possibly allow the imperium in imperio which the economic, and to a large extent the political, domination of the great monopolist trusts represent, to go forward uncontrolled. If the decisions of the Courts avail not to support the interests of the people, then the community as a whole must reorganize the entire system for the benefit of all. This is far easier with trusts than with the earlier development of individual factory owners or distributors. That fact the more able upholders of the trust system themselves publicly acknowledge. Nor can there be any doubt that the entrance upon the war of the United States as a great world power will hasten on socialization in the Republic of the West. An enormous territory like America, with agriculture practically still the supreme interest, cannot take the same course in the new advance as England, which has allowed its rural population to be removed and its land cultivation to be crippled. But that collective will replace individual or company ownership and management in both countries is already apparent, whether we call the change Socialism or not, whether the transformation involves class antagonism expressed in open violence, or peaceful outlet is to be given by wide constitutional change.

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Almost with the rapidity of Japan, Germany has in a generation passed through an evolution which needed more than a century to accomplish here. And Germany has taken still more definite steps towards the new phase. Her capitalism has at no time enjoyed the freedom from state control that existed in Great Britain and the United States. Nor has she, in the exultation of her her marvelous growth of factory industry, neglected any measures deemed necessary for

the improvement of agriculture by state aid in the direction of enhancement of production and cheapening of transport. Her landed proprietors have dominated the entire German national policy at home as abroad, and have taken care to fortify their position both economically and politically, not only by the application of science to agriculture but by protectionist duties and jerrymandered representation. The Social-Democratic Party, the largest single political party in Germany, played into the hands of this powerful reactionary element by their acceptance of the Pan-German Chauvinist cry of 'Deutschland über Alles,' and their shameful betrayal of their principles and pledges at the beginning of the campaign of aggression and atrocity started by the Central Powers. During the war, administrative collectivism has inevitably advanced even beyond the position it held before. But Germany's political forms, like our own, are many years behind her social and economic development; moreover, they are so handled as to hinder all democratization, however much they may facilitate the increase of state-administered collectivism. Those who know Germany best may well doubt whether the Fatherland will be able to carry through the coming reorganization, whatever it may be, without a desperate internal struggle. So long as the war lasts and the German armies are fighting on foreign territory there will be no possibility of revolution at home. But, when the Teutonic hosts are manifestly beaten, a very different spirit will be awakened against the caste which has inflicted such bootless ruin upon Central Europe. Bankruptcy and armed revolt will precede the inevitable political change, whatever form

the economic conditions may take.

In that respect, defeated Germany will be at a great disadvantage compared with victorious though exhausted France. French political forms are far ahead of the French economic status. The real France is still rural France. Political France is democratic to a point that no country with so large an agricultural population has ever yet attained. France, therefore, which led the way in 1789, will be the European country best placed for sober reconstruction in 1919. Her national position and confidence will be restored; her idealism, clarified, it may be, by the loss of her Russian investments, will fire her enthusiasm without shaking her judgment.

Great Britain stands in a more difficult yet more interesting and hopeful position than any European nation. The remarkable extension of state power in the course of the war, already referred to, has rendered the thorough-going revolution from capitalism to coöperative communism economically and socially far more easy than it would have been before. The economic forms are, in fact, ready for the change; only capable intelligence is needed to apply them. What Karl Marx truly said to me five-and-thirty years ago is, on this account, doubly true to-day. 'England is the one country in Europe where a peaceful revolution is possible; but,' he added, 'history does not tell us so.' If only our dominant class had been wise enough to make ready by a thorough-going reform of our Constitution in a democratic sense, while at the same time removing by sound education the ignorance of the mass of our people, the saving clause of Marx's forecast might have been expunged. As it is, our political institutions are at least three

generations behind our industrial development.

Universal Adult Suffrage, Proportional Representation, The Initiative and Referendum, one effective National Assembly of moderate dimensions, a series of popularly elected Administrative Committees such

organization of democracy is still, according to our politicians, outside the domain of practical politics. Instead of this we have a vast mass of wasteful and incompetent bureaucratic departments piled on the top of one another, whose main object is, under an appearance of grudging collectivism, to perpetuate the parasitic sitic methods methods which must spell national ruin, come what may. Even now, with the millions of trained men who will return from the front to demand their share in the more generous national life which should be the outcome of their efforts, our ruling classes are thinking solely of their own pockets and their own future.

