The Freewoman

THE Freewoman A WEEKLY HUMANIST REVIEW No. 45. Vol. II. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1912 Threepence Registered at g.P.o. as a Newspaper. Editor: DORA MARSDEN, B.A. CONTENTS Page The Dances of the "Stars."By Huntly Carter 361 Topics of the Week: Voting 363 Low Forms of Society 364 Leadership 365 "The New Humpty Dumpty."By Rebecca West 366 Leadership. By Charles J. Whitby, M.D. 368 Page The New Order. Series II. IV.—The New Religion: Cosmic Harmony in Human Conduct. By W. Allan Macdonald and Helen M. Macdonald 370 "The Freewoman "Discussion Circle. 371 Correspondence: Representation and Government 371 Pack Slaves! To Arms! 371 The Original Impulse 372 The Case of Penelope 372 Rebecca West's Review of "Marriage "373 Money 373 The Evil of Government 374 To World's End, via The Cape 374 What is Individualism? 375

THE DANCES OF THE "STARS." IN the circle of cosmic intelligence there are no "Stars"—only stars. Between the dancing stars in heaven and the rhythm of the cosmos there is nothing, but between the dancing "Stars "on earth and the cosmic rhythm there is a machine. Man has lost the cosmic impulse and found a piano. He has become erect as an upright grand. Some months ago, while in Paris, it was suggested by my distinguished confrere, M. Henri Darvey of the Mercure de France, that I should accompany M. Raymond Duval, the musical critic of Uns, in order to sample the seeds of the Dalcrozian system of dancing, and to watch how they were being sown in France. These seeds, it appeared, had come to Paris from Switzerland by way of various Continental cities, and were destined to arrive in due course in England. (A consignment of them from Germany is due here in November, and favourable examples will be shown by the Dalcrozian pupils in London and provincial cities. It remains to be seen whether they will take root in English soil, the top dressing of which consists of so many foul and foreign elements.) One night I and M. Duval set out for the demonstration. We were to see a number of enthusiastic persons agitating their blood by running round in circles, semi-circles, demi-semi-circles in response to the requirements of notes of music, crotchets, quavers, semi and demi-quavers. I gathered this much and more from M. Duval, who, being an expert in this sort of running business, was only too eager to explain its merits in order that I might agree to undergo a course, and thereby become more graceful in my method of locomotion. He seemed to think I ought to stop flopping about from side to side like a turbot, even though I enjoyed it. Further, he told me that I had within me a quantity of natural musical potentialities which my primitive ancestors had transmitted to me after receiving them direct from Nature. In order that they might develop and manifest these tendencies, Nature had given these ancestors the key of sensibility. In the course of time man had, however, mislaid this key, with the result that human beings became like dolls in a nursery. Then arose a very great mechanician, who said: "These dolls have no intelligence; I must supply some. I will invent machines that shall feed, clothe, and shelter them, and even give them animation."He was like the ingenious person in Marryat's novel who invented a certain instrument by which he could enlarge the bumps of every head placed within it. To be brief, I learnt that I had dormant rhythms in me which could be set going by a machine which the industrious descendants of the very great mechanician had brought to perfection. Evidently M. Duval had better hopes of my rhythms than I had of them myself. On entering the small dance-room three things took my notice—a director, a piano, and a black-board. The director represented authority; the blackboard, teaching and translation; the piano, man's loss of response to natural stimuli. Together they represented the man-talk medium by which moderns are roused to dance actively. Presently the director stroked the piano and other strange features became apparent. Male and female figures, dressed in black bathing tights, emerged from tiny bathing boxes crowning the public gallery, and, in response to some chords, began to circle at one end of the room, moving harmoniously and gracefully against a grey-curtained background. I noticed that the rhythms of the dancers corresponded to those of the music. The piano said politely, "Now, if you please, we will have a lively and gay rhythm, or the rhythm of the barcarolle, or a white and black rhythm, a soft, a loud, a silent, a lymphatic, an adipose rhythm, as the case may be,"and the legs and arms processed accordingly. Then the blackboard intervened with a word or two. It said, "When I give you this rhythm, make four movements with your arms. Stamp your feet with the first beat, indicate the second by a movement, keep the body stationary, and start off with the third and fourth beats.""And,"I added, "you will then become figures or bits of old Etruscan pot." We left the Etruscan decorations for the arched Champs. Night led the way down the river of fire, all subtle gleams and keen caresses. Deep blue-violet swam overhead; shafts of golden yellows pierced the trees. Lights danced in procession with the rapidly moving vehicles. Men and women were seated at the cafes. The free vibrations of their voices and bodies waved like dancers' plumes across flashing recesses. Here was life. Here were men and women full of vitality. They moved spontaneously; they were a portion of the Champs' life. They were It. This was Champs-Elysian, not Dalcrozian. A few days later I was shown that remarkable study by Matisse, "The Joy of Life." Its proper title is "Life without a Director." Once more I experienced a real sense of life. From the outset I began to be a portion of the picture. It was as though my intelligence had ibeen fired by its strength and vitality. As I looked at it, living forms emerged from space, forms unrestrained, spontaneous, expressing the real joy movement of life itself. I saw these figures acting and reacting in space without any visible accompaniment. One of the most remarkable things in them was their freedom of movement. The mind of the cosmos, vital intelligence, was running through their whole bodies. Technically, this life and freedom was got by the structural unity of line and colour. By the rhythmic treatment of line the eye was carried unconsciously from point to point to the central motive, a circle of figures having the utmost animation. This centre was the big vital side. It was touched with violet, into which the roses and yellows and their complementaries undulatingly rolled like the waves of the sea. Curiosity impelled me to discover what it was that gave vitality to the movement of the figures. I found that the grace and bend of the trees was only a reflection of those of the flow and bend of the vertebrae and the motion of the pelvis. Turning for a moment from the picture, I sought for this wonderful natural flow of the vertebras and motion of the pelvis in the great modern "star "dancers. But without success. I watched Isadora without arms, Maud Allen the depressionist, Ruth St. Denis the imitation Indian article, Pavlova, "star" of "The Palace,"Kchessinka, the Sisters Wiesenthal, and all I discovered were Greek Vase and other intellectual dances, taking us 'back to where we are not intended to go. These were dances of the arms and fingers and legs, in which the vertebrae and pelvis take no part. They were the manifestations of the invertebrate dancer stamped with the dead pelvis. This was partly Dalcrozian. Following the Matisse came an amazing Picasso, either at M. Sagot's, in the Rue Lafitte or elsewhere. To the pot-walloping British brain the study would suggest the collapse of a pyramid of beer-cans possessing limitless handles. But to me it was a real drawing, having the same quality of intelligence and rhythmic movement that I had discovered in the Matisse picture. Here again my intelligence was fired by the logic and beyond this the astounding vitality of line. It was such as you would find in a natural dancer. The whole thing had the appearance of a number of straights and curves ascending in spirals towards the infinite, just as the human body ascends when it is in perfect motion, thus giving sensitive persons an irrepressible feeling of a living organism, not a dead Greek or Etruscan vase. This living dance of the straights and curves was certainly not Dalcrozian. I am not concerned here with the advantages claimed for the "dance gymnastic."I admit there is something to be said for this system of awakening into being the rhythms now slumbering within the soul. Perhaps I shall return to the subject when the exponents of the system are here. I merely wish to indicate the scope of the circle of intelligence. It covers a very wide realm of thought and action, wherein it aims to break down as far as possible the mechanical barriers which man has set up between himself and vital and spiritual forms of expression. Within this realm is the wonderful temple of dance upon whose doors are written: "Man will not be permitted to enter Heaven with a piano on his back." The mention of Matisse and Picasso reminds me that Mr. Alfred Stieghtz,of New York, has just published a portfolio containing seven reproductions respectively of the works of each artist. The aim of the publication is to make known the creative literary work of Gertrude Stein, who has written the text for the purpose. Huntly Carter. TOPICS OF THE WEEK. Voting. WE do not know whether anyone has drawn attention to the difference in phraseology which the defenders of Representative Government have learnt to use during the last hundred years. The old defence was spun round the doctrine that "Taxation and Representation went together."The modern advocate prefers to offer the plea that Government is by Consent. To establish the old doctrine was the motive which roused the Cromwellian Rebellion, in which oligarchic forces (not democratic forces) opposed the Royalist. The doctrine was further ratified by the "Bloodless Rebellion"of 1689 which followed the Royalist reaction. Representative Government triumphed in theory and in fact. For Representative Government, as the tag "Taxation and Representation go together "shows, is Government by Representatives of Interests, not of persons. Parliament, which from the Commonwealth down to the First Reform Bill, was the Club-house of the Actual Governors, was the meeting-place of land-holders who came together in order to plan out rules of State—laws—in the interests of land-holders. These material interests were represented in person. If the land-owner was too little fond of the Club to be there himself, he sent his Bailiff; in any case, his nominee. The thing to be noted about representation in the pre-Reform period is that there was no nonsense current about one man representing other men. The aristocrats had had more than sufficient of that kind of doctrine under the Tudors and Stuarts. Charles the First only wanted to *' govern "them for their good. They considered Civil War preferable. Hence the member of Parliament stood for the safeguarding of his stake in the country. In order to safeguard it he became a Governor, that is to say, he erected forms of coercion deemed by him to be sufficiently awe-inspiring to frighten off from spoliation all those who did not possess like "stakes."The stakeless persons naturally became the Governed, lying at the mercy of those whom they had allowed to become strong enough to establish monopoly, and to seize instruments of government, i.e., of coercion. This explains why the actions of Parliament in pre-Reform days impress us with a sense of reality which is wholly foreign to the doings of its latter days. It is because the governors in person stood on the floor of Parliament and protected their interests there openly. They formulated frankly—favouring land-owners' decrees,which they called laws, and they actually, in person, administered them. They were the masters, the lawmakers, the judges of the slaves who were called the people. Without dissemblance or hypocrisy, they were the governing class. They embodied the principles of Representative Government in the only form which psychological honesty could deem possible. By virtue of the taxes they paid— were in a position to pay because they held possession of land—they, in person, represented the interests of that land. They did not send gentlemen to represent them. They went themselves. Their interests were too important to be left to the chances of majorities, and no one as yet had had the insolence to suggest that they, the possessors, should. If they occasionally put a nominee in their place, for the sake of convenience, it was a relative, or a flunkey who could be kicked downstairs if he started any vagaries of thinking on his own account. Thus frankly, brutally, did the landed classes, through Parliament, govern. Then a change came. It started with America, spread to Ireland, received tremendous impetus from the Revolution in France. The governors had governed too well. The governed were getting restive under it, as slaves will at times. France had taught much that America had left untaught of what possibly may happen when governors go a shade too far. The governed were beginning to ask why they should be governed, arming for a contest indeed. It became clear that, if government was to continue, it must be by virtue of strategy rather than of force. The governors thereupon decreed that the governed should share in government, no less. They did not propose to give them a share in land, which would have put them in a position, like their masters, actually to govern any of those who still remained landless, and thus to approach to something of an equality with their former governors. No. With that profound contempt which governors always have for the intelligence of the governed, they said, "Let us make them up a little notion. Let us tell them they do govern; it will natter them, and they are too foolish to know really whether they govern or not. Let us give them a little slip of paper, and tell them it is the voucher for their share in the government."So the governed got the vote. They still remained governed nevertheless, but when from time to time they pointed out this awkward little detail, the governors blandly explained, "Of course, we are all governed now. True, we do the governing and you obey our orders, but then we do it, by your consent. Government by Consent; Government by Consent! Were we not so hypnotised by familiar phrases, "Government by Consent"would send us off into peals of inextinguishable laughter. As it is, we sit round in solemn conclave and repeat "Government by Consent."To be governed is to have our lives ordered and controlled, our actions forced, forbidden, or punished, by others. It is to put the directing of our lives under the orders of others. A person who does not resist government is either imbecile or powerless. A half-witted person will often suffer himself to be led about like a child, but a normal person will follow his own bent. Even though his bent be perverse, he will follow it. The persons who fill our prisons have followed their bent, and Government has been powerless to stop them. It has only been able to