real wages of the workers will fall, if the capitalists avail themselves of the obstacles to Labour organisation and of the antipathies that will arise among the workers themselves. And if one can give a forecast of social happenings, one might assert that these sectional differences and antipathies will be greater immediately after the War than they have ever been during the history of capitalism. Capitalists have increased their power over the workers during the war in all industries occupied in war work, and are secured against labour trouble by various Parliamentary Acts. They have a free hand to increase output ; they have adopted automatic machinery, team work, standardised methods of production, employment of unskilled workers, men, women, and boys, on skilled processes. Hundreds of millions of the most up-to-date machinery have been introduced; payment by piecework, bonus systems have been extended. Output per head as the result of this process has been doubled. The workers have not spared their energies, and have sunk self-interest to meet efficaciously the dire necessities of war. Floating capital has been decreased, and will be scarce after the War; and those in possession thereof will reap large advantages. Certain sections of the community who have benefited by Army and Navy work and increased freights will be in this happy position Even the excess profits tax failed to prevent amassing wealth. Witness the alleged investment by them of ~~oo,ooo,ooo in Treasury Bills. The capitalist employers will resist returning to preWar methods of industrial structure, realising the far greater productivity of the new methods. A reference to the recent reports of the London Chamber of Commerce will convince one on this point. They also have felt the satisfaction of being masters of their own works, and ‘‘ sweet reasonableness ” will not induce many to modify the autocracy which this begets. Very many large-scale employers have recently expressed their intention to take steps to maintain this increased productive capacity after the War, and to promote at the same time the interests of the I workers. They hope to find employment for demobilised soldier-workers and for stop-gaps, women and children, by double and treble shifts ; to increase wages through profit-sharing or gainsharing; to secure harmony for Capital and Labour by giving the workers a control over the conditions under which they work, and by the promotion of joint committees for the purpose of devising and administering workshop policies and adjusting wages. It seems difficult, however, to prophesy how capitalists as a body of recipients of income will fare after the War, as their position will largely depend on the result of the War and on the terms of peace settlement. Much also depends on the fiscal policy adopted; on the fact whether protection will be given to agriculture or not, and on what form it will take. The State will be slow to abandon Its policy towards increased bureaucracy. It will endeavour to extend the principles at work in the National Health Insurance Act, Labour Exchange Act, etc. It will increase its paternal attitude towards the worker at the cost of his freedom. This will be facilitated by the unemployment benefits given to the demobilised soldiers and by the actual tendency towards conscription of Labour. The establishment of 400 Labour Exchanges promised by Mr. Hodge is a further earnest of a feudal attitude. It will be impossible for the State to restore pre-War labour conditions. of trade unionism. It will be necessary maintain the present efficient industrial structure to brought about by war conditions, in order that the United Kingdom may compete successfully with America and Central Europe, which will adopt the most efficient industrial and commercial methods. The State control of industries of public utility will continue ; experience in shipping and railways seems to justify a continuance of- this policy. On the other hand, the State should own and control all “ key ” industries, especially those requiring protection for their growth. The State must devise and put into execution without delay the machinery that will secure for trade unionists and demobilised soldiers the welfare and security against lowering the standard rates of pay, against unemployment and a deterioration of their standard of life, to maintain which their trade union practices and rules were formulated. The Trade Boards Act must be extended and minimum wages adopted. The action of the State will largely depend on the Government in power; hence the workers must realise the important issues of the next general election, which will be determined to some extent by the comparative strength of organises and unorganised workers. The latter class may help into power State-protected capitalism, and thus bring about the final and enduring break up of all that organised Labour fought for during the last sixty years. Though the prospects of Labour immediately after the War are not too bright, yet the workers must proceed at once to learn their lesson and to devise means for permanently improving their condition. The trade unions should federate into large unions, each one embracing all the workers in each industry, and render all unions bIackleg-proof by organising also unskilled Labour. It ought now to have learned the lesson that skilled organised Labour can no longer monopolise its craft. These national unions should settle the main lines of policy to be applied and worked by the local unions The national unions should federate and form themselves into a National Labour Council, which would settle sectional disputes among trade unions and represent interests of Labour in general in its relation to the the State or to Capital. The workers should aim more at industrial partnership than at advances in wages. Industrial partnership logically entails some control of, and responsibility for, the management of the works; and, in the case of large firms, the workers should be represented on the boards of directors. In all cases the workers’ representatives should be appointed, not by any external authority, but by the workers of the firm concerned. proportion of the