The answer that when trade revives there will be little un

employment is no answer. You will not end unemployment. You only mean that by doing two years' production in one year you will have very few unemployed this year, and very many next. It leaves untouched the root complaint, that all the nation's work is being done by a portion only of the nation's workers. It does not show what work the unemployed are to do, unless they do part of that now done by the employed and so enable these to work shorter hours.

It is symptomatic of our present chaos of thought that in practice every trade resists fiercely any attempt to act on this view by introducing new workers into the trade. The foreseen effect of that is only to get the available work finished in a shorter period, and so to bring the prospect of unemployment nearer to those who now have work. If you could promise to all a guaranteed week's work and pay for life, as the civil servants now have, then you might bring all the men you wish into the industry. But if you can only guarantee work for as long as the work lasts, then we will keep that work for ourselves, lest we have to face unemployment. It was for this reason that the building trades after the war refused to be diluted with ex-service men or to help in a national house-building campaign.

Socialists have always recognised that in a Socialist State all must work for all and not for self. This universal spirit of unselfishness was to result from the Socialist movement itself. We have had experience of the muddling of Government management of business in the war; of the profiteering spirit making fortunes out of the nation's danger; of Labour leaders who take Government jobs and are heard of no more; of trade unions whose funds go in supporting placemen; of malingering workmen who cling to unemployment. In spite of all this, one still meets those who believe that the Socialist movement is steadily spreading the spirit of self-sacrifice among its adherents, and that presently the majority of the nation will be converted to a system under which they will have no private ends to work for and will be ready to give their best, of mind and body, to work for public ends.

But there is a growing Communist school which faces the facts much more truly. They know that their revolution will be wrought by a minority, if at all. They are not waiting for the bulk of the nation to be converted to their view; they are only waiting till they are a sufficient minority to impose their will by force. They hold that the present ruling classes are a minority who impose their will on the nation because they have control of the Army; another minority, with armed force, can oust them and rule in their stead. There will be shootings, on a large scale, of those privileged classes who have evaded their share of toil, with as VOL. XCIV-No. 557

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little scruple as other Governments have felt in shooting to maintain law and order. The new shootings are to maintain the new law and order of the unprivileged classes.

Men are not converted to this programme by the programme itself, but by bitterness against their present hopeless condition. Men become Communists through dwelling on the grievances I have mentioned till they become convinced that the privileged classes mean to remain privileged and to take the cream of all production, mean also to keep the producers in such poverty that they will have to take whatever work and whatever pay may be offered them, and for this purpose are crippling the men's unions and preventing their getting a fair hearing in the Press. When that conviction is forced on him, a man ceases to agitate for fair play and to argue with you: you do not mean to do him justice; you have control of the Press and the Army and mean to use them to keep him down; he will go to the root of the matter, will form another army to end your control once for all.

This drift from Socialism to Communism causes a strong reaction towards Conservatism among the bulk of the workers. They have an incredible goodness of heart and fundamental sense of justice, and a firm belief that this goodness and justice are found, at bottom, in all classes of the nation. They will have nothing to do with a policy of violence, and in order to resist it will postpone asking redress of their present troubles, while resenting the extremist action which breaks up the orderly Labour movement. Half expressed, one finds their conviction that the interdependence of employer and employed is natural and beneficial to both, and need not be a reproach to either; that private employment can be human and kindly, while State employment is inhuman and machine-like; and that the right of property extends equally to big property.

J. B. MCLAUGHLIN, O.S.B.

IS BRITISH EMPIRE ECONOMIC UNITY

POSSIBLE?

I.

THE British Empire Exhibition, now being prepared for the spring of 1924, aims to be a peace stocktaking of our Imperial position in production, manufacture and merchanting; and the measure of its success will give a clear indication of how our Imperial fabric has stood the test of the Great War (and, perhaps, the severer test of certain illusory promises of an earthly paradise, with the subsequent inevitable disillusionment). As to the capacity of the British Empire-expressed in terms of territory, of capital, of labour-to organise for itself, in spite of war losses, a prosperity greater even than that which marked the opening of this century, there can be no reasonable doubt. The Empire can provide solid comfort-indeed, some degree of luxury -for all its citizens for this century, at least. If there is any place at all for doubt, it is on the point whether the sentiment of unity and the capacity to take the 'big view' remain sufficiently strong to overcome promptings of territorial jealousy or of shortsighted selfishness, so as to enable the British Empire to act as an economic unit in the peace reconstruction of the world.