punish them after the event, and the odd fact is to be recorded that the more they are punished by imprisonment the more settled does their tendency to repeat their actions become. What strange manner of persons, then, are these who are governed by consent, that is, who put their lives under the arbitrary control of others, by consent? Who are these who agree to have their hands shackled, feet tied, and teeth drawn, by consent? They are the powerless. That is the plain, hideous truth. Their consent is a tacit, enforced consent of the "nithings."They have neither the strength nor the spirit to withhold it. They are the landless, property-less, unarmed, uneducated, and over-worked, to whose battered intelligences a contemptuous fiction has been offered. Let them ask themselves: When did they become so afraid of their riotous little selves that they desired to be governed? When was their consent secured? When did they consent to have any governors at all; and when did they consent to have these? One must suppose that it is all contained in that little paper they make crosses on occasionally, that voucher that they are "Governed "and "by Consent."They still have to learn that government because of imbecility is necessity; government because of power-lessness is crime; but that government by consent is blasphemy. The governing of our lives is our own responsibility, and to delegate it is the unforgivable sin. But the people are not blasphemous. Their unintelligence is their adequate defence. The hypocrisy which lies so brazenly upon this latter-day interpretation of government, i.e., that it is by consent, finds its counterpart in the machinery of government itself. Formerly the governors governed (bludgeoned) the people frankly, as pleased and proud of their job as if they were hunting game. But the Reform Bills have changed all that. Since the governors realised that it was not safe to advertise government openly as an interest and a sport, some little readjustments were necessary to make the fiction about voting completely innocuous. . For instance, the discussion of real interests was removed from the scope of Parliament's deliberation. By the conversion of land interests into money interests this was easily effected, and land cultivation ceased to be the main source of labouring activity. The new Representatives of the People (before, they had been representatives of landed interests) became competent, naturally, to deal with that which was within their province, i.e., that which those whom they "represented"possessed, which was literally, nothing. The land-owners, possessing land, governed in the interests of land. The people's representatives, standing for persons who possessed nothing, governed according to their circumstances. The People's Poverty became their natural province. It became the basis of "democratic "legislation. Thev manipulated it this way and that, and produced trimmed Nothingnesses which they called Domestic Reform. For "Representation of People with Nothing "had not the advantage which the "Representation of Landed Interests "had. These latter were represented by the Owners of the Interests themselves, and as owners were jealous of their welfare. The "People who owned Nothing "are represented by "persons who have heard of"these People. And the result is, that parliamentary government, which was always a crime, has become in addition a filthy, canting abomination. But the People with Nothing still slobber over it. Have they not got their Voucher, their little Ticket they can make Crosses on? It remains for them to attain to where they were one hundred years ago, and again to rise in Rebellion. This time, it should be Insurrection, an outraged People rising up to Seize (not demand) Property (not a Vote!). Then the real war will flare out, for they will then close in with the real governors—the owners of Land and Money, who at present are mainly outside the People's Parliament. They find no reason for them to be in. The parliamentarian puppets are quite effective as a screen, and are quite able to keep the people's attention diverted. Low Forms of Society. What is a "low form of society "? A correspondent sends us an interesting letter in which occurs this phrase. We would like to know, since if we can establish a common understanding of it, much futile discussion will be avoided. Is the modern form of society "low "? We take it that our correspondent (and many other readers) would say that it is not. Now we hold that it is. An entire philosophy turns upon the decision as to which of the two views is right. Let us consider the English Empire. To our mind, it is in an advanced state of decay, and probably the next fifty years will see its complete break-up. To guard and govern the offshoots of the Empire, the governors, as is usual in Empires,, have been compelled to impoverish the entire tree. They have deprived it of the independent spirit which is the sap. Government, of necessity with a great Empire, has become its main concern. To induce the spirit of governed, i.e., of dependents, conquered, into all its subjects has been a necessity of its existence. Otherwise, the Empire would not have held together. The consolidation of an Empire is the beginning of its decay. In time the decay is reflected in the changing geography, the diminishing territory, of the Empire itself. The superficial mind is inclined to regard as the beginning of decay what is really its last stages. This digression upon the evil effects of Empires upon the nation which acquires them, is made in order to suggest that that part of English affairs which is usually at the back of the mind of the person who speaks of England as a highly evolved State, i.e., that it is an Empire, is really a symptom of degeneracy rather than of development. Empires have been in at the death of most great civilisations. The reason is only too rarely brought out. The desire for Having, which outflaunts the greatness of Being, even in great civilisations, leads to a policy of aggression which ultimately results in an Empire. Thereupon (and during the aggressive period, though this is not noticed), Government succeeds to Freedom, and speedily the Great Spirit begins to decline. Hence the rise, the culmination, and decline of civilisations. Their rise and fall are intimately connected with Government and Freedom. It is necessary to insist on this, since it is just this matter of size and complexity which are really meant when a society or a country is referred to as being highly evolved. But it is the most patent fallacy. Government, i.e., the forcible coercion of a form of life which resents coercion, is of necessity complex. Freedom would be simplicity's self in comparison. And the bigger the governed unit grows, the more complex it grows. Its bigness and its complexities both are signs of degeneracy, and not of development. If the Empires or Great States could be dissolved, their governments abolished, and the units of government made identical with the individual unit, though it would become simple, it would contain potentialities of the higher development of the human soul, which are the causes of great civilisations. That this is so is proved by the fact that only under conditions of freedom and simplicity does the human mind flower. Consider our own * highly evolved "and "complex "race. What does it produce save ugliness and stupidity? Nothing spontaneously—no free intelligence. Everything is imitation. Everything is studied, copied, following a "school."We are set to study "classics."But what "classics"did the classics study? What models had the compilers of Homer,, or what had David, or other Hebrew writers? Yet where is the breath of life captured as in these, conceived in all probability among little village-communities, or out on the hillside, by a solitary shepherd tending; his flock? Even in our own culminating period—the Elizabethan—life was comparatively free and simple. In fact, it seems that complexity of circumstance is inimical to the exercise of intelligence. Complexity tends to entrammel intelligence in detail, to embarrass the free flight of the mind. It would appear, with all history to sustain it, that complexity with its incumbent governmentalism, is retained at a sacrifice of intelligence. For instance, what sensitively intelligent person could tolerate easily life in London, still less Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Middlesborough? Apart from their execrable ugliness, their size is sufficient to overcome the sense of separateness, of personality. The individual has no space; there is no room for Him, the Person. The bustle and haste, the getting and spending, the impudent noise, these are no setting fit .for Persons, fastidious, difficult, different, wanting little, yet wanting everything which counts. There are crowds of slaves, of workmen, of pushers and wasters, some nice little children who grow ugly and unintelligent by the time they are twenty. And that is all. We have neither sculptors, poets, painters, nor philosophers. We cannot sing, dance, or play naturally, and the nation's mirth comes from the music-halls. We are no athletes, and concerning games, as a nation, we watch them rather than play in them. Physically, mentally, morally, we are nothing. This is lugubrious, but as two correspondents base their arguments upon the assumption that ours is a "high"form of society, as opposed to some others which are "low,"we are seeking to learn what is meant by "low "and "high."One correspondent, Miss Frances Prewett, quotes Herbert Spencer's argument that society is an "organism."We do not believe that society is an organism. A society is merely an agglomeration of complete and separate entities. Its only happy unions in societies are those of voluntary association and free co-operation, which are as free to be disrupted, to be broken away from, as they were free to form. We have already and very of ten pointed out that, morally, as Spencer himself acknowledges, this is the only possible form of society. The nearer economic conditions can be adjusted to this moral necessity, the better chance have the individuals who compose societies to become Great. Compare society with such an organism as man. In societies men can break away, sever their connection, return, rejoin, break away again, and so on; that is, if any such body in "society"can be conceived as the main trunk from which the member can be said to sever himself. But consider the organism "Man."An eye cannot break away from the body and return to its place without damage; nor can an arm; still less the heart, or the lungs. No, in an organism the constituent members all form part of a whole. Their meaning and function is in respect of the whole, and their vitality is maintained only when they are in unhampered and healthy connection with it. But there is no society thus constituted, nor any society within a society. A society, therefore, is not an "organism." It is much nearer a "Mechanical Mixture,"each constituent of the mixture being charged with certain characteristics of attraction and repulsion, which altogether produce very odd effects. How very far Spencer is from maintaining consistently that society is an organism may be gathered from the following quotation taken from the suppressed chapter in "Social Statics," entitled "The Right to Ignore the State" :— "Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach. And he has, therefore, a right to withdraw. "They who assert that men are made for governments and not governments for men may consistently hold that no one can remove themselves from the State without entangling themselves in an absurdity; for if legislators' power is disputed, it follows that those from whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is conferred."And again: "When we have made our Constitution purely democratic, says the earnest reformer,, we shall have brought government into absolute harmony. Such a faith is a very erroneous one. By no process can coercion be made equitable. The purest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny. The rule of the few by the many is tyranny also. .... The very existence of minorities and majorities is indicative of an immoral State. . . . The enactment of public arrangement by vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise constituted— implies that the desires of some cannot be satisfied without sacrificing the desires of others—'implies, therefore,organic (!) immorality. Thus, from another point of view, we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil, and further, unless the right to ignore the State is recognised, its acts must be essentially criminal. "What is the meaning of Dissent. The time was when a man's faith and his mode of worship were as much determinable by law as his secular acts, and according to the provision extant on our Statute-book are so still. We have ignored the State in the matter wholly in theory and partly in practiced Scarcely the description of an "organism" we think. Leadership. The question of leadership, which Dr. Whitby raises in this issue, is well worth deeper investigation than it has yet received. It is a matter of far-reaching importance, affecting religion, morality, and economics: in facts, the entire round of existence. What is a "leader"? Presumably a person who leads—but whom? We know people lead dogs on a string, or they lead a horse, or sheep, or a child, or a blind man. But what of that person who leads normal grown men? It is our opinion that, where a "Leader"is not a careless fellow, he is a Rascal. There is little profit to be got from the opinions of "Followers" on "Leaders" since "following** is so fatally easy, so alluring a situation to degenerates that they would reply by one long-scream of enthusiasm to any questionings on the subject. For "followers"are not merely saved the trouble of thinking, and the burden of responsibility; they are, by a subtle leader, so made to feel that they are one with him, so allied with what they would call his glory, but which a more observant eye would call his shame, that they are oblivious to any moral appeal. The follower is, indeed, more or less hopeless. Salvation from leading and following will have to come from the moralisation of "leaders." The person with the power to lead will have to learn that "leading"is with him original sin. It is a prostitution of power. Power is the means to increased Being. It is the energy in a Man whose right use is to increase his stature, to raise him in the scale of being up towards his fuller development. It is his means of achieving Personality: that is, of drawing nearer to his "God."Its legitimate use is to make him a greater soul; its illegitimate is to direct it towards the subordination of his fellows. These two opposed uses show why, while many men have Power, few men have Genius. Almost all powerful men use their power perversely, as a prostitute uses sex. In order to exercise control over their fellows, to govern them, they divert their powers from their moral use, which is the individual owner's growth and development, and impoverishing themselves thus, they in addition overcome the individualised power of those with whom they come in contact. This explains why a man like Napoleon, with his lust for a following