profits should be paid to A the workers through the respective trade unions. This distribution of profits through the unions might take various forms; a lump sum at the end of each year, or by a deferred participation in some provident fund or annuity, or by a combination of such forms. If the individual’s share in the profits were paid directly to him, it might tend to alienate him from his trade union and break up its solidarity. Special facilities should be also offered to trade unions to invest their funds in the respective industries. As unemployment is “ a necessary process in capitalism,” capitalists should be made to maintain their workers during the period of unemployment. This could be done by a contribution from the employers to trade union funds, out of which the unemployed workers should be paid. If that policy had been adopted instead of the present policy as set forth in the National Health Insurance Act, the capitalists would soon devise some means of putting a stop to unemployment. Finally, Labour should induce into its unions the brain-workers as well as the manual workers, and not only the automatic brain-workers, but those who are more important from the view-point of education, the worker, the responsible brain-worker. The worker must make himself and his children fit to bear these responsibilities, and’ he can only do so by educating himself and his family intellectually and morally and religiously. He can get intellectual education through the means of continuation schools and Workers’ Educational Association, and keep his children at school until the age of sixteen. Moral education he can promote by loyalty to his trade union and fellowmen and his religious education by adherence to tenets of his Church and the observance in life of its Commandments Intellectual education, though it is a condition precedent to the workers’ betterment, yet without religion and morality it will bring no contentment. Capitalists should do all in their power to allay the suspicious feelings of the workers towards them by recognising the futility of opposing the just and humane claims of the workers, and by recognising their human personality. They should also co-operate with the State in giving the workers an economic constitution and frankly recognise their unions. It is too much to hope €or from the average capitalist that he will yield to Labour all the above-mentioned concessions ; but if he does so, all reasons will be withdrawn from the workers for restricting production and for hostility to the adoption of team-work, standardisation, long runs of repetition work, etc. The Nation as a commercial entity would increase in prosperity; and compete successfully in neutral markets. Capitalists ought to use their federations for purposes of greater business efficiency. Individual firms must federate, especially to export on terms comparable to their foreign competitors. Only by such combination can they bear easily the cost of pushing their goods in foreign markets by men having technical and linguistic knowledge ; they will also avoid competition among themselves, and reap some of the advantages of largescale production and distribution. The days for individual firms to push foreign trade are at an end. ... Employers must imitate those of America and Germany in encouraging higher education for those about to hold responsible positions in their businesses. The small numbers of students pursuing the admirable courses of studies in the Faculties of Commerce in British Universities is a standing reproach to the enterprise and ‘intelligence of the British employer. While the Faculties of Commerce of the Universities in Great Britain and Ireland had, the year preceding the outbreak of war, not more than zoo students, four German Universities of Commerce had between them over students of the average age of 23, each pursuing a full course of studies. If England intends to compete in foreign marketswith Central Europe, she must see that the future business leaders are men of high educational attainments ? This education, being of a liberal character, will develop in the future employer a social conscience, and help him to realise still higher ideals in life than personal monetary gains; it will tend to promote the partnership between Capital and Labour, and realise that co-operation of industrial Parliaments of Capital and Labour, which will be the next stage in industrial evolution after the temporary reverse Labour is likely to, meet with immediately after the War. The State must play a large part in directing such an evolution, and must enter as a controlling factor into any such partnership in the interests of the community. In Barber’s Saloon, By Anton Tchehov. (Translated from the Russian by P. Selver the MORNING. It is not yet seven o’clock, but Makar Kuzmitch Blestkin has already opened his barber’s The proprietor,. a young man of three-andsaloon. twenty, unwashed, greasy but foppish in his attire, is busy getting things into shape. As a matter of fact, there is nothing to get into shape, but his labours have caused him to perspire freely. Here he wipes with a piece of rag, there he scrapes with his finger, there, again, he discovers a bug and flips it away from the wall. The barber’s saloon is poky, cramped, and unclean. The matchwood walls are ‘plastered over with paper strips which remind one of a carman’s discoloured shirt. Between the two dingy oozing windows there is a narrow, creaking, rickety door, and, above it, a small bell which has become greenish with damp and fitfully emits a feeble tinkle of its own accord, without any reason. And if you look into the mirror which hangs on one of the walls, it distorts your countenance in all directions as a single pitiless image. In front of this mirror, the haircutting and shaving takes place. On a small table, which is as unwashed and greasy as Makar Kuzmitch himself, lies the whole show: combs, scissors, razors, a stick of pomade for: one kopeck, face-powder for one kopeck strongly weakened eau-de-cologne for one kopeck. Indeed, the whole barber’s saloon is not worth more that a fifteen kopeck piece. Above the door’ the feeble bell utters its whimpering tinkle, and