Cornc-ll Univor'.lly Library 
 
 HD8390.H4 
 
 The aims of labour. 
 
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 3 1924 002 657 199 
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 AT 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002657199 
 
THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
THE 
 AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 BY THE RT. HON. 
 
 ARTHUR HENDERSON, M.P., 
 Secretary of the Labour Party 
 
 NEW YORK ST;T5 SO'liTL 
 
 ccri;;2:LL uiaiVEr.rjxY 
 NEW YORK 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 MCMXIX 
 
 n.S. 
 
These things shall be! a loftier race 
 
 Than ere the world hath knovm shall rise 
 
 With flame of freedom in their souls, 
 And light of knowledge in their eyes. 
 
 They shall be gentle, brave, and strong 
 
 To spill no drop of blood, but dare 
 All that may plant man's lordship firm 
 
 On earth, and fire, and sea, and air. 
 
 Nation with nation, land with land, 
 Inarmed shall live as comrades free: 
 
 In every heart and brain shall throb 
 The pulse of one fraternity. 
 
 New arts shall bloom of loftier mould 
 
 And mightier music fill the skies, 
 And every life shall be a song, 
 
 When all the earth is paradise. 
 
 John Addington Symoitos. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In presenting this little volume to the public no 
 pretence is made that it is a complete or comprehen- 
 sive statement of the aims of British Labour, nor 
 is it an attempt to write a book on Labour Politics, 
 The main substance of several of the chapters has 
 already appeared in the form of articles published 
 during the past two months. When it was sug- 
 gested that I should issue them as a collection of 
 chapters dealing with some of the vital problems 
 now confronting the democratic forces of this coun- 
 try, I agreed to do so; and now I offer them, together 
 with two or three new chapters, to my prospective 
 readers in the hope that they may prove to be of some 
 little help to them in forming their own views on the 
 questions which are discussed herein. 
 
 The sole purpose of this publication is to advance 
 the social and political ideals which I have at heart, 
 and I propose to hand over any profits resulting 
 from the sale of the book to the fund which the 
 Labour Party is promoting with a view to erecting a 
 suitable and lasting Memorial to the honour of those 
 
 PROPERTY OF LIBRARY 6330 
 
 WEW YOBK STATE SOilOPL 
 INB'JSTFSAL AiJQ \Mm RELATiOMS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 who have fallen on the field of battle in furtherance 
 of the ideals and aims which inspire British Democ- 
 racy and on behalf of which British Labour has sac- 
 rificed so much and so freely. 
 
 A. H. 
 December 22nd, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAFTEK PAGB 
 
 I The Political Laboux Movement ... 9 
 
 II The New Pakty and Its Programme . . 19 
 
 III Solidarity . 31 
 
 lY World Security .......... 40 
 
 V A People's Peace ..,.,. ^ , 48 
 
 VI No Economic Boycott ....... 55 
 
 VII Revolution or Compromise? . . ^ . , 67 
 
 VIII Freedom , , 75 
 
 IX Victory , . 84 
 
 X The Spirit of Democracy 92 
 
 Appendices: 
 
 I Inter-Allied Labour War Aims .... 99 
 II Labour and the New Social Order . . .111 
 
THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE POLITICAL LABOUR MOVEMENT 
 
 With the coming of peace the world will enter upon 
 an era of revolutionary change to which there is no 
 parallel in history. In this country, as in every 
 other, the war has already profoundly modified the 
 economic system of pre-war days, and has intro- 
 duced far-reaching innovations into industry. 
 Methods of State control which would once have 
 been regarded as intolerable infringements of the 
 rights and liberties of both employers and workmen 
 have been accepted without effective protest even 
 from those bred in the individualist tradition of the 
 last century. Some of these changes are admittedly 
 only temporary and provisional. They were dic- 
 tated by national necessity, and were introduced 
 upon the explicit understanding that an unprece- 
 dented situation had arisen which called for bold 
 and drastic measures. Those measures which relate 
 to trade vmion practices and customs in the work- 
 
 9 
 
10 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 shops, in particular, are governed by strict pledges 
 for the restoration of pre-war conditions when the 
 national crisis is over. Nevertheless, the extent and 
 importance of these changes in methods of produc- 
 tion, the control of industry, the management and 
 distribution of labour, and the limitations imposed 
 upon the activities of financiers and the enterprises 
 of individual capitalists, practically involve a revo- 
 lution, the effects of which will remain when the ne- 
 cessity which gave them their sanction has passed 
 away. Most of them are permanent. In four 
 crowded and eventful years we have gathered the 
 fruits of a century of economic evolution. We have 
 entered upon a new world. With the main features 
 of this new world we are still unfamiliar. We can- 
 not yet begin to measure the material effects of the 
 war upon the commercial and industrial system 
 upon which our civilisation has been based. 
 
 Still less can we estimate the results of the inner 
 revolution of thought and feeling which has accom- 
 panied these material changes. Yet we are begin- 
 ning dimly to see that the old order of society has 
 dissolved. ' A new social order is taking shape even 
 in the midst of the stress and peril of the time. 
 This revolution is fundamental, for it touches the 
 springs of action in the great mass of the common 
 people. Greater changes in the material structure 
 
POLITICAL LABOUR MOVEMENT 11 
 
 of society have still to come, but they will be dic- 
 tated not by the exigencies of war but by the new 
 democratic consciousness and the* new social con- 
 science which have come to birth in the long agony 
 of the present struggle. The people have been 
 taught by events, better than by any process of ra- 
 tional argument, that they alone make war possible, 
 though they have no hand in fashioning the policies 
 that lead to war: their energy, devotion, and sacri- 
 fice, in trench, field and factory, are qualities which 
 their rulers exploit when they quarrel with one an- 
 other. In times of peace the people feel that they 
 are nothing; when war comes they are found to be 
 everything. War is possible only because the skill 
 and bravery of the common people, their immense 
 industry, their patient endurance, their direct and 
 simple sense of right and wrong, give the world's 
 rulers a feeling of power which they use, not to en- 
 sure the happiness and prosperity of the multitudes 
 of humble folk, but to glorify their own names and 
 to feed their insensate ambitions. The people have 
 discovered this, and in learning it they have discov- 
 ered their own power. Never again, we may be 
 sure, will the people allow themselves to be driven 
 helplessly into war by these sinister forces. Neither 
 will they be able henceforth to see as enemies the 
 people of other countries who are like themselves the 
 
12 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 victims of the militarist imperialism and secret 
 diplomacy of their rulers. 
 
 Internationalism, as an organised movement, may 
 have temporarily broken down in this war. But the 
 spirit of internationalism, the consciousness of the 
 solidarity of peoples, the democratic vision which 
 overlooks the artificial frontiers which keep the 
 peoples apart, will grow stronger the longer the 
 war continues. In the midst of the universal horror 
 of the battlefield something like an entente of the 
 peoples has been established. The democracies of 
 the world begin to understand one another. Some 
 of the old misunderstandings and prejudices, inten- 
 sified by the bitterness of the present mad struggle, 
 may flourish for some time after the war. Old jeal- 
 ousies die hard, new hatreds have been born, human 
 nature is human nature still. But beneath these un- 
 natural enmities, transcending the passionate antag- 
 onisms of the hour, new forces of fraternity and good 
 will are at work, reconciling the sundered peoples 
 and making a covenanted peace possible between 
 them, more durable than the treaty peace that the 
 official diplomacy will presently conclude. In every 
 belligerent country these healing and unifying 
 forces have been released. Nowhere — ^not even in 
 Russia — are they yet dominant: but the democratic 
 spirit is permeating every country. Democratic 
 
POLITICAL LABOUR MOVEMENT 13 
 
 conceptions are influencing the thought of every 
 people, who see the war as the last monstrous prod- 
 uct of the economic and social inequalities of the old 
 order of existence which dissolves and passes away 
 like an evil dream of the night. 
 
 Equality is the great human formula of the com- 
 ing era of revolutionary change. We are moving 
 swiftly towards a new order of society in which the 
 idea of equality will govern the political thinking of 
 all the democracies. The freedom and fraternity of 
 which men have dreamed, which we desire to see 
 established in this country and extended to every 
 other, so that there may be no more wars, are rooted 
 in equality. It is not a new conception. It has in- 
 spired democratic action since democracy first took 
 shape as an organised movement. It has been the 
 aim of trade unionism from its earliest beginnings, 
 though it may not have been consciously formulated. 
 It is the aspiration of political democracy. The war 
 has quickened it afresh and has invested it with a 
 new significance. Failure to appreciate the fact 
 that the minds of the people have been deeply influ- 
 enced by equalitarian ideals, to under-estimate the 
 popular resentment of class privileges, whether 
 based on the accident of birth or upon the posses- 
 sion of wealth, which the war has strengthened 
 rather than mitigated, will be fatal in the future to 
 
14 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 governments and political parties alike. These are 
 the conceptions which will determine the politics of 
 the future. Where does the Labour Party stand in 
 relation to them and to the vast range of problems, 
 international and national, political, social, and eco- 
 nomic, the solution of which will be conditioned by 
 them? Is the Labour movement so organised and 
 equipped as to qualify it to interpret and direct the 
 new consciousness of democracy? 
 
 The answer to this question is not difficult. An 
 examination of the present position of the political 
 Labour movement will suffice to show that its form 
 of organisation must be completely changed if it is 
 to be enabled to meet the requirements of the new sit- 
 uation. It is a fact of enormous importance that 
 the development of democratic ideals and purposes 
 synchronises with the introduction of a franchise 
 measure which opens a tremendous vista of political 
 achievement. When the new Act comes into opera- 
 r tion it is estimated that the nvmaber of voters will be 
 increased by 2,000,000 men and 6,000,000 women 
 — a million of the latter being unmarried women — 
 making a total of sixteen and a quarter million 
 electors. These figures do not represent the actual 
 improvement in the position of political democracy 
 brought about by the Reform Bill, for many regis- 
 tration anomalies and disqualifications are removed, 
 
POLITICAL LABOUR MOVEMENT 15 
 
 and thus a considerable increase in the number of 
 electors on the "live" register able to take part in 
 elections may be anticipated. To meet this great 
 change in the character of the electorate and to take 
 full advantage of the re-distribution of political 
 power our present form of organisation is plainly 
 inadequate. 
 
 Measured by the extended history of trade union 
 organisations in this country, the political Labour 
 movement is of very recent origin. This year the 
 Trade Union Congress celebrates its jubilee. As a 
 distinct and separate group in Parliament the La- 
 bour Party, on the other hand, has not yet attained 
 its majority. It was the activity of the Socialist 
 pioneers in this country which supplied the final 
 impulse to political action on the part of the organ- 
 ised working class movement. It is true that after 
 the passing of the Reform Act of 1868, which en- 
 franchised the workmen in the boroughs, a move- 
 ment was started to secure the return of trade union- 
 ist members to Parliament. In 1874 fourteen can- 
 didates went to the poll, but only two were returned, 
 including the Right Hon. Thomas Burt, M.P., the 
 present father of the House, In 1880 the nimiber 
 was increased to three; in 1885 to eleven; in 1892 
 to fourteen; but in 1895 the number was reduced 
 to twelve. The conjunction of the socialist and the 
 
16 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 industrial movements, however, caused the pace to 
 quicken. Alone, the Socialist propagandists seemed 
 to be condemned to political futility. In 1885, for 
 example, the old Social Democratic Federation ran 
 two candidates — one at Kennington and the other at 
 Hampstead: the candidate at Kennington received 
 thirty-two votes, the candidate at Hampstead polled 
 twenty-nine. The foundation of the Independent 
 Labour party in 1893, as a result of the propaggada 
 of the Fabians and the old S.D.F., prepared the 
 ground for the decision of the Trade Union Congress 
 in 1899, when a resolution was adopted directing the 
 Parliamentary Committee to arrange a conference of 
 the trade unions and the socialist societies "to de- 
 vise ways and means of securing an increased num- 
 ber of Labour members in Parliament." A year 
 later the Labour Representation Committee was 
 formed, and a distinct Labour Group came into ex- 
 istence in Parliament, on independent lines, with its 
 own whips and its own policy. 
 
 The form of organisation adopted indicates quite 
 clearly that at that time the creation of a national 
 party was not contemplated. What was then 
 formed was a separate group, not a democratic polit- 
 ical party capable of challenging the two historic 
 parties on their own ground. After the special con- 
 ference of 1899, the Labour Party took shape as 
 
POLITICAL LABOUR MOVEMENT 17 
 
 a federation of trade unions, socialist societies, 
 trades councils and local labour parties, and co- 
 operative societies. It was not until 1903 that the 
 Candidates of the Labour Representation Commit- 
 tee obtained any notable success at the polls. Be- 
 tween the General Elections of 1900 and 1906 three 
 remarkable victories were obtained: Mr. (now Sir 
 David) Shackleton was returned unopposed for 
 Clitheroe ; Mr. Will Crooks won Woolwich from the 
 Unionist party; and I had the pleasure of beating 
 both the Tory and Liberal candidates at Barnard 
 Castle. In 1906 the party promoted fifty candida- 
 tures at the General Election and twenty-nine of 
 them were successful at the polls; in January, 1910, 
 seventy-eight candidates ran under the auspices of 
 the party, and forty were returned; at the last Gen- 
 eral Election, in December, 1910, fifty-six candi- 
 dates were nominated, and forty-two returned. In 
 Parliament these members formed a separate and in- 
 dependent group. But they were not a party, in the 
 accepted sense of the word, and some of them had 
 not shaken off their allegiance to the historic parties. 
 In the country, though we maintained our own elec- 
 toral machinery and our own staff of organisers, 
 the organisation was essentially a federation of local 
 and national societies. When the war came it was 
 made clear that this form of organisation had ele- 
 
18 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 ments of weakness which the less serious stresses of 
 peace times had not revealed. As the war wore 
 on, and the democratic will became stronger, we 
 were led to see that if Labour is to take its part in 
 creating the new order of society it must address 
 itself to the task of transforming its political organ- 
 isation from a federation of societies into a national 
 popular party, rooted in the life of the democracy, 
 and deriving its principles and its policy from the 
 new political consciousness. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE NEW PARTY AND ITS PROGRAMME 
 
 When the war ends the Labour Party, like every 
 other, will be confronted with an unprecedented 
 political situation. No comparison can be made 
 between this situation and any that has arisen out of 
 previous wars. The post-Napoleonic period, fol- 
 lowing the wars in which this country was involved 
 for twenty years, provides the nearest parallel; but 
 in every essential particular Labour stands to-day, 
 both in relation to world-politics and to national 
 affairs, on an altogether different footing from that 
 of a century ago. The Trade Union movement was 
 then strangled by laws which made the combina- 
 tion of workmen, even for purposes of self-protec- 
 tion, illegal. Democracy was rendered abortive by 
 a scandalously restricted franchise which concen- 
 trated political power wholly in the hands of the 
 landed aristocracy. Social conditions were atro- 
 cious. The people were the prey of the profiteering 
 classes, who waxed rich out of the sufferings and 
 privations of the poor. 
 
 19 
 
20 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 A generation of political effort on the part of the 
 people brought an extension of the franchise to the 
 commercial and the middle classes, but added noth- 
 ing to the power of democracy except the right to 
 combine in Trade Unions for certain limited pur- 
 poses, and the privilege of "collective bargaining" 
 with the employers. Everywhere the workers were 
 in revolt against the intolerable conditions under 
 which they were compelled to live and labour. An- 
 other generation had to pass before the workmen of 
 the boroughs were enfranchised and a beginning 
 could be made with the organisation of political de- 
 mocracy on modern lines. It was said then by an 
 ornament of the aristocratic House of Commons that 
 the privileged classes would have to begin to edu- 
 cate their masters. "Their masters," however, pre- 
 ferred to educate themselves. In the process they 
 also educated the leaders of the class parties, who 
 began reluctantly to move upon the path of social 
 reform which carried them further away decade by 
 decade from the secure privileged position they had 
 once occupied. 
 
 In world politics at the same time the democratic 
 movement, which had received an immense impetus 
 from the transitory triumph of revolutionary prin- 
 ciples in France, was crushed beneath the weight of 
 
NEW PARTY PROGRAMME 21 
 
 the reactionary "Holy Alliance," formed by the 
 kings for the protection of the monarchical principle 
 and the suppression of every liberal and humanising 
 idea. It is no part of my purpose to describe how 
 the democratic movement shook off this incubus and 
 introduced the epoch of popular government on the 
 continent and at home. It must be enough to say 
 that a backward glance at the history of the nine- 
 teenth century will show that the people have been 
 steadily extending the range of their influence in 
 politics and affairs, without any very clear notion of 
 what they were doing or how the final stages in the 
 conquest of political power by the organised demo- 
 cracy were to be surmounted. Democracy had to 
 fight hard for every inch of ground it won. It was 
 in the grip of mighty forces it had not learned how to 
 control. It fought these forces blindly, confounding 
 some that were, if properly used, beneficent, with 
 those that were entirely malignant. It could not 
 see that the mechanical inventions of Watt, 
 Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, 
 which revolutionised the industrial system at the 
 beginning of the last century, were only bad because 
 they were allowed to fall into the hands of the cap- 
 italist classes. It is not surprising if, in its empiri- 
 cal approach to politics, democracy made some mis- 
 
22 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 takes, misjudged the direction in which events were 
 travelling, and had but a fumbling grasp upon the 
 reins. 
 
 All this is of the past. The situation to-day is 
 very different. Democracy is awake, and aware of 
 its own power. It sees things in a better perspec- 
 tive, and realises that at home and abroad the 
 triumph of democratic principles in politics and in- 
 dustry and social life is a matter simply of wise and 
 capable leadership and resolute and united effort on 
 the part of all sections of the organised movement. 
 There never was a bigger opportvmity for democracy 
 to achieve its main aims than the one which now 
 offers. It is time that we should begin to think not 
 only of the great social and economic changes that 
 are to take effect in the coming period of reconstruc- 
 tion, but of the methods and means of securing them. 
 The war has proved to democi-acy that a dictator- 
 ship, whether with one head or five, is incompatible 
 with its spirit and its ideals even in war-time. It 
 has also revealed many serious defects in the struc- 
 ture of society. And it has shown the need for dras- 
 tic change in the composition and organisation of po- 
 litical parties. It is generally acknowledged that 
 the old party system has irretrievably broken down. 
 Evidence of this is afforded by the clamant call for 
 new parties. The appearance upon the horizon of a 
 
NEW PARTY PROGRAMME 23 
 
 National Party and a Women's Party, the proba- 
 bility of separate groups forming in Parliament 
 around the personality of political leaders who have 
 lost or are losing their grip upon the more or less 
 coherent and strongly organised parties of pre-war 
 days, are symptoms of this disintegration. Politi- 
 cal power is about to be re-distributed, not only 
 amongst the electors under the Franchise Bill, but 
 amongst the political parties in Parliament which 
 will claim to represent the new democratic conscious- 
 ness. Minor readjustments designed to adapt or- 
 thodox Liberalism or Unionism to the changing 
 psychology of the electorate will not avail. A 
 thorough-going transformation of the machinery of 
 the parliamentary parties and a fundamental re- 
 vision of their programmes are in my judgment not 
 merely timely but necessary. 
 
 The Labour Party, at any rate, has proceeded 
 upon the assumption that reconstruction is inevita- 
 ble. It has formulated a scheme which is delib- 
 erately designed to give the enfranchised millions 
 full opportunity to express their political prefer- 
 ences in the choice of* members to represent them in 
 the Reconstruction Parliament which will have to 
 deal with the vast problems arising out of the war. 
 The outline of the new party constitution is now 
 familiar to every attentive reader of the newspapers. 
 
24 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 It contemplates the creation of a national demo- 
 cratic party, founded upon the organised working- 
 class movement, and open to every worker who la- 
 bours by hand or brain. Under this scheme the 
 Labour Party will be transformed, quickly and 
 quietly, from a federation of societies, national and 
 local, into a nation-wide political organisation with 
 branches in every parliamentary constituency, in 
 which members will be enrolled both as workers and 
 as citizens, whether they be men or women, and 
 whether they belong to any trade union or socialist 
 society or are unattached democrats with no ac- 
 knowledged allegiance to any industrial or political 
 movement. We are casting the net wide because we 
 realise that real political democracy cannot be organ- 
 ised on the basis of class interest. Retaining the 
 support of the affiliated societies, both national and 
 local, from which it derives its weight and its fight- 
 ing funds, the Labour Party leaves them with their 
 voting power and right of representation in its coun- 
 cils unimpaired; but in order that the party may 
 more faithfully reflect constituency opinion it is also 
 proposed to create in every constituency something 
 more than the existing trades council or local labour 
 party. It is proposed to multiply the local organi- 
 sations and to open them to individual men and 
 women, both hand-workers and brain-workers, who 
 
NEW PARTY PROGRAMME 25 
 
 accept the party constitution and agree with its aims. 
 The individually enrolled members will have, like 
 the national societies, their own representatives in 
 the party's councils, and we confidently believe that 
 year by year their influence will deepen and extend. 
 The weakness of the old constitution was that it 
 placed the centre of gravity in the national society 
 and not in the constituency organisation: it did not 
 enable the individual voter to get into touch with 
 the party (except in one or two isolated cases, like 
 that of Woolwich or Barnard Castle) except through 
 the trade union, the socialist society, or the co- 
 operative society. The new constitution emphasises 
 the importance of the individual voter. It says to 
 the man and woman who have lost or never had sym- 
 pathy with the orthodox parties, "You have the 
 opportunity now not merely of voting for Labour 
 representatives in Parliament, but of joining the 
 party and helping to mould its policy and shape its 
 future." 
 
 Under the old conditions the appeal of the party 
 was limited. It has seemed to be, though it never 
 actually was, a class party like any other. It was 
 regarded as the party of the manual wage-earners. 
 Its programme was assumed, by those who have not 
 taken the trouble to examine its whole propaganda, 
 to reflect the views of trade unionists not as citizen? 
 