from the whole world, was really poles apart from genius. A genius husbands power. A "leader"lets it out on hire. Power is for creation. A genius creates. He creates thoughts which are not himself, which are independent of himself. What he creates the world may have free, to use for its own purposes. But they were created, not for the world's sake, but that a man with power might fulfil himself. The leader, on the other hand, abandons himself in order to ensnare others. His life is one long compromise between the self he knows he might have power to become and the self which he creates in order to undermine the power of others. As we have said, it is no good appealing to "natural"followers in this matter. One must rely upon the appeal to the strong—the possible leaders. This morality will have to be exercised from above, not from below. The question which a Powerful one has to put to himself is twofold: First, "Can I be myself with this crowd at my heels? Does not the necessity of keeping them there entail a constant tax upon temperament and individuality—a strain which can only be relaxed upon pain of losing 1leadership'? "We believe that no favourable answer to these questions has ever been possible to any "leader " since the world began. "Drivers"get a better chance, but for leaders compromise and hypocrisy begin with the first hour of leadership. A "leadership"is one long course of degeneracy. The other aspect of the question: Are the persons associated with a leader better for being led? A "leader"knows they are not. He knows he uses them for his purposes, to accomplish his ends, and thrust his thoughts upon them. For it is to be noted that a "leader"is essentially not a person who is accompanied. He does not merely "go first."Often enough he does not "go first"at all. His leadership means direction, control, and organisation. He knows that any tendency towards independence is inimical to him. The strong "person in his following is a danger to him, and is hastily eliminated. He grows strong in leadership only as his followers became weak and dependent. His strength lies in their weakness and docility. Every "leader" who is honest with himself knows this. He knows that only fools * 'follow," and that he flourishes in their foolishness. Deep in his heart he despises their foolishness: it has tempted him to make them into prey. Deeper still, he hates them, because they have lured him into forgetfulness of himself. In enslaving them he has squandered himself. Instead of forcing power into genius, he has become the Arch-fool of Fools and a Knave to boot. Whereas his Light of Creation might have illuminated darkness, through his Fall he and they alike sink into the dark together. The greatest service that one man can do for another—and a man with Power can do it— is to turn him aside from following, and set in in the path of self-confidence, which leads to the realisation of a man's own Personality—his Soul. "The New Humpty Dumpty." * MR. FORD MADOX HUEFFER has always placed certain obstacles before his readers. He began badly by writing, in collaboration with Joseph Conrad, a novel called "The Inheritors" (probably the most incomprehensible book ever published in Western Europe), of which the very collaboration was irritating, since it left one mystified as to whether Conrad or Hueffer was the man to curse. He followed up that vein by an obscurity of style which made his readers desire to remind him that it is bad manners to whisper, so sotta voce were his jokes and passions. Subsequently he began to dislike his public as much as he had always despised it, and his books became the confidential communing of Mr. Hueffer with his disgruntled soul. Few people have succeeded in violating these sacred confidences: "A Call," as it appeared in the English Review, is an example of the cotton-wool in which he wrapped the delicacies of his distress. But now he has become as clearly, brightly naturalist as Joseph Conrad, and one is glad; not only because dropping that style must have taken years off his age, but because really one wanted to read his books all the time. But he continues to insult his readers by throwing them his good books from behind an absurd nom de plume. Quite obviously "The New Humpty Dumpty" is by Mr. Hueffer. It deals with the aristocrats that Mr. Flueffer, the Mediaevalist, loves, because aristocrats can so often produce convincing proof that they have been in England since the Middle Ages. "He lit a little candle that sent a golden glow on to the facets of crystal inkpots and on to the roughened surfaces of chiselled silver seal-holders, so that all the table resembled a small altar."That image betrays Mr. Hueffer, who lacks the singleness of heart necessary to a religious man, but loves to adorn life with the fripperies of religion. He delights in the spectacle of Greek popes, who are Russian spies and Galizian marquises infatuated with the poetry of the elder Dumas, walking in Bayswater, just as an imaginative child loves to see the foreign sailor-men rolling up the seaport streets. Besides, the same passions drive Daniel Chaucer and Ford Madox Hueffer to write. At present Mr. Hueffer is mastered by the hatred of a certain type of woman: a healthy being with high red cheek-bones and blunt vigour, whose tradesmanlike moral outlook makes her dun other people for scrupulous conduct and always give short weight herself. So that Olympia Peabody glares from "The Panel"(the last book published under Mr. Hueffer's name) at her other self, Countess Macdonald, in "The New Humpty Dumpty."On every page the style gives up its secret. There is no reason why the nom de plume should be respected: it is just one of Mr. Hueffer's irritable tricks. The book itself, as might be guessed from its title, is an unfriendly companion volume to "The New Machiavelli."Richard Rimington came of lower middle-class parentage, was unfamiliar with the Continent, and knew with women fumbling unhappiness and passionate dependence. All these things are repulsive to Mr. Hueffer. In contrast to Mr. Wells' hero he has drawn the perfect gentleman, the true servant of the Prince. Count Sergius Mihailovitch Macdonald was a Russian nobleman who, perceiving from his earliest * "The New Humpty Dumpty."By Daniel Chaucer. 6s. (John Lane.) youth that the world is a rocking stone trembling on the verge of perdition, desired to save it. At first he sought salvation through the love of the people. He gave his patrimony to an Anarchist club in the Tottenham Court Road, with the result that Soho saw a sudden eruption of cheap restaurants, gambling clubs, and sweating tailors' businesses. Then, in a convulsion of Socialism, he married a tailor's daughter and gave away another fortune to the Putney branch of the Fabian Society. "They naturally wanted to print pamphlets. These advanced people always want to print pamphlets. . . . They could not agree as to whose pamphlets they were to publish. So they all went to law. They had innumerable lawsuits."But it was really his wife who convinced him of the sin of handing over the power of Life to the lower classes. "The whole of the trouble comes from your being a member of the shopkeeping classes,"explains Mr. Pett, the Nietzschian Tory. "That's what you are, a shopkeeper's daughter. That's what's in the blood. That's what's in the profession. Your father was a tailor. If a customer brought him cloth to make a suit of he would steal a yard and a half of it and justify himself because it was the custom of the trade. That's like you. You will take any advantage you can, and you will justify yourself because it's the custom of a person in your position. . . . When Sergius Mihailovitch has been generous to you, you've despised him, because you do not understand what generosity is. When Sergius Mihailovitch lost his affection for you, you upbraided him like a tradesman who sees a customer take his custom away and give it to another establishment. That's what you are, a product of tradespeople. The difference between you and gentlefolk like Macdonald. Good God! The difference between you and me and

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him is that we haven't got a spark of generosity in us. . . . We aren't either of us lit to loosen the shoe latchets of Sergius Mihailovitch. That's how the world has always been. That's how it will always be. We're the lower classes. That's what we are, because we haven't got in the whole of our compositions a spark of generosity."Under this revelation Sergius Mihailovitch decided that life regulated by the standards of princes is the most delicate, the most kindly life we know. He noticed that Galizia had dethroned its young King and is now wilting under a revolutionary government. "They thought they were going to have some fun, but they find they're being governed by twelve people, each one as solemn and dull as a Methodist minister." "I am the son of a Methodist minister myself," said Mr. Salt gloomily, "Precisely," Macdonald encountered him. "So you know how dull it is to be governed by one of them. Think of your Sundays at home, and then think of being governed by twelve at once."So he determined to set the young King on the throne again. After all, he was trying to key things up—to key up the whole world. He was trying not so much to put back the hands of the clock as to retain for the world something that the world already possessed. It wasn't the mere setting-up again in a ridiculous little republic of a ridiculous little monarchy; it was a question of proving to the world that certain things were good and that there was enough to go round. "He had to do strange things on the way to his ideal. For instance, besides conciliating the American financiers, who were financing the counterrevolution in return for mineral concessions, he has to organise a small party, consisting of a chauffeur and two disreputable ladies, whose duty it is, by participating in motor accidents and throwing peaches at head waiters, to create a bad reputation for the young King, so that the Galizian Government will think him incapable of a counter-revolution. In the end he wins Galizia back to Royalism by kidnapping the bulls intended for a bull-fight organised by the President, and thus discrediting the republic. At the moment of victory he is struck down by a bullet in the back, shot by an assassin hired by a Galizian marquis who had heard Macdonald disparage the poetry of the elder Dumas. What a contrast is this chivalrous life to the ill-bred scurry of Richard Rimington's existence! Sergius Mihailovitch even loves like a perfect gentleman. While she is still married it never occurs to him that he loves her. How uncontrolled the lawless love of Rimington and Isabel Rivers seems beside this! It is not the immorality of Rimington's love affairs that would distress Mr. Hueffer, but the fear that people who are so anarchic in important matters might soon become slovenly in their manner of leaving visiting-cards. But Mr. Hueffer's conservatism is due not so much to his conventionality as to the strictly mechanistic view of life. Conservatism is the only creed possible to those who hold reason higher than intuition. Reason tells us that the generous conditions of life enjoyed by the aristocracy must have produced a caste capable, by its freer development, of governing all others. Intuition tells us of a vast flood of genius surging through the sea of Life,, rising to majesty at diverse places which we cannot chart. As artistic genius may be manifest in unpleasant old gentlemen like Turner or scoundrels like Cellini, so the genius for delicate living may arise in strange places. But Mr. Hueffer will not believe that because it cannot be proved. For the same reason that he distrusts the people he distrusts the future. It cannot be proved that the future will be as full of beauty and joy as the past, unless one proves that there will be a repetition of events. And obviously, since we acknowledge that life is change, there will be no such repetition. Sergius Mihailovitch, by restoring Royalism to a bored kingdom, proved himself the slave of his mind. Rimington, with his hot, irritable fumbling at ideas, was trying to use his intellect as the servant of his intuition. Mr. Wells recognises in "Marriage""we've no basis yet Tjroad enough and strong enough on which to build."Mr. Hueffer accepts the intellectual pleasure of appreciating graceful art and life as his basis; whence arises the sheer spiritual pride of being contented "to preserve whatever old goodnesses there may be in the world "? This defect in Mr. Hueffer is largely due to the fact that he was brought up among pre-RaphaeJates. Their mission was something like that of the weekly paper, Truth: they were out to libel our British institutions. They succeeded marvellously. Almost everybody with an income of over three hundred a year sneers a little when referring to the Royal Academy. But, like Truth, they had no constructive policy. They preached the gospel of the value of love and jewels and flowers, and all things that are kept for their beauty and not for use. But beyond this their spirits weakly refused to range. Mr. Hueffer is their last survivor, and finds no institution left to revile. It is significant that both the creator and the survivor of the school, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Hueffer, are foreigners facing life at an awkward angle on this cold, alien island. One fancies that some alteration of external circumstance would make Mr. Hueffer write much better books—such as going abroad or living on a clay soil. Rebecca West. Leadership. "What is long life worth? What warrior wisheth to be spared? "ONCE upon a time I went to a music-hall, and saw there among other more or less amusing things a thing I shall never forget. This was a *¦ performing cat."In the first place, this cat in company with a dog performed a little drama, the details of which are not to the purpose, with complete success. The dog, I believe, stole its master's dinner, and placed the limp cat upon the table just in time for her to be caught there upon the owner's return. In the next item the cat was in sole possession of the stage, across which a row of short pillars had been arranged. The cat was placed upon one of the end pillars, and was expected to jump from pillar to pillar across the stage. But, on arriving at the centre pillar, the cat, bethinking herself that she was not in the vein for playing the fool, but for meditation upon things in general, incontinently lay down, and refused to budge. Coaxings, cajoleries, caresses, and, doubtless, muttered threats were lavished upon her by the distraught master of ceremonies—but lavished in vain. The cat remained imperturbable, superbly insouciant. The "performing cat"would not perform. In my time I have (for my sins) witnessed a good many music-hall turns in which French poodles and other canine artistes have evinced their amazing talents, and they have invariably played the game. I live in somewhat faint hope of seeing another"performing cat."This anecdote is by way of introduction to the suggestion that human beings may be roughly classified as approximating to either the feline or the canine type. Some folk would at once affirm that all women belong to the cat category, and all men to the tribe