If it is shown that the Empire can do so, that the British race, though spread over five continents, can still regard the sea as its common frontier and can act as one force in peace as well as in war, and that further it can carry along with it in friendly co-operation the peoples which are under its tutelage, though not of its blood, then there is a great reassurance for the future of the world. If, on the other hand, the sentiment of unity, strong as it was at the call of war, does not prove equal to the very different strain of a united Empire economic policy, we shall have to build our hopes on a much more modest basis. Such an event would not necessarily mean calamity, but it would mean writing off' the best promise of a quick return of the world to a prosperous and steady peace. A British Empire united for peace as closely, as unselfishly, as unflinchingly, as it was for war,

could certainly bring civilisation quickly back to well-being. There are, no doubt, other ways of salvation, but none so certain.

II.

In considering now whether Empire economic unity is a possible ideal it is unwise to ignore the fact that before the Great War the idea was mooted by some of the Dominions but was not followed up by the Mother Country. Before 1914 there was, in

many quarters in this country, doubt as to whether Imperial unity in the full sense of the word was a practicable proposition. One school of political thought was inclined to think that it would involve more sacrifices than benefits to the people of the Home Country. Some, indeed, interpreted the aspirations of the Dominions to closer economic unity as indications of a selfish desire to exploit the Home Country for their own benefit. I think it can be fairly said that among the sailors, soldiers, and the administrative workers of the Empire, there was less of this doubt than in most other classes of the community. They came into closer contact with the overseas Empire. Their callings led them, at times, to its outposts, where they were able to note how vigorously the British sentiment flourished when transplanted to faraway settlements under the Union Jack. They realised the real nature of the fervent sentiment of Imperialism at the outposts, which, to some people at home, seemed somewhat crude and oldfashioned. Further, they came to a clearer knowledge of the foreign jealousies toward our Empire and to a full appreciation of the necessity of a close Imperial unity for defence. Probably (as regards sailors and soldiers, at any rate) they rarely, in those pre-war times, thought in terms of trade and production; but anything that meant closer Imperial unity appealed to them. Since then, I think, every man who is really interested in defence is interested also in trade. (I know that during my term of office in France and at the War Office as Quartermaster-General I became necessarily a close student of world economics.) Thus the movement for closer economic unity within the Empire had the support of most of those who had had to do with the administrative and defence work of the Empire, but it did not win the active and whole-hearted support of the majority of the people in Great Britain. That fact must have some bearing on future

discussions.

If we could forecast the Empire's decision on economic unity by the facts of war-time unity, there would be no doubt at all about the verdict. The events of the Great War proved a real strength of Imperial sentiment. They showed that our British

settlements overseas had bred true to stock; that they were as British in their ideals, and as tenacious in holding them, as the people of the Home Country; that they were willing to make the full sacrifice of blood and treasure to maintain those ideals. But this problem cannot safely be judged in the light of war-time sentiment; it is whether the Empire can show the same unity and the same sense of a common purpose in facing the hard workaday problems of peace reconstruction. To the people of our race it is in some respects a more severe test. It lacks the inspiration of war fervour and calls for adjustments which may appear at the moment sacrifices, for surrenders of certain prides, for long, patient, laborious, even wearisome effort. The ideal of Empire economic unity may demand in one quarter a temporary sacrifice of cheapness, in another a postponement of a cherished plan to found a new local industry. In all quarters it will demand the long view' and the big view.'

III.

Yet, more evidently than before the war (and even at that date many held that the only alternative to a closer organisation of the Empire was its dissolution), it is clear that we must consolidate and organise our Imperial resources if we are to maintain the leadership in civilisation of the British race and give the assistance which is expected from us in the reconstruction of the world. In the matter of Imperial defence certainly it is clear that the plan of it must be a joint plan and the burden a common one. Until the world is clearly convinced of the senselessness of war the British Empire must be prepared, as a whole, to defend any one of its partners from destruction. Not one of the partners is secure in its independence without the support of the others. In the matter of economic organisation, it seems to me no less certain that the condition of full security and prosperity is the capacity for united organisation and action. We have at the moment a top-heavy Empire, too much of its population concentrated in these islands, too many vast areas overseas which invite attack by their emptiness, many of its industries dependent too greatly on foreign sources either for their raw materials or for their markets. We have to correct the mistakes due, in part, to the superabundant prosperity of the nineteenth century.

Looking back on the economic development of the British Empire of the nineteenth century, it is clear that we suffered in some degree from the embarrassment of riches. There were so many avenues of industry in which supremacy came readily