26 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 with a common interest in good government, bi^t as 
 workers seeking remedies for a series of material 
 grievances touching hours of labour, rates of wages, 
 conditions of employment. This misapprehension 
 rests upon a too narrow definition of the term 
 "Labour." On the lips of the earlier propagandists 
 the word was used to differentiate between those 
 whose toil enriched the community, and those who 
 made no productive effort of any kind but lived idly 
 and luxuriously upon the fruits of the labours of 
 others. It is that differentiation we design to per- 
 petuate in the title of the party. The Labour Party 
 is the party of the producers whose labour of hand 
 and brain provide the necessities of life for all and 
 dignify and elevate hvmian existence. That the 
 producers have been robbed of the major part of the 
 fruits of their industry under the individualist sys- 
 tem of capitalist production is a justification for the 
 party's claims. One of the main aims of the party 
 is to secure for every producer his (or her) full share 
 of those fruits — and to ensure the most equitable 
 distribution of the nation's wealth that may be 
 possible, on the basis of the common ownership of 
 land and capital, and the democratic control of all 
 the activities of society. 
 
 The practice of empirical politics, the effort to 
 gecure this or that specific refonn, will not suffice; 
 
NEW PARTY PROGRAMME 27 
 
 Labour lays down its carefully thought-out, compre- 
 hensive plan for the reconstruction of society, which 
 will guarantee freedom, security, and equality. We 
 propose, as a first step, a series of national minima 
 to protect the people's standard of life. For the 
 workers of all grades and both sexes we demand and 
 mean to secure proper legislative provision against 
 unemployment, accident, and industrial disease, a 
 reasonable amount of leisure, a minimum rate of 
 wages. We shall insist upon a large and practica- 
 ble scheme to protect the whole wage-earning class 
 against the danger of unemployment and reduction 
 of wages, with a consequent degradation of the 
 standard of life, when the war ends and the forces 
 are demobilised and the munitions factories cease 
 work. The task of finding employment for dis- 
 banded fighting men and discharged munition work- 
 ers we regard as a national obligation: we shall see 
 to it that work is found for all, that the work is pro- 
 ductive and socially useful, and that standard rates 
 of wages shall be paid for this work. In the reor- 
 ganisation of industry after the war, the Labour 
 Party will claim for the workers an increasing share 
 in the management and control of the factories and 
 workshops. What the workers want is freedom, a 
 definite elevation of their status, the abolition of the 
 system of wage-slavery which destroyed their inde- 
 
28 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 pendence and made freedom in any real sense impos- 
 sible. We believe that the path to the democratic 
 control of industry lies in the common ownership of 
 the means of production: and we shall strenuously 
 resist every proposal to hand back to private capital- 
 ists the great industries and services that have come 
 under Government control during the war. This 
 control has been extended to the importation and 
 distribution of many necessary commodities — ^many 
 of the staple foods of the people and some of the raw 
 materials of industry. More than the great key 
 industries and vital services have come imder con- 
 trol ; and we do not mean to loosen the popular grip 
 upon them, but on the contrary to strengthen it. 
 
 In the field of national finance the Labour Party 
 stands for a system of taxation regulated not by the 
 interests of the possessing and profiteering classes, 
 but by the claims of the professional and housekeep- 
 ing classes, whose interests are identical with those 
 of the manual workers. We believe that indirect 
 taxation upon commodities should not fall upon any 
 necessity of life, but should be limited to luxuries, 
 especially and principally those which it is socially 
 desirable to extinguish. Direct taxation, we hold, 
 upon large incomes and private fortunes is the 
 method by which the greater part of the necessary 
 revenue should be raised; we advocate the retention 
 
NEW PARTY PROGRAMME 29 
 
 in some appropriate form of the excess profits tax; 
 and we shall oppose every attempt to place upon the 
 shoulders of the producing classes, the professional 
 classes, and the small traders, the main financial 
 burden of the war. We seek to prevent, by methods 
 of common ownership and of taxation, the accumu- 
 lation of great fortunes in private hands. Instead 
 of senseless individual extravagances we desire to 
 see the wealth of the nation expended for social pur- 
 poses — for the constant improvement and increase 
 of the nation's enterprises, to make provision for the 
 sick, the aged, and the infirm, to establish a genuine 
 national system of education, to provide the means 
 of public improvements in all directions by which 
 the happiness and health of the people will be en- 
 sured. One step in this direction will be taken when 
 the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink is no 
 longer left to those who find profit in encouraging 
 the utmost possible consumption. The party's pol- 
 icy in this matter asserts the right of the people to 
 deal with the licensing question in accordance with ' 
 the opinion of localities; we urge that the localities 
 should have conferred upon them full power to pro- 
 hibit the sale of liquor within their boundaries, or 
 alternatively to decide whether the number of 
 licences should be reduced, upon what conditions 
 they may be held, and whether they shall be under 
 
30 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 private or any form of public control. In our rela- 
 tions to other peoples, whether those of our blood 
 and tongue in the British Empire, or those of other 
 races and languages, we repudiate the idea of domi- 
 nation and exploitation, we stand for the steady de- 
 velopment of the idea of local self-government and 
 the freedom of nations. On all these points and the 
 problems underlying them, the Labour Party lays 
 down its general principles and policies; * and from 
 time to time Labour's representative assemblies will 
 apply these principles to the problems of immediate 
 and pressing importance, and formulate the pro- 
 gramme which the electors will be invited to sup- 
 port. In opposition, and presently as we believe 
 and hope in office, Labour will seek to build up a 
 new order of society, rooted in equality, dedicated to 
 freedom, governed on democratic principles. 
 
 * For a detailed statement of the party's reconstruction proposals, 
 see "Labour and the New Social Order" printed as an appendix. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 SOLIDARITY 
 
 The organised workers have displayed a wonderful 
 spirit of loyalty and remarkable fortitude, courage, 
 and determination throughout the period of the war, 
 but from now onwards the need for practical and 
 effective solidarity will become increasingly evident 
 and insistent. The tremendous sacrifices of the 
 present are a blood-offering for the security of the 
 future, and a grave responsibility will rest upon 
 the representatives of the several nations concerned 
 if, from any unworthy motive, they fail to arrange 
 such a peace settlement as will afford the peoples 
 of the world a reasonable prospect of security, 
 freedom, and progress. If such a peace is not 
 realised it will mean that the most vital object of our 
 participation in the present grievous and devastating 
 conflict has not been attained, and that the military 
 failure of Germany has not proved to be a victory for 
 the Allied cause. 
 
 It is imperative that the workers of the world 
 should realise that they are too intimately concerned 
 
 31 
 
52 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 in the proper adjustment of all the great war issues 
 to allow them to be settled in any other than a just 
 and honourable way. Moreover, immense problems 
 of political, social, and material reconstruction will 
 present themselves for solution immediately peace 
 is declared. These problems will not be confined 
 to any one nation, but will be international in char- 
 acter, scope, and effect; and, if they are to be solved 
 Successfully, joint action and close co-operation 
 between all peoples will be essential. 
 
 The defeat of aggressive Militarism and Autoc- 
 racy will not dispose of all the great difficulties con- 
 fronting Democracy; it will only mean, in the event 
 of an honourable and lasting peace, that the peoples 
 will be free to concentrate all their energies, their 
 creative and constructive genius, on the considera- 
 tion and solution of these common difficulties. De- 
 mocracy has in its hands the necessary power to 
 arrange the future destiny of the world. If the dem- 
 ocratic forces are to be successful, it is of essential 
 importance that they shall combine with singleness 
 of aim, firm determination, and complete unity un- 
 der the banner of Freedom, Peace, and Progress. 
 
 There is ample evidence that the workers of this 
 coimtry have not yet formed a just appreciation of 
 the vital importance of all the forces of democracy 
 imiting with one will and a common purpose to se- 
 
SOLIDARITY 33 
 
 cure in the peace settlement and the subsequent na- 
 tional and international reconstruction the essential 
 conditions of "a new heaven and a new earth." 
 It is true they intend that the new Society of Na- 
 tions shall be built on the solid rocks of justice, 
 honour, and humanity, instead of being rebuilt on 
 the shifting sands of oppression, conquest, and in- 
 ternational jealousy. They intend that brute force 
 and all other barriers to "Peace on Earth, Good-will 
 among men" shall be done away with and that the 
 conclusion of this terrible struggle shall inaugurate 
 a new era in which moral force shall hold complete 
 and unquestioned sway. And it must be obvious 
 that anything short of this would mean that the 
 present golden opportunity had been missed and 
 would give a new lease of life to the forces of reac- 
 tion and militarism throughout the whole world. 
 The only power that can save the present and 
 future generations from a repetition of the present 
 ruthless struggle, is a united world Democracy. 
 
 But if full advantage is to be taken of this oppor- 
 tunity to ensure that the destiny of the world shall be 
 at the complete disposal of the people themselves, it 
 will require of Democracy all the best qualities of 
 real statesmanship. It is not sufficient that the na- 
 tions shall have a clear vision of the new world 
 which they desire to dwell in; they must organise 
 
34 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 with unity and strength of purpose and use their 
 power to lay the foundations true and firm and aft- 
 erwards to complete the whole edifice on right and 
 noble lines. 
 
 A real People's International, which shall give 
 concrete and practical expression to the spiritual 
 aspirations, social ideals, and moral passion of hu- 
 manity, must be founded on an imshakable faith of 
 the nations in the spirit of democracy, and the recog- 
 nition by all peoples not only of their national rights 
 and privileges but of their international obligations 
 and responsibilities. Freedom at home and domi- 
 nation abroad are incompatible with the ideals of 
 democracy. If the German people are sincere in 
 their professions of faith in democracy and the 
 principles of equality among all nations, large and 
 small, strong and weak, they must begin to establish 
 in their own country a constitutional system of 
 democratic government. It is not a matter that 
 needs to be postponed for consideration after the 
 war. Russia, the latest addition to the League of 
 Democracies, did not neglect to strive for internal 
 freedom during the progress of hostilities, and if the 
 peoples of the world are to be responsible for arrang- 
 ing the terms of a democratic and stable peace the 
 German nation will need to establish popular con- 
 trol over its own national affairs. And until this 
 
SOLIDARITY 35 
 
 is done it will be impossible to build a completely 
 successful and effectual People's International. 
 
 In the past Democracy has been far too ready and 
 content to contract-out the vitally important work 
 of national and international construction with the 
 inevitable result that the jerry-built structure 
 erected was too frail to stand when the storm-clouds 
 of war burst over Europe with such terrible effect 
 in 1914. There must be an end of this policy. 
 The peoples must shoulder their own responsibili- 
 ties, and must see to it that the new world edifice 
 which is to be built on the ruins of the old shall be 
 capable of resisting all international storms that 
 may threaten humanity in the future. 
 
 If Democracy is to co-operate effectively and suc- 
 cessfully in international affairs, it is altogether 
 essential that the democratic forces shall be united 
 and solid at home. It may safely be said that 
 hitherto too much prominence has been given to dif- 
 ferences of opinion regarding tactics and methods, to 
 the incalculable advantage of the reactionary and 
 opposing forces. Surely past experiences must 
 have proved beyond all shadow of doubt the neces- 
 sity of all sections of the movement inspired by the 
 same high ideals combining to enforce their common 
 will. We cannot afford to fritter away our strength 
 by internal wrangling on issues which, after all, are 
 
36 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 not of vital importance and are only secondary to 
 the main aims we have in view. 
 
 Whatever may have been the causes of past dif- 
 ferences of opinion, and however acute may have 
 been the disagreements regarding the causes of the 
 war and the methods employed to bring it to a suc- 
 cessful conclusion, there can be no substantial dif- 
 ference among the various sections of the great 
 democratic army regarding the kind of peace which 
 will make the world safe for democracy, or as to the 
 need for a comprehensive and effective policy of 
 reconstruction. Of this we may be assured, the 
 future will only be democracy's if democracy con- 
 centrates all its powers into one channel and seeks 
 to enforce its will by united action. Concentration 
 of its strength can only be achieved by complete 
 unity of purpose and action. What is most urgently 
 required is breadth of vision to focus in broad out- 
 line the great aims of democracy, and courage, 
 power, and tenacity to strive to attain those ideals. 
 There is little divergence among the various demo- 
 cratic forces of the country so far as aims and objects 
 are concerned; but if we are to attain a reasonable 
 measure of co-operation, there will have to be a 
 greater disposition on all sides to seek accommoda- 
 tion regarding the methods by which our aims and 
 ideals may be achieved. "United we stand, divided 
 
SOLIDARITY 37 
 
 we fall," is a significant phrase, and the various 
 forces of reaction have long since learnt to give it full 
 recognition and to stand together in face of the 
 common enemy, democracy. Self-preservation has 
 compelled them to work in unison, but only the lack 
 of cohesion and co-operation on the part of the 
 democratic forces has enabled them to stand together 
 so long and to exert so great an influence on the des- 
 tiny of the people. 
 
 But the war has changed men's thoughts and 
 introduced new standards and new values. War, 
 like everything else in life, affects the common peo- 
 ple more than it does any other section of the com- 
 munity, and they are determined to have a greater 
 measure of control in the direction of national and 
 international, social, industrial, and political affairs. 
 But determination to control and direct presupposes 
 the definition of the lines along which organised 
 democracy proposes to direct affairs when it has se- 
 cured control. Organised democracy must have its 
 own definite and well-thought-out plans of construc- 
 tive reform — local, national, and international; and 
 it must also have its own "union sacree" to ensure 
 that the whole of its power shall be organised and 
 directed along those channels which are best calcu- 
 lated to achieve success. Greater difficulties will 
 have to be faced and more serious obstacles overcome 
 
38 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 than ever before. For it is easier to criticise the un- 
 satisfactory schemes of others than to produce sound 
 constructive schemes of one's own, and with the 
 greatest measure of miity and the most helpful con- 
 ditions prevailing, the problems to be solved at the 
 close of this war will demand all that is best in 
 Democracy. The vast problems of reconstruction, 
 which include demobilisation, industrial reorganisa- 
 tion, a world fodd-shortage, financial recuperation, 
 unemployment probably on a serious scale, and a 
 host of other pressing problems of far-reaching 
 effect, will call for immediate attention. No half- 
 hearted or temporary measures will suffice to dispose 
 of them successfully. They must be tackled in a 
 comprehensive, courageous, and practical manner, 
 and a truly national Labour Party, if it is to prove 
 the best instrument to solve them, must be united in 
 determination, strong in power and influence, clear 
 in vision, and audacious and courageous in its meth- 
 ods of dealing with practical politics. The old 
 statesmanship has failed. If democratic statesman- 
 ship is to succeed it must be given a fair chance by 
 its own people. The coming together of the Trades 
 Congress and the Labour Party and the Co-operative 
 movement, and the determination of the latter to 
 enter upon direct political action, is significant of a 
 new spirit of unity. Then the new policy of the 
 
SOLIDARITY 39 
 
 Labour Party is indicative of a bolder effort to im- 
 press National, Inter-Dominion, and International 
 life with a new spirit. This is all to the good pro- 
 vided it is accompanied by a clearer conception of 
 personal and collective responsibility and the recog- 
 nition of the fact that in things essential there must 
 be unity, and in things doubtful liberty. It must 
 more than ever be appreciated that democracy is 
 more than a form of government, it is a spirit. As 
 Mazzini said, it is an attempt at the practical reali- 
 sation of the prayer "Thy kingdom come. Thy will 
 be done as in Heaven so on earth." Moved by a 
 common love unto a common activity in a common 
 cause for a common humanity, we must lift ourselves 
 above the narrow and divisive influences which ren- 
 der futile so much effort. We must welcome the 
 active co-operation of all who stand for justice and 
 seek the largest liberty and the greatest good. The 
 edifice to be erected on the foundation of the will of 
 a free people must be solid and substantial. The 
 democratic forces must begin at once, and, whatever 
 may be their difficulties, continue their task of recon- 
 structing the world in a spirit of unity, co-operation 
 and fraternity, if they would realise an abiding suc- 
 cess. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 WORLD SECURITY 
 
 President Wilson's famous declaration that the 
 supreme inspiration of the military efforts of the 
 Allies against the Central Powers is the desire to 
 make the world safe for democracy will remain for 
 all time one of the classic utterances of real states- 
 manship. It crystallises in a brief sentence the 
 spiritual yearnings and idealist sentiments of all 
 free peoples. The war itself has exercised a purify- 
 ing influence on the souls of men and women, has 
 stirred them to the depths of their being, and quick- 
 ened and intensified their powers of insight and dis- 
 crimination. The outlook of the individual has 
 been broadened and his sense of real values has 
 become keener and more accurate. He is no longer 
 satisfied by a general recognition of his right to earn 
 the means of existence ; he now demands to be guar- 
 anteed the right to live in peace and security. He 
 wishes neither to oppress nor to be oppressed. The 
 
 war, by the frightful ravages and cruel sacrifices 
 
 40 
 
WORLD SECURITY 41 
 
 which it has entailed, has shown him, perhaps more 
 clearly and brutally than anything else could do, 
 how nearly his own life and domestic happiness are 
 linked up with the national life and welfare of his 
 country. He has learned by keen suffering and bit- 
 ter experience that the immoral and unscrupulous 
 policy of one nation may plunge the whole world 
 into the lowest depths of misery and desolation. 
 He has realised from the example of Germany that 
 a citizen may be called upon personally to expiate 
 the crimes and follies of his Government. And as a 
 direct consequence of this new and fuller compre- 
 hension of his liability as a citizen, he has deter- 
 mined to take a more practical and effectual part in 
 the direction and control of national and interna- 
 tional affairs. 
 
 In the past, British Governments decided when 
 the nation should make war and afterwards deter- 
 mined the terms that should bring about its settle- 
 ment. To-day, it is the British people who are at 
 war and the people must decide the terms of peace. 
 Despite the prolonged period of hostilities and mili- 
 tary disappointments, they remain steadfast in their 
 determination to defeat the ambitious schemes of 
 aggressive German militarism, and they will not 
 relax their efforts until their war aims are capable 
 of achievement. Speaking of our War ideals, Mr. 
 
42 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 Asquith said, in his Dublin speech, on September 
 25th, 1915:— 
 
 Forty-four years ago, at the time of the war of 1870, Mr. 
 Gladstone used these words. He said: "The greatest 
 triumph of our time will be the enthronement of the idea of 
 public right as the governing idea of European politics. . . ." 
 The idea of public right — what does it mean when translated 
 into concrete terms? It means first and foremost the clear- 
 ing of the ground by the definite repudiation of militarism as 
 the governing factor in the relation of States and of the future 
 moulding of the European world. It means, next, that room 
 must be found and kept for the indejjendent existence and 
 the free development of the smaller nationalities each with 
 a corporate consciousness of its own. Belgium, Holland, 
 Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Greece, and the 
 Balkan States, — they must be recognised as having as good 
 a title as their powerful neighbours — more powerful in 
 strength and wealth — to a place in the sun. And it means 
 finally, or it ought to mean, perhaps by a slow and gradual 
 process, the substitution for force, for the clash of competing 
 ambitions, for groupings and alliances and a precarious equi- 
 poise, of a real European partnership based on the recognition 
 of equal rights and established and enforced by a common 
 will. 
 
 These are the ideals for which the people of this 
 and the other Allied countries are fighting. It is not 
 against the German people as individuals that their 
 wrath and hostility are directed, but against 
 Germany's policy of aggression and oppression. 
 They do not desire to exterminate the German peo- 
 
WORLD SECURITY 43 
 
 pie, but they are determined to exterminate the 
 policy of military, political, and economic domina- 
 tion which has been and still is a standing menace 
 to the security and freedom of humanity. The 
 power they are fighting against is the s.et of false 
 ideals which are "the ruthless master of the German 
 people." It is the ambition to world domination, 
 the worship of militarism, and the belief in brute 
 force as a proper instrument of policy. But secur- 
 ity will not be obtained by this soulless policy merely 
 changing its nationality from German to British or 
 French or that of any other of the Allies. The idol 
 of rampant and aggressive militarism must be shat- 
 tered beyond repair, and the faith of all nations in its 
 power and efficacy must be utterly destroyed. Such 
 a policy by whatever nation it might be pursued 
 would inevitably lead to a similar world catastrophe. 
 The British soldiers and the British people are not 
 fighting for British domination or French domina- 
 tion or domination by any of the Allies. The idea 
 of world domination was not "made in Germany"; 
 it is as old as world-history itself. Germany is 
 merely the latest nation to be deluded by these impos- 
 sible dreams, which in the past have ended in defeat, 
 ruin, and disillusionment. The end will be in no 
 wise different for Germany. 
 
 It should be quite apparent, therefore, that world 
 
44 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 security cannot be guaranteed simply by the defeat 
 of Germany's ambitious schemes, but only by the 
 kind of peace settlement which is made after she 
 has been completely frustrated. Peace terms must 
 be based upon principles and justice, and not gov- 
 erned by expediency or selfish national ambition. 
 It must secure restitution of forcibly annexed terri- 
 tory, reparation for all the wanton destruction and 
 wrongs consequent upon Germany's military aggres- 
 sion, full recognition of the rights of all peoples, 
 and guarantees for the security of world peace. 
 
 The people have made war in defence of high 
 ideals; they must see to it that when peace comes it 
 shall be governed by wise principles. As President 
 Wilson has courageously declared: — 
 
 The treaties axid agreements which bring the war to an end 
 must embody tenns that will create a peace that is worth 
 guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the ap- 
 proval of mankind, not merely a peace that will serve the 
 several interests and immediate aims of the nations engaged. 
 
 The first step towards making the world safe for all 
 peoples is the establishment of a stable peace 
 founded on the inalienable rights of mankind; a 
 peace which will assuage all legitimate grievances 
 and causes of friction between one nation and 
 another ; a peace that will offer a real prospect of the 
 nations living together in amity and concord. 
 
WORLD SECURITY 45 
 
 The question which then presents itself for answer 
 is : When such a peace shall have been agreed upon, 
 by what means can its permanency be guaranteed? 
 This is a matter of primary importance, for the 
 hopes of all peoples are centred on security for the 
 future. They are more anxious about this than 
 about anything else: that when this war is termi- 
 nated the world shall be maintained in peace and 
 tranquillity. This is no new problem which con- 
 fronts statesmanship. First alliances, then group- 
 ings, and finally the system of balance of power, all 
 had for their object security. And each in turn 
 failed lamentably. But if there is not to be a return 
 to the dangerous, sensitive, and ever fluctuating bal- 
 ance of power what alternative has statesmanship to 
 offer in its place? One thing is certain, namely, 
 that the people will not easily tolerate a return to the 
 precarious conditions of pre-war days. They recog- 
 nise that the old methods have all ended in disaster 
 and they will readily turn to any practical solution 
 of the problem which may be propounded if for no 
 other reason than that if the worst comes to the 
 worst, it could hardly plunge the world into greater 
 agony and distress than the previous attempts to 
 secure international peace. 
 