into the barber’s saloon enters an elderly man in a tanned jerkin and shoes of felt His head and neck are enveloped in a woman’s shawl. This is Erast Ivanytch Yagodov, the god-father of Makar Kuzmitch. At some time or other he has served in the consistory as a caretaker, but now he lives in the neighbourhood of Krasny Prud* and carries on business as a locksmith. “Good morning, Makarushka, my boy!” he says‘ to Makar Kuzmitch, who is deep in his tidying-up. They kiss. Yagodov pulls off the shawl from his head, crosses himself, and sits down. “A tidy distance, that !” he remarks, wheezily. “A good step from Krasny Prud to Kaluga Gate eh?” “How are you getting on?” “Badly, my son. I’ve had the fever.” “You don’t mean it ! The fever?” “Yes. I was laid up a month, thought I was dying, Had the priest in, and all. Now my hair’s falling out. The doctor ordered me to have it cut. You’ll have a new, strong crop of hair, says he. So, thinks I to myself, why not go to Makar? Better go to a relative than to anyone else. He’ll do it better and ask nothing for it. It’s a tidy step, it’s true, but what does that matter? It’ll be a walk.” “Only too pleased. Take a seat, if you don’t mind.” Makar Kuzmitch, dropping a curtsey, indicates a Yagodov sits down and looks at himself in chair. * Red Pond, a district in the north-eastern Moscow. -f In the southern district. part of the mirror, with evident satisfaction at the spectacle. In the mirror appears a crooked freak with the lips of a Kalmuck, a flat, broad nose, and goggle eyes. Makar Kuzmitch envelops his client’s shoulders in a white sheet with yellow stains, and begins to wield the squeaky shears. “I’ll give you a close crop, eh?” he remarks. “Of course. Leave it like a Tartar’s, like a cannonball The hair’ll sprout again all the thicker.” “HOW’S Aunt getting on “Pretty middling. She manages to rub along. She attended the major’s wife in her sickness. They gave her a rouble for it.’’ “Well, well ! A rouble, eh? Just keep your ear still. ” “Right ! Don’t cut me; look out. Oh, that hurts. You’re pulling my hair.” “That’s all right. Can’t be done otherwise in our line of business. And how’s Anna Erastovna?” “My daughter? Pretty well-quite frisky she is, in fact. Last week, Wednesday it was, she got engaged to Sheikin. Why didn’t you come?” The shears stopped squeaking. Makar Kuzmitch let his arms droop, and asked in a tone of dismay “Who’s got engaged?” “Anna. ’ ’ “But how’s that? Who to?” “To Sheikin, Prokofie Petrovich I I is aunt’s a housekeeper in Zlatoustensky Lane. Nice woman, she is. Of course, we’re all glad, thank goodness. The wedding’s next week. Give us a call We’re going to have a spree.” But how do you make that out Erast Ivanytch said Makar Kuzmitch, pale, and flabbergasted, as he shrugged his shoulders. “How can that be? It . . . it can’t be. Why, Anna Erastovna . . . why, I . . . why, I was gone on her. . . . I had intentions. How can it be?” “Why, like this. They just went and got engaged. He’s a steady chap. ” Makar Kuzmitch broke out into a cold sweat all over his face. He put the shears on the table, and proceeded to wipe his nose with his fist. had intentions,” said he. “It’s impossible. Erast Ivanytch. I . . . I’m in love with her; I’ve put it to her. And Aunt promised. I’ve always looked up to you as if you were my own father. . . . I’ve always cut your hair for nothing. . . . You’ve always had favours from me, and when the old man died you got a sofa and ten roubles which you haven’t returned. Do you remember?” “Remember? Of course I do. But what sort of a match do you think you are, Makar? Call yourself a match, eh? You’ve got no money, and no position, a mighty poor business. . . . “And Sheikin’s rich ?” “Sheikin’s a member of a trade union. He’s got fifteen hundred roubles put away. That he has, my boy. Take it or leave it, the thing’s settled and done with. You can’t alter it now, Makarushka. Look round for another girl. there’s plenty more to be had. Well, get on with my hair. What are you stopping for?” Makar Kuzmitch said nothing, and stood motionless ; then he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and lapsed into tears. “Here, what’s up?” said Erast Ivanytch by way of comfort. “Hold hard. Snivelling just like an old woman, he is. Get finished with my head first, and then cry. Pick up the scissors.” Makar Kuzmitch picked up the scissors, gazed at them for a moment in an abstracted manner, and then let them fall on the table. His hands were trembling. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t now, I’ve got no strength left. I’m an unlucky fellow. And she’s unlucky, too. We were fond of each other, we came to an agreement, and then some ill-natured people, with- out any mercy, come between us. Clear off, Erast Ivanytch. I can’t bear the sight of you.” “Well, I’ll come hack to-morrow, Makarushka. You can finish cutting my hair to-morrow.” “All right, then.’’ “Cheer up, and I’ll come again to-morrow, as early as I can.” Erast Ivanytch had half his head clipped to the crown, so that he looked like a convict. It was awkward to remain with a head in such a state, but there was nothing else to be done. He wrapped his head and neck up in the shawl, and quitted the barber’s saloon. Left to himself, Makar Kuzmitch sat down and continued to weep silently. On the next day, early in the morning, Erast Ivanytch appeared once again. “What can I do for you?” he was asked coldly by Makar Kuzmitch. “Finish cutting my hair, Makarushka. There’s half my head still to do.” “Kindly pay the money in advance. I don’t cut hair for nothing. ” Erast Ivanytch, without speaking a word, departed, and to this very day the hair is long on one half of his head, and short on the other. To pay money for haircutting he considers prodigal, and he is waiting until the hair grows of itself on the close-cropped half. And that was how he made merry ’at the wedding. Reviews. What Think Ye of Christ? Being Lectures on the Incarnation and its Interpretation in Terms of Modern Thought. By Charles E. Raven, M.A. (Macmillan. 