gh emotional quality of
sincerity. The phrases in which it tersely describes its objects are
admirable. "What is to be reconstructed after the war is over is
not this or that government department, this or that piece of social
machinery, but Society itself." There is to be a systematic approach
towards a "healthy equality of material circumstance for every person
born into the world, and not an enforced dominion over subject nations,
subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex." In industry as
well as in government the social order is to be based "on that equal
freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and that widest
participation in power, both economic and political, which is
characteristic of democracy." But all this, it should be noted, is not
to be achieved in a year or two of "feverish reconstruction"; "each
brick that the Labour Party helps to lay shall go to erect the structure
it intends and no other."

In considering the main features of this program, one must have in
mind whether these are a logical projection and continuation of the
Anglo-Saxon democratic tradition, or whether they constitute an absolute
break with that tradition. The only valid reason for the adoption of
such a program in America would be, of course, the restoration of some
such equality of opportunity and economic freedom as existed in our
Republic before we became an industrial nation. "The first condition
of democracy,"--to quote again from the program, "is effective personal
freedom."

What is called the "Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum"
contemplates the extension of laws already on the statute books in order
to prevent the extreme degradation of the standard of life brought about
by the old economic system under industrialism. A living minimum wage is
to be established. The British Labour Party intends "to secure to
every member of the community, in good times and bad alike... all the
requisites of healthy life and worthy citizenship."

After the war there is to be no cheap labour market, nor are the
millions of workers and soldiers to fall into the clutches of charity;
but it shall be a national obligation to provide each of these with work
according to his capacity. In order to maintain the demand for labour
at a uniform level, the government is to provide public works. The
population is to be rehoused in suitable dwellings, both in rural
districts and town slums; new and more adequate schools and trai