 At the present moment there is only one proposi- 
 tion which can be regarded as practical and concrete 
 
46 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 and which contains the essence of real statesman- 
 ship, and that is the proposal to form a League of 
 Nations to guarantee the peace and security of the 
 world. It is a reasoned, intelligent, and scientific 
 attempt to construct internatioiial machinery to ad- 
 minister justice between nations with a view to dis- 
 posing of all points of friction which may arise. In 
 reality it will be an International Court of Justice to 
 which all disputes between adhering nations which 
 cannot be settled by diplomatic means must be 
 referred to arbitration. Such disputes may be 
 either justiciable, i.e., disputes which are capable of 
 being decided by recognised international law; or 
 non-justiciable disputes, i.e., disputes which cannot 
 be covered by international jurisprudence but which 
 can be settled by moral law, provided the nations 
 concerned are disposed to accept moral law as being 
 on at least as high a plane as law made by man. 
 
 But even this method of maintaining world peace 
 may not be fully satisfactory and successful unless 
 it has the full sanction of the peoples behind it. 
 The spirit of the nation partners must be behind 
 such a League and their moral support must be sup- 
 plemented by a joint organised power — ^military, 
 economic, and commercial — capable of enforcing 
 the decisions of the League on any recalcitrant mem- 
 
WORLD SECURITY ^7 
 
 ber, and of defending any member which may be 
 attacked by a non-adhering nation that may refuse 
 to refer the dispute between them for settlement by 
 pacific means. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 A PEOPLE'S PEACE 
 
 The war has clearly demonstrated the extraordinary 
 power invested in free peoples. Take the case of 
 the United States, For several months President 
 Wilson had recognised that his country must event- 
 ually intervene in the war on the side of the Allies 
 and in defence of the great principles of freedom and 
 liberty, but it was not until the American people 
 were convinced beyond all doubt of the righteous- 
 ness of this course that he was empowered to or- 
 ganise his country for war. In Britain the publica- 
 tion of Lord Lansdowne's letter was almost sensa- 
 tional in its effects, inasmuch as it compelled states- 
 men to recognise that the question of peace terms 
 so vitally concerned the people that its consideration 
 could not be postponed until the close of hostilities 
 but demanded immediate discussion and definition. 
 Hitherto the nation has been more or less content to 
 remain in ignorance of the details of our peace 
 terms: they have been satisfied with general refer- 
 ences which were mainly confined to the statement 
 
 48 
 
A PEOPLE'S PEACE 49 
 
 of broad principles. Now they are aware that 
 while there may be universal agreement on general 
 principles, the method of the application of those 
 principles may differ very materially according to 
 the interpretation of each nation, and it is only by a 
 comparison of the explicit and concrete peace terms 
 of each of the belligerent groups that the world can 
 judge what now constitutes the obstacles to a real 
 and lasting peace. The people have their own ideas 
 of peace, and they are only concerned with the diffi- 
 culties to be surmounted before that peace can be 
 obtained; they do not care what obstacles prevent 
 the attainment of a Government's peace unless that 
 peace is in strict harmony with their own ideals. 
 They have no sympathy with selfish national inter- 
 ests or ambitions; they are shouldering the oppres- 
 sive and painful burdens of the war with courage, 
 fortitude, and determination, not merely to over- 
 throw German tyraimy and her scheme for world 
 domination, but more especially in order to secure 
 such international re-arrangement as will permit all 
 the peoples of the world to live together under con- 
 ditions of freedom, equality, and security. They 
 realise that there can be no national safety without 
 international security, that the national develop- 
 ment and happiness of a people are indissolubly 
 linked up with international tranquillity and good- 
 PROPERTY OF LIBF5ARY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SC:;yOL ^ 6330 
 IKIHSSTBIAL Ai:0 LAFOR KELATiG^^S 
 
so THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 will. They appreciate more than ever that nation- 
 alism is not the final stage of a nation's development, 
 but that it is only an intermediate step to complete 
 world internationalism. The effects of the war 
 have been felt by the whole world; there have been 
 no national barriers to the pain, suffering and sac-i 
 rifices of the great Armageddon. The whole of hu- 
 manity has been crucified. And humanity, bleeding 
 and torn, cries out for a radical and complete solu- 
 tion of all the factors which contributed to the 
 present world-catastrophe. 
 
 Such a solution can only be found in a peace 
 which will remove all old grievances, prevent the 
 imposition of new injustices, establish a world 
 recognition and practice of the principle of the right 
 of self-detem-ination and of free development of all 
 peoples, great and small. It must offer guarantees 
 for the security of world peace in the future. Se- 
 curity is the greatest of all questions for humanity, 
 but whatever provisions may be made with a view to 
 establishing means for the maintenance of world 
 peace, they will surely prove to be useless unless 
 the other outstanding political, territorial, economic, 
 and commercial problems are settled on just, honour- 
 able, and democratic lines. 
 
 So far as the British people are concerned they 
 have no thoughts of territorial conquests; they do 
 
A PEOPLE'S PEACE 51 
 
 not seek forcibly to annex any portion of the 
 national possessions of any of the Central Powers 
 (3r their Allies. They demand neither conquests nor 
 war indemnities. But there will have to be certain 
 restorations and reconstitutions. Such necessary 
 changes will be covered by the application of the 
 principle of the right of self-determination of all 
 peoples. Belgium must be restored to complete in- 
 dependence and compensated for the foul wrongs to 
 which she has been subjected as a result of the Ger- 
 man invasion of her territory. The questions of 
 Serbia, Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxembourg, 
 Palestine, and the extension of Italy and Roumania 
 to their natural boundaries, are all capable of being 
 settled on this basis. Territories in Asia which 
 have been freed from the oppressive rule of the 
 Turks or the Germans ought not to be returned to 
 their old rulers, nor can they be appropriated by any 
 of the Allied Powers, in view of the very definite 
 declaration that they are not fighting for "annexa- 
 tions," If these peoples are not capable of exercis- 
 ing their right of self-determination, the administra- 
 tion of their territories should be placed in the hands 
 of an international commission acting imder the di- 
 rection and control of the proposed League of Na- 
 tions. 
 
 [The inhuman methods of the German towards 
 
52 JHE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 subject races preclude or ought to preclude the return 
 of the African colonies recently liberated from their 
 control. Though the natives may not yet be in a 
 position to exercise judiciously their right of self- 
 determination, they have given very definite expres- 
 sion to their fears of the re-establishment of German 
 rule. They may not know what sort of Govern- 
 ment they want, but they certainly do know the kind 
 of rule they do not want, and that is German rule. 
 They must therefore be freed from German domina- 
 tion, and in order to conform with the Allies' declar- 
 ation of "no annexations" there can be no question 
 of the Allied countries appropriating them. The 
 colonies of Tropical Africa, by whatever nation 
 they are at present controlled, should be constituted 
 an independent African State, the administration of 
 which should be placed in the hands of an Interna- 
 tional Commission acting under the direction and 
 control of the proposed League of Nations. Any 
 other territorial re-adjustments desired for strategic 
 or other purposes are matters for negotiation at a 
 Peace Conference and do not constitute questions 
 affecting the continuation of hostilities. 
 
 The world must be completely and finally rid of 
 aggressive militarism, the old costly and oppressive 
 burden of armaments must be thrown off. This can 
 best be attained by a common agreement between all 
 
A PEOPLE'S PEACE 53 
 
 the nations of the world having for its object the 
 strict limitations of war machinery — ^human and 
 material. If there is a return to the old competitive 
 system of armaments it will lead to the inevitable 
 issue — a world war even more terrible and destruc- 
 tive than the present war. 
 
 There can be no question of economic domination 
 after the war by either group of belligerents. Eco- 
 nomic aggression, like military aggression, is a 
 menace to the peace of the world, and its effects 
 inevitably fall most hardly upon the working classes. 
 Free intercourse, international co-operation, and the 
 removal of tariff barriers except for revenue pur- 
 poses, should be the basis of international economic 
 relations after the war. 
 
 If we get a peace which removes all the old men- 
 aces to war, and settles the immediate problems 
 arising from the present war, it will be necessary to 
 establish machinery to guarantee the permanence 
 of peace. More than for anything else the people 
 yearn for security. This may be obtained by the 
 setting up of a supernational body composed of all 
 the nations of the world: a League of Nations with 
 judicial powers to consider and dispose of all differ- 
 ences and disputes between two or more nations. 
 This proposal means in effect the practice of arbi- 
 tration in the domain of international affairs. Its 
 
54 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 success in practice would depend on the peoples wEd 
 were members of the League; if they are genuine in 
 their desire for world security, if they adhere to the 
 League in the right spirit and continue firm in their 
 determination to prevent future wars, the League of 
 Nations will prove to be a real and effective guaran- 
 tee of world peace and security. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NO ECONOMIC BOYCOTT 
 
 |The speeches and declarations of our leading states- 
 men, delivered in the early months of the war, offer 
 ample evidence of the fact that this coimtry 
 became an active participant in the gigantic world- 
 struggle from only the highest and best motives. 
 Speaking in the House of Commons as Prime Min- 
 ister within a week of the declaration of war, Mr. 
 Asquith said: — 
 
 If I am asked what we are fighting for, I reply in two 
 sentences. In the first place to fulfil a solemn international 
 obligation. . . . Secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the 
 principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in 
 defiance of international good faith. I do not believe any 
 nation ever entered into a great controversy with a clearer 
 conscience and stronger conviction that it is fighting, not for 
 aggression, not for the maintenance even of its own selfish 
 interests, but that it is fighting in defence of principles the 
 maintenance of which is vital to the civilisation of the world. 
 
 Such, then, in broad outline, were the principal ob- 
 jects for which the British people imsheathed the 
 sword. ,We assumed the role of champion of the 
 
 55 
 
56 \THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 sanctity of international treaties and of the rights of 
 small nations, and sought to impress upon the world 
 that we desired neither territorial expansion, nor 
 artificial economic advantage. This high concep- 
 tion of national duty inspired the entire population 
 of the British Empire and its Dependencies, and 
 produced an vmparalleled display of unity and 
 determination. Our armed intervention, taken with 
 the full approval of practically the whole nation, 
 was to be a clear and emphatic demonstration of our 
 stern and uncompromising hostility to the savage 
 recourse to the use of force, and the wicked and 
 indefensible violation of the integrity of a neigh- 
 bouring state by the German Government, which 
 confessed that it regarded its treaties as "scraps of 
 paper," and excused its act of wilful aggression 
 by the plea that "necessity knows no law." And 
 to-day, after more than three years of military 
 effort, unprecedented in its toll of sacrifice — ^human, 
 material, and financial — ^the majority of the people 
 of these isles remain loyal to the high ideals and 
 principles which animated them at the outbreak of 
 hostilities, and are as firmly determined as ever to 
 prosecute the war until these fundamental objects 
 have been attained by military, diplomatic, and 
 political means. 
 
 British Labour is convinced, as it has been from 
 
NO ECONOMIC BOYCOTT .57 
 
 the beginning, that a victory for German Imperial- 
 ism would be the defeat and the destruction of 
 democracy and liberty in Europe. In the peace 
 settlement, practical provision must be made against 
 any future recurrence of the present terrible world- 
 calamity by the elimination of aggressive militarism 
 from the entire world and, what is equally 
 important, by the removal of all the old-standing 
 menaces and the prevention of new provocations to 
 war. 
 
 The Allied nations are fighting against Germany's 
 ambitions and immoral "will to power," which 
 means German domination — military, political, and 
 economic — at the expense of the rights of other 
 peoples. The world will not tolerate German 
 domination, but it does not wish for British or 
 French or Allied domination. What it seeks is a 
 full and practical recognition of the principles of 
 freedom and equality among all nations. 
 
 If the suggested Federation of Nations is to have 
 any prospect of real and permanent success, and if 
 the present struggle is to be looked back upon as the 
 war which ended all war, everything must be done to 
 prevent the division of Europe into two separate and 
 hostile economic camps after the war. It may safely 
 be said that the latter eventuality would be fatal to 
 all our hopes of a permanent peace, and a great 
 
58 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 betrayal of a righteous and noble cause. Instead of 
 securing the abolition of war, it would perpetuate 
 international suspicion, jealousy, and greed, the evil 
 products of economic antagonisms which contributed 
 so largely to the general causes of the present 
 European conflict, and would lead inevitably to a 
 bitter and devastating repetition of all the losses, 
 sorrow, suffering and sacrifice within a few short 
 years. 
 
 It cannot be too clearly understood that this is 
 not the policy of organised Labour in this country, 
 nor of the Socialists of France, Russia, Belgium or 
 Italy, all of whom have declared emphatically that 
 they do not seek the political and economic destruc- 
 tion of Germany. These representatives of the 
 working classes and those in close association with 
 them know full well that all attempts at economic 
 aggression, whether by protective tariffs or capital- 
 istic trusts or monopolies, lead inevitably to the 
 exploitation of the working classes. They cannot 
 regard with any other feeling than one of deep hos- 
 tility any proposal or policy which seeks utterly to 
 destroy the economic position of any people after the 
 war; and if this is to be the intention or possible 
 effect of the Paris Conference Resolutions, then it 
 would be well to understand at once that organised 
 Labour in this country is determined not to allow the 
 
NO ECONOMIC BOYCOTT 59 
 
 normal economic relations of nations to be founded 
 on a policy of oppression and ostracism, producing, 
 as it must, hostility and hatred after the war. 
 
 British Labour is out to strangle and stamp under 
 foot Kaiserism and Militarism and the "will to 
 world domination" — and to substitute for them 
 goodwill and fraternity: it is not at war with the 
 peoples of Germany and Austria, except in so far 
 as they support the war policy of their autocratic 
 rulers. That it appreciates the danger of an 
 economic struggle was clearly indicated in a decision 
 reached at the recent Trade Union Congress by 
 2,339,000 votes to 278,000, or a majority of more 
 than eight to one. The resolution was as follows: — 
 
 That the economic conditions created by the War have in 
 no way altered the fundamental truth that Free Trade be- 
 tween the Nations is the broadest and surest foundation for 
 world-prosperity and international peace in the future, and 
 that any departure from the principle of Free Trade would 
 be detrimental to the prosperity of the Nation as a whole. 
 
 This overwhelming majority shows very clearly that 
 British Industrial Democracy, as represented by 
 Congress, will decline to subscribe to a policy pre- 
 judicial to the economic interests of our own work- 
 ing folk, and one that is calculated to prevent the 
 definite and essential reconciliation of free democra- 
 cies. Therefore, the proposal to cripple Germany 
 
60 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 financially and to render her impotent commercially 
 by a ruthless trade war, may be expected to receive 
 the determined opposition of the British Labour and 
 Socialist Movement. Once the British people as a 
 whole realise the true inwardness of such a policy, 
 how far it is out of accord with their own cherished 
 aims in this war as declared by Mr. Asquith in his 
 Guildhall, Dublin, and Cardiff speeches, and op- 
 posed to the spirit of international co-operation and 
 goodwill, they will reject it as one inspired by a spirit 
 of revenge, and consequently a fatal impediment to 
 the attainment and maintenance of world peace. 
 
 In the interests of world peace, therefore, the 
 Paris Resolutions, so far as they are intended to 
 form the basis of a policy of organised systematic 
 commercial and economic boycotting, which aims 
 at the destruction of German commerce, must be 
 strenuously opposed. They would provide a new 
 standing menace to a healthy internationalism and 
 to the future peace of the world, and impose further 
 burdens upon the consumers in the respective coun- 
 tries. 
 
 If we have amongst us a class of politicians who 
 regard the German people as rightful spoils to be 
 economically exploited and oppressed after the con- 
 clusion of hostilities, let them cease talking of a 
 fight to a finish, for no mere military victory can 
 
NO ECONOMIC BOYCOTT 61 
 
 ever be the final stage of the struggle; it would only 
 mean a transfer of the venue, with a change of 
 weapons from the military to the economic. But 
 British Labour, and especially the organised section, 
 will refuse to regard the German and Austrian 
 people in that light. 
 
 The fundamental purpose of British Labour in 
 continuing its support of the war is the hope that 
 it may influence the development of world demo- 
 cracy. In order that this may be accomplished, 
 it is determined that the peace terms shall be Just 
 and honourable, and such as shall erect no barriers 
 that will prevent the realisation of these high ideals. 
 A spirit of revenge, if introduced, would vitiate the 
 findings of any peace conference and make a demo- 
 cratic peace an impossibility. Moreover, British 
 Labour appreciates the difficulty that has arisen 
 already by the promulgation of the suggested policy 
 of commercial repression and its effect in prolonging 
 the war. France, Russia, and America all provide 
 evidence that the objects and aims of England are 
 suspected; consequently, we have persistent de- 
 mands for a restatement of our position. We say 
 to the German people that if they want peace they 
 must make themselves masters in their own house, 
 that they must destroy the Kaiser's power for evil 
 and that they must come into line with the free 
 
62 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 democracies of the world; but we increase their 
 already serious difficulties by intimating that when 
 they have succeeded they are not to be a free people 
 but are to be commercially and economically iso- 
 lated. What is to be thought of a statesmanship 
 which invites the German people to form part of a 
 Federation of Nations for the maintenance of a 
 world peace, and at the same time proclaims the in- 
 tention of constructing q, Federation of Allies for no 
 other object than the setting up of a commercial 
 boycott of Germany? Such a proposal, under all 
 the terrible experiences of the war, may appeal to a 
 section of the people influenced by the wounded feel- 
 ings of to-day without regard to the consequences 
 of the morrow; but when the full effects are realised 
 they will be recognised as not only dangerous but 
 criminal, and the sooner they are officially repudi- 
 ated the better it will be for the Allied Cause. 
 
 These contradictory After-War Proposals, and 
 the suspicion and doubt as to where Britain now 
 stands, only render it more imperative that our 
 aims and objects should be clearly restated in 
 order that the world may know why it is we con- 
 tinue to fight. General Smuts has stated that the 
 war is already won, and all that is required is for the 
 Allies to sit tight until Germany acknowledges her 
 defeat. If that is so, how important it is that we 
 
NO ECONOMIC BOYCOTT 63 
 
 should be satisfied that the struggle is continued only 
 because of failure to obtain the ideal peace settle- 
 ment, and not because of misunderstandings as to 
 our terms. It should not be difficult to give to 
 the country the assurance that we continue to re- 
 main loyal to the position as expressed by Mr. 
 Asquith in 1914, and that we are fighting neither 
 for conquest nor economic boycott. 
 
 We do not lose sight of that aspect of the economic 
 question as it affects our overseas Dominions and 
 Dependencies, for we consider that without repres- 
 sion and revenge it would be possible to make such 
 arrangements as would improve the relationship be- 
 tween them and the Mother Country, both with re- 
 gard to food supplies, raw materials and essential 
 industries, without a revolution in our fiscal system. 
 On this point. Sir Robert Borden, speaking as 
 Prime Minister of Canada, has said that the people 
 of Canada would not desire the people of the United 
 Kingdom to change their fiscal policy for the pur- 
 pose alone of giving a preference to the producers 
 of Canada, especially if the proposed fiscal changes 
 would involve any injustice or be regarded as op- 
 pressive by any considerable portion of the people 
 of the United Kingdom. After calling attention to 
 the Imperial Preference Resolution approved by the 
 Imperial War Cabinet, which rims: — 
 
64 ,THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 The time has arrived when all possible encouragement 
 should be given to the development of Imperial resources, 
 and especially to the making the Empire independent of 
 other countries in respect of food supplies, raw materials 
 and essential industries. With these objects in view this 
 Conference expresses itself in favour of: — 
 
 1. The principle that each part of the Empire, having 
 due regard to the interests of our Allies, shall give specially 
 favourable treatment and facilities to the produce and manu- 
 facture of other parts of the Empire. 
 
 2. Arrangements by which intending emigrants from the 
 United Kingdom may be induced to settle in countries under 
 the British flag. 
 
 the Canadian Premier continued: — 
 
 I should say at once that this resolution does not neces- 
 sarily propose, or even look to, any change in the fiscal 
 arrangements of the United Kingdom. It does not involve 
 taxation of food ; it does not involve the taxation of anything. 
 As far as the fiscal system of the United Kingdom is con- 
 cerned, I followed when in England precisely the same course 
 that I have carried out in this Parliament, and in this country 
 — I decline to interfere in matters which are the subject of 
 domestic control and concern in the United Kingdom. I 
 decline to invite them to change their fiscal policy. These 
 matters are within their control, as our fiscal policy is within 
 ours. And I would go further, and say that the people of 
 Canada would not desire the people of the United Kingdom 
 to change their fiscal policy for the purpose alone of giving a 
 preference to the producers of this country, especially if the 
 proposed fiscal changes should involve any injustice, or should 
 be regarded as oppressive by a considerable portion of the 
 people of the United Kingdom. But what this proposal looks 
 to, as I understand it, is this — ^that we can within the Empire 
 
NO ECONOMIC BOYCOTT 65 
 
 get better and cheaper facilities of communication than we 
 have enjoyed up to the present time. That I believe, is the 
 line along which the change indicated will proceed. The 
 question of transportation has been a very live one, a very 
 important one to the producers of this country, especially 
 those of the western provinces. We know that before the 
 commencement of war the cost of transportation across the 
 Atlantic increased twofold or threefold. There was some- 
 times a dearth of ships. I hope and believe that there will 
 be concerted action and co-operation between the Government 
 of the United Kingdom and the Governments of the Overseas 
 Dominions, by which speedier, better and more economical 
 transportation will be provided between the Mother Country 
 and the Overseas Dominions and between the Overseas Do- 
 minions themselves. So that, in this light, I am confident 
 that the resolution passed by the Conference will receive 
 favourable consideration by the people of this country. 
 