of dogs. But this hasty verdict I cannot endorse. My contention is rather that the cats are anarchists (or, if you will, individualists), and the dogs votaries of the great State. It is my firm conviction that, in all classes of the community, the docile, tractable canine variety of the human species enormously outnumbers the intractable and, if I may say so, impossible feline type. Further, that no amount of propaganda on the part of the latter will produce those radical changes in the disposition of the former necessary for the reversal of the present numerical relation of the two types. And this is, I make bold to say, a fact upon which we are entitled to congratulate ourselves and the Powers that Be. For, were it otherwise, the disintegration and final annihilation of human society would be obviously a mere question of time—and of no long time either, it may well be supposed. In order to complete my illustration, the community must be conceived as comprising a few members of the purely feline species, a very large number of almost purely canine type, and, intermediate between these, hybrids combining the two elements in every possible proportion. This being so, the social problem presents itself to me as that of a rearrangement by which these different psychological types, at present huddled together in inextricable confusion, shall be sorted out and adjusted one above the other, the aristocratic intractable cats at the apex of the pyramid, the docile, neighbourly dogs at the base, and the hybrids accurately disposed, according to their feline or canine affinities, between them. Only so, it seems to me, is it possible to arrive at any sort of stability, an essential prerequisite of communal happiness and communal achievement. The present unrest is undoubtedly due to the almost complete divorce of the reality and the semblance of power, its privileges and its responsibilities. Money and intrigue rule the roost, but they do so in a stealthy and underhand fashion by setting up in apparent supremacy a gang of political marionettes, who dance to the tune of capitalism. If the real rulers of modern society showed themselves openly as such their callous indifference to the hideous wrongs produced by their tyranny would not be tolerated by public opinion; they would be forced to amend their ways, and to disgorge. As it is, public indignation spends itself helplessly upon the political scapegoats, who are in the main powerless, even granted their desire, to effect fundamental reforms. And, to complete the farce, we are deluded by the show of representative government into the belief that when things go awry we ourselves are chiefly to blame. For have we not the government that we have ourselves chosen, and therefore the government that we deserve? Under more normal conditions, conditions of direct, paternal government, it has from time immemorial been found that power and responsibility are inseparablv combined. From the law of noblesse oblige there is in the case of acknowledged rulers no final escape. In a normally constituted hierarchy it will be found that, whereas those at the base of the pyramid are, in purely external matters, more or less subject to discipline and restraint, they enjoy almost complete freedom in all that concerns their private lives. As regards those at the apex, the rulers, the exact opposite holds. Externally free, their inner lives are determined by a law which there is, in the long run, otherwise than by abnegation of their dignity and power, no chance of evading. The whole weight of public opinion is brought to bear upon them with irresistible effect Their acceptance of ruler functions implies a claim to superiority to the weaknesses and limitations of ordinary folk: woe to them if the claim be not made good! That these ordinary folk do not lightly admit such claims, or cheaply bestow the prerogatives of rulership, is a fact written in blood upon the records of mankind. Rightly to denote the reluctance with which mankind, from the very beginning, has admitted the indispensability of leaders, the terrible price exacted for its doubtful privileges, and the strange alacrity with which that price has nevertheless been paid, a glance into the crowded pages of Dr. Frazer's "The Dying God"will amply suffice. The entire history of the race may be regarded as a struggle between the individual and the herd; or, to revert to my former metaphor, one may say that mankind has always led "a cat and dog life."Among primitive peoples the divine king or man-god must be killed on the appearance of the least symptom of enfeeblement; he may not lose so much as a single tooth. The pretext alleged, that, since the course of nature is dependent upon the life of the man-god, success in war and abundant harvests are only to be expected so long as he retains perfect health and vigour, is to be attributed to the immemorial ingenuity of priestcraft in the devising of plausible excuses for barbarous customs. In the same way, among tribes who have difficulty in keeping up their food supply, old and infirm folk are knocked on the head in order that they may not be too feeble to enjoy life on the other side! Primitive people cannot dispense with leaders any more than we can, but as a protest against the hateful necessity these unpleasant conditions are imposed. Experience proves that if a man be born to lead, lead he must and will; no conditions or penalties will prevent him from fulfilling his destiny. Thus a sixteenth-century traveller relates how in the South Indian Province of Quilacare the king was only allowed to reign twelve years. At the end of that time, after a ceremonial bath, he mounted a scaffold adorned with silken hangings, and there, before his assembled subjects, having provided himself with sharp knives, proceeded to cut off his own nose, ears, lips, all his members, and as much as possible of his flesh, concluding the performance by slitting his weasand. "And he performs this sacrifice to the idol, and whoever desires to reign other twelve years and undertake this martyrdom for love of the idol, has to be present looking on at this; and from that place they raise him up as king."In Malabar there was"an office tenable for five years, during which its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers within his jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers, each of whom vied with the other in trying to catch it in its course down. He who succeeded was nominated to the post for another five years."Dr. Frazer cites the case of a Shilluk who clamoured to be made king "on condition of being killed at the end of a brief reign of a single day."This is mere madness; on the other hand, such institutions as that of the sacrifice in Quilacare demand more serious consideration. It would be a mistake to regard popular jealousy as the sole factor concerned. The cruel price exacted for leadership was also a rough and ready test of real fitness, an effectual means of sifting out mere charlatans and pretenders. Only a man conscious of genuine superiority would be capable of looking on at such an orgy of self-mutilation, and, in the full certainty of a like end, accepting the vacant role. If one adopt Eucken's definition of faith as "the recognition of the inner presence of an infinite energy,"then one must admit that the kings of Quilacare were men of faith, and that they deserved the divine honours accorded them after death. It is difficult even to suppose that a mere lust for dominance could have determined their choice, to the exclusion of some consciousness of a real mission, inspired by genuine pity and love. For it is characteristic of the born leader to love the commonalty with a love akin to hatred and not far distant from contempt. And it is characteristic of the commonalty to exult in the sufferings of heroes, and to regard fortitude as the ultimate test of manhood. It is the feeling expressed by Emily Dickinson:— "I like a look of agony, Because I know it's true; Men do not sham convulsions Or simulate a throe." A debating society in search of a suitable topic might profitably devote an evening to the question of the results upon the personnel of government in this countrv that would follow the substitution of the Malabar custom of T halavettifiarothiam (authority obtained by decapitation) for our present electoral methods. Capitalism is, as I have said, at bottom a device for separating the privileges and responsibilities of leadership, and so evading the law that power over one's fellow men must be paid for in happiness and freedom. But our money lords are not really so omnipotent as they appear. In every community the real king or queen is the person of greatest discernment and sovereign will, whose powerful influence radiates outwards and down wards until it permeates and controls all. Unseen, unacknowledged, though not unfelt or impotent, the normal hierarchy still exists and functions as of old. Of course, nobody can be at the top of the tree in everything; but somebody must always be at the top in regard to the things that matter most. And he or she is, for the time being, the rightful ruler, and will, at least in a measure, actually rule. It is perhaps an open question whether Voltaire or Rousseau were King of France at the middle of the eighteenth century; certainly Louis XV. was not. It was the group of thinkers who foregathered in the salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame Geoffrin, Madame Necker, and Julie de Lespinasse, such men as D'Alembert, Fontenelle, Grimm, Diderot, Condorcet, Suard, De Chastellux, who decreed what Goethe calls the "cleansing bath "of the Revolution. If their way of thought was marred by sentimentality, their enlightenment less profound, their emancipation more partial than

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they deemed it, there is the less reason to be surprised at the imperfection of their achievement or the crimes which attended its birth. Moreover, perfection cannot fairly be expected of the work of kings in exile; they had never in any respect a free hand. Writers and readers of such a journal as the freewoman are engaged in a task even more momentous than that of the famous encyclopaedists. Charles J. Whitby. The New Order. SERIES II. IV — THE NEW RELIGION: COSMIC HARMONY IN HUMAN CONDUCT. I.—"New Maids for Old: Free Women in Marriage and Out."II.— The New Education: Free Initiative and Life-long Culture. III.—"The New Hygiene: Natural Health versus Economic Wealth." N.B.—The New Order, Series I. and II, can now be obtained in the form of id. Tracts. IV.—Beyond the Veil of Sense. THE religious instinct in ancient and modern times has been more or less incessantly preoccupied with thoughts of what lies beyond the veil of sense, and this in obedience to that higher functioning already described, which is of the Universe, universal, and therefore not bound within the narrow limits of the individual life and experience. "We look before and after," sang Shelley, "and pine for what is not." "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," said the apostolic writer. In the beautiful words of the Eastern sage, "Religion (yoga) is the restraining of the modifications from without: then the seer in his own state abides."This characteristic quality unifies the New Religion with all other religions that the world has known. It takes its stand beyond the here and the now, probing behind the hitherto and the hereafter, in its search for the fundamental sanctions of conduct, both personal and social. While thus, like other religions, having its roots in the unseen, the New Religion has also, like them, its flower and fruit in the visible field of action. No great religious founder can be named who has not profoundly modified, both by example and precept, the conduct of daily life. All alike insist that it is only in practising the application, only by "living the life,"that the truths of the religion can be in any valid sense known.* So far as the practice of the new sense, or art of free organisation, is concerned, enactors of the New Order, wherever found, are endeavouring to carry it into immediate effect in their daily life and intercourse. So far as actual experiments in land tenure and the new medium of exchange are involved, it is one of the primary aims of these series to seek co-operation from any, without distinction of sex or race, who are ready and willing to share in such experiments. Although, according to the interpretation given throughout this tract, the religious instinct is, in its essentials, everywhere one, in the working out of the teachings by those who seek more or less imperfectly to grasp the mind of the Teacher, there inevitably results variety, and * Here students of Christian Science will note that their founder, Mrs. Eddy, in all her published works insistently strikes this note of action, as opposed to the mere acceptance of her theory. the falling away in certain respects from the great ideal. Hence the need of a return to the fountain head, a resetting in new and living terms, consonant with the needs of the time, of the old fundamental truth—the need, in fact, of the New Religion. The conclusions in the realm of social conduct which flow from the New Religion have been speci fically dealt with under various headings in previous tracts. Turning now to the personal aspect of human conduct, the individual's duty to himself, and the relation of that in him, which thinks as "I," to the Cosmos—the beyond life—he who is imbued with the New Religion finds himself no longer harassed by painful contradictions, as in the old order, between the inner life of religion and the outward working links with his fellows. In the pursuit of that inner light, which some have called inspiration or revelation, he now discovers his ever-nearer approach to an ultimate oneness with the rest. Enacting the principles of the New Order, that very sense of self-direction—the finding of his own soul, as some would say—is what he postulates and pursues no less ardently for others than for himself: the conscious aim of his reconstructed social order is precisely to achieve this. Provided that this principle be actually embodied in his own life and in his dealings with others, the Universe, he feels, must gradually disclose its treasures to him and them, not otherwise. As another apostolic writer expressed it: "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? "Or, in a more recent setting of the same idea, "Let us first have social symphony, and then tune our sacred lyre."