Part 3

But it is not the body only that suffers; it is the soul of the nation that is in danger. Discontent is caused by mental distress, unsatisfied and perfectly justified longings which are inherited or spontaneous are blunted. Be the purse full of gold, be every physical sense gratified thereby, the hunger of the soul for more enlightenment, for more joy, for higher enterprise will continue, and the whole being, even that part which is physical, will suffer. The atmosphere of factory life is bleaching bodies and souls wherever it is in the ascendant; the people become hollow-cheeked, their manners surly, their wits atrophied. They are not _free_, they are slaves to Plutus. So sensitive to environment is the mind of man, even at the simplest and least initiated, that it grows in harmony with its employment. In constant touch with machinery a man becomes like his machine! Iron enters in his soul. He becomes a kind of bolt or screw, a wedge or wheel. No wages, however high, can compensate for what industrial life has robbed. The greater cities and towns hardly know of the fields of Enna or the paradise that God made. They think, if they think at all, that the filthy air they breathe, the hideous smoke under whose canopy they exist but don’t live, is “alright,” and that there is nothing else.

And yet somehow, although perhaps they cannot define it, _they feel a want_, a yearning for something better, and it is that which makes their souls discontented, hard, and unsympathetic. Their souls are caged as the soaring eagle is caged in a menagerie. Cinders, refuse, evil smells, foul air; instead of flowers, the life-giving sun, pure air, and sweet scents of spring. God made these, the descendants of Tubal Cain made the others. Their birthright has been seized by jerry builders, exploiting companies, who care just about as much for the people as a butcher cares for the animal whose throat he is about to cut. To keep the industrial slave in a good humour he is treated to unhealthy excitement of cinema shows, which to “catch on” must partake of the Newgate Calendar, or if any Art is presented to him it must be “_of his level_.” Of his level?

Is that the attitude to be assumed by those who should know better? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to kill a soul, but it can be wounded and degraded till it is seemingly dead, has lost all power of progression, and, like a wingless bird, can only creep on the earth. And that is what an artificial life does, first to an individual, then, in time, to a whole nation.

§ 13

It is dangerous to gamble with instinct. It is impossible to wholly destroy man’s instinct, which is essentially as well as hereditarily opposed to the artificial life of Industrialism. He _is_ an outdoor animal, he scratches the earth instinctively. It may be through ignorance, but so it is; he will stick a dead shrub in the ground, thinking it will grow. Kill Agriculture and in its place erect Industrialism, and you have killed all that is best, indeed all that really matters in the human race!

Before the war what were called civilised countries, our own included, had reached a point of artificial living as disastrous to them as it had been to Rome and Byzantium in their decadence. We, the English, were growing idle, neglecting agriculture, buying from foreign markets instead of creating our own. We were ceasing to be a productive nation. Whatever we could borrow we borrowed. We propped up Germany, who grew rich out of our lack of foresight and imagination. Ideals were laughed at and Plutus was the god worshipped; never mind how wealth was gotten or spent, wealth was all in all. Education, notwithstanding half-hearted and ill-digested Bills passed through Parliament, was neglected save in so far as it might be money-providing. It is out of such a degenerating state of things that we must be dragged if we cannot be drawn. Artificial life as made by Industrialism must be rectified if England is to make intellectual progress and take again the honourable and respected place she held. What are we making to show to generations to come? Nothing as compared to what the past has left for us! A few iron and steel bridges which time will destroy, a few exceedingly hideous railway stations, a great many railway tracks, a vast amount of “rolling stock,” which will presently be of the value of scrap iron.

Herds of motor cars and new flights of aeroplanes; monstrous ironclads which are no sooner completed than they become out of date; a partial and growing destruction of agriculture; and, in the meantime, necessary expenses of even a rigid economist are trebled, if not more, and wages rise to a point where it seems unlikely that resources will be able to meet them, profiteering by tradesmen has become the habit. If this be so, instead of leaving on our tracks a well-organised road, we shall leave debts and a desert. Shall England be turned into an ash heap? If so, the reason for doing so must be better explained than hitherto.