 Here, then, we have a clear recognition of the posi- 
 tion of the United Kingdom and the possibility of 
 some arrangement being made which would be ac- 
 ceptable to Canada and other Dominions without 
 carrying with it any risk of injury to our own people. 
 British Labour desires to maintain the policy of the 
 Open Door because this policy is more beneficial to 
 the workers than a policy of commercial restriction 
 and isolation. Moreover, it believes that it would 
 afford immense possibilities in the way of Govern- 
 ment action and organisation having for their ob- 
 ject the safeguarding of British industry and com- 
 merce, and the highest development of the resources 
 
66 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 of every part of the Empire, which could be secured 
 without imposing new and heavy burdens on the 
 working classes. Instead of commercial antagon- 
 ism and repression it desires a full recognition of 
 the need for concerted international arrangements, 
 having for their object a general improvement of 
 working conditions of labour, wages, etc., by means 
 of international factory legislation to operate in 
 every country, whereby a greater measure of social 
 and economic contentment may be secured for the 
 workers of all nations, and safeguards imposed 
 against their being economically exploited or op- 
 pressed. The future must be an improvement on the 
 present and the past, but no improvement can be 
 obtained from an economic war, because this double- 
 edged weapon inflicts fatal wounds on all peoples. 
 Of this Labour is convinced, that a world peace 
 which is broadly based on the expressed will of free 
 democracies cannot be assisted by a temporary or 
 perpetual economic war. And a peace which does 
 not properly recognise the natural economic rights of 
 all peoples will be neither democratic nor lasting. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 REVOLUTION OR COMPROMISE? 
 
 Revolution is a word of evil omen. It calls up a 
 vision of barricades in the streets and blood in the 
 gutters. No responsible person, however deter- 
 mined he or she may be to effect a complete trans- 
 formation of society, can contemplate such a possi- 
 bility without horror. It is impossible to say what 
 the future holds, but many of us believe that man- 
 kind is so weary of violence and bloodshed that if 
 the coming social revolution necessarily involved 
 armed insurrection it would find no general sanc- 
 tion. To the British people in particular the pros- 
 pect of a period of convulsive effort of this character 
 is wholly without appeal. Revolution in this sense 
 is alien to the British character. Only in the last 
 resort and as a final desperate expedient have the 
 people of this country consented to employ force to 
 attain their ends. There have been times, of course, 
 when the active opposition or dead inertia of the rul- 
 ing classes have not been overcome until the people 
 have shown that they were bent on obtaining their 
 
 67 
 
68 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 ends ieven at the cost of bloodshed. These occa- 
 sions have not been numerous. They have been 
 more in.the nature of spontaneous popular uprisings 
 than of deliberately planned insurrections. The 
 British people have no aptitude for conspiracy. 
 They are capable of vigorous action, of persistent 
 and steady agitation year in and year out, of stub- 
 born and resolute pressure against which nothing 
 can stand; they have their moods of anger which 
 may find expression in sporadic revolts: but they 
 do not organise revolutions or plot the seizure of 
 power by a sudden coup d'etat. The growth of 
 political democracy among us has been marked by 
 few violent crises. Successive extensions of the 
 franchise have been won mainly by agitations of a 
 peaceful kind, accompanied in only a few cases by 
 rioting, and organised revolution in the continental 
 sense, for political or social ends, has been exceed- 
 ingly rare in our history. 
 
 It would be idle, however, to deny that the temper 
 of democracy after the war will not be so placable as 
 it has hitherto been. Whether we like it or fear it, 
 we have to recognise that in the course of the last 
 three and a half years people have become habitu- 
 ated to thoughts of violence. They have seen force 
 employed on an unprecedented scale as an instru- 
 
REVOLUTION OR COMPROMISE? 69 
 
 ment of policy. Unless we are very careful these 
 ideas will rule the thoughts of masses of the people 
 in the post-war period of reconstruction. The idea 
 that by forceful methods the organised democracy 
 can find a short cut to the attainment of its aims 
 will have its attractions for men of unstable 
 temperament, impatient of the inevitable set-backs 
 which we are bound to encounter if we work along 
 constitutional lines. Let that idea stand unchal- 
 lenged by the leaders of democracy, and we shall be 
 faced with graver perils than any that have con- 
 fronted us in past times. Never before have we 
 had such vast numbers of the population skilled in 
 the use of arms, disciplined, inured to danger, ac- 
 customed to act together under orders. When the 
 war ends this country and every other will be flooded 
 with hardy veterans of the great campaigns. 
 Among them will be thousands of men who have 
 exercised authority over their fellows in actual war- 
 fare, and who will be capable of assuming leader- 
 ship again if insurrectionary movements come into 
 existence. We may be warned by a perception of 
 these facts that if barricades are indeed likely to be 
 erected in our streets they will be manned by men 
 who have learned how to fight and not by ill-dis- 
 ciplined mobs unversed in the use of modern wea- 
 
70 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 pons,. likely to be easily overcome by trained troops. 
 Revolution, if revolution is indeed to be forced upon 
 democracy, will be veritable civil war. 
 
 The prospect of social convulsions on this scale 
 is enough to appal the stoutest heart. Yet this is 
 the alternative that unmistakably confronts us, if we 
 turn aside from the path of ordered social change 
 by constitutional methods. The natural bias of or- 
 ganised Labour lies in the direction of smooth, or- 
 derly progress. When a deadlock is reached, as 
 often happens in industrial disputes, the first appeal 
 is always to the weapons of conciliation and arbi- 
 tration. Negotiations usually end in a compromise : 
 but the compromise generally represents a step for- 
 ward. Labour is sometimes pictured as a blind 
 giant, but unlike Samson it has sufficient wisdom to 
 realise that in pulling down the pillars of the temple 
 it may be crushed beneath the ruins along with its 
 enemies. When the leaders of democracy speak of 
 Revolution — ^thereby causing much alarm to ladies 
 like Mrs. Humphrey Ward — ^they do not therefore 
 contemplate any act of blind violence comparable 
 to the brave stupidity of the Philistines' captive: 
 they intend simply to warn the dominant classes that 
 any attempt to keep democracy fettered and sub- 
 ordinate is foredoomed to failure. By peaceable 
 methods, or by direct assault, society is going to be 
 
REVOLUTION OR COMPROMISE? ~ 71 
 
 brought under democratic control. And the choice 
 of naethod does not primarily rest with democracy: 
 it lies rather with the classes who own the ma- 
 chinery of production and control the machinery of 
 the State to decide whether necessary changes are to 
 be peaceably introduced on the basis of willing co- 
 operation, or resisted to the last ditch. Conflicts 
 will inevitably arise between the privileged classes 
 and the great mass of the people as to whether this 
 or that specific reform is opportune or expedient at 
 a given moment. All that I am concerned with for 
 the moment is the temper in which these reforms are 
 to be approached — whether with a disposition to 
 agree after full and frank discussion of the interests 
 involved and the purpose to be achieved, or in a 
 mood of sullen resistance hardening into a stupid 
 refusal to discuss the question of reform at all. The 
 latter mood will be fatal to our hopes of effecting a 
 great and beneficent reconstruction of society by 
 political methods. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that before the war there 
 was a visible tendency on the party of a section of 
 the people to resent the slow working of the machin- 
 ery of Parliament. The war has not entirely oblit- 
 erated our memory of the feverish industrial unrest 
 which was such a significant feature of the situation 
 in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of 
 
72 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 war. There were many causes for it. But no one 
 will deny that much of the trouble arose from the 
 belief sedulously fostered by an active group of 
 propagandists in the industrial arena that it was 
 hopeless to expect Parliament to take any interest 
 in the workers' grievances. Political action by the 
 workers themselves was systematically discredited 
 and discounted. The mass of the organised work- 
 ing class movement never lost faith in the Labour 
 Party, and made full allowance for the difficulties 
 under which their Parliamentary representatives 
 worked. It is nevertheless true that the propaganda 
 of "direct action" among the workers tended seri- 
 ously to undermine belief in the efficacy of political 
 methods. The opportunity of the anti-parliamen- 
 tarian propagandists will recur if in the immediate 
 future the Labour Party, by reason of its own weak- 
 ness or the stubborn resistance of other parties and 
 classes, is unable to fulfil the expectations of its 
 followers. One good reason for beginning now to 
 build up a strong democratic party in Parliament, 
 with a programme of social and economic reforms 
 carefully thought out in advance, is that such a 
 party, having the confidence of the organised move- 
 ment and conscious of its strength, will be able to 
 prove that political methods are effective, and that 
 Parliament can be made to legislate for the good 
 
REVOLUTION OR COMPROMISE? 73 
 
 of the people as a whole rather than for the benefit 
 of particular classes. The Labour Party can re- 
 habilitate Parliament in the eyes of the people who 
 have been wearied by the unreal strife of the ortho- 
 dox parties, and by the cumbrous working of the 
 Parliamentary machine in dealing with pressing and 
 urgent questions of reform. The Labour Party sets 
 out to prove by actual experiment and achievement 
 that the Democratic State of to-morrow can be estab- 
 lished without an intervening period of violent up- 
 heaval and dislocation. 
 
 The Revolution which the Labour Party seeks to 
 bring about in this country will not be effected by 
 means of bombs and bayonets. It will be, however, 
 quite as thorough-going in its results as any violent 
 convulsion involving the use of armed force can 
 posssibly be. It means a radical change in the atti- 
 tude of Parliament towards questions of social re- 
 form, a speeding up of the legislative machine, a 
 resolute independence on the part of the Labour 
 Party in Parliament. It means further a complete 
 overhauling of the administrative machine. Ex- 
 perience has shown us that the great administrative 
 services, swathed in red tape, hampered by tradi- 
 tion, conservative by instinct, saturated with class 
 prejudice, are a more effective check upon the re- 
 forming impulse than even a Parliament dominated 
 
74 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 by aristocratic and capitalist influences. We have 
 no use for the Circumlocution Office. We want to 
 see the Civil Service democratised. The Diplomatic 
 Service, in particular, is an aristocratic preserve 
 which offers no opportunity for a career to any man 
 unless he possesses a private income of at least £400 
 a year, however well qualified he may otherwise 
 be. The abolition of such a barrier is a democratic 
 duty. In addition, we desire to bring the Foreign 
 Office more directly under the control of Parliament, 
 and to give the peoples' representatives larger powers 
 of criticism in regard to foreign policy. So also 
 with other Government Departments: we believe 
 that their efficiency, energy, and enthusiasm for the 
 public welfare will be greatly increased by an in- 
 fusion of the spirit of democracy. Labour's aim is 
 to establish democratic control over all the machinery 
 of State. It can be done without a violent break 
 with the past. Labour desires to make a swift and 
 smooth transition to the new order, working along 
 constitutional lines, not seeking to introduce innova- 
 tions for the sake of novelty, but solely for the pur- 
 pose of promoting political and social liberty and 
 putting an end to oligarchical government and the 
 domination of one class by another. To effect this 
 transformation of the legislative and administrative 
 machine it will not be necessary to spill blood. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 FREEDOM 
 
 It is a tragic paradox that in the great struggle for 
 freedom and democracy the British people have been 
 required to surrender many of their cherished liber- 
 ties. The nation's willingness to submit to restric- 
 tions imposed by authority upon the right of demo- 
 cratic self-determination which has been its chief 
 pride and boast for many centuries is a more con- 
 vincing proof of its resolute intention to achieve vic- 
 tory than even the sacrificial service of the men in 
 the field and the workers at home. It is question- 
 able, indeed, whether many of the limitations upon 
 freedom were necessary; but it is indisputable that 
 only a people motived by the purest patriotism, and 
 resolved to allow nothing to weaken the national 
 will, would have accepted them. At any other time 
 the State's encroachment upon the domain of private 
 liberty would have been instantly challenged. It 
 was not because the British people were convinced 
 that the surrender of democratic rights was neces- 
 sary that they yielded without a struggle, but be- 
 
 75 
 
76 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 cause they realised they could not prosecute two 
 wars simultaneously. Having resolved to defeat 
 Prussianism abroad because it menaced the freedom 
 of the whole world, they tolerated the curtailment of 
 their liberties at home as a relatively smaller danger 
 with which they could more conveniently deal when 
 the bigger peril was removed. Reaction has made 
 great strides during the war. The people know that 
 they are in the grip of reaction. But it would be a 
 disastrous error to conclude that democracy has been 
 so firmly fettered that it will not be able to shake 
 off its bonds when the hour comes for it to reckon 
 with its domestic enemies. The very submission of 
 the people, their acceptance of one outrageous re- 
 striction after another, may lead the reactionaries to 
 think their policy has succeeded: when the greater 
 preoccupation of the war is over they will perhaps 
 see how completely it has failed. 
 
 What are the reactionary encroachments upon lib- 
 erty against which democracy may justly protest? 
 We do not complain so much of the formal restric- 
 tions imposed upon the people of this country on the 
 plea of national necessity, but of the subtler in- 
 roads upon both private and public liberty through 
 a reactionary and oppressive interpretation of the 
 long series of regulations introduced during the war. 
 Take first the freedom of the press. An intelligent 
 
FREEDOM 77 
 
 censorship which confined its activities to the sup- 
 pression of news that might assist the military effort 
 of the enemy would be regarded as performing a 
 legitimate duty: but the military censorship has 
 developed into a wonderful political engine which 
 enables the authorities systematically to control the 
 press. It enables the executive not merely to con- 
 trol opinion but to manufacture it. On the one 
 hand it prevents free discussion of questions of 
 public policy; on the other it guides the public mind 
 by means of a steady stream of artful suggestion 
 and official "information" manipulated and col- 
 oured in accordance with official views. The seiz- 
 ure of pamphlets, the suppression of newspapers, the 
 attempt to bring under the survey of the censorship 
 every leaflet, pamphlet, and printed sheet dealing 
 however remotely with questions of war and peace, 
 are only additional illustrations of this dangerous 
 development by which truth is rationed, political 
 opinion made to order in government factories, and 
 an artificial unity created by the simple expedient of 
 denying expression to dissident views. The prac- 
 tical denial of free speech and the right of public 
 meeting, both by direct prohibition and by the far 
 worse method of permitting meetings to be broken 
 up by organised violence, is another development 
 aga;inst which democracy is bound to protest. Still 
 
78 THE AIMS OF LABOUR: 
 
 more sinister is the growth of espionage and police 
 inquisition: the adoption of continental methods 
 of surveillance represents an invasion of private 
 life by the agents of authority which before the war 
 one would have confidently declared this country 
 would never tolerate. The right of asylum, under 
 which many political refugees sought shelter from 
 the harsh oppression of their own Governments, has 
 been destroyed. The right of trial by jury and of 
 public trial has been virtually superseded, and the 
 detention of suspected persons without trial and 
 without formal charge being made against them 
 shows how far the executive has gone in defiance of 
 the constitutional safeguards which protected the 
 person and property of British citizens. New tri- 
 bunals, unknown to the British legal system, and 
 answerable only to the Government, have been set 
 up for dealing with new offences, established prin- 
 ciples of our juridical system, well attested rights of 
 accused persons, have been arbitrarily set aside. 
 
 Before the war the workers enjoyed a considerable 
 measure of personal and collective freedom, as 
 workers not simply as citizens: they were not bound 
 to one employer or confined to one district, but 
 might go where the highest wages invited and in the 
 last resort could enforce their claims for improved 
 conditions by ceasing to work. These rights have 
 
FREEDOM 79 
 
 disappeared. Many workshop practices and cus- 
 toms which protected the workmen have been aban- 
 doned. That in the latter instance the workmen 
 and their representatives have agreed to these limi- 
 tations and restrictions does not weaken the asser- 
 tion that they represent a serious diminution of 
 the workers' freedom. With a patriotic self-devo- 
 tion beyond all praise the organised workers have 
 consented to abandon many of the guarantees which 
 they had devised to protect them from the rapacity 
 of the employers; but it cannot be denied that the 
 manner in which their readiness to sacrifice their 
 rights, including their right to decide for whom 
 they shall work and under what conditions, has 
 been exploited in the interest of reaction, has given 
 rise to much suspicion and discontent. This very 
 human reaction against all these legislative and ad- 
 ministrative experiments is the measure of their fail- 
 ure. It proves that they have gone too far, are too 
 harsh and oppressive in their working. They have 
 given the workers a sense of being harried, con- 
 trolled, and disposed of without any reference to 
 their own wishes and frequently against their will. 
 That is the root of the resentment and distrust 
 which the organised workers now show. It is the 
 reason why they scrutinise with jealous suspicion 
 every proposal put forward by the Government for 
 
80 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 the further organisation of the nation's reserves of 
 man-power. 
 
 Not only the steadily deepening revolt of the or- 
 ganised workers but the equally marked degener- 
 ation of public moral and the loss of popular confi- 
 dence in the Government, must be taken as further 
 evidence of the total practical failure of this policy 
 of repression and regimentation. In the early days 
 of the war, those who, like myself, felt that the 
 righteousness of our cause justified and indeed de- 
 manded every sacrifice, accepted the restrictions 
 which the Government proposed as a necessary ex- 
 pedient for the vigorous prosecution of the war; 
 and we have to bear our share of responsibility if 
 we failed to perceive every possibility of abuse 
 underlying the legal phrases in which the proposals 
 were embodied. But democracy in war time is at a 
 disadvantage in dealing with abuses or excesses of 
 authority; its moral simplicity and singleness of 
 aim put democracy in the power of its enemies. The 
 same qualities will deliver it when the lesson of 
 this experience of what reaction can do, how craftily 
 the enemy of freedom can plot the destruction of 
 popular liberties in the very hour when the people 
 are making unprecedented sacrifices in order to pre- 
 serve freedom and extend its boundaries, has been 
 
FREEDOM 81 
 
 learned. The people's sacrifice of their rights and 
 liberties was sanctioned by motives of the purest 
 patriotism. Those of us who counselled and en- 
 couraged the sacrifice when authoritative voices 
 warned us that only so could the war be won have 
 no reason to be ashamed : the shame rather lies with 
 those who under cover of the plea of national neces- 
 sity formulated regulations that have been a weapon 
 in the hands of reaction for the subversion of civil 
 liberty. 
 
 While we recognise that the logic of military de- 
 fence is the logic of restriction, of authority against 
 liberty, and acknowledge the difficulty of defining 
 the limits of such control as a Government must 
 claim when a nation is at war, we proclaim that the 
 democratic ideal of freedom is not the freedom of a 
 people in barracks or a besieged city, but of equality 
 and mutual service. Militarist authority implies 
 subservience and regimentation. Democracy de- 
 mands the right of self-determination and the op- 
 portunity to realise through its own culture and in- 
 stitutions the fullest possibilities of self-develop- 
 ment. The era of democratic freedom will not be 
 inaugurated merely by a suspension of the war re- 
 strictions. It will be the function of the builders of 
 the new order of society to discover the influences 
 
82 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 that constrain freedom and by combined effort to 
 destroy them. Democracy asserts that brute force 
 should not be the arbiter in the relation of States, 
 and therefore seeks to embody the principle of con- 
 ciliation in international institutions. As the spirit 
 of democracy will inform these international insti- 
 tutions and national self-determination is the guid- 
 ing principle they will be the protectors of national 
 freedom; and democracy, which is nourished on 
 publicity, will demand that the free air of public 
 discussion shall penetrate the obscurities of diplo- 
 macy. We realise further that there can be no true 
 freedom so long as property and power are concen- 
 trated in the hands of a few, and the democratic 
 watchword for the struggle of the future is 
 "Through Equality to Freedom." We look to the 
 democratisation of political institutions through a 
 still wider extension of the franchise, the abolition 
 of secret political funds, derived from the traffic in 
 honours, and to the growth of industrial democracy, 
 to enlarge the boundaries of freedom in this land, 
 and to give the individual citizen a deeper sense of 
 power and responsibility as the attributes of a free 
 man. We know, too, that as the price of liberty is 
 perpetual vigilance, so its surest safeguard is the 
 passion for liberty in the hearts of men and women. 
 To save this nation from the moral and political 
 
FREEDOM 83 
 
 servitude which makes the masses of people helpless 
 agents of their own destruction and puts into the 
 hands of the few more than the power of life and 
 death is the settled resolve of organised democracy. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 VICTORY 
 
 Victory is a word on the lips of many people. It is 
 a word which the statesmen of the Allied countries 
 and of the Central Empires alike use quite freely, 
 but with a very restricted application. To most the 
 meaning of victory is limited to a striking military 
 success. There is a grave danger that the moral as 
 well as the social implications of victory may be 
 forgotten or ignored. Any victory, however spec- 
 tacular and dramatic in a military sense it may be, 
 which falls short of the realisation of the ideals with 
 which we entered the war, will not be a victory but 
 a defeat. We strive for victory because we want to 
 end war altogether, not merely to prove the superior- 
 ity of British arms over those of Germany. We con- 
 tinue the struggle, dreadful though the cost of it has 
 become, because we have to enforce reparation for 
 a great wrong perpetrated upon a small unoffending 
 nation, to liberate subject peoples and enable thera 
 
 to live under a form of government of their own 
 
 84 
 
VICTORY 85 
 
 choosing, and to destroy, not a great nation, but a 
 militarist autocracy which had deliberately planned 
 war without considering the interests either of their 
 own people or of the European Commonwealth of 
 which they were a part. 
 