4s. 6d. net.) Theology has become passionate in this volume; the examining chaplain to the Bishop of Southwark is concerned not only bo illuminate our minds but to save our souls. Indeed, he protests against the professional theologian that he asks of any teaching only : “Is it true?” and does not apply the human test of its salvation -value; and as human beings have a habit of asking with a shrug “It may be very true, but what does it matter ?” the professional theologian is useless. Worse than useless, Mr. Raven would say, for his technical! presentation of spiritual reality offends more than it attracts, and frequently converts an inquirer into an iconoclast. Mr. Raven is himself a Fellow, Lecturer in Theology, and Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge but he had the advantage, even at Emmanuel College, of “seeing life,” of being compellednot only to justify but to state and understand his faith, “to give a reason for the hope that is within him” to a most varied concourse of opponents. He says himself : “Naturally at first there was chaos, and into the very vortex of it I was flung as a newlyordained deacon scarcely older than my own senior undergraduates. The eighteen months’ life was one Iong struggle against dominant unbelief I shall never forget those fortnightly meetings of the Religious DiscussionSociety founded by Mr. Chawner, and consisting of twelve members of whom for the first year I was the sole professing {Christian. They were an able group of men; and I used to come away literally worn out with the strain of my puny efforts to make a case for the faith that was in me, to maintain it against the arguments of those whose views ranged from the Stoic to the hedonist, from the Fabian to the Nietzscheite and who were united only in this, that all denied and would fain destroy the creed of Christ. Through the aching shame at my own impotence and the glad assurance that despite my failures the Faith still stood true, my half-formed beliefs became clearer and more defined. I discovered that utter insincerity was the only possible method, that catchwords, ideas taken on trust and clothed in cant phrases were useless, nay, subversive that it was impossible to convince others of what I was not prepared to state logically and defend without appeals to external authority, and that the personality and the claims of Jesus came to mean more and more both io me and my opponents, while the metaphysics of the Creeds meant ’less and less.” It must have been a good time for the opponents, and certainly it has not done Mr. Raven any harm. After that, he had eighteen months of parochial work, which gave him an acquaintance with everyday life that the average theologian does not possess; and confirmed in his theory that: “in the religious sphere, unlike the mathematical the validiity of a theory can only be tested in its ‘actual working. ’? As the psycho-analysts say : “A truth is a truth when it works.’’ It is really a psychological interpretation of the Incarnation that Mr. Raven gives in these lectures The first shows us that man’s knowledge of God is conditioned by his powers of perception, just as his knowledge of everything else is conditioned. There is, in fact, no immediate revelation of God, but a mediate revelation through everything, and the indwelling of the Spirit in Jesus does not differ in kind but only in degree from its indwelling in the saints and in more sinful men. The other lectures deal with “The One-ness of Jesus,’’ “The Many-sidedness of Jesus,” “The Divinity of Jesus,’’ and “Man’s ,Salvation through Jesus.” Mr. Raven insists that the best method of approach to the idea of the Incarnation is through the life and teaching of the man Jesus, not through the doctrine of the Christ, the second Person of the Trinity. Jesus was a type, He can only be explained in the terms of that which He typified; but as He was perfect man, He is able to show us most clearly the, way to rear knowledge of the Divine. Our conception of God is determined by our knowledge of Jesus; and Mr. Raven is bold enough to declare of the divinity of Jesus that “His one-ness with the divine comes along the same lines and affects the same side of His nature as do our ecstasy and communion.” He admits that this is technical heresy, but argues that any other teaching results in a denial of the reality of the Incarnation. “Difference in degree merely means that He was very man, and that His union with His Father is to be interpreted under the same mode as ours.” Indeed, the whole question really is: “Is the Incarnation to be intelligible or unintelligible?’’ Mysterious, it will always be, for we do not know, nor seem likely to know, how our own life indwells in our body; but that is no reason for making the mysterious unintelligible. If . Christianity is to be a doctrine of salvation, the Incarnation must be intelligible by statement in the terms of our own experience; the mystery remains, but we are linked by affinity to the mystery. Moral Philosophy. of Free Thought, By K. C. Morgan, Kt., M.D. (Daniel. 5s. net.) In 1822, this book was originally published; since. when the Freethinkers have used no other. It is now re-issued at the request of Mr. H. C. Donovan, whose father, presumably, in 1861, “recommended this work to the frequent perusal of such of my children as shall pay attention to the subject of Phrenology.” The book probably had some interest at a time when sceptics were accused of an “indulgence of licentious habits, ” arid stories about “infidel death-beds” (as though an infidel could not at least die as well as ,his even Christian) were current, It is unfortunate that, as Nietzsche said, “in England, for every little emancipation from divinity, people have to reacquire respectability by becoming moral fanatics in an awe-inspiring manner”; for the Freethinkers are really the most dull of writers. If only they would do a little free thinking, and not bother so much about the superfluity of a Divine sanction of morals, they would not be authors of such frowsy commonplaces of physiology masquerading as moral philosophy as this book presents. Peace to its ashes ! The Pastiche, WAR. What a hole! All holes, nothing whole, Funk holes, shell holes, rat holes, Unholy, unwholesome hell Muck, - mess, megrims, melancholy, Melancholy, immeasurably