§ 14

Science and industry misapplied may prove to be a curse! They _are_ misapplied when used for purposes of destruction. What folly it is when it is regarded coolly, rationally and with common sense! Millions upon millions of money are wasted, which, if spent in the construction of national intellectual stability, upon education and all that education would provide, would ennoble the nation. The great war, made by politicians, by egoists, has been the most devastating in the history of mankind. Science has been applied to it with acrid avidity. Without the misapplication of scientific inventions the disasters caused by the war would have been impossible. Science wrongly applied, facilities invented as aids to peaceful transport and international as well as national contact abused, have worked havoc. The age of iron and steel, of cheap and accessible fuel, coal and oils, of easy communication between races instinctively and by tradition antagonistic, has said its say in something very near the destruction of Europe. Every discovery made to be used to promote prosperity and peace has been used for the destruction of both. Terrible things science has done during the last five years. Without railways, without motors, without factories, without aeroplanes, without chemistry, each in its way desirable, if used for construction, the great war would have been impossible; impossible as it has been enacted. Wars will be as long as man remains foolish. As yet it appears the folly of men is more potent than their wisdom. They _invent_ for peace, they _use_ for war. What a contradiction this implies! They are answerable for this misapplication of science.

§ 15

When wisdom is uppermost war will cease. Governments will not influence one way or another when the democracy is educated and so has become wise, when it declines to use genius in an evil direction, when, having learnt to use well and for national good the facilities for it which inventive genius has provided, democracy will see straight. Governments are at a discount just now. Looking over the world as it is at this moment it is difficult, perhaps impossible, so far to find one which is stable or wise. Wisdom must be born out of the people. Wisdom can only be gained by education, which means discrimination. The free will of a people can only serve for good when it is guided by _right_, not _wrong_, when people have been so mentally trained as to be able to discriminate between ephemeral and permanent welfare. If democracy is not to be a deadly failure and a deadly curse the people must retain their soul, their honesty, their good fellowship established upon intellectual more than emotional fellowship.

If good is to prevail over evil the working class, the noblest of England’s product in the past, must be led into the path which leads to Freedom by a sense of duty owing to the whole community which it is bound to be called upon to exercise, and to the full, in the future. It is for “the People” to make the final choice upon which the future of England depends--peace and prosperity or war and anarchy! When the people are educated to see straight agitators may roar themselves hoarse, may tell lies under cover of specious argument, but they will not prevail.

§ 16

Agitators have never led a country as a whole, they have infected the less enlightened members of it with discontent, perhaps with imitable frenzy, but never have they turned the course of the stream of progress permanently.

Agitators ruffle the surface of the waters as little boys blow upon it, thinking they are creating a storm, which, however, is only severe enough to upset toy ships; only so far are they really dangerous. Agitators may roar against capitalists, but they cannot do without them; indeed, their Utopia would be to become capitalists. When capital says, “I will not be wasted,” and Labour says, “My work shall not be destroyed because it is part of my best self which I reverence,” we shall be on the high road to national and international peace.

§ 17

Politicians may dabble in “Leagues” (we all know what they mean, to be broken when conditions appear which seem against their continuity). Statesmen may try to make up for previous mistakes by twisting arguments to suit new methods, but as long as it does not come right home to the people that war and internal dissension spells destruction to Labour as to Capital, in the long run war, within and without, is certain to occur again. And the next war! Every effort made by science, plus the experience of the last five years, will be used to destroy that which it set out to preserve.

The more splendid the services of science the more terrible will, and must be their misapplication. Nothing that has happened in Europe, Russia or the East, however cruel and terrible it has been, will compare with the horrors of the next war. Cities, entire districts, fleets and armies will cease to exist in moments, not even in days. God’s sky will be full of destroying agents against which every defence will be in vain. We are only out of the last great war by the skin of our teeth. Shall we profit by the lessons it has offered or shall we forget? That is the question.

§ 18

Shall we draw closer together as a people whose motto is “Fraternity,” or drift apart? We can draw closer if we choose and each one of us resolves to do “the utmost for the highest.” Civil dissension can be as morally destructive as military rule. It sets every instrument of the orchestra out of tune; it creates a hideous discord and chaos which can only be resolved by the greatest enemy to democracy--a military Government. The very thing we have been fighting to expel from Germany may have to be enacted here in free England if anarchical methods prevail, and there is danger (we do not say probability) that they may if the heart of the country becomes _rotten_. The heart of the country is Labour, but labour not selfishly, graspingly, and tyrannically used, but as the bulwark of protection to the community in part and as a whole. If Labour is to take a prominent part in the affairs of the country, in legislation, for example, its votaries _must be educated_; at present they are not, and therefore had they the power they seek or that is demanded for them by agitators who are only less ignorant than they, it is impossible to gauge the difficulties and dangers into which the country would be plunged. Before Labour is fit to govern it must learn how to use leisure. The shorter the hours of labour the more imperative will become education. Are our working men prepared to use the leisure they demand for the good of the community or only to please their, as yet, primitive instincts? From a class which is idle or mischievous during leisure hours we can expect no wisdom, and without wisdom no man can rule himself, much less his fellows. From rulers we expect wide wisdom, not class prejudice. The former is impossible, the latter certain, without education.