 For the people of this country these are still the 
 objects of the war. The ideals with which we 
 entered the struggle have not been 'lowered. On 
 the contrary the aims of the people, the ends for 
 which they are prepared still to suffer and serve, 
 obscured though they may be by the clamant im- 
 perialism of the dominant class, have become a 
 rooted resolve. They will not suffer the war aims 
 of this country to be transformed into a pro- 
 gramme of conquest and annexation. They will 
 sanction only such territorial and political changes 
 in Europe, Asia, and Africa as will make possible 
 the creation of a society of free nations pledged to 
 maintain peace, protected by mutual guarantees, ex- 
 tended to the small nations as well as great, against 
 oppression and unfair attack from any warlike state. 
 In seeking to attain these ends we ought not to rely 
 entirely upon forces in the field; nor ought we to 
 deceive ourselves by thinking that a military vic- 
 tory, however complete and overwhelming, will suf- 
 fice to establish an international order in which there 
 is no danger of future war. We desire a victory 
 
86 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 which cannot be won wholly by the armies in the 
 field. Sufficient use has not been made of the 
 moral, political and diplomatic weapons which the 
 Allies have at their disposal. There is a danger 
 of substituting military success and the desire for 
 territory for noble ideals and great principles. In 
 thus subordinating the moral to the material we 
 mock the sacrifice of our heroic dead and forget God, 
 for which no military success can make amends. 
 Long before the war had reached this present stage, a 
 great moral offensive should have been launched, 
 supplementing the military effort, with the object of 
 bringing home to the hearts and minds of the enemy 
 peoples the real truth about the war. Since con- 
 science and reason do not end upon the frontiers of 
 Central Europe, the democratic case, which the lead- 
 ers of the popular movement in the Allied countries 
 could present to the social democracy of Germany, 
 would prove convincing enough to shorten the war 
 materially. It would clarify the real issues of the 
 war in every country. It is a grave fault on the 
 part of those who direct Allied policy that they have 
 so far neglected to use political and diplomatic as 
 well as military methods to achieve victory. 
 
 When victory in the sense of the collapse of the 
 military power in the Central Empires is at last 
 achieved, we shall be confronted with the task of 
 
VICTORY 87 
 
 translating military success into its political, eco- 
 nomic, and social equivalents in this country and 
 every other. It will not be a democratic victory if it 
 results merely in the restoration of the capitalistic 
 regime which the war has discredited and destroyed. 
 Victory for the people means something more than 
 the continuance of the old system of production for 
 the profit of a small owning class, on the basis of 
 wage-slavery for the producing classes. The hard, 
 cruel, competitive system of production must be 
 replaced by a system of co-operation under which 
 the status of the workers will be revolutionised, and 
 in which the squalor and poverty, the economic in- 
 security and social miseries of the past will have no 
 place. This is the great task before the statesmen 
 and politicians of the future. 
 
 Then we must remember that the coming period 
 of reconstruction, even more than the remaining 
 period of the war, will impose upon the leaders of all 
 the civilised States new and searching tests of char- 
 acter and intellect. As we draw nearer to the end 
 of the war we begin to see more clearly the magni- 
 tude of the problems that peace will bring. So vast, 
 intricate, and fundamental have been the changes 
 wrought during the last three and a half years that 
 we are sometimes tempted to think the will and 
 intelligence of men will be unequal to the task of 
 
88 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 dealing with them. Still more may we fear some- 
 times that the problems of reconstruction will be 
 handled by men too impatient to think things 
 through, too tired and cynical to respond to the 
 glowing faith in a finer future for the world which 
 now inspires the multitudes of common people who 
 have striven so heroically and suffered so patiently 
 during the war. For national leadership to fall into 
 the hands of such men in the great new days upon 
 which we shall presently enter would be a disaster 
 almost as great as the war itself. If there could be 
 anything worse than an empiric in control of state 
 policy when peace comes, it would be the influence 
 of a cynic upon the splendid enthusiasm and revo- 
 lutionary ardour of democracy, newly awakened to 
 a consciousness of its power and eager to build a 
 better future for mankind. 
 
 The outstanding fact of world politics at the 
 present time — and when peace comes this fact will 
 be made still more clear — is that a great tide of 
 revolutionary feeling is rising in every country. 
 Everywhere the peoples are becoming conscious of 
 power. They are beginning to sit in judgment upon 
 their rulers. They are beginning to ask questions 
 about the policies that have brought the world to 
 the edge of secular ruin. In this war the peottle 
 have shown themselves capable of heroic sacrifices 
 
VICTORY 89 
 
 and resolute endurance because they love liberty and 
 desire peace. The hope that the issue of this war 
 will be an increase of freedom, not only for them- 
 selves, but for those who have lived under the yoke 
 of alien tyrannies, has sustained the people of this 
 country throughout these years of war. It has 
 caused them to pour out the blood of their best and 
 bravest, to surrender hard-won liberties, to toil un- 
 remittingly in factory, field and mine, to spend with- 
 out stint the material wealth accumulated through 
 years of peace and prosperity. These sacrifices will 
 not have been made in vain if the territorial and 
 political changes to be made in Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa embody the idea of public right, and estab- 
 lish an enduring peace between the nations that 
 emperors, diplomatists, and capitalists will not be 
 able to shake. 
 
 But the people will not choose to entrust their 
 destinies at the Peace Conference to statesmen who 
 have not perceived the moral significance of the 
 struggle, and who are not prepared to make a peo- 
 ple's peace. We want to replace the material force 
 of arms by the moral force of right in the govern- 
 ment of the world. For that great task of the im- 
 mediate future we want national leaders who are not 
 only responsive to the inspirations of democracy, 
 but who are qualified to guide the mighty energies 
 
90 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 of democracy in the task of building up the new 
 social order. 
 
 Never before have the people been confronted 
 with problems of greater magnitude, international 
 and national, economic and political, social and per- 
 sonal; but never have they had so good an oppor- 
 tunity of taking hold of these problems for them- 
 selves. The policies and programmes of the ortho- 
 dox parties have little relevance to the new situ- 
 ation. Political parties bound by tradition, satu- 
 rated with class prejudice, out of touch with the 
 living movements of thought and feeling among the 
 people, cannot easily adapt themselves to the 
 changed conditions, the new demands, the wider 
 vision to which the war has given rise. The party 
 of the future, upon which the chief tasks of recon- 
 struction will devolve, will be the one which de- 
 rives directly from the people themselves, and has 
 been made the organ of the people's will, the voice 
 of all the people — of both sexes and all classes — 
 who work by hand or brain. Through such a party 
 led by democratically chosen leaders who have 
 proved their fidelity to principle and their faith in 
 the people's cause, the best spirits of our time will 
 be able to work as they have never been able to work 
 in the orthodox parties of the past. Nothing but 
 disunity and divided counsels in the democratic 
 
VICTORY 91 
 
 movement can wreck the promise of the future. 
 For every man and woman who believes in demo- 
 cracy and who desires to see a new birth of freedom 
 in this land there is a place in the people's move- 
 ment and a well-defined work to do. Despite the 
 vast complications of our task, the duty of Christian 
 citizenship has never been so clearly marked. In 
 the past the democratic effort has been weak because 
 it has been divided. During the war we have learnt 
 the meaning of co-operation for common ends. The 
 lesson holds good for the politics of to-morrow. 
 
 In a wider sense than has hitherto been understood 
 the politics of the future will be human politics, and 
 the dominating party will be the party of the com- 
 mon people and of democracy. . This is certain. 
 The people will have it so, for the people are weary 
 of wars. They have borne too long the inequalities 
 and injustices inherent in an economic system based 
 on competition instead of co-operation. They are 
 coming together in a more powerfully organised 
 movement to achieve a new freedom, and to estab- 
 lish on this earth, drenched with men's blood, torn 
 with men's struggles, wet with human tears, a fairer 
 ideal of life. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 The cruel ravages of the world war have caused a 
 great resurgence of democratic feeling throughout 
 the world, and have given a great impetus to the 
 already strong popular tendencies towards democra- 
 tic control in national and international affairs. It 
 is impossible to calculate the extent to which demo- 
 cratic thought and ideals now permeate the peoples 
 of the world: suffice it to say that in every country 
 without exception the people's conception of the 
 tremendous power that is invested in them consti- 
 tutionally and divinely has been deepened. Though 
 there is no divine right of kings and princes there 
 is the divine right of peoples: and all the peo- 
 ples of the earth are beginning to realise more and 
 more each day that the "new kingdom on earth" 
 can only be established by a full recognition of 
 these divine rights — the rights of liberty and equal- 
 ity. These are the springs of democratic faith. 
 They are the spiritual basis of real democracy. 
 
 [The coming of world democracy means the uni- 
 92 
 
.THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 93 
 
 versal reign of freedom and justice, equality and 
 fraternity; the universal acceptance of the principle 
 of equal opportunities for all peoples to self deter- 
 mination and self development; and a practical 
 recognition of the rights and obligations of each 
 nation as a member of the society of free nations. 
 It also means a recognition of the interdependence 
 of peoples, and involves international co-operation 
 and goodwill. 
 
 In international affairs it means the welfare of the 
 whole of humanity as against selfish national inter- 
 ests and ambitions. In national affairs it means 
 the common weal as against class or individual in- 
 terests. National prosperity cannot be truly ap- 
 praised by the wealth of the few, but by the content- 
 ment and happiness of the community as a whole 
 and their ability to satisfy, not only their social re- 
 quirements, but also their spiritual needs. As 
 Lecky has truly said, "The essential qualities of 
 national greatness are moral, not material." Moral 
 greatness may beget material prosperity, but material 
 prosperity by itself invariably tends to a depreci- 
 ation of the spiritual and moral: it dulls the finer 
 sensibilities, and saps the real strength of a people. 
 How often in the early days of war was the fear 
 expressed that our great material prosperity had 
 deadened many of the finest national qualities and 
 
94 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 characteristics of our race? Fortunately for tlie 
 future welfare of the people, they were not dead, 
 but lying dormant, and the impulse to new life which 
 they received in 1914 was so great that under the 
 subsequent stress and strain of war the vision of 
 the people became clearer, their sense of real values 
 became finer and more keen, until now they are 
 determined that henceforth only the best social struc- 
 ture that human knowledge, experience, and capacity 
 can devise will satisfy their determination to re- 
 build civilisation on a foundation of justice and 
 righteousness. 
 
 But it is hopeless to expect to create a healthy 
 internationalism and a true nationalism unless the 
 importance of the individual also is recognised. 
 The society of nations is founded on the comity of 
 individuals. And there is an obvious danger in 
 over-looking the supreme importance of character 
 as an indispensable factor in national and interna- 
 tional life. Looking at every phase of national life 
 we find a decided tendency to undervalue or ignore 
 altogether the moral worth of the unit of society. 
 We think in numbers: we act in numbers. Move- 
 ments appeal to our minds, not always because they 
 are right, but because they are popular. Many peo- 
 ple talk about what is wrong with the world, the 
 nation, or the municipality, but do not dream of 
 
tTHE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACX 95 
 
 enquiring what is wrong with the individual. Yet 
 the expression of the national will represents the 
 greatest common measure of the views of the con- 
 stituent individuals in the aggregate. And demo* 
 cracy can never rise to the full greatness of its 
 possibilities unless the individual rises to the highest 
 point of moral greatness. Men and women with 
 low moral standards are the weakest links in the 
 chain and the strength of the chain is limited to the 
 strength of its weakest link. To secure an improve- 
 ment in the material and social conditions of the 
 people, we must elevate the moral standards of the 
 people, since it is only possible to secure and con- 
 solidate vital changes as a result of the moral de- 
 termination of the community as a whole. This 
 question of the importance of the moral passion and 
 rectitude of the individual is becoming daily more 
 urgent in view of the significant rise and growing 
 power of democracy in this country. The future 
 welfare of the nation is in the hands of the organised 
 democracy, and we are compelled to concern our- 
 selves not only with intentions and practical aims, 
 but with the faith, the ideals, and the personal quali- 
 ties of leaders and followers. The difficulties before 
 us are stupendous — Rome was not built in a day, 
 and neither will the new national and international 
 structure be completed in a day nor without heavy 
 
96 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 demands being made upon the moral staying power 
 of the people. To follow the line of least resistance 
 will not bring us to the new world: the path will be 
 long, difficult, and full of pitfalls. 
 
 If democracy is to take full advantage of the 
 glorious opportunities before it, it can only be as a 
 people individually strong in determination, and 
 fired by moral passion and lofty ideals, led by men 
 and women inspired to action by high purpose and 
 unselfish ambition. Surely then, we cannot afford 
 to ignore the question of personal character in our 
 efforts to reach the Social ideal. The doctrine of 
 personal irresponsibility is not only dangerous but 
 an indication of a lack of vision on the part of those 
 who advance it, and is often only employed to excuse 
 an evasion of an individual's civic and social duties. 
 The individual is not justified in claiming his na- 
 tional rights unless he fulfils his obligation to his 
 fellow men and to the State: the State must recog- 
 nise the rights of its citizens if it demands from 
 them a fulfilment of their obligations as citizens. 
 This is the sure way to stimulate a real personal and 
 national consciousness upon which the success of 
 democracy so much depends. Democracy will be 
 effective in proportion to the intensity of its spiritual 
 and moral faith; and the power of democracy as 
 a whole will be measured by the loyalty of the in- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 97 
 
 dividual to principle and by his belief in the moral 
 power of right as against wrong. Character in the 
 individual exemplifies human nature in its highest 
 form, for it exhibits man at his best: and only a 
 democracy built on the highest form of character will 
 prove to be that instrument by which the world is to 
 be saved. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 INTER-ALLIED LABOUR WAR AIMS 
 
 The following is the full text of the "Memorandum on War Aims" 
 adopted by the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference in 
 London : 
 
 THE WAR 
 
 I. — The Inter-AIIied Conference declares that whatever may have 
 been the causes of the outbreak of war it is clear that the peoples 
 of Europe, who are necessarily the chief sufferers from its horrors, 
 had themselves no hand "in it. Their common interest is now so 
 to conduct the terrible struggle in which they find themselves en- 
 gaged as to bring it, as soon as may be possible, to . an issue in a 
 secure and lasting peace for the world. 
 
 The Conference sees no reason to depart from the following decla- 
 ration unanimously agreed to at the Conference of the Socialist and 
 Labour Parties of the Allied Nations on February 14, 1915 : 
 
 "This Conference cannot ignore the profound general causes of 
 the European conflict, itself a monstrous product of the antagonisms 
 which tear asimder capitalist society and of the policy of colonial 
 dependencies and aggressive imperialism, against which Interna- 
 tional Socialism has never ceased to fight, and in which every govern- 
 ment has its share of responsibility. 
 
 "The invasion of Belgium and France by the German armies 
 threatens the very existence of independent nationalities and strikes 
 a blow at all faith in treaties. In these circumstances a victory for 
 German imperialism would be the defeat and the destruction of 
 democracy and liberty in Europe. The Socialists of Great Britain, 
 Belgium, France and Russia do not pursue the political and economic 
 crushing of Germany; they are not at war with the peoples of Ger- 
 many and Austria, but only with the governments of those countries 
 by which they are oppressed. They demand that Belgium shall be 
 liberated and compensated. They desire that the question of Poland 
 shall be settled in accordance with the wishes of the Polish people, 
 either in the sense of autonomy in the midst of another state, or in 
 that of complete independence. They wish that throughout all Eu- 
 rope, from Alsace-Lorraine to the Balkans, those populations that 
 have been annexed by force shall receive the right freely to dispose 
 of themselves. 
 
 "While inflexibly resolved to fight until victory is achieved to ac- 
 
 99 
 
100 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 complish this task of liberation, the Socialists are none the less re- 
 solved to resist any attempt to transform this defensive war into a 
 Wfar of conquest, virhich would only prepare fresh conflicts, create new 
 grievances and subject various peoples more than ever to the dou- 
 ble plague of armaments and war. 
 
 "Satisfied that they are remaining true to the principles of the 
 International, the members of the Conference express the hope that 
 the working classes of all the different countries will before long find 
 themselves united again in their struggle against militarism and 
 capitalist imperialism. The victory of the Allied Powers must be a 
 victory for popular liberty, for unity, independence and autonomy 
 of the nations in the peaceful federation of the United States of 
 Europe and the world." 
 
 MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 
 
 IT. — Whatever may have been the objects for which the war was 
 begun the fundamental purpose of the Inter-Allied Conference in 
 supporting the continuance of the struggle is , that the world may 
 henceforth be made safe for democracy. 
 
 Of all the conditions of peace none is so important to the peoples 
 of the world as that there should be henceforth on earth no more 
 war. 
 
 Whoever triumphs, the peoples will have lost unless an international 
 system is established which will prevent war. What would it mean 
 to declare the right of peoples to self-determination if this right were 
 left at the mercy of new violations, and was not protected by a super- 
 national authority? That authority can be no other than the League 
 of Nations, in which not only all the present belligerents, but every 
 other independent state, should be pressed to join. 
 
 The constitution of such a League of Nations implies the imme- 
 diate establishment of an international High Court, not only for the 
 settlement of all disputes between states that are of justiciable na- 
 ture, but also for prompt and effective mediation between states in 
 other issues that vitally interest the power or honour of such states. 
 It is also under the control of the League of Nations that the con- 
 sultation of peoples for purposes of self-determination must be or- 
 ganised. This popular right can be vindicated only by popular 
 vote. The League of Nations shall establish the procedure of in- 
 ternational jurisdiction, fix the methods which will maintain the free- 
 dom and security of the election, re.store the political rights of in- 
 dividuals which violence and conquest may have injured, repress 
 any attempt to use pressure or corruption, and prevent any .sub- 
 sequent reprisals. It will be also necessary to form an International 
 Legislature, in which the representatives of every civilised state would 
 have their allotted share and energetically to push forward, step by 
 step, the development of internaiional legislation agreed to by, and 
 definitely binding upon, the several states. 
 
 By a solemn agreement all the states and peoples consulted shall 
 pledge themselves to submit every issue between two or more of 
 
APPENDIX I 101 
 
 them for settlement as aforesaid, Refusal to accept arbitration or 
 to submit to the settlement will imply deliberate aggression, and all 
 the nations will necessarily have to make common cause, by using 
 any and every means at their disposal, either economical or military, 
 against any state or states refusing to submit to the arbitration award, 
 or attempting to break the world's covenant of peace. 
 
 But the sincere acceptance of the rules and decisions of the super- 
 national authority implies complete democratisation in all countries; 
 the removal of all the arbitrary powers who, until now, have as- 
 sumed the right of choosing between peace and war; the maintenance 
 or creation of legislatures elected by and on behalf of the sovereign 
 right of the people; the suppression of secret diplomacy, to be re- 
 placed by the conduct of foreign policy under the control of popular 
 legislatures, and the publication of all treaties, which must never be 
 in contravention of the stipulation of the League of Nations, with 
 the absolute responsibility of the government, and more particularly 
 of the foreign minister of each country to its legislature. 
 
 Only such a policy will enforce the frank abandonment of every 
 form of imperialism. When based on universal democracy, in a 
 world in which effective international guarantees against aggression 
 have been secured, the League of Nations will achieve the complete 
 suppression of force as the means of settling international differ- 
 ences. 
 
 The League of Nations, in order to prepare for the concerted aboli- 
 tion of compulsory military service in all countries, must first take 
 steps for the prohibition of fresh armaments on land and sea and 
 for the common limitation of the existing armaments by which all the 
 peoples are burdened; as well as the control of war manufactures 
 and the enforcement of such agreements as may be agreed to there- 
 upon. The states must undertake such manufactures themselves, so 
 as entirely to abolish profit-making armament firms, whose pecuniary 
 interest lies always in the war scares and progressive competition in 
 the preparation for war. 
 
 The nations, being armed solely for self-defence and for such action 
 as the League of Nations may ask them to take in defence of in- 
 ternational right, will be left free, under international control either 
 to create a voluntarily recruited force or to organise the nation for 
 defense without professional armies for long terms of military serv- 
 ice. 
 
 To give effect to the above principles, the Inter-Allied Conference 
 declares that the rules upon which the League of Nations will be 
 founded must be included in the treaty of peace, and will henceforth 
 become the basis of the settlement of differences. In that spirit 
 the Conference expresses its agreement with the propositions put for- 
 ward by President Wilson in his last message: 
 
 ( 1 ) That each part of the final settlement must be based upon 
 the essential justice of that particular case, and upon such adjust- 
 ments as are most likely to bring a peace that will be permanent. 
 
 (2) That peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about 
 from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and 
 
102 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 pawns in a game, even the great game now forever discredited of the 
 balance of power; but that 
 
 (3) Every territorial settlement involved in this war must be 
 made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, 
 and not as a part of any mere adjustments of compromise of claims 
 amongst rival states. 
 
 (4) That all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded 
 the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without intro- 
 ducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism 
 that would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe, and, 
 consequently, of the world. 
 
 TERRITORIAL QUESTIONS 
 
 III. — The Inter-Allied Conference considers that the proclama- 
 tion of principles of international law accepted by all nations, and 
 the substitution of a regular procedure for the forceful acts by which 
 states calling themselves sovereign have hitherto adjusted their dif- 
 ferences — in short, the establishment of a League of Nations — 
 gives an entirely new aspect to territorial problems. 
 
 The old diplomacy and the yearnings after domination by states, 
 or even by peoples, which during the whole of the nineteenth century 
 have taken advantage of and corrupted the aspirations of nationali- 
 ties, have brought Europe to a condition of anarchy and disorder 
 which have led inevitably to the present catastrophe. 
 
 The Conference declares it to be the duty of the Labor and Social- 
 ist movement to suppress without hesitation the imperialist designs 
 in the various states which have led one government after another 
 to seek, by the triumph of military force, to acquire either new terri- 
 tories or economic advantage. 
 
 The establishment of a system of international law and the 
 guarantees afforded by a League of Nations, ought to remove the last 
 excuse for those strategic protections which nations have hitherto felt 
 bound to require. 
 
 It is the supreme principle of the right of each people to deter- 
 mine its own destiny that must now decide what steps should be 
 taken by way of restitution or reparation, and whatever territorial 
 readjustments may be foimd to be necessary at the close of the 
 present war. 
 
 The Conference accordingly emphasises the importance to the 
 labour and Socialist movement of a clear and exact definition of 
 what is meant by the right of each people to determine its own 
 destiny. Neither destiny of race nor identity of language can be 
 regarded as affording more than a presumption in favour of federa- 
 tion or unification. During the nineteenth century the theories of 
 this kind have so often served as a cloak for aggression that the 
 International cannot but seek to prevent any recurrence of such an 
 evil. Any adjustments of boundaries that become necessary must 
 be based exclusively upon the desire of the people concerned. 
 
 It is true that it is impossible for the necessary consultation of 
 
APPENDIX I 103 
 
 the desires of the people concerned to be made in any fixed and 
 invariable way for all the cases in which it is required, and that the 
 problems of nationality and territory are not the same for the inhab- 
 itants of all countries. Nevertheless, what is necessary in all cases 
 is that the procedure to be adopted should be decided, not by one 
 of the parties to the dispute, but by the super-national authority. 
 