melancholy, Tearful, tragic, weird. Weird, odd, extraordinarily odd, rum. Rum, butter, biscuits, bully and tea. More rum, no rum, nothing but petrol water. Arms t Arms and equipment. Arms and legs, corpses, bodies, Bosches, Armless haters, harmless, hideous horrors. Hideous, hardening, ha! ha! Huns hunted, helmet hunting, souvenir hunting. Buttons, badges, badges of rank, rigid rankers, Rank, bad, rotten rancidity. And the mud. . . . Paste, mushy, slush and water, bloody water, chlorinated water, Slime, slithery slough, bog, quagmire, beastly ! Puddles, ponds, and pools. Wearing waders, weary waders, waders weak, wonky, gone west. We’ve wet feet : whale oil, where, where, where? Cold, keen, cutting, excruciating fire, Fire, flare-lights, fire-flingers, flash, Crump, Where was it? Crumps coal-boxes, ‘Jack Johnsons, Jumping Jehosophat ! whizz, whistle, whizz-bangs-oh, Trench mortars and aerial torpedoes, Minewerf er and machine-guns, Slingers, snipers, shots, good shots, bad shots, Blighties, base, buried or back to billets. Billets, bother ! Back again to billets, Trudging trench trails arid tracks, ruts and real roads. Tramping roads, roaring with the nine Point two howitzers, huts, heavy roads, Habitations, houses, heaven ! Billets, blankets, beds, blessed beds, Billowy beds, planks and straw . But beds, beds and bye-bye. W. M. H. MILITARY INSTRUCTION. AN IMPRESS EON. Little is heard but the voice. “Now then! ’Shun! “Yus, I’m yer pal, I am. I’m here ter learn yer. Jest pay ’tention ter me, and yer can’t go wrong. Blimey! ’Old yer ’ead up there; ’old it hup! “ ’Ow old are yer? Thirty-nine, eh? , Fought so. Well smarten yerself up er bit, will yer? ‘‘ Now, arms upward stretch! “ Blimey, put ’em down agin! I’m ’ere ter learn yer, that’s what I am-learn yer. “ What’s yer name? Wood! Fought so! Wood be name and wooden-’eaded be nature ! ” Here our instructor is overcome by laughter. “ Yus, gorblimey, yer’ll ’ave ter smarten yerselves hup er bit! Come on, now. Form quad! Oh, blimey! ‘As you were! Yus, ye? the worst squad I’ve ever come acrorst-yus, yer are. I’m ’ere ter learn yer, I am. An’ if yer can’t learn off me, yer can’t learn off no one. Yus, an’ if I haves much more of it, I’ll give it yer on Seterday arternoon for two ’ours. Gorblimey, I will ! “Now watch me’an’ yer can’t go wrong. Armswinging and leg-risin’! Yus that’s jest ’ow yer ’aves to do it. “ Oh, gorblimey ! As yer were! “ What’s yer name? Smiff ! Fought so? Well, Smiff, what was yer in civil life? Clerk, was yer? Fought so. Yus, don’t look at me like that, or I’ll draw it acrorst yer when we’re done. Yas, I will. An’ if I ketches anybody a-larfing at me-well, I’ll run yer -yus, gorblimey: I’ll run yer! I’m ’ere ter learn yer, that’s what I am. “ Yus, and let me tell yer as ’ow yer the worst .class. I’ve ever ’ad. Yus, yer are; but I’ll learn yer.” Squad breaks up for a short interval. Instruction in bayonet-fighting follows. Instruction begins “Well, as I said before, I’m yer pal, I am, an’ I wants ter get yer on, I do. So as yer can take care of yerselves. Now then, ’tention ! ‘f Now, when yer ’andle yer baynit, yer wants ter fink of Nurse Cavell-yus, an’ all them other wimen what them there ’Uns ’ave murdered. Yus, yer wants ter stick ’em like pigs. ‘I Watch me ! In-out-on guard ! Yus, right through ’em. An’ quick, too; then yer’ll be ready for the next one. “Yus, do it yerselves. In-out-on guard! “ Oh, gorblimey ! Yer’ve got ter kill ’em, that’s wot you’ve got ter do. Stick it in ’em, ’cos they don’t like it Let’s ’ave it agin. Yus, an’ fink of Nurse Cavell while yer a-doing it. “ ’Ow old are yer? Firty! Fought so. Well, yer better pull yerself together. Yus, ’ah if yer don’t, I’ll run yer-gorblimey, I will! That’s yer fice, ain’t it? Well, mind yer don’t get the shape of it altered. ‘I Now, then, there’s a norfficer coinbn’. Just pull yerselves tergether, an’ remember I’m yer pal, I am. Who yer larfing at, eh? 1’11 run yer-gorblimey, I will ! ” H. F. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. AFTER= WAR UNEMPL0YMENT . Sir,-Your proposal of ‘‘ undilution ” appeals to one instantly as the right answer, in the abstract, to the problem of unemployment after the war, but the timid guildsman, when he comes to think over the possibility (not, perhaps, very great) of your solutions being actually adopted, begins to feel anxious. Supposing that Lloyd George (if he happens still to be autocrat with the House of Commons to heel) were to take your advice and were promptly to quadruple old age pensions, lower the age of pensioners to sixty, raise that for admission to industry, shorten the working day and lengthen holidays, what would be the final outcome of all these excellent measures ? This particular unemployment problem would have been solved, but would not the cause of capital as against the coining of the Guilds have been enormously strengthened ? Reformist legislation is dangerous just in so far as it is effective. Your scheme would raise the efficiency of labour and spread contentment, so that, though wages might rise, the employer would reap the benefit not only in increased productivity, but also in increased docility. How would all this affect the fight for control? - What, for instance, would be the attitude of those comfortable sixty-year-old State pensioners, and what their influence on sons, and grandsons ? I don’t feel comfortable when Guildsmen take a leaf out of the Fabian book and offer excellent advice to a capitalist Government. Stupid as it is, that Government is quite capable of knowing that it is to THE NEW AGE rather than to the “ New Statesman ” that it must now turn for help when it finds itself in a tight place. I don’t care to see you throwing a life-belt to a man E. T. who may as well drown. **I A SOLDIER IN LONDON. Sir,--Being in search of a meal, I entered a wellknown cafe and went forward to the rear part of the lounge where dining-tables are laid. The first table I approached had accomodation for four persons, but only one seat was occupied, and that by a-lady. The seat beside her was vacant, whilst at the opposite side of the table two chairs were tilted up. I placed my hand on the back of the first chair for the purpose of setting it down, when the lady snapped out viciously, “You can’t sit here.” I went to the nest table. Again the sole occupant was a lady. Result, this time with a foreign accent, “ You can’t sit here.” I went to the third table. This time the occupant was a man but the result was the same. I got the clear intimation, in pure English this time, that I could not sit there. Oh, oh !” thinks I. This reminds me of a notice I once saw outside some gardens in the Midlands: “ Prices of Admission.