* The aspiring student of the New Religion knows with a sureness which brings him peace that there are no limits set to the possibilities of human de velopment, the progressive winning of ever-higher insight and wider outlook into the before and after, the ever-finer penetration into the mysteries of the beyond. He needs only to beware lest too close contact with the false values and inverted morals of the economic world should vitiate his field of mental vision, peopling it with figures of delusion which masquerade as spiritual guides. Testing, therefore, every experience in the searching light of cosmic instinct, he is ready to take his share (without premature dogmatising) in the abstrusest researches, into the origins and destinies of life, whether body life or soul life, once his tribute of daily duty is yielded. Probing the limits of personality, he seeks to pierce, by the aid of the cosmic sense, into the impersonal region which lies beyond. The attempt, however humbly made, to function in the eternal now delivers him from those tragic wrestlings over,, and yearnings for, immortality after death, which marked the more personal, and, therefore, the more emotional period of religious experience and worship. Communing to the utmost of his powers with the larger cosmic life, he finds himself yet more and more in touch with creative forces, so that he loses count of whether he be the moving agency or they. The spiritual law is thus disclosed whereby the higher and more enduring the force, the less personal (in the economic sense) are its workings. By the action of this law, between individuals first and then between groups, the rhythmic harmonies of the New Order will find ever-widening expression in the life of man—"on earth as it is in Heaven." W. Allan Macdonald. Helen M. Macdonald. * "Humanitism: The Scientific Solution of the Social Problem."By w. a. Macdonald. (Triibner and Co 1890 Page 381. "The Free woman"Discussion Circle. THE Discussion Circle met for a business meeting on Wednesday, September 18th, at Chandos Hall, when a very fair number of members assembled. Mrs. A. H. Edwards took the chair, and the first business discussed was the financial position of the Circle. Owing to the regrettable serious illness of the treasurer, Mr. Weston, we are unable to state exactly the financial situation, but it seems possible that the present funds will enable us to hold four more meetings before the end of the year 1912— two in October (as already arranged), one in November, one in December. As Mr. Weston is unable to carry on his duties as treasurer, Miss f. W. Stella Browne was nominated for the office. A unanimous vote was given at the meeting for her election, and she has kindly consented to do the work. Following on the business, Miss Marsden addressed the members on the subject of "The free-woman and its Policy."This gave rise to much discussion, and, as all the members present were anxious to hear more on the matter (and to give other members an opportunity to be present), a resolution was moved and seconded that Miss Marsden be asked to read a paper to the Circle at the November meeting, expounding more fully her views for the policy of The Free woman. This Miss Marsden has consented to do. The action of Messrs. Smith & Son in refusing to take the freewoman for ordinary sale on their bookstalls was then debated, and the best methods by which supporters of the paper might assist. Miss Marsden pointed out the need of further subscribers for the paper, showing that a subscription is of infinitely more financial help than the mere buying of the paper week by week. The paper has a hard fight for existence, even though its circulation increases, and all sympathisers are called upon to make a serious effort on its behalf. One of the best, and easiest, ways is for each one who reads the paper to become at once a subscriber, and, secondly, to obtain one other subscriber, at least. The need for action is urgent. The next meeting of the Circle will take place on Wednesday, October 2nd, 8 p.m., at Chandos Hall. The subject for discussion is "The Abolition of Domestic Drudgery,"and the discussion will be opened by Mrs. A. Melvin and Miss Rona Robinson. Owing to the late treasurer's illness, mentioned above, there has been some confusion in the list of paid-in subscriptions, and those members who were not present on Wednesday last at the business meeting are requested to be so good as to send a postcard without delay to the secretary (Miss B. Low, 19, Temple Fortune Hill, Hendon, N.W.), stating whether they have or have not paid their subscription up to December, 1912 (2s. 6d.). Those who have not yet done so are asked to send subscriptions now, in order that the accounts may be made correct. The committee regrets having to trouble members who have, possibly, already paid, but the circumstances render it inevitable. B. Low (Acting Secretary).

Correspondence. Note to Correspondents.— While quite willing to publish letters under noms de plume, we make it a condition of publication that the na?ne and address of each cor-respondent should be supplied to the editor.—Ed. To the Editor of The Freewoman. REPRESENTATION AND GOVERNMENT. Madam,—In your issue of September 19th you declare that "to have a vote is to offend against spiritual law. By the time Mrs. Leigh gets a vote, honest men and women will be refusing to be mixed up in the offence,"and you assert that government by tyrants is preferable to representative government. I have followed with great interest your iconoclastic articles on the evils of government. I have tried to discover what remedy you propose. Would you abolish.all forms of government and trust to free association to carry on the work of civilisation? Do you consider it possible that society, except on a low scale, could exist without government? I do not ignore the many examples of gregariousness in the animal world, but it has been disputed that man descended from a gregarious ancestry. At any rate, the higher apes do not live in groups, but alone with their mates, and much has been written to prove that primitive man is not a social being. According to the American sociologist, Professor Lister Ward, human society is purely a product of man's reason, and arose by insensible degrees -pari passu with the development of his brain. The primary effect of government is to protect society from anti-social influences. Spencer has compared society to a social organism, of which government is the brain or organ of consciousness. As the individual directs and controls natural forces, so should government direct and control social forces. The strongest reason for the existence of government lies in this handling of social forces. With increase of intelligence the inequality of individual members of society has greatly increased, and this has correspondingly augmented the ability of some to exploit others. This would become an intolerable menace to isociety if it were not antagonised by the same power wielded by the collective body of society itself. The self-seeking class is striving, with considerable success, to enlist government; itelf in its service. Would you advocate that intelligent, earnest women should stand aside instead of striving to gain due representation, and thus aid the forces of progress? If a citizen "refuses to be mixed up iin the offence of voting,"it means that, for his part, he will allow the forces of corruption to have full sway. Governments by tyrants are instances of the usurpation of the powers of society by individual members. Crude and imperfect as democratic governments may be, they are better than the wisest of autocracies. To increase the intellectual status of democratic governments, the intellectual status of their 'constituencies must be increased, so that a fuller social consciousness may be awakened, and social problems put in (the way of gradual but certain solution. 'Mrs. Leigh, in ifighting for the elementary right of the franchise, lis fighting for the right to use all the powers of fully conscious, developed womanhood to aid in directing the social organism. Frances Prewett. [Representation of the People"is a myth, which serves the forces of oppression very well, in that it diverts attention from actual government. We are governed through the forces of monopoly, which Parliament and votes are powerless to fight. Women, asking for votes, are playing into the hands of monopolists, i.e., the real governors. We refer elsewhere to the above letter.—Ed.] @@@ SLAVES! TO ARMS! Madam,—You are calling the "slaves "to arms and urging them to take to guns and swords, but you fail to remind them that they have better weapons than those. Guns must be defensive, not offensive weapons, and our offensive line of action should be made so strong as to render almost useless our calling to the arsenal. If the slaves raise a cry for blood to be shed, it is not likely that the governors will give them time to put on foot a powerful army; new Bartholomew's bells will ring and slaughter will begin, where good and bad will die side by side. Where must we look for hope and action? You mentioned the Trade Unions: would you answer the following questions? May not the Trade Unions' money be converted into land? May not land yield food? May not food fill the stomachs of the workers in time of strike? May not stomachs satisfied enable the men to hold out longer against their employers, and -perhaps bring to naught the great argument of starvation? May not the workers come to realise as much, and act accordingly? May not this investment of Trade Unions' money on land lead, slowly but peacefully and surely, to a new social order? Your statement that "The Standing Army of England may be said to date from the time of the establishment of the Bank of England "may well be true; had you, however, gone deep into the analysis of the fact, your philosophy concerning' physical force might have been different. How have the Jews come to such amazing money power that in all likelihood they put on foot a "Standing Army to back their speculations "? May not one suggest that they have been brought yonder by the Gentiles, the latter—in their greed—not seeing that depriving the Jew of land, they left him no other means to survive but money. And why should not the Jew survive? But it meant war, and so, while the Gentiles were fighting amongst themselves, another war was slowly proceeding, of which thev were hardly aware, and whose secret deeds and history are puzzles for us all. Shall we ever know the dark oart played by the Jew's money in all our wars and treaties? It may interest the editor to read a book of Mr. Kipling's—i.e., "Puck of Pook's Hill "—where the author seems to imply that the Magna Charta was signed by King John "because he could not borrow more money from the Jews." All we gather is that the Jew has survived and has conquered, although put at a disadvantage at the start, being kept off the land, i.e., the means of freedom. N6w Gentiles and Jews stand shoulder to shoulder and fight on equal terms, for the money of the Jew can buy him land, and the Christian may perhaps learn from the Jew that intelligence can conquer brute force. But deeming all war ugly and leaving therefore in the background the meanness of either Jews or Gentiles in time of warfare, may I urge you to make clear to your readers if you mean to preach a gospel of blow for blow, if you want to see the "slaves "rising in arms against their master, or if you hold that Intelligence may make clear the way for Love and Will to conquer Freedom? Do guns and swords act the principal part in your line of action, or are they kept at the background for a defensive purpose? Do you intend that humanity should conquer the so-called bliss of freedom, without the help— in love and will—of part of its own self, i.e., the Jews? I end this letter, Madam, by a warning: Remember that you quoted yourself words that Madame Torgue reported as having been spoken in capitalist circles: "II faut une bonne sadgnee pour calmer cette fievre revolu-tionnaire du proletariat."May you sleep without dreaming of red, bloody dripping hands! Francoise Lafitte. [(i) Trees "may "walk, if a miracle happens. The people "may"again possess the land, when the workers' miracle happens. This miracle is "Growth of Spirit."By the time workers have sufficient spirit to force such possession, they will have spirit enough to be ready to make trouble in case of accidents. They will be prepared to fight it through. (2) We always feel sceptical when people talk of "love and will."There will be a perfect harvest of capitalist "love and will "after the capitalists have been brought to their knees. We hate capitalists. We would crush them if we had the power. In the meantime, we are generating power along with others, and one day that power will crush them. When Justice has been done, all will be "liking "(moderate only for most people) again. (3) Our nightmare is a vision of "social reformers "talking, talking, talking of doing good to the poor. It is really worse than blood! —Ed.] THE ORIGINAL IMPULSE. Madam,—While heartily sympathising with your attitude towards our present mechanical civilisation, I should like to point out that the mechanistic tendency, the dominant characteristic of the human male, will not disappear as a result of the restoration of free access to the land. We are confronted to-day, it is true, in the shape of modern metaphysics, with a humble and contrite confession of the limitation of mechanistic conceptions of life, coupled with a call to "get back "to something which is said to have been lost as the price of the development of "intellection,"something which is described as being "the greater part of mind."We are told of the inadequacy, for leadership, of thought however clear, of reason however powerful. We are begged to concentrate within "the original impulse."This confession of bankruptcy is calling women to the rescue. We have thought men knew, as it were, where they were going, and were happy and amused. They stand now maimed and helpless. There would seem to be no ground for supposing that they can get, so to say, on to the back of the original impulse they are seeking. There is nothing original left in them but a dim memory and this longing for home. Many of them in their misery do not even know that they have a home. They feel that life is "embroidered on nothing."They are full of fear. They herd. They want a rock of ages or a boat or an aeroplane. Upon the wings of the storm they will not venture. The more energetic, to gain confidence, talk of "the conflict between thought and chaos."The latest expedient of this energetic type is to suggest that things would clear up if women, too, become subject to the nightmare of spatial illusions. They beg us to believe that the "walls of mystery "lie "over the edge of the world."The point I would emphasise is, of course, that whether we regard them as temporarily maimed by or inherently limited to mechanistic conceptions, men are not likely in the near future to cease trying to live by them. Dorothy Richardson. THE CASE OF PENELOPE. Madam,—My only excuse for carrying this controversy one stage further must be the fun of the thing. I'm sorry I called your correspondent, Margaret Theobald, "Mrs."I suppose I did so because her point of view, like most advanced young women's, appears to be that of the British matron of the 'nineties. I have already answered most of her objections, though she seems to be unaware of this, and certainly won't admit it. Permit me to say that talk about women under a system of state endowment being maintained by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill is a little silly and in the style of the Daily Express. Miss Theobald says that she thought I was talking about "intelligent and commonly nice people,"not about "old buffers "and "Philistines on a pier."I was talking about mankind, with perhaps a special interest in "old buffers "like Henri Quatre, Byron, Georges Sand, De Musset, aad Shelley. If Miss Theobald had troubled to read other