 Upon the basis of tlie general principles herein formulated the 
 Conference proposes the following solutions of particular problems: 
 
 (a) BELGrcM 
 
 The Conference emphatically insists that a foremost condition of 
 peace must be the reparation by the German government, under the 
 direction of an International Commission, of the wrong admittedly 
 done to Belgium; payment by that government for all the damage 
 that has resulted from this wrong; and the restoration of Belgium 
 as an independent sovereign state, leaving to the decision of the 
 Belgian people the determination of their own future policy in all 
 respects. 
 
 (b) Alsace and Lorraine 
 
 The Conference declares that the problem of Alsace and Lorraine 
 is not one of territorial adjustment, but one of right, and thus an 
 international problem, the solution of which is indispensable if peace 
 is to be either just or lasting. 
 
 The Treaty of Frankfort at one and the same time mutilated 
 France and violated the right of the inhabitants of Alsace and Lor- 
 raine to dispose of their own destinies, a right which they have 
 repeatedly claimed. 
 
 The new treaty of peace, in recognising that Germany by her 
 declaration of war of 1914, has herself broken the Treaty of Frank- 
 fort, will make null and void the gains of a brutal conquest and of 
 the violence committed against the people. 
 
 France, having secured this recognition, can properly agree to a 
 fresh consultation of the population of Alsace and Lorraine as to its 
 own desires. 
 
 The treaty of peace will bear the signatures of every nation in 
 the world. It will be guaranteed by the League of Nations. To this 
 League of Nations France is prepared to remit, with the freedom 
 and sincerity of a popular vote, of which the details can be subse- 
 quently settled, the organisation of such a consultation as shall 
 settle forever, as a matter of right, the future destiny of Alsace and 
 Lorraine, and as shall finally remove from the common life of all 
 Europe a quarrel which has imposed so heavy a biurden upon it. 
 
 (c) The Balkans 
 
 The Conference lays down the principle that all the violations and 
 perversions of the rights of the people which have taken place, or are 
 still taking place, in the Balkans must be made the subject of redress 
 or reparation. 
 
104 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 Serbia, Montenegro, Rumania, Albania and all the territories 
 occupied by military forces sliould be evacuated by the hostile forces. 
 Wherever any population of the same race and tongue demands to 
 be united this must be done. Each such people must be accorded 
 full liberly to settle its ovrn destiny, without regard to the imperial- 
 istic pretensions of Austria, Hungary, Turkey or other state. 
 
 Accepting this principle, the Conference proposes that the whole 
 problem of the administrative reorganisation of the Balkan peoples 
 should be dealt with by a special conference of their representatives 
 or in case of disagreement by an authoritative international commis- 
 sion on the basis of (a) the concession within each independent 
 sovereignty of local autonomy and security for the development of 
 its particular civilisation of every racial minority; (6) the universal 
 guarantee of freedom or religion and political equality for all races; 
 (c) a Customs and Postal Union embracing the whole of the Balkan 
 states with free access for each to its natural seaport; (d) the entry 
 of all the Balkan states into a federation for the concerted arrangement 
 by mutual agreement among themselves of all matters of common 
 interest. 
 
 (d) Italy 
 
 The conference declares its warmest sympathy with the people of 
 Italian blood and speech who have been left outside the boundaries 
 that have, as a result of the diplomatic agreements of the past, and 
 for strategic reasons, been assigned to the Kingdom of Italy, and 
 supports their claim to be united with those of their own race and 
 tongue. It realises that arrangements may be necessary for securing 
 the legitimate interests of the people of Italy in the adjacent seas, 
 but it condemns the aims of conquest of Italian Imperialism and 
 believes that all legitimate needs can be safeguarded, without pre- 
 cluding a like recognition of the deeds of others or annexation of 
 other people's territories. 
 
 Regarding the Italian population dispersed on the eastern shores 
 of the Adriatic, the relations between Italy and the Yugo-Slav popu- 
 lations must be based on principles of equity and conciliation, so as 
 to prevent any cause of future quarrel. 
 
 If there are found to be groups of Slavonian race within the 
 newly defined Kingdom of Italy or groups of Italian race in Sla- 
 vonian territory, mutual guarantees must be given for the assurance 
 of all of them, on one side or the other, full liberty of local self- 
 government and of the natural development of their several activities. 
 
 (e) Poland and the Baltic Provinces 
 
 In accordance with the right of every people to determine its ovni 
 destinies, Poland must be reconstituted in unity and independence 
 with free access to the sea. 
 
 The Conference declares further, that any annexation by Germany, 
 whether open or disguised, of Livonia, Courland or Lithuania would 
 be a flagrant and wholly inadmissible violation of international law. 
 
APPENDIX I lOS 
 
 (f) The Jews and Palestine 
 
 The Conference demands for the Jews in all countries the same 
 elementary rights of freedom of religion, education, residence and 
 trade and equal citizenship that ought to be extended to all the 
 inhabitants of every nation. It further expresses the opinion that 
 Palestine should be set free from the hard and oppressive govern- 
 ment of the Turk, in order that this country may form a Free State, 
 under international guarantee, to which such of the Jewish people 
 as desire to do so may return and may work out their own salva- 
 tion free from interference by those of alien race or religion. 
 
 (g) The Problem op the Turkish Empire 
 
 The Conference condemns the handing back to the systematically 
 cruel domination of the Turkish government any subject people. 
 Thus, whatever may be proposed with regard to Armenia, Mesopo- 
 tamia and Arabia, they cannot be restored to the tyranny of the 
 Sultan and his Pashas. The Conference condemns the imperialist 
 aims of governments and capitalists who would make of these and 
 other territories now dominated by the Turkish hordes merely instru- 
 ments either of exploitation or militarism. If the peoples of these 
 territories do not feel themselves able to settle their own destinies, 
 the Conference insists that, conformably with the policy of "no 
 annexations," they should be placed for administration in the hands 
 of a. Commission acting under the Super-National Authority or 
 League of Nations. It is further suggested that the peace of the 
 world requires that the Dardanelles should be permanently and 
 effectively neutralised and opened like all the main lines of marine 
 communication, under the control of the League of Nations, freely 
 to all nations, without hindrance or customs duties. 
 
 (h) Austria-Hungary 
 
 The Conference does not propose as a war aim dismemberment 
 of Austria-Hungary or its deprivation of economic access to the 
 sea. On the other hand, the Conference cannot admit that the claims 
 to independence made by the Czecho-Slovaks and the Yugo-Slavs 
 must be regarded merely as questions for internal decision. National 
 independence ought to be accorded, according to rules to be laid 
 down by the League of Nations, to such peoples as demand it, and 
 these communities ought to have the opportunity of determining 
 their own groupings and federations according to their affinities and 
 interests. If they think fit they are free to substitute a free federa- 
 tion of Danubian states for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
 
 (i) The Colonies and Dependencies 
 
 The International has always condemned the colonial policy of 
 capitalist governments. Without ceasing to condemn it, the Inter- 
 Allied Conference nevertheless recognises the existence of a state of 
 things which it is obliged to take into account. 
 
106 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 The Conference considers that the treaty of peace ought to secure. 
 to the natives in all colonies and dependencies effective protection 
 against the excesses of capitahst colonialism. The Conference de- 
 mands the concession of administrative autonomy for all groups of 
 people that attaui a certain degree of civilisation, and for all the 
 others a progressive participation in local government. 
 
 The Conference is Of opinion that the return of the colonies to 
 those wrho possessed them before the Vifar, or the exchange or com- 
 pensations which might be effected, oilght not to be an obstacle to 
 the making of peace. 
 
 Those colonies that have been taken by conquest from any bellig- 
 erent must be made the subject of special consideration at the Peace 
 Conference, as to which the communities in their neighbourhood will 
 be entitled to take part. But the clause in the treaty of peace on 
 this point must secure economic equality in such territories for the 
 peoples of all nations, and ' thereby guarantee that none are shut 
 out from legitimate access to raw materials; prevented from disposing 
 of their own products, or deprived of their proper share of economic 
 development. 
 
 As regards more especially the colonies of all the belligerents in 
 Tropical Africa, from sea to sea, including the whole of the region 
 north of the Zambesi and south of the Sahara, the Conference 
 condemns any imperialist idea which would make these countries 
 the booty of one or several nations, exploit them for the profit of 
 the capitalist or use them for the promotion of the militarist aims 
 of the goverrunents. 
 
 With respect to these colonies the Conference declares in favour 
 of a system, of control, established fay international agreement, under 
 the League of Nations and maintained by its guarantee, which, 
 whilst respecting national sovereignty, would be alike inspired by 
 broad conceptions of economic freedom and concerned to safeguard 
 the rights of the natives under the best conditions possible for them, 
 and in particular: 
 
 (1) It would take account in each locality of the wishes of the 
 people, expressed in the form which is possible for them. 
 
 (2) The interests of the native tribes as regards the ovmership 
 of the soil would be maintained. 
 
 (3) The whole of the revenues would be devoted to the well- 
 being and development of the colonies themselves. 
 
 ECONOMIC RELATIONS 
 
 IV. The Inter-Allied Conference declares against all the projects 
 now being prepared by imperialists and capitalists, not in any one 
 country only, but in most countries, for an economic war, after peace 
 has been secured, either against one or other foreign nation or against 
 all foreign nations, as such an economic war, if begun by any country, 
 would inevitably lead to reprisals, to which each nation in turn 
 might in self-defence be driven. The main lines of marine com- 
 munication should be open without hindrance to vessels of all 
 
APPENDIX I 107 
 
 nations under the protection of the League of Nations. The Con- 
 ference realises that all attempts at economic aggression, whether 
 by protective tariffs or capitalist trusts or monopolies, inevitably 
 result in the spoliation of the working classes of the several countries 
 for the profit of the capitalists; and the working classes see in the 
 alliance between the military imperialists and the fiscal protectionists 
 in any country whatsoever not only a serious danger to the prosperity 
 of the masses of the people, but also a grave menace to peace. On 
 the other hand, the right of each nation to the defence of its own 
 economic interests, and in face of the world-shortage hereinafter 
 mentioned, to the conservation for its own people of a sufficiency 
 of its own supplies of foodstuffs and raw materials, cannot be 
 denied. The Conference accordingly urges upon the labour and 
 Socialist parties of all countries the importance of insisting, in the 
 attitude of the government towards commercial enterprise, along 
 with the necessary control of supplies for its own people, on the 
 principle of the open door, and without hostile discrimination against 
 foreign countries. But it urges equally the importance, not merely 
 of conservation, but also of the utmost possible development, by 
 appropriate government action, of the resources of every country 
 for the benefit not only of its own people, but also of the world, 
 and the need for an international agreement for the enforcement in 
 all countries of the legislation on factory conditions, a maximum 
 eight-hour day, the prevention of "sweating" and unhealthy trades 
 necessary to protect ibe workers against exploitation and oppression, 
 and the prohibition of night work by women and children. 
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF PEACE 
 
 V. To make the world safe for democracy involves much more than 
 the prevention of war, either military or economic. It will be a 
 device of the capitalist interests to pretend that the treaty of peace 
 need concern itself only with the cessation of the struggles of the 
 armed forces and with any necessary territorial readjustments. The 
 Inter-Allied Conference insists that in view of the probable world- 
 wide shortage, after the war, of exportable foodstuffs and raw 
 materials, and of merchant shipping, it is imperative, in order to 
 prevent the most serious hardships, and even possible famine, in one 
 country or another, that systematic arrangements should be made on 
 an international basis for the allocation and conveyance of the avail- 
 able exportable surpluses of these commodities to the different coun- 
 tries, in proportion, not to their purchasing powers, but to their 
 several pressing needs; and that, within each country, the govern- 
 ment must for some time maintain its control of the most indis- 
 pensable commodities, in order to secure their appropriation, not in 
 a competitive market mainly to the richer classes in proportion to 
 their means, but, systematically, to meet the most urgent needs 
 of the whole community on the principle of "no cake for any one 
 imtil all have bread." 
 
 Moreover, it cannot but be anticipated that, in all countries, the 
 
108 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 dislocation of industry attendant on peace, the instant discharge 
 of millions of munition makers and workers in war trades, and the 
 demobilisation of millions of soldiers — in face of the scarcity of 
 industrial capital, the shortage of raw materials, and the insecurity 
 of commercial enterprise — will, unless prompt and energetic action 
 be taken by the several governments, plunge a large part of the wage- 
 earning population into all the miseries of unemployment more or 
 less prolonged. In view of the fact that widespread unemployment 
 in any country, like a famine, is an injury not to that country alone, 
 but impoverishes also the rest of the world, the Conference holds 
 that it is the duty of every government to take immediate action, not 
 merely to relieve the imemployed, when unemployment has set in, 
 but actually, so far as may be practicable, to prevent the occurrence 
 of unemployment. It therefore urges upon the labour parties of every 
 country the necessity of their pressing upon their governments the 
 preparation of plans for the execution of all the innumerable public 
 works (such as the making and repairing of roads, railways and water- 
 ways, the erection of schools and public buildings, the provision of 
 working-class dwellings and the reclamation and afforestation of land) 
 that will be required in the near future, not for the sake of finding 
 measures of relief for the unemployed, but with a view to these 
 works being undertaken at such a rate in each locality as will 
 suffice, together with the various capitalist enterprises that may be 
 in progress, to maintain at a fairly uniform level year by year, and 
 throughout each year, the aggregate demand for labour; and thus 
 prevent there being any unemployed. It is now known that in this 
 way it is quite possible for any government to prevent, if it chooses, 
 the occurrence of any widespread or prolonged involuntary unem- 
 ployment; which if it is now in any country allowed to occur, is 
 as much the result of government neglect as is any epidemic disease. 
 
 RESTORATION OF THE DEVASTATED AREAS AND 
 REPARATION OF WRONGDOING 
 
 VI. The Inter-Allied Conference holds that one of the most 
 imperative duties of all countries immediately peace is declared will 
 be the restoration, so far as may be possible, of the homes, farms, 
 factories, public buildings and means of communication whatever 
 destroyed by war operations; that the restoration should not be 
 limited to compensation for public buildings, capitalist undertakings 
 and material property proved to be destroyed or damaged, but 
 should be extended to setting up the wage-earners and peasants 
 themselves in homes and employment; and that to insure the full 
 and impartial application of these principles the assessment and dis- 
 tribution of the compensation, so far as the cost is contributed by 
 any international fund, should be made under the direction of an 
 international Commission. 
 
 The Conference will not be satisfied unless there is a full and 
 free judicial investigation into the accusations made on all sides 
 that particular goverrunents have ordered, and particular officers 
 
APPENDIX I 109 
 
 have exercised, acts of cruelty, oppression, violence and theft against 
 individual victims, for which no justification can be found in the 
 ordinary usages of war. It draws attention in particular to the loss 
 of life and property of merchant seamen and other non-combatants 
 (including women and children) resulting from this inhuman and 
 ruthless conduct. It should be part of the conditions of peace that 
 there should be forthwith set up a Court of Claims and Accusations, 
 which should investigate all such allegations as may be brought 
 before it, summon the accused person or government to answer the 
 complaint, to pronounce judgment, and award compensation or dam- 
 ages, payable by the individual or government condemned, to the 
 persons who had suffered wrong, or to their dependents. The sev- 
 eral governments must be responsible, financially and otherwise, for 
 the presentation of the cases of their respective nationals to such a 
 Court of Claims and Accusations, and for the payment of the com- 
 pensation awarded. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 
 
 VII. The Inter-Allied Conference is of opinion that an Interna- 
 tional Conference of Labour and Socialist organisations, held under 
 proper conditions, would at this stage render useful service to world 
 democracy by assisting to remove misunderstandings, as well as the 
 obstacles which stand in the way of world peace. 
 
 Awaiting the resumption of the normal activities of the Interna- 
 tional Socialist Bureau, we consider that an International Confer- 
 ence, held during the period of hostilities, should be organised by a 
 committee whose impartiality cannot be questioned. It should be 
 held in a neutral country, under such conditions as would inspire 
 confidence; and the Conference should be fully representative of all 
 the labour and Socialist movement in all the belligerent countries 
 accepting the conditions under which the Conference is convoked. 
 
 As an essential condition to an International Conference the Com- 
 mission is of opinion that the organisers of the Conference should 
 satisfy themselves that all the organisations to be represented put 
 in precise form, by a public declaration, their peace terms in 
 conformity with the principles "no annexations or punitive in- 
 demnities, and the right of all peoples to self-determination," 
 and that they are working with all their power to obtain from 
 their governments the necessary guarantees to apply those principles 
 honestly and unreservedly to all questions to be dealt with at any 
 official peace conference. 
 
 In view of the vital differences between the Allied countries and 
 the Central Powers, the Commission is of opinion that it is highly ad- 
 visable that the Conference should be used to provide an opportunity 
 for the delegates from the respective coimtries now in a state of 
 war to make a full and frank statement of their present position 
 and future intentions, and to endeavour by mutual agreement to 
 arrange a programme of action for a speedy and democratic peace. 
 
 The Conference is of opinion that the working classes, having 
 
110 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 made such sacrifices during the war, are entitled to take part in 
 securing a democratic world peace, and that M. Albert Thomas 
 (P'rance), M. Eniile Vandervelde (IJelgiuin) and Mr Arthur Hen- 
 derson (Great Britain) be appointed as a commission to secure from 
 all the governments a promise that at least one representative of 
 Labour and Socialism will be included in the official representation 
 at any government conference, and to organise a Labour and So- 
 cialist representation to sit concurrently with the official confer- 
 ence; further, that no country be entitled to more than four repre- 
 sentatives at such conference. 
 
 The Conference regrets the absence of representatives of American 
 labour and Socialism from the Inter-Allied Conference, and urges 
 the importance of securing their approval of the decisions reached. 
 With this object in view, the Conference agrpes that a deputation, 
 consisting of one representative from France, Belgium, Italy and 
 Great Britain, together with Camille Huysmans (Secretary of the 
 International Socialist Bureau), proceed to the United States at 
 once, in order to confer with representatives of the American democ- 
 racy on the whole situation of the war. 
 
 The Conference resolves to transmit to the Socialists of the Central 
 Empires and of the nations allied with them the memorandum in 
 which tlie Conference has defined the conditions of peace, conform- 
 ably with the principles of Socialist and international justice. The 
 Conference is convinced that these conditions will commend them- 
 selves on reflection to the mind of every Socialist, and the Confer- 
 ence asks for the answer of the Socialists of the Central Empires, in 
 the hope that these will join without delay in a joint effort of the 
 International, which has now become more than ever the best and 
 the most certain instrument of democracy and peace. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 LABOUR AND THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 A DRAFT REPORT ON RE-CONSTRUCTION 
 
 [The following Draft Report on the General Policy of the Party on 
 "Reconstruction" has been prepared by a Sub-Committee of the 
 Executive for the consideration of the Party; and is submitted by the 
 Executive to the annual Conference at Nottingham, not for adoption 
 but with a view to its being specially referred to the constituent organ- 
 isations for discussion and eventual submission to the Party Confer- 
 ence to be arranged for June next, or a special Conference should a 
 General Election render it necessary.^ 
 
 It behoves the Labour Party, in formulating its own programme 
 for Reconstruction after the war, and in criticising the various 
 preparations and plans that are being made by the present Govern- 
 ment, to look at the problem as a whole. We have to make it clear 
 what it is that we wish to construct. It is important to emphasise 
 the fact that, whatever may be the case with regard to other political 
 parties, oiu- detailed practical proposals proceed from definitely held 
 principles. 
 
 THE END OF A CIVILISATION 
 
 We need to beware of patchwork. The view of the Labour Party 
 is that what has to be reconstructed after the war is not this or that 
 Government Department, or this or that piece of social machinery; 
 but, so far as Britain is concerned, society itself. The individual 
 worker, or for that matter the individual statesman, immersed in 
 daily routine — like the individual soldier in a battler-easily fails to 
 understand the magnitude and far-reaching importance of what is 
 taking place around him. How does it fit together as a whole? 
 How does it look from a distance? Count Okuma, one of the oldest, 
 most experienced and ablest of the statesmen of Japan, watching the 
 present conflict from the other side of the globe, declares it to be 
 nothing less than the death of European civilisation. Just as in the 
 past the civilisations of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and the 
 great Roman Empire have been successively destroyed, so, in the 
 judgment of this detached observer, the civilisation of all Europe is 
 even now receiving its death-blow. We of the Labour Party can 
 so far agree in this estimate as to recognise, in the present world 
 catastrophe, if not the death, in Europe, of civilisation itself, at any 
 
 III 
 
112 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 rate the culmination and collapse of a distinctive industrial civili- 
 sation, which the workers will not seek to reconstruct. At such 
 times of crisis it is easier to slip into ruin than to progress into higher 
 forms of organisation. That is the problem as it presents itself to 
 the Labour Party to-day. 
 
 What this war is consuming is not merely the security, the homes, 
 the livelihood and the lives of millions of innocent families, and an 
 enormous proportion of all the accumulated wealth of the world, 
 but also the very basis of the peculiar social order in which it has 
 arisen. The individualist system of capitalist production, based 
 on the private ownership and competitive administration of land and 
 capital, with its reckless "profiteering" and wage-slavery; with 
 its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the means of life and 
 its hypocritical pretence of the "survival of the fittest"; with the 
 monstrous inequality of circumstances which it produces and the 
 degradation and brutalisation, both moral and spiritual, resulting 
 therefrom, may, we hope, indeed have received a death-blow. With 
 it must go the political system and ideas in which it naturally found 
 expression. We of the Labour Party, whether in opposition or in 
 due time called upon to form an Administration, will certainly lend 
 no hand to its revival. On the contrary, we shall do our utmost to 
 see that it is buried with the millions whom it has done to death. If 
 we in Britain are to escape from the decay of civilisation itself, which 
 the Japanese statesman foresees, we must ensure that what is 
 presently to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting, 
 but on fraternity — not on the competitive struggle for the means 
 of bare life, but on a deliberately planned co-operation in production 
 and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by 
 brain — not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a 
 systematic approach towards a healthy equality of material cir- 
 cumstances for every person bom into the world — not on an enforced 
 dominion over subject nations, subject races, subject Colonies, subject 
 classes or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in government, 
 on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and 
 that widest possible participation in power, both economic and 
 political, which is characteristic of Democracy. We do not, of 
 course pretend that it is possible, even after the drastic clearing away 
 that is now going on, to build society anew in a year or two of 
 feverish "Reconstruction." What the Labour Party intends to satisfy 
 itself about is that each brick that it helps to lay shall go to erect the 
 structure that it intends, and no other. 
 
 THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE 
 
 We need not here recapitulate, one by one, the different items in 
 the Labour Party's programme, which successive Party Conferences 
 have adopted. These proposals, some of them in various publi- 
 cations worked out in practical detail, are often carelessly derided 
 as impracticable, even by the politicians who steal them piecemeal 
 frpflj us! Thf members of the Labour Party, themselves actually 
 
APPENDIX II 113 
 
 working by hand or by brain, in close contact with the facts, have 
 perhaps at all times a more accurate appreciation of what is practi- 
 cable, in industry as in politics, than those who depend solely on 
 academic instruction or are biased by great possessions. But to-day 
 no man dares to say that anything is impracticable. The war, 
 which has scared the old Political Parties right out of their dogmas, 
 has taught every statesman and every Government official, to his 
 enduring, surprise, how very much more can be done along the lines 
 that we have laid down than he had ever before thought possible. 
 What we now promulgate as our policy, whether for opposition or for 
 office, is not merely this or that specific reform, but a deliberately 
 thought-out, systematic, and comprehensive plan for that immediate 
 social rebuilding which any Ministry, whether or not it desires to 
 grapple with the problem, will be driven to undertake. The Four 
 Pillars of the House that we propose to erect, resting upon the 
 common foundation of the Democratic control of society in all its 
 a ctivities, may be tp^-med rp snprtivclv : 
 
 (a) 'I'ne Universal EnforcUllJLUl Uf LllL liTal'ional 
 
 (6) The Democratic Control of Industry; 
 
 (c) The Revolution in National Finance; and 
 
 (d) The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good. 
 
 'I'he various detailed prOp6i!!lla iil Ihti LiltiOUr Pkrty, "herein briefly 
 summarised, rest on these four pillars, and can best be appreciated 
 in connection with them. 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL ENFORCEMENT OF A NATIONAL 
 
 MINIMUM 
 
 The first principle of the Labour Party — in significant contrast 
 with those of the Capitalist System, whether expressed by the Liberal 
 or by the Conservative Party — is the securing to every member of 
 the, community^ in good timps and hari alikp (and not nniv in tnp 
 strong and able, the well-born or the fortunate), of all the requisites 
 of healthy life and worthy citizenshin. T his is in no sense a class" 
 proposal. Such an amount of social protection of the individual, 
 however poor and lowly, from birth to death is, as the economist 
 now knows, as indispensable to fruitful co-operation as it is to 
 successful combination; and it affords the only complete safeguard 
 against that insidious Degradation of the Standard of Life, which is 
 the worst economic and social calamity to which any community can 
 be subjected. We are members one of another. No man liveth to 
 himself alone. If any, even the humblest is made to suffer, the whole 
 community and every one of us, whether or not we recognise the fact, 
 is thereby injured. Generation after generation this has been the 
 comer-stone of the faith of Labour. It will be the guiding principle 
 of any Labour Government. 
 
 The Legislative Regulation of Employment 
 
 Thus it is that the Labour Party to-dav stands for the universal 
 application of the Policy of the National Minimum, to which (as 
 
114 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 embodied in the successive elaborations of the Factory, Mines, 
 Railways, Shops, Merchant Shipping, and Truck Acts, the Public 
 Health, Housing, and Education Acts and the minimum Wage Act — 
 all of them aiming at the enforcement of at least the prescribed 
 Minimum of Leisure, Health, Education, and Subsistence) the 
 spokesmen of Labour have already gained the support of the en- 
 lightened statesmen and economists of the wrorld. All these lavirs 
 purporting to protect against extreme Degradation of the Standard 
 of Life need considerable improvement and extension, whilst their 
 administration leaves much to be desired. For instance, the Work- 
 men's Compensation Act fails, shamefully, not merely to secure 
 proper provision for all the victims of accident and industrial disease, 
 but what is much more important, does not succeed in preventing 
 their continual increase. The amendment and consolidation of the 
 Factories and Workshop Acts, with their extension to all employed 
 persons, is long overdue, and it will be the policy of Labour greatly 
 to strengthen the staff of inspectors, especially by the addition of 
 more men and women of actual experience of the workshop and the 
 mine. The Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act must certainly be 
 maintained in force, and suitably amended, so as both to ensure 
 greater uniformity of conditions among the several districts, and to 
 make the District Minimum in all cases an effective reality. The 
 same policy will, in the interests of the agricultural labourers, dictate 
 the perpetuation of the Legal Wage clauses of the new Com Law 
 just passed for a term of five years, and the prompt amendment of any 
 defects that may be revealed in their working. And, in view of the 
 fact that many millions of wage-earners, notably women and the less- 
 skilled workmen in various occupations, are unable by combination 
 to obtain wages adequate for decent maintenance in health, the 
 Labour Party intends to see that the Trade Boards Act is suitably 
 amended and made to apply to all industrial employments in. which 
 any considerable number of those employed obtain less than 30s. 
 per week. This minimum of not less than 30s. per week (which will 
 need revision according to the level of prices) ought to be the very 
 lowest statutory base line for the least skilled adult workers, men 
 or women, in any occupation, in all parts of the United Kingdom. 
 
 The Organisation op DEMOBiLisAnoN 
 
 But the coming industrial dislocation, which will inevitably 
 follow the discharge from war service of half of all the working 
 population, imposes new* obligations upon the community. The 
 demobilisation and discharge of the eight million wage-earners 
 now being paid from public funds, either for service with the colours 
 or in munition work and other war trades, will bring to the whole 
 wage-earning class grave peril of Unemployment, Reduction of 
 Wages, and a Lasting Degradation of the Standard of Life, which 
 can be prevented only by deliberate National Organisation. The 
 Labour Party has repeatedly called upon the present Government 
 to formulate its plan, and to make in advance all arrangements 
 
APPENDIX II 115 
 
 necessary for coping witli so unparalleled a dislocation. The policy 
 to which the Labour Party commits itself is unhesitating and un- 
 compromising. It is plain that regard should be had, in stopping 
 Government orders, reducing the staff of the National Factories and 
 demobilising the Army, to the actual state of employment in particu- 
 lar industries and in different districts, so as both to release first the 
 kinds of labour most urgently required for the revival of peace 
 production, and to prevent any congestion of the market. It is 
 no less imperative that suitable provision against being turned 
 suddenly adrift without resources should be made, not only for 
 the soldiers, but also for the three million operatives in munition 
 work and other war trades, who will be discharged long before 
 most of the Army can be disbanded. On this important point, 
 which is the most urgent of all, the present Government has, we 
 believe, down to the present hour, formulated no plan, and come to 
 no decision, and neither the Liberal nor the Conservative Party 
 has apparently deemed the matter worthy of agitation. Any Gov- 
 ernment which should allow the discharged soldier or munition 
 worker to fall into the clutches of charity or the Poor Law would 
 have to be instantly driven from office by an outburst of popular 
 indignation. What every one of them who is not wholly disabled 
 will look for is a. situation in accordance with his capacity. 
 
 Securing Employment tor All 
 
 The Labour Party insists — as no other political party has thought 
 fit to do — that the obligation to find suitable employment in pro- 
 ductive work for all these men and women rests upon the Govern- 
 ment for the time being. The work of re-settling the disbanded 
 soldiers and discharged mmiition workers into new situations is a 
 national obligation; and the Laboui; Party emphatically protests 
 against it being regarded as a matter for private charity. It strongly 
 objects to this public duty being handed over either to committees of 
 philanthropists or benevolent societies, or to any of the military or 
 recruiting authorities. The policy of the Labour Party in this matter 
 is to make the utmost use of the Trade Unions, and equally for the 
 brain workers, of the various Professional Associations. In view of 
 the fact that, in any trade, the best organisation for placing men in/ 
 situations is a national Trade Union having local branches through- 
 out the kingdom, every soldier should be allowed, if he chooses, to 
 have a duplicate of his industrial discharge notice sent out, one 
 month before the date fixed for his discharge, to the Secretary of the 
 Trade Union to which he belongs or wishes to belong. Apart 
 from this use of the Trade Union (and a corresponding use of the 
 Professional Association) the Government must, of course, avail 
 itself of some such public machinery as that of the Employment 
 Exchanges; but before the existing Exchanges (which will need to be 
 greatly extended) can receive the co-operation and support of the 
 organised Labour Movement, without which their operations can 
 never be fully successful, it is imperative that they should be drasti- 
 
116 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 cally reformed, on the lines laid down in the Demobilisation Report 
 of the "Labour after the War" Joint Committee; and, in particular, 
 that each Exchange should be placed effectively under the super- 
 vision and control of a Joint Committee of Employers and Trade 
 Unionists in equal numbers. 
 
 The responsibility of the Government, for the tim e being, in 
 the~Krave industrial crisis that d emobilisation will t>t'oduc<i, guts, 
 iiowever, tar beyond the einlit fflllllo il men ailj wome n Whom tET 
 v arious aepartments will suodenly d iMdiaige fium lUelr own service. 
 The etlect ot tnis peremptory distliarge on all the other workers has 
 also to be taken into account. To the Labour Party it will seem the 
 supreme concern of the Governmpnt o f the day to s ee to it that there 
 sna il De, as a result of the gigantic "General Fosf wnicn it will 
 itseli have aeliberately set going, jnowhere any Degradation of the 
 Standard of Life. The Government has pledged itselt to restore 
 the I'rade union conditions and "pre-war practices" of the work- 
 shop, which the Trade Unions patriotically gave up at the direct 
 request of the Government itself; and this solemn pledge must be 
 fulfilled, of course, in the spirit as well as in the letter. The Labour 
 Party, moreover, holds it to be the duty of the Government of the 
 day to take all necessary steps to prevent the Standard Rates of 
 Wages, in any trade or occupation whatsoever, from suffering any 
 reduction, relatively' to the contemporary cost of living. Un- 
 fortunately, the present Government, like the Liberal and Conser- 
 vative Parties, so far refuses to speak on this important matter with 
 any clear voice. We claim that it should be a cardinal point of 
 Government policy to make it plain to every capitalist employer 
 that any attempt to reduce the customary rate of wages when peace 
 comes, or to take advantage of the dislocation of demobilisation to 
 worsen the conditions of employment in any grade whatsoever, will 
 certainly lead to embittered industrial strife, which will be in the 
 highest degree detrimental to the national interests; and that the 
 Government of the day will not hesitate to take all necessary steps 
 to avert such a calamity. In the great impending crisis the Govern- 
 ment of the day should not only, as the greatest employer of both 
 brainworkers and manual workers, set a good example in this respect 
 but should also actively seek to influence private employers by pro- 
 claiming in advance that it will not itself attempt to lower the 
 Standard Rates of conditions in public employment; by announcing 
 that it will insist on the most rigorous observance of the Fair Wages 
 Clause in all public contracts, and by explicitly recommending every 
 Local Authority to adopt the same policy. 
 
 But nothing is more dangerous to the Standard of Life, or so 
 destructive of those minimum conditions of healthy existence, which 
 must in the interests of the community be assured to every worker, 
 than any widespread or continued unemployment. It has always 
 been a fundamental principle of the Labour Party (a point on which 
 significantly enough it has not been followed by either of the other 
 political parties) that in a modern industrial commtmity, it is one of 
 the foremost obligations of the Government to find, for every willing 
 
APPENDIX II 117 
 
 worker, whether by hand or by brain, productive work at Standard 
 Rates. 
 
 It is accordingly the duty of the Government to adopt a policy 
 of deliberately and systematically preventing the occurrence of un- 
 employment, instead of (as heretofore) letting unemployment occur, 
 and then seeking, vainly and expensively, to relieve the unemployed. 
 It is now known that the Government can, if it chooses, arrange the 
 Public Works and the orders of National Departments and Local 
 Authorities in such a way as to maintain the aggregate demand 
 for labour in the whole kingdom (including that of capitalist em- 
 ployers) approximately at a uniform level from year to 
 year; and it is therefore a primary obligation of the Government 
 to prevent any considerable or widespread fluctuations in the total 
 numbers employed in times of good or bad trade. But this is 
 not all. In order to prepare for the possibility of there being any 
 imemployment, either in the course of demobilisation or in the first 
 years of peace, it is essential that the Government should make all 
 necessary preparations for putting instantly in hand, directly or 
 through the Local Authorities, such urgently needed public works as 
 (a) the rehousing of the population alike in rural districts, mining 
 villages, and town slums, to the extent, possibly, of a million new 
 cottages and an outlay of 300 millions sterling; (b) the immediate 
 making good of the shortage of schools, training colleges, technical 
 colleges, &c., and the engagement of the necessary additional teach- 
 ing, clerical and administrative staffs; (c) new roads; (d) light 
 railways; (e) the unification and reorganisation of the railway and 
 canal system; (/) afforestation; (g) the reclamation of land; (h) the 
 development and better equipment of our ports and harbours; («') 
 the opening up of access to land by co-operative small holdings and in 
 other practicable ways. Moreover, in order to relieve any pressure 
 of an overstocked labour market, the opportunity should be taken, 
 if unemployment should threaten to become widespread, (o) im- 
 mediately to raise the school leaving age to sixteen; (6) greatly to 
 increase the number of scholarships and bursaries for Secondary and 
 Higher Education; and {c) substantially to shorten the hours of 
 labour of all young persons, even to a greater extent than the eight 
 , hours per week contemplated in the new Education Bill, in order 
 i to enable them to attend technical and other classes in the daytime. 
 Finally, wherever practicable, the hours of adult labour should be 
 reduced to not more than forty-eight per week, without reduction of 
 the Standard Rates of Wages. There can be no economic or other 
 justification for keeping any man or woman to work for long hours, 
 or at overtime, whilst others are unemployed. 
 
 Social Insurance Against Unemployment 
 
 In so far as the Government fails to prevent Unemployment — 
 wherever it finds it impossible to discover for any willing worker, 
 man or woman, a suitable situation at the Standard Rate — the 
 Labour Party holds that the Government must, in the interest of 
 
118 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 the community as a whole, provide him or her with adequate main- 
 tenance, either with such arrangements for honourable employment 
 or with such useful training as may be found practicable, according 
 to age, health and previous occupation. In many ways the best form 
 of provision for those who must be imemployed, because the industrial 
 organisation of the community so far breaks down as to be tem- 
 porarily unable to set them to work, is the Out of Work Benefit 
 afforded by a well administered Trade Union. This is a special tax 
 on the Trade Unionists themselves which they have voluntarily 
 undertaken, but towards which they have a right to claim a public 
 subvention — a subvention which was actually granted by Parliament 
 (though only to the extent of a couple of shillings or so per week) 
 under Part II. of the Insurance Act. The arbitrary withdrawal by 
 the Government in 1915 of this statutory right of the Trade Unions 
 was one of the least excusable of the war economies; and the Labour 
 Party must insist on the resumption of this subvention immediately 
 the war ceases, and on its increase to at least half the amount spent 
 in Out of Work Benefit. The extension of State Unemployment 
 Insurance to other occupations may afford a convenient method of 
 providing for such of the Unemployed, especially in the case of 
 badly paid women workers, and the less skilled men, whom it is 
 difficult to organise in Trade Unions. But the weekly rate of the 
 State Unemployment Benefits needs, in these days of high prices, to 
 be considerably raised; whilst no industry ought to be compul- 
 sorily brought within its scope against the declared will of the 
 workers concerned, and especially of their Trade Unions. In one 
 way or another remunerative employment or honourable mainte- 
 nance must be found for every willing worker, by band or by brain, 
 in bad times as well as in good. It is clear that, in the twentieth 
 century, there must be no question of driving the Unemployed to 
 anything so obsolete and discredited as either private charity, with 
 its haphazard and ill-considered doles, or the Poor Law, with the 
 futilities and barbarities of its "Stone Yard," or its "Able-bodied 
 Test Workhouse." Only on the basis of a universal application of 
 the Policy of the National Minimum, affording complete security 
 against destitution, in sickness and health, in good times and bad 
 alike, to every member of the community of whatever age or sex, 
 can any worthy social order be built up. 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 
 
 The universal application of the Policy of the National Minimum 
 is, of course, only the first of the Pillars of the House that the Labour 
 Party intends to see built. What marks off this Party most dis- 
 tinctively from any of the otlier political parties is its demand for 
 the full and genuine adoption of the principle of Democracy. The 
 first condition of Democracy is effective personal freedom. This has 
 suffered so many encroachments during the war that it is necessary 
 to state with clearness that the complete removal of all the war- 
 time restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of publication. 
 
APPENDIX 11 119 
 
 freedom of the press, freedom of travel and freedom of choice of place 
 of residence and kind of employment must take place the day after 
 Peace is declared. The Labour Party declared emphatically against 
 any continuance of the Military Service Acts a moment longer than 
 the imperative requirements of the war excuse. But individual 
 freedom is of little use without complete political rights. The 
 Labour Party sees its repeated demands largely conceded in the 
 present Representation of the People Act, but not yet wholly satis- 
 fied. The Party stands, as heretofore, for complete Adult Suffrage, 
 with not more than a three months' residential qualification, for 
 effective provision for absent electors to vote, for absolutely equal 
 rights for both sexes, for the same freedom to exercise civic rights 
 for the "common soldier" as for the officer, for Shorter Parliaments, 
 for the complete Abolition of the House of Lords, and for a most 
 strenuous opposition to any new Second Chamber, whether elected 
 or not, having in it any element of Heredity or Privilege, or of the 
 control of the House of Commons by any party or class. But 
 imlike the Conservative and Liberal Parties, the Labour Party 
 insists on Democracy in industry as well as in government. It 
 demands the progressive elimination from the control of industry 
 of the private capitalist, individual or joint-stock; and the setting 
 free of all who work, whether by hand or by brain, for the service of 
 the community, and of the community only. And the Labour 
 Party refuses absolutely to believe that the British people will 
 permanently tolerate any reconstruction or perpetuation of the dis- 
 organisation, waste and inefficiency involved in the abandonment of 
 British industry to a jostling crowd of separate private employers, 
 with their minds bent, not on the service of the community, but — ■ 
 by the very law of their being — only on the utmost possible profi- 
 teering. What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound 
 onwards in its aggregate productivity. But this cannot be secured 
 merely by pressing the manual workers to more strenuous toil, or 
 even by encouraging the "Captains of Industry" to a less wasteful 
 organisation of their several enterprises on a profit-making basis. 
 What the Labour Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorgani- 
 sation of the nation's industry, no longer deflected by individual 
 profiteering, on the basis pf the Common Ovniership of the means of 
 Production; the equitable sharing of the proceeds among all who 
 participate in any capacity and only among these, and the adoption, 
 in particular services and occupation, of those systems and methods 
 of administration and control that may be found, in practice, best 
 to promote, not profiteering, but the public interest. 
 
 Immediate Nationalisation 
 
 The Labour Party stands not merely for the principle of the 
 Common Ownership of the nation's land, to be applied as suitable 
 opportunities occur, but also, specifically, for the immediate 
 Nationalisation of Railways, Mines, and the production of Electrical 
 Power. We hold that the very foundation of any successful re- 
 
120 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 organisation of British Industry must necessarily be found in the 
 provision of the utmost facilities for transport and communication, 
 the production of power at the cheapest possible rate, and the most 
 economical supply of both electrical energy and coal to every corner 
 of the kingdom. Hence the Labour Party stands, unhesitatingly, 
 for the National Ov^nership and administration of the Railways and 
 Canals, and their union, along with Harbours and Roads and the 
 Posts and Telegraphs — not to say also the great lines of steamers 
 which could at once be owned, if not immediately directly managed 
 in detail, by the Government — in a united national service of Com- 
 munication and Transport; to be worked, unhampered by capitalist, 
 private or purely local interests (and with a steadily increasing par- 
 ticipation of the organised workers in the management, both central 
 and local), exclusively for the common good. If any Government 
 should be so misguided as to propose, when peace comes, to hand the 
 railways back to the shareholders; or should show itself so spend- 
 thrift of the nation's property as to give these shareholders any en- 
 larged franchise by presenting them with the economies of unifica- 
 tion or the profits of increased railway rates; or so extravagant 
 as to bestow public funds on the re-equipment of privately owned 
 lines — all of which things are now being privately intrigued for by the 
 railway interests — the Labour Party will offer any such project the 
 most strenuous opposition. The railways and canals, like the roads, 
 must henceforth belong to the public, and to the public alone. 
 
 In the production of Electricity, for cheap Power, Light and 
 Heating, this country has so far failed, because of hampering private 
 interests, to take advantage of science. Even in the largest cities 
 we still "peddle" our Electricity on a contemptibly small scale. 
 What is called for, immediately after the war, 'is the erection of a 
 score of gigantic "super-power stations," which could generate, at 
 incredibly cheap rates, enough electricity for the use of every 
 industrial establishment and every private household in Great 
 Britain; the present municipal and joint-stock electrical plants 
 being universally linked up and used for local distribution. This is 
 inevitably the future of Electricity. It is plain that so great and so 
 powerful an enterprise, affecting every industrial enterprise and, 
 eventually every household, must not be allowed to pass into the 
 hands of private capitalists. They are already pressing the 
 Government for the concession, and neither the Liberal nor the 
 Conservative Party has yet made up its mind to a refusal of such 
 a new endowment of profiteering in what will presently be the life- 
 blood of modern productive industry. The Labour Party demands 
 that the production of Electricity on the necessary gigantic scale shall 
 be made, from the start (with suitable arrangements for municipal 
 co-operation in local distribution), a national enterprise, to be worked 
 exclusively with the object of supplying the whole kingdom with the 
 cheapest possible Power, Light, and Heat. 
 
 But with the Railways and the generation of Electricity in the hands 
 of the public, it would be criminal folly to leave to the present 
 1,500 colliery companies the power of "holding up" the coal supply. 
 