One hears an answer to the assertion we have made: “Give us power and see how we use it!” That is all very well, but before power is added to that already in possession we must be sure that the best is being made of what has been already attained. If the workmen of England or of any other country are to hold offices of State in which ripe judgment, experience and knowledge of the world, of the complications to which it has been subjected from the earliest times, are required, they must have a very different Utopia in the back of their minds to that which is evident as yet. They will have to learn that to legislate entirely in the interests of Labour (and that is what Labour would do now) would be tantamount to the ultimate destruction of the very thing they wish to promote--the wealth of Labour as opposed to that of the capitalist. Before power, and such power, is granted to a class which has had no experience of its exercise we must be certain that their previous use of their higher energies has justified their demands, namely, that they have fulfilled the demands which their work should have made, well and honestly. First of all, the workman must have given his best work to his employer, and, having done that as the first duty to his neighbour and to himself as an honourable man, he must have proved by the good use of his hours of leisure that he is in earnest, that he desires not only to become a _decent_ citizen but a _capable_ one.

Now, the best instructed of us and the most intellectually endowed know by experience how difficult it is to so train the mind to be ready and prompt to employ leisure to the best advantage, that is to say, in such a manner that is useful and ennobling, not detrimental and decadent! This is a matter which hinges on principle as well as choice. Industry is engendered by effort as well as by theory. If a man is industrious he has trained himself to be so by acting upon a theory which he has found to be advantageous. Advanced democrats will tell us: “You have no right to interfere with the hours of leisure of a citizen. If he elects to get drunk, why not? If he gambles, why not? If he prefers dog fighting and the prize ring to improving his mind; if he prefers to beat his wife to treating her decently, why not? She does not mind it. If he prefers to spend his money in travelling about to see football matches to taking his earnings home to his family, why not?” Yes, Mr. Democrat, but by doing so is your pet working man even on the road to be a worthy ruler or responsible statesman, or even in a minor degree to take part in framing laws, or seeing that when made they are put into action? If your working man spends his leisure in barbarous pursuits he is still, by preference, a barbarian! If he wastes his earnings, taking little of them home to provide for and educate a family, in the first place, does he deserve higher wages, while those he is already receiving he uses ill? Is a man that acts so fit to rule? Certainly not! If he abuses his own wages, do you think he will not waste or abuse the use of public money? Of course he will! The democrat who has added the sauce of anarchy to his favourite dish, whose logic is framed upon assertion unjustified by reasoning, will tell you: “You let him alone. He fills the pockets of the big pots. If he likes to get drunk, why not? I likes liberty, I does.” And yet the fool who says this will be the first to urge class tyranny and claim for the idle workman a place in a Ministry, perhaps the first place. Good God! No; before the working classes are granted grave responsibilities they must prove they are worthy of them by exercising a firm purpose, doing what they are already called to do honourably and well, and show signs by industry during leisure hours that they are men, not barbarians, and good citizens, not anarchists!

They must prove by their private lives that their public acts will not be a disgrace, that a high principle has been their guide, that their souls are straight and active for good, and that a true Fraternity, wide and embracing, has finally ruled out selfish class prejudice. They must prove that they are in no humour to be levelled down by their noisy leaders. They must prove their higher ambition by not listening to the cry, “Strike again, Bill! Force the governor if _’e_ won’t give in! The Government is weak: force it to a decision in your favour! You ’ave the power to starve the country if you choose. Don’t yer see yer power? Why, then, man, use it!”

§ 19

Wise people do not wish to give added power to a class that listens to and acts upon such folly. They know if they did that the country would suffer as a whole and become the prey to a tyranny, and a mob tyranny, the most dangerous of all.

Before they are granted new powers we want to see the British workman doing his work as well as he used to do it, to see him an honest man by giving his best work for good pay.