letters besides her own, she would have appreciated the relevancy of my allusion to St. Simon Stylites. What her favourite, the saint of Assisi, has to do with this particular controversy, I am at a loss to discover. Certainly a warm and wholly unsexual friendship united him to St. Clare, but we have no grounds for assuming that they would have persisted in corresponding if they had become conscious of a change in their sentiments for each other. (It is interesting to note how frequently your correspondents ask themselves what St. So-and-So would have done. One might be reading the Universe or La Croix.) The French may think Joseph (after the Calendar, the Old Testament!) a ninny, and may wink, as I admit they do, at their wives' infidelities; but the French husband has not sunk so low as to defame the mother of his children in open court, placard her name in all the newspapers, and accept money publicly from her lover, as our high-minded moral English gentlemen make no scruple of doing. Our neighbours have the qualities of their defects. Nor do they ever fail to provide their children with a means of livelihood. One point in your correspondent's letter does need elucidation on my part. Miss Theobald rightly argues that man's kindness to other animals is not inspired by any hope of a return. In my original article I said that pity was or had become an instinct in man. Mr. Lewis then asked why we should cultivate that instinct if it made us unhappy. I then tried to prove that it was to man's interest to cultivate it, though it may not have been originally dictated by a sense of interest. Pity, I imagine, began with the mother's feeling for her young, then extended itself to the tribe, to the nation, to mankind, and finally (with some of us) to all living things. Pity for animals certainly doesn't increase the sum of human happiness, but it does increase the sum of living happiness, for which I for one am solicitous. My whole argument, briefly stated, amounts to this. It is not the nature of man to be chaste and constant in his affections; therefore, it would be well to recognise this and not to make unchastity or inconstancy a reproach or to demand stability of affection as a right. To me it seems as absurd for a husband to reproach his wife for her altered sentiments as for her altered looks. The mother, as I have said, accustoms herself to the transfer of her children's love to strangers; why shouldn't lovers do the same? Love the same person all your life if you can; but don't merely pretend to and keep the corpse of a dead love on the premises. As. to the angelic virtue of chastity, it is a merely negative attribute—an abstention—which is certainly not entitled to any applause, as far as I can see. The Aloysius Gonzagas and the readers of the Cursitor Street weekly tract can go on denying themselves this or any other natural indulgence for all I care, but they must not be disappointed if sensible people refuse to thank them for an abstention which presumably benefits no one but themselves. I wish I could describe Margaret Theobald's remarks about my wife and I "being determined to get tired of each other,"etc., as funny without being vulgar. The accents of E. M. Watson and Kathleen Oliver are too shrill to be audible. Edmund B. d'Auvergne. Madam,—I do not want to leave Mr. d'Auvergne in a parlous plight, so I will explain that I do not object to man being guided by instinct. I say one instinct checks and restricts another, so that it is not useful to say "obey instinct "without further explanation. The martyr has an instinct to live and an instinct to resist tyranny. The striker has an instinct for safety and an instinct for justice. Similarly, I believe there is more instinct for fidelity in sex-relations than some people, misled by obvious facts that point in another direction, believe. I did not say anything about the laws of England or of anywhere else. Arthur D. lewis. REBECCA WESTS REVIEW OF "MARRIAGE." Madam,—I have long had a feeling that I should one day be able to say to your brilliant reviewer, Rebecca West, "be sure your sin will find you out "(in the words of that Calvinistic theology on which I was nurtured), and Tny hour has at last come. Accordingly, I must celebrate my triumph, hoping that Rebecca West will admit the victory is mine. Your readers will remember that recently she charged certain writers, chief among whom was Charlotte Bronte, with the "spinster view "of life, and, lo and behold! we have with a vengeance the same spinster attitude throughout the critique on H. G. Wells' "Marriage."I cannot here illustrate as fully as I would wish, but I will point out at least two glaring instances. Here is one. In commenting on that incident in "Marriage"where Marjorie ,sits up all night (wretched and self-pitying because Trafford, absorbed in work at his laboratory, forgets to return home till 5.30 a.m.) and greets her husband half weeping with "I'm cold, and I want some tea,"Rebecca West writes: "That repulsive desire for tea is a masterly touch. It reminds one of the disgust one felt as a healthy schoolgirl when one saw the schoolmistress drinking tea at lunch at half-past eleven. It brings heme to one -poignantly how disgusting the artificial -physical weakness of woman, born of loafing about the house, with only a flabby mind for company, must be to an ordinary vigorous man."If this isn't spinsterdom, what is! My dear Reviewer, I ask you, have you ever had to live among six brothers and had an opportunity of noting any of their propensities and tastes? I have not found it rare for that "ordinary vigorous man "you allude to to show a liking for "loafing about the house "(accompanied by a mind more or less flabby) quite as great as that of the woman with her "artificial physical weakness,"and as for tea-drinking—well, at this moment a large and exceeding vigorous male relative is at my elbow ejaculating (and it's precisely that accursed hour of half-past eleven a.m.), "Tea, for heaven's sake—or if you really can't manage tea, I suppose I could do with Beer."And the second illustration. In one of the comments of your Reviewer, I read: "I wonder about the women who never come across any man who was worth loving (and next time Mr. Wells travels in the Tube he might look round and consider how hopelessly unlovable most of his male fellow-passengers are),"etc. Charlotte Bronte may have had her "spinsterish "ideas, but never, never was she capable of writing the passage quoted just above—Charlotte knew that the woman "who never comes across any man who was worth loving "is just a sentimental spinster day-dream, and that most of Mr. Wells' "male fellow-passengers "in the Tube are just exactly as unlovable— and lovable—as Mr. Wells' female fellow-passengers. I wish Charlotte could say it all for me! All this has remarkably little to do with Mr. Wells' "Marriage,"I admit, but then Rebecca West's review has also remarkably little to do with it. Her review, as bearing on the novel reviewed, is often very entertaining, sometimes good in its criticism of the ideas in the book, and almost entirely lacking in comprehension of the thing as a work of Art. X. MONEY. Madam,—Mr. Kitson says: "It is one of the most curious instances of 'inconsistency that, whilst denouncing the payment of rent as robbery, Henry George should have striven to justify interest."Evidently Mr. Kitson does not know what Mr. George called interest. I recommend a reading of "Progress and Poverty."Mr. Kitson slanders Henry George when he classifies the incomes of Rockefeller, Morgan, et al, as interest, for Mr. George expressly excludes such incomes (Book III., Chap. IV.) from interest, which he limits to the product of working capital, in the hands of labour. When a "financier,"by false reports, "bears "down a stock, then buys it, sends up the price and sells, can such profit be calied interest? When 'Rockefeller got rebates from railroads enabling him to undersell all competitors, was this profit interest? It does not resemble working capital in the hands of labour. 'Men grab land, which cost inotihing, and without a stroke of labour draw millions as ground rent. This, to Mr. Kitson, is precisely the same as a part of the return for actual working capital, freely agreed upon by the borrower and lender. He wonders at the inconsistency of those who see a difference. A real teacher must state facts, and reason correctly. Here Mr. Kitson fails. "Gold and silver are not money "(p. 230). Yet all the Acts defining money tell us that gold and silver coins, and orders for same, are money. These orders read "on demand,"hence credit is not involved. Mr. Kkson identifies money and credit. Credit is deferred payment. If coin is not money, orders for coin cannot be money. Therefore, Mr. Kitson's credit money has never been tried. Yet be assumes it exists (p. 256): "Money IS a social instrument."We need an exact description of the proposed credit money. Shall we accept that given by E. F. iMylius on page 278: "These notes will not represent the gold sovereign, or any other metal or commodity. They will represent economic value in terms of those denominational values as at present in use"? We are to use an unknown abstract unit of value, although we never knew of any values being measured by such unit. But we are to start out with the ghost value of the hated coin, for the denominational values now in use 'are coin values. We separate the present value of a coin, suspend this divorced value somehow, and preserve it for future use. By next year it will become a pure abstraction. How shall we measure values with it? If we want to pay for oats, shall we say: so many bushels were worth so much coin last year, we will assume the same relation now! But wheat is scarce and higher. How shall we measure that? Other commodities fluctuate, but no one will know how much. Values will be lost in a maze of abstractions. Yet we are told that this ghost money will abolish want. Land monopolists may continue to get half the crop, but this will injure no one, under the benign reign of the phantom unit of value. For if interest is the prime cause of want, then land monopoly is secondary, or no cause at all. What Mr. Kitson calls monopoly of gold is merely the massing of value in a few hands, by means of legal privilege. A few may buy huge masses of wheat with their plunder, but nearly all attempts to monopolise wheat have failed, and ruin has fallen upon the head of the "attempter,"as Sergeant Buzfuz would say. A few command the gold, but they do not collect it. Anyone wanting to make a go\ld spoon need not ask Morgan or Carnegie. Destroy the legal privilege, and the supposed power of monopoly will be broken, although the rich may continue to subsist upon their possessions, just as Capt. Kidd could live on his accumulations if undisturbed. Another objection to our currency is that it is "State restricted" (p. 288). What other money will be acceptable to all the people? Will they accept Mr. Kitson's I notes as money, and, if so, will he take pleasure in issuing any amount, to any person, without interest? There could be no harm, perhaps, in an unlimited issue of phantom notes, but it would all be stage money. Observe the amazing statement on page 256 that men, by saving up,"are enabled by the State "to prevent others from creating and exchanging."A saves his money and buys and sets up a windmill. B intended to do so, but cannot, because A has one, and the State helps to suppress B's efforts, though how we cannot see, if the possession by A of a windmill is the power that prevents B from having one. u Mr. Kitson also says (p. 288) that Roosevelt could not suppress the American trusts 'whilst tolerating the protective system whioh fosters them."Under that system Carnegie charged about twice the normal cost of steel. Would Mr. Kitson call this profit interest? Chicago. C. F. Hunt. THE EVIL OF GOVERNMENT. Madam,—Though a believer in the organisation of society which is called governiment, I think that modern government has secured a mastery over the people which is immoral and cruel. Government, in my view, is a necessity to marshal the forces of one society against possible attack from a lower form of society. But such government should act under the direction of the people; at present the people are directed and controlled by government. The servant has become the master in the household. The slackness of the individual is a potent cause of this reversal of status. The number of persons who will spend amy trouble in acquiring knowledge of the machinery of government is amazingly limited. Bridge and golf, Or cricket and musical comedy, come first in study and oanversaition. Unless the people will devote a little more time to tihe serious business of life, which is covered by the term government, the people will remain the driven slaves of the bureaucracy. The attractions of power are very numerous; and the vanity of most thinking persons is such that they excel in obtaining power over the minds and the bodies of their fellow-creatures. The word-thoughts, "glory"and "supreme will,"figure so often in The Freewoman that I suspect this insidious fallacy is present in the minds of many of its contributors. The only safe rule of conduct that I know is to claim superiority over none; to acknowledge inferiority to none; and to strive to be different from all. Then we can approach the ideal of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality without embarking on the perilous seas of Anarchism or Collectivism. Such a creed, if it were acted upon sincerely and truly, would disintegrate the aristocratic oligarchy and the theocracy which have captured the government machinery in England. It is open to the objection that the vast majority of people have such lazy minds that they prefer to depute to others the work of thinking and planning. So long as the people persist in 'tihis attitude the mere form the government takes is of the slightest importance. It will always be a tyranny; while the efforts of reformers in ideal and action will be in vain. That courageous journal, The Eye Witness, is an illustration of what I mean. The conductors of that journal are always protesting against the enslaving of the working class. For all practical purposes, the working classes and the majority of the middle and upper classes have been

{IN THE PRESS.) THE TRAGEDY OF THE STREETS. By A. ARTHUR READE. This is not a novel, not a gutter book, but a serious book dealing with a serious question which concerns the individual, as well as the State. It is a collection of real life dramas, relieved by interludes of personal anecdote, legal, social, and philosophical. It is the first attempt ever made to embody in a short volume some facts as to the treatment of women. These facts are drawn from official records, local history, and personal observation extending over a period of thirty years. To the student of social science this book is a treasury house of facts bearing on the social evil, as well as to every man who takes a real interest in the welfare of his country. It has involved months of hard labour in selecting, out of thousands of reports, typical illustrations of cruelty to women. Subscription price five shillings. Orders, with remittance, to be sent to the Author and Publisher, Wilmslow, Nr. Manchester.