Here is danger, and danger of a very serious nature. Never before in our long history has the entire manhood of this nation been liable to military service. Never before in any country have millions of trained soldiers, after being withdrawn from national industry, been returned to the old conditions. Never, certainly, has such a huge financial burden been laid upon the people as that which the workers of Great Britain, who have done most of the fighting and the producing during the war, will have to shoulder after the peace, if the existing financial organization is maintained. Never at any period were legitimate causes of discontent more rife among our population at home, or likely to be more active among the men who return from abroad. Never was the outlook more unpromising for

food prices, when all nations will be competing on the world markets for any surplus of necessaries, and so little preparation has been made to increase production at home.

In such circumstances it is imperative that the old bourgeois notions of political economy should be relentlessly scrapped, as Americans and Germans scrap inferior machinery.

The Quarterly Review

This has been done during the war; it will be necessary on a much larger scale and as part of a complete policy during the peace. No greater or more inspiring opportunity has been offered us, in all our long and stirring history, of leading mankind in peaceful and orderly fashion towards the attainment of the Coöperative Commonwealth.

THERE is a music hall to which my peregrinations sometimes lead me on my 'evening out,' and within its gallery entrance door I read two notices. The first says 'Shouting and Whistling not allowed: Offenders will be ejected'; and the second 'Bottles must not be brought into these Premises: Offenders will be ejected.' Notwithstanding these warnings I often enter that music hall, albeit as a patron less frequently of the gallery than of the 'Fauteuils.' In short, I am one of the nobs. The price of being one of the nobs is eighteen pence, with fourpence added thereunto as Amusement Tax, to help to win the war. My assistance towards that laudable end would be but twopence if I bought a cheaper seat; and (at the risk of our losing the war) I should prefer to indulge in this economy. But then I should fail to see what was

rring on the

stage. Feeble eyesight, and no vain desire to make a splash, forces me into the extravagance of a 'Fauteuil.'

My music hall gives me an excellent entertainment-at one-and-ten, plus one penny for a programme. From time to time the said programme bodes forth the appearance of a Versatile Violinist--or anyhow some sort of violinist, male or female, who is probably a no better performer than one of the orchestra humbly accompanying in a narrow gulf before the footlights. (I forgot to mention that another reason for patronizing the Fauteuils is that I sometimes secure one in the front row. From here I have a capital view into the orchestra, among whose company I always greatly enjoy the flutist. He is exceedingly bald and respectable, and the upper part of him is in evening dress; but if you lean over the balustrade and peer rudely down

wards you will observe that below the waist he is a soldier in khaki knickers and puttees. A singular vision; but, you see, this staid gentleman has been 'called up,' allottedonly too wisely, as I should judge, for I question his worth as a warriorto sedentary duty at home, and given a special pass which enables him to tootle melodiously at two houses per night. Such are the horrors of Armageddon. Tommy Atkins from his toes to his tummy, and Savile Row-more or less-above. Splendid fellow, the bald flute player!)

As I was remarking, the programme sometimes threatens me with a Versatile Violinist. This is one of the things which-in spite of eclectic tastes-I cannot abide, for I know that he (or she) will, at some point in the turn, cause his (or her) violin to imitate the bagpipes, especially the distant bagpipes. I do not know why, but a violin made to sound like bagpipes bores me. If someone would come on and make bagpipes sound like a violin I might stay, out of curiosity. As it is, I hasten forth to the bar.

The other night when I entered this bar with no intention of drowning the bagpipes in spirituous liquor for the hour was already past 9.30-I encountered one Private Robinson, who greeted me as a long-lost friend.