§ 20

Paying a bad or indolent workman the same wages as an efficient and industrious one is to put a tax on skill; it discourages the good workman and encourages the idle one in his idleness. To forbid a bricklayer to lay more than a minimum number of bricks per hour is to encourage the lazy and discourage the honest workman; therefore to curtail the production of work in quantity and quality is directly injurious to the needs of the country and indirectly to the progress of trade; moreover, it is unfair to the good workman as it places him on a level with the inferior or bad one, which is not only morally wrong but economically silly. Trades union laws have grown to be tyrannical. They contradict what was good in their initiative. As at present enacted they prove their authors to be ignorant men, ignorant of the first principles of political economy and of the results which must inevitably follow upon their acceptance. If an honest workman has the will to lay as many bricks per hour (so he does it well) it is tyranny to forbid him. It is neither to his interest nor of the trade he represents to coerce him. For the reason he does better and more work than his idle or incompetent fellow he has a right to a higher wage; to deny him that right is to lower the standard of workmanship generally and particularly. To oblige men to down tools at the command of leaders against their will is tyranny! So we find after all that grandiloquent talk about Liberty is gas. Trades union leaders are tyrants; even more, they are slave drivers! Labour would do well to strike against them instead of striking against doing their duty and being honourable members of society. Indeed, they would do well to duck them in the nearest pond as enemies, not friends, to their cause. The fact is that as soon as the workmen find out they have been misled retribution is likely to follow and quickly. When the honest workman sees clearly that a false position has been pressed upon him he will resent it and drastically. The last railway strike is a black spot in the history of generous and liberal England. The majority of the railway men did not wish it. It was forced on them by the audacity and ambition of their leaders. That statement is proved by the avidity of their return to work. Perchance they thought it was just possible that while they were starving others, and the helpless, they themselves would suffer with them. An empty belly is a very valuable medicine.

Englishmen of whatever class, rich or poor, would never consent to starve out their comrades, their children, their old fathers and mothers. Our workmen are, _au fond_, too good fellows to do that, even to descend to threaten it. The threat to starve the country was not made by them but by their leaders, who, if they do not know better how to conduct men only a little less ignorant than they, will have to be taught to do so, and quickly.

§ 21

British workmen laboured like men to win the war. Once or twice signs were evident that arrogant leaders were trying to seduce them, but they failed in the long run. But after the immediate danger zone was past, with reprehensible persistency the same leaders shook off their reserve forced upon them by a perilous situation and started a new war cry of class against class which the war and all the suffering it caused should have killed. But no! While we were all admiring the straightforward patriotism so tried by grave danger, anarchical leaders were considering the steps they would take to achieve an end by brutal force, thereby copying the tyrannical Germany that was being thrust from civilised companionship with the rest of the world. These are but mimics of a fallen power which had killed its soul, killed every instinct of justice, all pity and human kindness to bring about an end to gratify lust of conquest and overwhelming tyranny under the mark of Kultur. Trades union leaders threatened to starve London. Unable to coerce a none too strong Government by specious proposals and platform oratory, their threat was, happily, taken seriously, and the Government, in this instance, gave evidence of a power of forethought which it had too often neglected in the past. Those leaders were cheated of their prey of dead children and old people starving for want of milk. It is difficult to abstain from stronger words than are here used, difficult not to permit harsh words, so dastardly cowardly was the attempt which, although it failed, was made with a coldbloodedness that was more German than English. That it failed to succeed was not the fault of the authors of the scheme, who intended it to force the pace, intimidate the people and the Government, and establish trades union leaders as rulers of the country. In point of fact, it was blackmail! On the contrary, they have secured obloquy from every decent man and woman, and have happily placed themselves in a position of disorder which we hope will continue. If they try the same game again, if they are not met with physical resistance, they ought to be, and if the leaders of what is in reality “conspiracy” are not “doing time,” the Government will have to answer some not pleasant questions from a majority of orderly citizens which is resolved not to be set out of order by a minority of exploiters entirely out for their own interests and self-aggrandisement. If the Government had shown weakness, as it so often has done in somewhat similar circumstances, its doom would have been sealed. It has too often tried the patience of the country by unfulfilled promises and shifting ground when obstacles were obstinate, and an entirely reprehensible policy of compromise. This time it surprised the country by being prepared to deal with a crafty trap. It caught the vermin in the trap they had set to intimidate the country. That strike has gone far to prove that Labour, as at present led and organised, is no more fitted to rule than a naughty, ill brought up child is to rule its parents. We believe the soul of the British workman is still clean, _au fond_; it has been tempted to be otherwise by bad guides, taught to be dishonest by them, to be selfish, hard, even brutal, but enough of the old stamina has survived to encourage the belief that, under good, wise and sympathetic, but at the same time strong leadership, the British workmen will regain the confidence they have lost and the position of respect which has been compromised for them.

§ 22