f corporate or militant action. He is not
a Socialist. Finally, he bears no more resemblance to a Labour Member
than he does to a City Alderman or a Die-Hard Duke. This is the Common
Labourer of England; and it is he who is on the march at last.

See this man in your mind as you see him in the street, realise that it
is his open mind we wish to influence or his empty stomach we wish to
cure, and then consider seriously (if you can) the five men, including
two of his own alleged oppressors, who were summoned as a Royal
Commission to consider his claims when he or his sort went out on strike
upon the railways. I knew nothing against, indeed I knew nothing about,
any of the gentlemen then summoned, beyond a bare introduction to
Mr. Henderson, whom I liked, but whose identity I was in no danger of
confusing with that of a railway-porter. I do not think that any old
gentleman, however absent-minded, would be likely on arriving at Euston,
let us say, to hand his Gladstone-bag to Mr. Henderson or to attempt to
reward that politician with twopence. Of the others I can only judge
by the facts about their status as set forth in the public Press. The
Chairman, Sir David Harrell, appeared to be an ex-official distinguished
in (of all things in the world) the Irish Constabulary. I have no
earthly reason to doubt that the Chairman meant to be fair; but I am not
talking about what men mean to be, but about what they are. The police
in Ireland are practically an army of occupation; a man serving in them
or directing them is practically a soldier; and, of course, he must
do his duty as such. But it seems truly extraordinary to select as one
likely to sympathise with the democracy of England a man whose whole
business in life it has been to govern against its will the democracy
of Ireland. What should we say if Russian strikers were offered the
sympathetic arbitration of the head of the Russian Police in Finland
or Poland? And if we do not know that the whole civilised world sees
Ireland with Poland as a typical oppressed nation, it is time we did.
The Chairman, whatever his personal virtues, must be by instinct
and habit akin to the capitalists in the dispute. Two more of the
Commissioners actually were the capitalists in the dispute. Then
came Mr. Henderson (pushing his trolley and cheerily crying, "By your
leave."), and then another less known gentleman who had "corresponded"
with the Board of Trade, and had thus gained some strange cl