n. Nothing under such conditions could be worse for the mass of the
people. But with the destruction of the State in these islands would
go the trade unions built up by years of solid labour and sacrifice,
the co-operative societies, just now beginning to take a wider outlook
on things than mere "divi." hunting, and the democratic political
institutions of which the people can make far more use than they do
when they choose to exercise their intelligence and bestir their
energies. Then the increasingly complicated nature of production,
distribution and exchange has also to be considered. A piece of grit
will often throw elaborate and delicate machinery out of gear, but we
do not regard it as a revolutionary agent on that account. The control
of a few engineering workshops by shop stewards, puffed out with
vanity and a "little brief authority," will not provide the food
necessary to feed the people of these islands. We have, too, an
indication of the spirit of liberty with which they are animated in
the massed picketing at Glasgow, not against blacklegs and
non-unionists, but against fellow trade unionists who refused to aid
"unauthorised strikes."

I have said that these "down tools" outbursts are anti-Socialist. They
are anti-Socialist because they are anarchical. They may pull down,
but they cannot build up. Socialism and Socialists have suffered
enough during the war because of the freaks and cranks that the war
discovered among us, and the greater number of the same genus who now
profess to be Socialists without understanding much, if anything,
about the Socialist movement. We do not want further prejudice raised
against us by attempts to connect us with anarchical violence,
hooliganism and looting. Nothing for the benefit of the people can
possibly come out of what is now going on. All it will do is to help
reaction, and make even the majority of the working class ready to
acquiesce in a mild military dictatorship as a lesser evil than
Bolshevist tyranny and violence. And there are some British Generals
who are popular, and who are not merely militarists!

There is no royal road to the Social Revolution. The steady and
patient work of Socialist propaganda and organisation together with
the pressing forward of thorough-going collectivist proposals for the
ownership and control of industry for the common good, and the
imagination to take advantage of everything that will help forward the
great change from capitalis