-Subscribers, Free ; Public, 6d. Dogs and Soldiers Not Admitted.’’ There was this difference however : some of these ,people who resented the presence of a soldier were accompanied by dogs. I came to the conclusion that this was a game well worth seeing through, so one after another I went to about a dozen tables, and in every case, whether the . occupant was man or woman, British or foreign, I met with the same reception, “You can’t sit here.” Having tested the position thoroughly, I considered it was time to act, so I called a waiter. “ Waiter, tell the manager he’s wanted.” In a few minutes the manager appeared himself, an old ex-soldier of the French Army. (‘ Well, major, what can I do for you?” “ I want a seat and something to cat, and unless I get, both pretty smartly there’s going to be trouble here. It’s a queer state of affairs when a British soldier is refused accomodation at a dozen tables in a London eating-house. ” ‘‘ You shall have both, sir, and anything you desire,” he replied. And I did. But that fact did not remove the feeling that I’d been grossly insulted, simply because I was one of the rank and file. I suppose, if I’d worn crowns on my shoulder-straps instead of crowns on my sleeves, many of these-ladies would have been pleased to accommodate me. Now, as most of these seats were never occupied during the time that I remained there, I think it would not be a bad idea if the military authorities clearly intimated that any place where such treatment was accorded to any man wearing His Majesty’s uniform, ‘who can conduct himself properly and pay for what he wants, should be put out of bounds for all ranks. That would soon put a stop to such nonsense. On leaving the cafe I turned in to see a revue. What’s a revue, any way? Is it supposed to contain a story, plot, or what? As this was the first sample I’d seen of this kind of entertainment, I was naturally curious, especially as I’d seen it stated in the Press that this particular show was drawing A;2,000 a week. Well, I was completely flummoxed, and could neither make top nor tail of the bally thing. The house was packed, and cheered the performers uproariously. For what ? I neither saw nor heard anything worth cheering. What I did hear was some indifferent singing, and what I saw was about. forty partly dressed females doing a bad imitation of squad drill, and-oh, yes, there was a passion dance, which was evidently the piece de resistance of the show! In this performance an agile female threw various knots upon herself before a portly male person, and every contortion showed as plain as words that the hussy was brazenly offering him the apple. Fancy people paying &z,ooo a week to look at a show like this ! Phew ! . After the revue I strolled from Leicester Square to Piccadilly Circus. Someone has christened Pittsburg “‘Hell with the lid off.” I wonder what kind of a name he would invent to indicate the character of these few hundred yards of pavement ? Street-women were so numerous that they blocked the pavement and literally fought for the possession of a man. I thought they were going to give me a miss, but no such luck. “ Where are you going to, my dear?” chirruped one at my side. ‘‘ Home,” I replied. . ‘( Come home with me, my love.” “‘ No, hinny. You are going to hell so you can travel by yourself. ” She wasn’t the least put out-just turned about and made a dart at the next soldier who came along. Can nothing be done to save soldiers from these women? I know the usual reply-soldiers should be able to take care of themselves, and that’s where the mistake is made. Old soldiers like myself can take care of ourselves, but it should be remembered that the present army is made up of young fellows from towns and country, most of whom have never spoken to a girl before, outside their own family circle. These boys are naturally flattered when a woman, dressed in the latest fashion, showers caresses upon him. How are they, straight from their cramped industrial lives, to realise that these harpies live upon plunder, and that the sole result of association with them is a life of bitterness afterwards ? What would I suggest, then ? Make prostitution a felony. Organise a corps of a hundred women policemen. Let them patrol the streets and they’d soon clear up the professionals. But what about the flapper? Ah, there’s a problem! I will relate what I’ve seen of the hussies in another letter. A SOLDIER. *** * RUSSIA AND THE UKRAINE Sir,-It is not often I trouble your readers nowadays. But that which I sighed for has taken place. Allow me to inform them through your columns that the Ukraine question is dead and buried. Miliukof, Tereschtenko, Rodzianko, and Prince Lvoff (two of them Ukrainians) are a guarantee for the future. Let the Jews understand that their last excuse for a separate life has gone Let the Ukrainians of Russia help themselves now and justify their claims by patriotic development. The Ukrainians of Galicia have no longer any cause to fear the reunion with their brothers. A free Ukraine, whole and indivisible, within a free Russia-God help us, Sir, we have not suffered in vain! GEORGE RAFFALOVICH +*+ MR. VAN DIEREN’S MUSIC. Sir,-It may interest Mr. Gray to know I did not use Mr. Van Dieren’s analytical notes during the performance They savoured too much of the jig-saw puzzle for me to bother with them; and, anyhow, I object to using scores or analytical notes at a performance; they interfere for me with the spiritual enjoyment and understanding the music. I care so little for the theme of naming mania that, if the dramatic fitness of the themes is not apparent and convincing as music apart from labels, then my interest is gone. Mr. Van Dieren’s themes seemed to me to be so devoid of