APPENDIX II 121 
 
 These are now all working under public control, on terms that virtu- 
 ally afford to their shareholders a statutory guarantee of their 
 swollen incomes. The Labour Party demands tlie immediate 
 Nationalisation of Mines, the extraction of coal and iron being 
 worked as a public service (with a steadily increasing participation 
 in the management, both central and local, of the various grades of 
 persons employed) ; and the whole business of the retail distribution 
 of household coal being undertaken, as a local public service, by the 
 elected Municipal or County Councils. And there is no reason why 
 coal should fluctuate in price any more than railway fares, or why 
 the consumer should be made to pay more in winter than in summer, 
 or in one town than another. What the Labour Party would aim 
 at is, for household coal of standard quality, a fixed and uniform 
 price for the whole kingdom, payable by rich and poor alike, as 
 unalterable as the penny postage stamp. 
 
 But the sphere of immediate Nationalisation is not restricted to 
 these great industries. We shall never succeed in putting the 
 gigantic system of Health Insurance on a proper footing, or secure 
 a clear field for the beneficent work of the Friendly Societies, or 
 gain a free hand for the necessary development of the urgently 
 called for Ministry of Health and the Local Public Health Service, 
 until the nation expropriates the profit-making Industrial Insurance 
 Companies, which now so tyrannously exploit the people with their 
 wasteful house-to-house Industrial Life Assurance. Only by such 
 an expropriation of Life Assurance Companies can we secure the 
 universal provision, free from the burdensome toll of weekly pence, 
 of the indispensable Funeral Benefit. Nor is it in any sense a "class" 
 measure. Only by the assumption by a State Department of the 
 whole business of Life Assurance can the millions of policy holders 
 of all classes be completely protected against the possibly calamitous 
 results of the depreciation of securities and suspension of bonuses 
 which the war is causing. Only by this means can the great staff of 
 insurance agents find their proper place as Civil Servants, with 
 equitable conditions of employment, compensation for amy disturb- 
 ance and security of tenure, in a nationally organised public service 
 for the discharge of the steadily increasing functions of the Govern- 
 ment in Vital Statistics and Social Insurance. 
 
 In quite another sphere the Labour Party sees the key to Temper- 
 ance Reform in taking the entire manufacture and retailing of 
 alcoholic drink out of the hands of those who find profit in promoting 
 the utmost possible consumption. This is essentially a case in which 
 the people, as a whole, must assert its right to full and unfettered 
 power for dealing with the licensing question in accordance with 
 local opinion. For this purpose, localities should have conferred 
 upon them facilities 
 
 (o) To prohibit the sale of liquor within their boundaries; 
 
 (6) To reduce the number of licences and regulate the conditions 
 under which they may be held; and 
 
 (c) If a locality decides that licences are to be granted, to deter- 
 mine whether such licences shall be under private or any 
 form of public controj. 
 
122 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 MUNICIPALISATION 
 
 Other main industries, especially those now becoming monopo- 
 lised, should be nationalised as opportunity offers. Moreover, the 
 Labour Party holds that the Municipalities should not confine their 
 activities to the necessarily costly services of Education, Sanita- 
 tion and Police; nor yet rest content with acquiring control of the 
 local Water, Gas, Electricity, and Tramways; but that every facility 
 should be afforded to them to acquire (easily, quickly and cheaply) 
 all the land they require, and to extend their enterprises in Housing 
 and Town Planning, Parks, and Public Libraries, the provision of 
 music and the organisation of recreation; and also to undertake, 
 besides the retailing of coal, other services of common utility, par- 
 ticularly the local supply of milk, wherever this is not already fully 
 and satisfactorily organised by a Co-operative Society. 
 
 Control of Capitalist Industry 
 
 Meanwhile, however, we ought not to throw away the valuable 
 experience now gained by the Government in its assumption of the 
 importation of wheat, wool, metals, and other commodities, and in 
 its control of the shipping, woollen, leather, clothing, boot and shoe, 
 milling, baking, butchering, and other industries. The Labour 
 Party holds that, whatever may have been the shortcomings of 
 this Government importation and control, it has demonstrably 
 prevented a lot of "profiteering." Nor can it end immediately oii 
 the Declaration of Peace. The people will be extremely foolish if 
 they ever allow their indispensable industries to slip back into the 
 unfettered control of private capitalists, who are, actually at the 
 instance of the Government itself, now rapidly combining, trade by 
 trade, into monopolist Trusts, which may presently become as ruth- 
 less in their extortion as the worst American examples. Standing 
 as it does for the Democratic Control of Industry, the Labour Party 
 would think twice before it sanctioned any abandonment of the 
 present profitable centralisation of purchase of raw materials; of 
 the present carefully organised "rationing," by joint committees of the 
 trades concerned, of the several establishments with the materials 
 they require; of the present elaborate system of "costing" and 
 public audit of manufacturers' accounts, so as to stop the waste 
 heretofore caused by the mechanical inefficiency of the more back- 
 ward firms; of the present salutary publicity of manufacturing 
 processes and expenses thereby ensured; and, on the information 
 thus obtained (in order never again to revert to the old-time 
 profiteering) of the present rigid fixing, for standardised products, 
 of maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the whole- 
 sale trader and in the retail shop. This question of the retail 
 prices of household commodities is emphatically the most practical of 
 all political issues to the woman elector. The male politicians have 
 too long neglected the grievances of the small household, which is 
 the prey of every profiteering combination; and neither the Liberal 
 nor the Conservative party promises, in this respect, any amendment. 
 
APPENDIX II 123 
 
 This, too, is in no sense a "class" measure. It is, so the Labour 
 Party holds, just as much the function of Government, and just as 
 necessary a part of the Democratic Regulation of Industry, to safe- 
 guard the interests of the community as a whole, and those of all 
 grades and sections of private consumers, in the matter of prices, 
 as it is, by the Factory and Trade Boards Acts, to protect the rights 
 of the wage-earning producers in the matter of wages, hours of 
 labour, and sanitation. 
 
 A REVOLUTION IN NATIONAL FINANCE 
 
 In taxation, also, the interests of the professional and house- 
 keeping classes are at one with those of the manual workers. Too 
 long has our National Finance been regulated, contrary to the teach- 
 ing of Political Economy, according to the wishes of the possessing 
 classes and the profits of the financiers. The colossal expenditure 
 involved in the present war (of which, against the protest of the 
 Labour Party, only a quarter has been raised by taxation, whilst 
 three-quarters have been borrowed at onerous rates of interest, to 
 be a burden on the nation's future) brings things to a crisis. When 
 peace comes, capital will be needed for all sorts of social enterprises, 
 and the resources of Government will necessarily have to be vastly 
 greater than they were before the war. Meanwhile innumerable new 
 private fortunes are being heaped up by those who take advantage 
 of the nation's need; and the one-tenth of the population which 
 owns nine-tenths of the riches of the United' Kingdom, far from 
 being made poorer, will find itself, in the aggregate, as a result of 
 the war, drawing in rent and interest and dividends a larger nominal 
 income than ever before. Such a position demands a revolution in 
 national finance. How are we to discharge a public debt that may 
 well reach the almost incredible figure of 7,000 million po(mds 
 sterling, and at the same time raise an annual revenue which, for 
 local as well as central government, must probably reach 1,000 
 millions a yeaj? It is over this burden of taxation that the various 
 political parties will be found to be most sharply divided. 
 
 The Labour Party stands for such a system of taxation as will 
 yield all the necessary revenue to the Government without encroach- 
 ing on the Prescribed National Minimum Standard of Life of any 
 family whatsoever; without hampering production or discouraging 
 any useful personal effort, and with the nearest possible approxima- 
 tion to equality of sacrifice. We definitely repudiate all proposals 
 for a Protective Tariff, in whatever specious guise they may be 
 cloaked, as a device for burdening the consumer with imnecessarily 
 enhanced prices, to the profit of the capitalist employer or landed 
 proprietor, who avowedly expects his profits or rent to be increased 
 thereby. We shall strenuously oppose any taxation, of whatever 
 kind, which would increase the price of food or of any other 
 necessary of life. We hold that indirect taxation on commodities, 
 whether by Customs or Excise, should be strictly limited to luxuries; 
 and concentrated principally on those of which it is socially desirable 
 
124 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 that the consumption should be actually discouraged. We are at 
 one with the manufacturer, the farmer and the trader in objecting 
 to taxes interfering with production or commerce, or hampering 
 transport and communications. In all these matters — once more in 
 contrast with the other political parties, and by no means in the in- 
 terests of the wage-earners alone — the Laboiu' Party demands that 
 the very definite teachings of economic science should no longer be 
 disregarded. 
 
 For the raising of the greater part of the revenue now required 
 the Labour Party looks to the direct taxation of the incomes above 
 the necessary cost of family maintenance; and for the requisite effort 
 to pay off the National Debt, to the direct taxation of private 
 fortunes both during life and at death. The Income Tax and Super- 
 tax ought at once to be thoroughly reformed in assessment and 
 collection, in abatements and allowances, and in graduation and 
 differentiation, so as to levy the required total sum in such a way 
 as to make the real sacrifice of all the taxpayers as nearly as pos- 
 sible equal. This would involve assessment by families instead of 
 by individual persons, so that the burden is alleviated in proportion 
 to the number of persons to be maintained. It would involve the 
 raising of the present unduly low minimum income assessable to the 
 tax, and the lightening of the present unfair burden on the great 
 mass of professional and small trading classes by a new scale of 
 graduation, rising from a penny in the pound on tic smallest assess- 
 able income up to sixteen or even nineteen shillings in the pound on 
 the highest income of the millionaires. It would involve bringing 
 into assessment the numerous windfalls of profit that now escape, 
 and a further differentiation between essentially different kinds of 
 income. The Excess Profits Tax might well be retained in an ap- 
 propriate form; while so long as Mining Royalties exist the Mineral 
 Rights Duty ought to be increased. The steadily rising unearned 
 Increment of urban and mineral land ought, by an appropriate direct 
 Taxation of Land Values, to be wholly brought into the Public 
 Exchequer. At the same time, for the service and redemption of 
 the National Debt, the Death Duties ought to be regraduated, much 
 more strictly collected, and greatly increased. In this matter we 
 need, in fact, completely to reverse our point of view, and to re- 
 arrange the whole taxation of inheritance from the standpoint of 
 asking what is the maximum amount that any rich man should' be 
 permitted at death to divert, by his will, from the National Exchequer, 
 which should normally be the heir to all private riches in excess of 
 a quite moderate amount by way of family provision. But all this 
 will not suffice. It will be imperative at the earliest possible mo- 
 ment to free the nation from at any rate the greater part of its new 
 load of interest-bearing debts for loans which ought to have been 
 levied as taxation; and the Labour Party stands for a special Capi- 
 tal Levy to pay off, if not the whole, a very substantial part of the 
 entire National Debt — a Capital Levy chargable like the Death 
 Duties on all property, but (in order to secure approximate equality 
 of sacrifice) with exemption of the smallest savings, and for the rest 
 
APPENDIX II 125 
 
 at rates very steeply graduated, so as to take only a small contribu- 
 tion from the little people and a, very much larger percentage from 
 the millionaires. 
 
 Over this issue of how the financial burden of the war is to be 
 borne, and how the necessary revenue is to be raised, the greatest 
 political battles will be fought. In this matter the Labour Party 
 claims the support of four-fifths of the whole nation, for the interests 
 of the clerk, the teacher, the doctor, the minister of religion, the 
 average retail shopkeeper and trader, and all the mass of those living 
 on small incomes are identical with those of the artisan. The land- 
 lords, the financial magnates, the possessors of great fortunes will 
 not, as a class, willingly forego the relative immunity that they have 
 hitherto enjoyed. The present unfair subjection of the Co-opera- 
 tive Society to an Excess Profits Tax on the "profits" which it has 
 never made — specially dangerous as "the thin end of the wedge" 
 of penal taxation of this laudable form of Democratic enterprise — 
 will not be abandoned without a. struggle. Every possible effort 
 will be made to juggle with the taxes, so as to place upon the 
 shoulders of the mass of labouring folk and upon the struggling 
 households of the professional men and small traders (as was done 
 after every previous war) — whether by Customs or Excise Duties, 
 by industrial monopolies, by unnecessarily high rates of postage and 
 railway fares, or by a thousand and one other ingenious devices — 
 an unfair share of the national burden. Against these efforts the 
 Labour Party will take the firmest stand. 
 
 THE SURPLUS FOR THE COMMON GOOD 
 
 In the disposal of the surplus above the Standard of Life society 
 has hitherto gone as far wrong as in its neglect to secure the neces- 
 sary basis of any genuine industrial efficiency or decent social order. 
 We have allowed the riches of our mines, the rental value of the 
 lands superior to the margin of cultivation, the extra profits of the 
 fortunate capitalists, even the material outcome of scientific dis- 
 coveries — which ought by now to have made this Britain of ours 
 immune from class poverty or from any widespread destitution — to 
 be absorbed by individual proprietors; and then devoted very largely 
 to the senseless luxury of an idle rich class. Against this misappro- 
 priation of the wealth of the community, the Labour Party — speak- 
 ing in the interests not of the wage-earners alone, but of every 
 grade and section of producers by hand or by brain, not to mention 
 also those of the generations that are to succeed us, and of the 
 permanent welfare of the community — emphatically protests. One 
 main Pillar of the House that the Labour Party intends to build is 
 the future appropriation of the Surplus, not to the enlargement of 
 any individual fortune, but to the Common Good. It is from this 
 constantly arising Surplus (to be secured, on the one hand, by 
 Nationalisation and Municipalisation and, on the other, by the 
 steeply graduated Taxation of Private Income and Riches) that will 
 have to be found the new capital which the commtmity day by day 
 
126 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 t 
 
 needs for the perpetual improvement and increase of its various en- 
 terprises, for which we shall decline to be dependent on the usury- 
 exacting financiers. It is from the same source that has to be de- 
 frayed the public provision for the Sick and Infirm of all kinds 
 (including that for Maternity and Infancy) which is still so scanda- 
 lously insufficient; for the Aged and those prematiirely incapacitated 
 by accident or disease, now in many ways so imperfectly cared for; 
 for the Education alike of children, of adolescents and of adults, 
 in which the Labour Party demands a genuine equality of oppor- 
 tunity, overcoming all differences of material circumstances; and for 
 the organisation of public improvements of all kinds, including the 
 brightening of the lives of those now condemned to almost ceaseless 
 toil, and a great development of the means of recreation. From the 
 same source must come the greatly increased public provision that 
 the Labour Party will insist on being made for scientific investiga- 
 tion and original research, in every branch of knowledge, not to say 
 also for the promotion of music, literature and fine art, which 
 have been under Capitalism so greatly neglected, and upon which, 
 so the Labour party holds, any real development of civilisation fun- 
 damentally depends. Society, like the individual, does not live by 
 bread along — does not exist only for perpetual wealth production. 
 It is in the* proposal for this appropriation of every surplus for the 
 Common Good — in the vision of its resolute use for the building up 
 of the community as a whole instead of for the magnjfication of in- 
 dividual fortunes — that the Labour Party, as the Party of the Pro- 
 ducers by hand or by brain, most distinctively marks itself off from 
 the older political parties, standing, as these do essentially for the 
 maintenance, unimpaired of the perpetual private mortgage upon the 
 annual product of the nation that is involved in the individual owner- 
 ship of land and capital. 
 
 THE STREET OF TO-MORROW 
 
 The House which the Labour Party intends to build, the four 
 Pillars of which have now been described, does not stand a.l6ne in 
 the world. Where will it be in the Street of To-morrow? If we 
 repudiate, on the one hand, the Imperialism that seeks to dominate 
 other races, or to impose our own will on other parts of the British 
 Empire, so we disclaim equally any conception of a selfish and in- 
 sular "non-interventionism" unregarding of our special obligations 
 to our fellow-citizens overseas; of the corporate duties of one nation 
 to another ; of the moral claims upon us of the non-adult races, and 
 of our own indebtedness to the world of which we are part. We 
 look for an ever-increasing intercourse, a, constantly developing ex- 
 change of commodities, a steadily growing mutual understanding, and 
 a continually expanding friendly co-operation among all tlie peoples 
 of the world. With regard to that great Commonwealth of all 
 races, all colours, all religions and all degrees of civilisation, that 
 we call the British Empire, the Labour Party stands for its main- 
 tenance and its progressive development on tiie lines of Local Au- 
 
APPENDIX II 127 
 
 tonomy and "Home Rule All Round" ; the fullest respect for the rights 
 of each people, whatever its colour, to all the Democratic Self-Gov- 
 ernment of which it is capable, and to the proceeds of its own toil 
 upon the resources of its own territorial home; and the closest pos- 
 sible co-operation among all the various members of what has be- 
 come essentially not an Empire in the old sense, but a Britannic Al- 
 liance. We desire to maintain the most intimate relations with the 
 Labour Parties overseas. Like them, we have no sympathy with 
 the projects of "Imperial Federation," in so far as these imply 
 the subjection to a common Imperial Legislature wielding coercive 
 power (including dangerous facilities for coercive Imperial taxation 
 and for enforced military Service), either of the existing Self-Gov- 
 eming Dominions, whose autonomy would be thereby invaded; or 
 of the United Kingdom, whose freedom of Democratic Self-develop- 
 ment would be thereby hampered; or of India and the Colonial De- 
 pendencies, which would thereby run the risk of being further ex- 
 ploited for the benefit of a "White Empire." We do not intend, by 
 any such "Imperial Senate,'' either to bring the plutocracy of Can- 
 ada and South Africa to the aid of the British aristocracy or to en- 
 able the landlords and financiers of the Mother Country to unite. in 
 controlling the growing Popular Democracies overseas. The absolute 
 autonomy of each self-governing part of the Empire must be main- 
 tained intact. What we look for, besides a constant progress in 
 Democratic Self-Government of every part of the Britannic Alliance, 
 and especially in India, is a continuous participation of the Min- 
 isters of the Dominions of India, and eventually of other Dependencies 
 (perhaps by means of their own Ministers specially resident in Lon- 
 don for this piupose) in the most confidential deliberations of the 
 Cabinet, so far as Foreign Policy and Imperial Affairs are concerned; 
 and the annual assembly of an Imperial Council, representing all 
 constituents of the Britannic Alliance and all parties in their Local 
 Legislatures, which should discuss all matters of common interest, 
 but only in order to make recommendations for the simultaneous con- 
 sideration of the various autonomous local legislatures of what 
 should increasingly take the constitutional form of an Alliance of 
 Free Nations. And we carry the idea further. As regards our re- 
 lations to Foreign Countries, we disavow and disclaim any desire 
 or intention to dispossess or to impoverish any other State or Na- 
 tion. We seek no increase of territory. We disclaim all idea of 
 "economic war." We ourselves object to all Protective Customs 
 Tariffs; but we hold that each nation must be left free to do what 
 it thinks best for its own economic development, without thought of 
 injuring others. We believe that nations are in no way damaged by 
 each other's economic prosperity or commercial progress; but, on the 
 contrary, that they are actually themselves mutually enriched thereby. 
 We would therefore put an end to the old entanglements and mys- 
 tifications of Secret Diplomacy and the formation of Leagues against 
 Leagues. We stand for the immediate establishment, actually as a 
 part of the Treaty of Peace with which the present war will end, 
 of a Universal League or Society of Nations, a Supemational Au- 
 
128 THE AIMS OF LABOUR 
 
 thority, with an International High Court to try all justiciable issues 
 between nations; an International Legislature to enact such common 
 laws as can be mutually agreed upon, and an International Council of 
 Mediation to endeavour to settle without ultimate conflict even those 
 disputes which are not justiciable. We would have all the nations 
 of the world most . solemnly undertake and promise to make a com- 
 mon cause against any one of them that broke away from this funda- 
 mental agreement. The world has suffered too much from war for the 
 Laboiu: Party to have any other policy than that of lasting Peace. 
 
 MORE LIGHT— BUT ALSO MORE WARMTH ! 
 
 The Labour Party is far from assuming that it possesses a key to 
 open all locks; or that any policy which it can formulate will solve 
 all the problems that beset us. But we deem it important to our- 
 selves as well as to those who may, on the one hand, wish to join 
 the Party, or, on the other, to take up arms against it, to make quite 
 clear and definite our aim and purpose. The Labour Party wants 
 that aim and purpose, as set forth in the preceding pages, with all 
 its might. It calls for more warmth in politics, for much less 
 apathetic acquiescence in the miseries that exist, for none of the 
 cynicism that saps the life of leisure. On tiie other hand, the Labour 
 Party has no belief in any of the problems of the world being 
 solved by Good Will alone. Good Will without knowledge is Warmth 
 without Light. Especially in all the complexities of politics, in the 
 still undeveloped Science of Society, the Labour Party stands for in- 
 creased study, for the scientific investigation of each succeeding prob- 
 lem, for the deliberate organisation of research, and for a much more 
 rapid dissemination among the whole people of all the science that 
 exists. And it is perhaps specially the Labour Party that has the 
 duty of placing this Advancement of science in the forefront of 
 its political programme. What the Labour Party stands- for in all 
 fields of life is, essentially. Democratic Co-operation; and Co-opera- 
 tion involves a common purpose which can be agreed to; a common 
 plan which can be explained and discussed, and such a, measure of 
 success in the adaptation of means to ends as will ensure a common 
 satisfaction. An autocratic Sultan may govern without science if his 
 whim is law. A Plutocratic Party may choose to ignore science, if it 
 is heedless whether its pretended solutions of social problems that 
 may win political triumphs ultimately succeed or fail. But no La- 
 bour Party can hope to maintain its position unless its proposals are, 
 in fact, the outcome of the best Political Science of its time; or to 
 fulfil its purpose unless that science is continually wresting new fields 
 from human ignorance. Hence, although the purpose of the Labour 
 Party must, by the law of its being, remain for all time unchanged, 
 its Policy and its Programme will, we hope, undergo a perpetual 
 development, as knowledge grows, and as new phases of the social 
 problem present themselves, in a continually finer adjustment of our 
 measures to our ends. If Law is the Mother of Freedom, Science, 
 to the Labour Pasrty, must be the Parent of Law. 
 

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 The aims of labour. 
 
 3 1924 002 657 199