enslaved for centuries; so that The Eye Witness is rather beating the air. But what is its remedial proposal? When you examine closely the thought behind the vagaries of its constructive theory, The Eye Witness proposes to remedy the slavery of the body by enslaving the mind—by putting the Roman Catholic Church in place of the Puritan politician and the Jewish capitalist! It is the same old round. It is the mystic circle of the devil, out of which .humanity has not yet escaped. To substitute the priest for the capitalist, just when the capitalist has been substituted for the priest, is the policy of the Belloc party. This example only shows how attractive it is to most minds to acknowledge the domination of some degrading influence. C. H. Norman. [(1) We think Mr. Norman has met "glory"and "supreme will "in another journal. We are not aware of their presence in ours. (2) A "church "is essentially a voluntary association. There will always be churches, and they will be powerful to the extent that they remain voluntary. (3) It was "Race-Pride "and self-interest which marshalled the forces of the people in the most serious invasion with which we have been threatened, i.e., the Spanish. (4) If Mr. Norman keeps to his belief in his stated "Rule of Conduct,"we, as individualists, shall have nothing to cavil against. Mr. Norman may call his code what he pleases, but we should call it Individualism, and in the state where he applied it he would have far to seek to find a Government.—Ed.] TO WORLD'S END via THE CAPE. Madam,—Miss Gawtihoirpe's position is frankly unintelligible. To argue that a change from a plank to a feather bed would terminate the hunger-strike is simply to convert Mrs. Leigh into a prison reformer. Mr-Norman's position seems to be that to abandon forcible feeding is to abandon government, while your own attitude is that to put an end to forcible feeding we must put an end to government. The necessity or otherwise of government is the trifle that separates yourself and Mr. Norman. You say that government is the sole perennial target of rebels. But is it? I thought tihe crime of Suffragettes, in your eyes, was that they wished to take a hand at government and rebelled at being excluded. How can you, of all others, contend that with no government there would be no rebels—you who would rebel against the stars in their courses? But can we get along without a definition? Will you not state what you mean by the terra government? Your own doctrine of unmodified individualism with private property as its base will not only in time convince you that it is precisely the doctrine which those who favour the theory of government have"in all ages most artfully exploited; it will also supply you with a crop of rebels sufficient to tax your most meticulous ingenuity. You have nobly insisted on the right of individual property in land, but so far you have not pointed out the inevitable implications: that such a right is not only the negation of freedom, it is the thing above all others which makes government indispensable, and, what is most troublesome of all, it is the thing whioh makes rebels ubiquitous. What will you do with these rebels? Land can only he held, and holding requires certain qualities. What of those to whom the holding of land on these terms is impossible? You have more than once expressed a preference for the Mosaic principle of tenure, crowned by the majestic aureole, the Year of jubilee. But what "tyrant"shall we entrust with the task of compelling the celebration of this Festival in favour of Earth's dispossessed children? I hope you will not think tihis a digression. To contend that before we can deal with a handful of people who are being tortured in prison we must abrogate any and every form of common sanction which we call government is to say that to get to World's End we must go round the Cape. What an obsession of logic to take such a view of a twopenny 'bus ride. At any rate, I crave your leave to deal with the question for a moment within the ambit of the theory of government; that is to say, from Mr. Norman's point of view. The question is simply enmeshed in falsities and insincerities. The term forcible "feeding "is a lie. To feed by force is murder. It is not ungentlemanly—it is felonious. "Hunger-striking "may mean a thousand and one things, and the real design behind it has never been avowed by those in a position to do so, but, at least, it was deliberate rebellion as much as window-smashing. It may have been an attempt at martyrdom voluntarily and deliberately embarked upon. At any rate, we know it was an undertaking fraught witlh tragic consequences which were fully and seriously recognised. (Incidentally, why miscall dlt .by a grossly sordid term?) To refuse food is to refuse life. To refuse food in prison is to say to Government: "You cannot punish me, You will not throw open tlho.se dungeonndoors for three .months, but none the less I have the power to withdraw myself from your control, and I will. I am stronger than you, because I can prevent you from executing your will upon me."And tihey did so. The sublimely funny thing about it all is tftiaJt the Government were beaten every time. Never once did tlhe fatuous performance work. What was the object of forcible feeding? Was it to force the women to .finish their sentences? They never did lso in a single case. Was it to prevent the law from being circumvented? The law was circumvented each time. Was it designed to counter a nimble-witted device for getting out of gaol quick? The device (if such it was) succeeded on each and every occasion. And this is the crystallised fatuity we must defend at all co'sts! You say that Mr. Norman believes in tackling the coercionist business boldly. But here is coercion that doesn't coerce, a gun that won't fire, a dog with mo bark, a duck that can't swim, .and an ass that won't bray. The stark staring fact that people will not see is that .forcible feeding does not feed. It has not saved one Suffragette from starving. It has not brought one rebel tb "reason."It has not preserved one victim for the dumgeon's vengeance or enabled vemment to exaot its penalty from one prisoner. It has not once realised the darling design of its inventor and patentee. And this is the long-eared trick that all the bother is about. If this screaming fiasco is abolished there is an end to daw and government, is the nimble intuition of the adversaries of woman's suffrage. Forcible feeding, with all its lugubrious ritual, the mouth-lever, the stomach-pump, the boracic solutions, and all the other infallible scientific equivalents for the old frank rack and thumb-screw, is an attempt to convert folly into a text-book—to codify, annotate, and endow it with a glossary. It is all of a piece with the indecency and stupidity of eugenics. Jailors of the past blasphemously claimed that they could command death upon the human spirit. lit was reserved for the scientific jailors of this day to breathe the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost of claiming the power to command life upon those who refused it. Man shall not live by bread alone—not even by the stomach-pump. Life is more than meat, and it is because the partaking of food is always a sacrament that the sustenance of life may not be performed by hangmen and turnkeys. I ask, where is the dilemma in all this? What sacred principle will -be jettisoned by throwing overboard this infidel trick? Literally nothing hangs upon it, and its universal sterility should be more than enough for all practical philosophers. I beg you to believe I do not seek to prove The Free-woman to 'be wrong about the iniquity of Government. I do press on you that such ian issue is not .involved here, that such a miracle as the overthrow of Government is scarcely demanded. It reminds one too forcibly of the man who spent months in tlhe conquest of Christian Science and fallowed this up with a most praiseworthy attack upon Esoteric Buddhism—all in the hope of subduing a toothache. Forcible feeding, like all the monstrous shapes, the offspring of official brooding, brought to birth with great travail and upheaval, is not only an elaborate, comprehensive, and self-acting principle of futility, it is a boomerang whose ricochet blasts the hand that discharged it. There is only one point in Miss Gawthorpe s position that js clear to me, .and that is the question of motive. Here she seems to be on firm ground. There is one infallible test of motive, if there resides in the community sanction for the suppression or punishment of a particular act. If the doer of the deed cannot be punished, he is not a criminal. If Mrs. Leigh had been an Anarchist, we know full well what her fate would have been. Forcible feeding that has proved so fertile isn the production of negations, vacuums, blind-roads, and other minus quantities, has also brilliantly advertised and displayed the Government's impotence to punish. I repeat, at the risk of having this whole screed pitched unceremoniously into the waste-paper hole, that the trick has not delayed by one day the release of one prisoner. But the herd of official-groundlings, the army of warders and hirelings, of woman^tormentors and destroyers, continues its blatant outrage in every case, and for its Matins and its Evensong repeats the musty, sturdy lie that the thing is done to save life! And to get rid of this unctuous baggage it is necessary to work a miracle forsooth! Edwin Herrin. [What does our correspondent suggest? We hope to deal with the remarks about land and government later.— Ed.] WHAT IS INDIVIDUALISM? Madam,—Your comments this week carry a suggestion of the utter simplicity of the forcible feeding issue; and your criticism of at least two persons out of a picked three is simplicity itself. But on my side, I make plea that the hunger-striking of suffragists is, by virtue of the very possibilities you raise, and now by witness of actual fact, a thoroughly complicated business. It is complicated because it is not, as you would suggest, and as Mr. Shaw suggested, the problem of the right to die, though it looks like it. The women are ready to die. That is the magnificent point. Mr. Shaw did not face the issue of the rebel's will in action, which, intellectually, as well as .morally, is another issue altogether. Nor has Mr. "Norman faced this "coercionist business "in respect of the use of the hunger-strike as a fighting weapon, for that issue has not been raised. These are fine distinctions, but they are distinctions; and they bring me to your theories of the rebel and his defiance of government and of the anarchist and his denial of government. The rebel and the anarchist determine on the hunger-strike: the one because he defies the Government, the other because he denies the Government. Each in his own way, and on his own plane, and in his own person, represents a unified fighting force: his will against the community's will, as you would say. I learn that the corresponding action to this theory has within these last few days been demonstrated by Mrs. Leigh, who has, to make use of a vulgarism, put the authorities into a corner. She has proved herself a hero. She has demonstrated her truth. But you have put your theory of the truth of the rebel along with the theory of the practical anarchist. My mind discriminates between the two positions. Are you not rushing the situation? Are you really an anarchist? Do you really deny government in the philosophic sense even? Or are you too to be numbered among the self-deceivers? Is it fact that you have taken the personal stand that never will you avenge a wrong, that never will you pursue an advantage to personal ends, that never will you proceed against the breaker of the bond, that never will you appeal to law in any shape or form? If you can give a mighty affirmative to the united fact of all this, then are you truly outside man's law, for you have no longer need of it. But do you really regard

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months, herewith. all men as "free,"remembering that your original appeal to freewomen could, as yet, only be made to one in four women? And are our prostitutes, for you, the sisters they were for Josephine Butler, whose love for them and whose belief in their actual relationship to her were so great that she would take them in her arms, however diseased and distressed? What I want to know is—Are you in actuality opposed to Government as Government? Do you, for example, still support the Insurance Bill? Are you going to declare openly against a Votes for Women Bill? The only theory of anarchy that I know which guarantees genuine freedom for the individual soul is the despised and as yet little practised theory of Christian individualism. But it is essentially a religious theory. That is, it is religio: it relates the units who support the theory one to the other, and also binds them together. It does not separate. Syndicalism might be truly religious. It could become shockingly materialistic. It all depends on the nature of the bond. Our free individuals manifesting their individual wills are religious only to the extent of full recognition of the material and non-material claims of others—but what stupendous wisdom and love is necessary for this, what will-power is required to preserve to these others their full freedom! If you will to be just to criminals and prostitutes, will you not will to be just to .non-criminals and non-prostitutes? "One must be just even to governments,"says Miss Cicely Hamilton, in a recent letter. "Government must be destroyed. Let me sap,"you say. But do you actually mean that? I watch you from week to week governing your paper. You have your subordinates. You say to one, go, and she goes; to another, come, and she comes. In the columns of your /paper you talk to us, admonish us, lay down rules for our guidance, refresh our minds with ideas originally expressed—you even scold us at times! We, your readers, listen to your words; think about them; and where we find them friendly to our own psychology we welcome them—they are, as it were, our own thoughts new begowned; where we don't accept at first sight, we who are Lovers of Truth pay special heed, for with us the test must never be, is it pleasant? but, is it true? Sometimes we write to you and then we may again meet our letters as old friends. But sometimes they shine before us as cut jewels. We recognise the justice of this for two reasons: first, we