distinction and distinctness as to be all but impossible to distinguish. I don’t expect fully to comprehend a new work at a first hearing, but I do insist on being able to apprehend it in meaning and structure. But Mr. Van Dieren’s was too structureless in effect for me to make anything of it, and it was so emotionally monotonous that I was soon bored, and that with all the willingness and desire in the world to enjoy and understand it. Mr. Gray will contemn this as merely psychological, and so valueless but what, may i ask, is music written for if not for its psychological effect and value? What other criticism is applicable to music if not this of its spiritual value ? Surely there is no need for any bad feeling in all this arguing for principles. It is too silly to twit an earnest opponent, who is only seeking after the best, with platitudes and infallibility when he compares these modern attempts with the great things of the past, for only so can a just judgment be arrived at. I had no intention of being (‘ spiteful ” in my reference to Mr. Van Dieren’s conducting; it was a legitimate and instructive bit of observation and deduction. Rut it does enrage one more than a little when one sees all this publicity and adulation accorded to such immature, chaotic, ineffective attempts, and thinks how a Mozart and a Schubert had to suffer neglect and poverty and lack of adequate (or any) performances. Mr. Van Dieren has yet to learn that to be effectively simple is much more difficult than to be academically complex. The greatest things in music are also of the simplest in content, and the most impossible to imitate; genius is required to avoid failure there. FREDERICK H. EVANS. *+* Sir,-Mr. Van Dieren’s music is pre-eminently Apollonian in character; it lacks the Dionysian impetus which is capable of imparting such vigour, intensity, and depth to a great work of art. At the same time I have never heard a more perfect and harmonious utterance of the Apollonian theme itself. If only Mr. Van Dieren could produce a Dionysiac work of equal excellence and then a third in which both Apollo and Dionysus MEREDITH STARR. might equally participate ! THE CINEMA. Sir,-Your correspondent ‘‘ Fair Play ” in his letter on the Cinema makes one statement which is incorrect. He states that the Cinema Commission was “ appointed by the Trade.” Doubtless what he meant to say was “ invited by the Trade.” What actually happened was that the Trade invited the National Council of Public Morals to make an investigation into the effects of the Cinema on the young. But the Bishop of Birmingham’s Coinmission of Enquiry was appointed and established by the National Council of Public Morals, and not in any way by the cinematograph trade. The Trade asked for the enquiry; but all questions as to the personnel of the Commission or its procedure were left entirety to the discretion of the National Council of Public Morals. Cinematograph Trade Council, F. F. FOWELL, Secy. *** “V. AND R.” AGAIN. Sir,-“ A. E. R.” writes ; “Phipson did not say, as M:. Leggett says he did, ‘that we have paid for a big slice of our imports with an international currency. ’ ” Phipson may not have said so, but ‘‘ A: E. R.” certainly attributed that view to him. In his review of “A national currency Phipson’s “A. E. R.” wrote book would enable us to pay for imports with exports, instead of an international currency.” Again, in his letter which appeared on April 5 he stated : “If by giving an importer the option of being paid in international currency instead of British goods, we, not only curtail our export trade,” etc. If that is not the whole purport of Phipson’s book, perhaps ‘‘A. E. R.” will indicate where, either in his review or his subsequent letters, he has hinted at what Phipson’s message really is. Or is “A. E. R.” so dazzled by the brilliance of Mr. Phipson that he is unable to contemplate the scintillating magnificence of this book he pretends to review sufficiently steadily to discern even the general direction in which it manifests itself? HARRY W. LEGGETT. Memorandai (From last week’s NEW AGE.) Can cousinship be suspended at will merely on account of the temporary insanity of one of the relatives ? A few exercises in imagination would re-establish our faith in democracy, and include again within the comity of democracies the tragical German people. Prussianism is both a state of mind and a system. Culture is separate in America from commerce, as culture in England is largely bound up with commerce. At this moment what is not Left in Ireland is not Inish. There is nothing more remarkable than the profound desire of the English- people for education, unless it be the sense of their economic inability to pay for it. What is a Government for but to educate public opinion ?-“ Notes of the Week.” The control of the product capitalism, because upon it depends.-&. D. H. COLE. Theorists must create the Interviews.” is the stronghold profiteering mainly appetite for of change.- Capital tends to flow where the return will be largest to the capitalist, not to the nation.-JOHN ZORN. Young actors have to learn to deliver their wit like gentlemen, not like bookworms; as though their wit belonged to them, and not as though it were a quotation -JOHN FRANCIS HOPE. The literary judgment must agree with the personal and the personal with the literary; they cannot both analyse the same man and come to contrary conclusions--R H. C. PRESS CUTTINGS. To the Editor of the " Times." Sir,-Some expression ought, I think, to be given to the profound regret which many feel at the news that Allied airmen have dropped bombs on the open town of Freiburg and have injured and killed women and children. Those who think with me believe that, unspeakably great as has been the provocation, (I) a policy of reprisals is useless, for the German Government will care nothing for the death of a few civilians, and, further, we shall have started a competition in frightfulness in which we shall not contend on equal terms; (2) a policy of reprisals will prove disastrous, for we cannot now appear with clean hands at the great assize which will follow the war; we shall have had our share in lowering the standard of international morality ; (3) a policy of reprisals is essentially wrong.