Our original introduction had been, by genteel standards, perhaps a share outré. When I first had the privilege of beholding Mr. Robinson he was attired-but why put the matter euphemistically?—he was stark naked. Moreover, so was I. He was having a bath. So was I. The outer side of his bath was painted red. This indicated (as a notice, on the bathroom wall, informed those whom it might concern) that the bath was reserved for individuals affected with a certain skin disease: an ailment

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which I must make haste to add, in fairness to Mr. Robinson and thousands of his good comrades-is very commonly acquired at the Front, and is no fault of the victim. I regret to say that a glance at Mr. Robinson's person sufficed to convince mewithout the hint given by the red bath or by the odor of the sulphur curative which arose from it-that my new acquaintance had fallen a prey to the complaint in question. And I too was in a red bath. But my reasons for being in a red bath differed from Mr. Robinson's reasons. He was in a red bath because he had got-well-we may call it Thingumy. I was in a red bath because I had not got Thingumy. Thereby I was pursuing an ancient principle of mine, which I originally arrived at when visiting Davos Platz, the consumptive resort. Nobody ever contracts consumption at Davos. Owing to the health regulations in force there, it is one of the safest places in Europe for anybody afraid of 'catching tuberculosis. There are more tuberculosis bacilli loose in a London omnibus than in Davos. Similarly, if you wish to avoid 'infection" from baths, use those baths which are definitely labeled for infected bathers, inasmuch as those are the very baths which are most carefully Lysolized after use. I do not say that all the baths in that bathroom were not maintained in a remarkable state of purity by the khaki-clad gentleman who, ever since August 5, 1914, had daily and hourly swabbed them outand who is at this moment still patiently doing so, after over three years of it. I merely say that if, in a moment of aberration, he forgot to cleanse a bath it would not be a red bath; and if he squirts more Lysol into one bath than into another bath you may back the red baths to get the

they fell, because they had become not only vicious but obviously useless. They could not even handle effectively the means of resistance at their hand. 'Why did you run away?' the fugitive nobles were asked at Cologne. 'Nous étions des lâches,' was the reply. They were not physically cowards-both men and women proved this at the crisis of their fate; but they felt that their position could not be defended, so they lacked the moral courage to hold on. So strong also was the reaction, so slow the growth of the new forms, that, great as was the political transformation from the commencement of the revolution in 1789 to the restoration of Louis XVIII in 1815, the restored aristocrats were able to obtain some compensation from the National Assembly for the properties of which they had been deprived.

The same causes made themselves felt in the great development of capitalist production and factory industry which, beginning in its recognized shape in England about the middle of the eighteenth century, has spread and is still spreading over the civilized world. This change moved far more rapidly than any previous social modification. But it went forward in this island, as well as later in the United States, without any national superintendence or control. The horrors thus engendered fully equaled any of the chattel-slave or serf period. Children of tender years were never deliberately worked to death for the profit of the slave owner or the feudal lord, as they were by capitalist employers at the end of the eighteenth and during the first half of the nineteenth century. But the resistance of the wage earners proved as useless as the previous risings against slave owners, nobles, and land expropriators had been futile. Luddite anarchist de

struction of machinery, Chartist organized denunciation and physicalforce movements against the capitalists had no effect. Within a century or less, Great Britain was revolutionized from an agricultural country into being almost entirely a nation of manufacturers and profiteers. The peasant became a landless wage earner; the land population was drafted into cities; and the cities grew up with the most crowded and miserable dens in which a pauperized proletariat had ever been housed. Such limitations as there were to the employers' power to work women and children to death were chiefly due to opposition made by the landowners to the factory-owner class that was depriving them of political control.

Thus the transformation from home production and domestic industry to importation from abroad and great factory industry-one of the greatest economic and social revolutions ever known in any country-was achieved in Great Britain, not certainly without much perturbation and discontent culminating in armed violence, but, relatively to the crucial character of the change effected, with little bloodshed. Once more, individual revolts against economic conditions failed; for the victory of the capitalist and profiteering class was complete. During eighty years, from 1765 to 1848, the class-war between capital and labor was open and avowed. In the latter year capital won, owing to the gold discoveries, free trade, and the emigration of the most vigorous portions of the population.

Thenceforward the struggle took a different shape. First strikes, and then, very gradually, political action, carried on the strife, but with little advantage to the workers. They adopted the theories of the profiteering class; and the English proletariat