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see you as a Master at your job, and we recognise your right to govern; second, we are mindful of the rights of others, in a non-political sense, you govern with our consent, but you govern none the less. And you influence power week by week in accordance with the Power of Knowledge you demonstrate to us, and (be it noted!) in accordance with the ratio of response coming from us to you. In the lower realms of manifested Power this latter point would not be of much importance. Your Will would be our Law; and there would be an end of it. But to impose your mind-will on ours would be for you the great immorality, for you have told us, and you are right, that the will must not be coerced, must not be let out into bondage. The way to our wills is via the road of Knowledge, and the law of communicated knowledge turns on the psychological principle of response. For those approaching a highly individualised state, the law of response varies as the person. "Goad me—make me work,"once said a friend, whose working law of response depended on the overcoming of a fundamental inertia. The goad would be an instrument of torture for many, whereas it might (or might not) be effective with others. When you raise the cross currents of charges of hypocritical treatment of the forcible feeding issue; when you invert meanings and arrive thereby at the moral judgment of "painfully priggish,"you convey to minds which have learned to put away childish things that you are irritated; you do not necessarily prove the truth of your contentions. It may also be that by judgments of a genuinely unfair character you may put weaker minds off the track. Would not this be a pity? I defy anyone to read your commentary this week without getting a clear impression that you are very angry with my unfortunate self? But why are you angry? You actually accuse me of evading some issue or other; and inferentially you impute intellectual—or can you mean moral—hypocrisy? The truth remains that I faced the situation which my mind saw, and intellectual morality can never demand more of any one. I have, therefore, turned up all the available back numbers of The Freewoman to see what was the actual nature of your intellectual pre-judice. (You see my desire to understand?) So far as I can make out, you are the only person who has worked at the theorv of the hunger-strike and explained its genius as a fighting weapon. It was a brilliant idea—this use of the hunger-strike for its

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own sake; but my mind's truth spells that it isn't exactly playing the game to turn a protest for political offenders' treatment into a rebel's weapon with a whole philosophy of will behind it! Psychologically speaking, it is taking an unfair advantage of all whose law of mental response is different from your own, if they are, as most likely, unaware of the existence of this particular philosophy. To this day, how the justice of the actions of individuals in Manchester and, I believe, elsewhere was arrived at, tinder the circumstances of the time, I do not know; and neither officially nor privately did I ever myself hear the hunger-strike-weapon theory once discussed. Grasping the theory clearly enough to-day, I recognise its value and its significance. I am grateful to the actual presence of The Freewoman that by your many published comments thereon I am being enabled to understand certain psychological phenomena which, in the days of actual militancy, had puzzled me profoundly. Sincerity is the gateway by which the individual soul and mind approaches "The Truth."What I have written is pure dogma to those for whom the working of the principle is not as clear as it is to me. Each makes the great discovery for himself. But because sincerity is the true mode of approaching "the truths "of The Truth, it would spell psychological ignorance on my part if I were to expect, much less demand, that given the same material of fact, sincere individuals would necessarily arrive at the same conclusions. What is your theory of .individualism worth if it does not stand for this—the right of the individual to be, as sincerely as he may, His Own Man? Miss Christabel Pankhurst sojourning in Paris, in demonstration of the immunity of the political offender from arrest, is to my certain knowledge demonstrating her truth, her politician's truth. I demand no more of her. Mr. John Galsworthy, favouring the theory of a Times correspondent: that the hunger-strikers should be allowed to strike, set free, fed up, taken back to prison, the process to be continued through as many strikes as is necessary to complete the original sentence—is not purposely cruel. His mind is ultra-judicial (would you make him change it?), and he has probably never been in mental touch with the theory of the rebel. Even then, before he could adopt its conclusions, as distinct from intellectual appreciation, he would have to overcome a natural mind-tendency towards what he would call "fair-play"; the honouring of the bond; in other words,

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"justice."Mr. Anthony Ludovici is not foolish because he says, "I have only to think of the possibility of my own mother being burnt to death at a theatre, thanks to their incendiary methods, to become quite blind to their present sufferings."I understand his point of view. Mr. Granville Barker is not guilty of intellectual laziness because he does not reason in your or my way; and asks with a positively injured expression on the tip of his pen, "What are the authorities to do?"His mind is simply another mind. Mr. Havelock Ellis is not evading the issue because his part-answer—that as the women had had better opportunities than the average criminal "they are fit subjects for the heaviest sentence that may lawfully be imposed "—is inclined to perversity. The Rev. Dr. Orchard, as a Christian, and therefore as a theoretic supporter of the "anarchy "of Christianity, is not hypocritical, because he will acknowledge the weight of motive, but will not favour a shorter sentence on any account. The writer's mind is not dishonest because it believes that intellect is the very place where intuitions are not realised, and therefore falls foul of your mind; nor is it lacking in clarity because it has told the writer "the truth "that intuitionising is a mode, and not, as you think, confined to the inferior region of subconsciousness. Only to think of the intellectual significance of the works of a great intuitionist like Mr. Francis Grierson (it says) is to realise the incompleteness of the Editor's present view. What individuals we are! Why do you plump for logic on the .forcible-feeding issue, and for the other thing when Mr. Wells and others become too logical? Because you are acting as a free individual and you have arrived at the advanced stage of judging cases on their merits. I claim equal privilege. The conclusions of a freely acting mind have brought me to these recognitions: Mrs. Mary Leigh is now the happiest woman in England, because she has demonstrated her truth to a "successful "issue. She has been more "successful "than many rebels of the past, partly owing to her sincerity plus her natural gifts as a rebel; partly owing to the united past labours of us all, the minds of the authorities having been prepared to make both recognitions and admissions. But what of the mind of the public? The field of response is limited in two ways: by the natural limitations of each individual's mind, and by the quality and content of the mind's previous knowledge—or the lack of it. To ask the public to recognise the value of the philosophy of the rebel's will in action, the utter iniquity of all governments, the non-criminality of all "criminals,"in one breath, is to confess one's self lacking in that real humour which, as the poetic intuition of Okakuro Kakuzo said, was the "smile on the face of philosophy."It is to be guilty of philosophic unfairness and of psychological outrage. But what the public can get hold of, as a start, is the fact that those who hunger-strike to the death, be they men or women, are heroes. And this the release of Mrs. Leigh has already vindicated. It is the root principle of the criticised petition. The martyr spirit which bears witness, passively, to sincerity is another issue. And so is the right to suicide. The rebel will not cease to be a rebel with the cessation of external government. The rebel is always a rebel. His value varies as the needs of the times, and_we always have him with us. When his time has need of him he is a great asset. He becomes a hero. When his time does not favour his development he becomes a thorn in the side of governments and of individuals, unless they can direct his special energies into fruitful channels. If he is a rebel who also possesses genius, he creates his own conditions for action, as Miss Pankhurst is now doing, in her way; as you are doing, in yours. Napoleon was tyrant, governor, genius, rebel, supporter of religion, all in turns, and at will. The rebel stands for a form of specialised Power; but he is not necessarily the greatest Power or the most valuable. To what end? Courage, too, in proportioned and balanced manifestation is a virtue; and makes for strength. Courage is not necessarily the greatest virtue. But it is the chiefest virtue for the adventurer—physical, spiritual, or mental; and to this category, in the widest meaning of the word adventurer, rebels and warriors of all kinds belong. Courage is an absolute necessity for the vowed servant of Truth; and

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for sincere attainment of any kind. With the day of attainment, courage, like modesty, is brought into the proper focus. It is not then a question of perpetual and painful straining at the ideal; nor is it then the tragedy of the set brow, nor the challenging defence of defiance. These have all been means. The joy of mastery is to hand. To the thinker, intuition then becomes the friendly guide: it can no longer torment and cheat. Logic is the welcome comrade. Mind is the great and tireless interpreter and Master of all. Regarding actions, the heart then shirks neither praise nor blame. The "right "is done because it is seen to be right. Chaotic and anarchic passions become the steady passion of the patient and determined heart. To have attained to this is to have mastered Life. Those who are truly Masters of Life are the Natural Masters of the World, as they are the actual forerunners of the race of True Man. Mary Gawthorpe. [(1) Our unconsciously expressed irritation was doubtless due to the fact that we considered Miss Gawthorpe's petition, if successful, would have sold a unique position. Now that, with the release of Mrs. Leigh, such a fate has been averted, we feel more amiable, and only hope Miss Evans will quickly follow Mrs. Leigh. (2) We shall always avenge wrongs when we remember to, either by kindness or the other way; most probably the "other"way. We shall always pursue advantages to personal ends, as we always have done in the past. Everybody should. But this is Individualism, or Anarchism. (3) We shall make use of Government whenever we can to its own detriment or to our advantage. We shall lose no opportunity of doing it an injury. We work for its destruction. As an instrument of destruction the Insurance Act is ifirst-rate. They should bring in another. A second one would let in an even fiercer light than this one has upon the real nature of Goverment. As for Votes for Women, we think the women will be very quick to see the nature of Government. Unless they get it soon (and then forget it) the more thoughtful among them will cease to ask for it. They should battle with Government itself. Personally, we think the Vote is an insult. Would we use one? No.—.Ed.] A letter from Henry S. Salt, Esq., Secretary of the Humanitarian League, is held over, and will appear next week.—Ed.

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