-F. H. ELY. I do not know what Sir Douglas Haig is paid, but I am certain that he is not paid anything like the money that many manufacturers and contractors are making annually out of the war. There is no question at all of anybody in the Army profitting by the war. If the General Staff were a lot of company directors for whom our soldiers were called upon to make profits by killing Germans, there would be plenty of discontent, in the trenches. The difference between workers at homw and the soldiers in the trenches is that the former know they are working for the private profit of someone the latter know they are not.-" London Mail While it cannot be denied that certain sections of Russian Social Demoracy are imbued with pacifist ideas, I believe that the mass of public opinion favours whole-hearted prosecution of the war. And even the Socialists, when they put forward their programme of " no annexation and no indemnities,'* do not necessarily mean that they wish to see any slackening in the conduct of the war. The eight hours' day is now in force. in the factories, ' but no limit is placed on overtime for all work fur war purposes, and in the case of food organisations and railways. This shows that the people realise the necessity for uniting the rear with the front in a common effort to secure victory. At Minsk the workmen's and soldiers' delegates of the Russian Western front held a meeting, at which MM. Cheidze, Tseretelli, and Skobeloff represented the Petrograd delegates. They said that the pivot of their programme was unity of front and rear in the work of defending the newly won Iiberty of Russia. Every effort would be made to supply the armies with what they needed in order to do their duty.--" Times." We have our own private quarrel with Germany, as one nation with another, as she with us. Her aim is to make the world believe that the war .is a personal quarrel between herself and us, and that she would end it now if we would let her; it is the ambition and the enmity of England. that prolong the war. That 'is her cry, and we must prove by our .freedom from ambition and enmity that it is false. We must go to the Peace Conference with no claims against her merely as of one nation against another. We must make her understand by our actions .that me come not as a nation at all, but as a member of a new society, and that she, too, may become a member of it if she will. She has a blood-feud with us now, and we cannot end it by killing her; but we may convince her that she lives in a world in which blood-feuds will no longer be endured. For this talk of blood-feuds is all metaphor. The quarrel between us and Germany is not one between two men who hate each other and have done each other wrongs, It is between two multitudes, no one member of which has a personal quarrel with any other. It is the error of the Germans that they see a nation as a person, a romantic, sentimental error, in which they forget to see themselves or any other men as per-~ sons, in which they cease to act as men or to treat men as men, or women as women, or children as children. we cannot cure them of it by falling into it ourselves by talking or thinking of Germany as a person and a personal devil. Rather we shall cure them by knowing ourselves that this is a world of men, not of nations, and that when nations fight it is men who die, and women who are widowed, and children who are left fatherless For that is the fact behind all the solemn talk of theorists. Germans are 'more real than Germany, Englishmen than England, and men .than either. And now the league of the nations has become a league of men to maintain that fact, a league a thousand times more real than any alliance of the past. But it can keep its reality only if it remains aleague of men and does not slip back into a league of nations maintained for a particular purpose and against one particular nation. We need to see the Germans, and to convince them that we see them, not as a nation at all, but as a multitude of men possessed by a collective madness, a multiple calling themselves Germany, which is to them another name for God. But if they will throw off the madness we will see them, and treat them again, as men; we will forgive the wrongs which they did when they thought themselves God; we will not exult insolently over that country of theirs which has exulted over all the world. We will remember that they, too, have their dead and their widows and their fatherless, a grief which they share with us in our common humanity.-" Times Literary Supplement. The War Cabinet have approved a new scheme submitted by the Director-General of National ,Service for obtaining from the less essential industries a sufficient number of suitable substitutes for men who must be released for military purposes from 'the more essential industries. Committees of employers and employed in the various trades affected are being formed for the purpose of arranging what men shall be released from their respective trades, and to ar range for their transfer to the essential trades the substitution officers of the National Service Department. main feature of The the scheme is that it places upon those concerned in the trade itself the responsibility of finding the men required with the least possible injury to the trade or hardship to the man, That vast profits have been accumulated under Government contracts is a matter of common knowledge and that various M.P.'s have been directly or indirectly connected with contracting firms is equally well known. Yet, in face 'of the fact that millions of money have been accumulated, the Government has deliberately prevented any further discussion or comment on those contracts obtained by. members of the House; and it is perfectly open for a partner in a munition, a shipbuilding or any other firm connected with munitions of war, to arrange a deal on terms disastrous to the country and infinitely profitable to himself, without the House of Commons being able to discuss the terms of the agreement, to express disapproval of the same, or to compel the contractor to relinquish his seat." The New Witness."