mportance as a sort of rebellion. In
discussing the Socialist possibilities of a national railroad strike,
Roland-Holst, representing the usual Socialist view, says that it makes
very little difference whether the roads are nationally or privately
owned; in either case such a strike is likely to be considered by
capitalistic governments as something like rebellion.

But while this applies only to the employees of the most important
services like railroads, when privately operated, it applies practically
to _all_ government employees; there is an almost universal tendency to
regard strikes against the government as being mutiny--an evidence of
the profoundly capitalistic character of government ownership and "State
Socialism" which propose to multiply the number of such employees. Here,
too, the probable governmental attitude towards a future general strike
is daily indicated.

President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, has written
that any strike of "servants of the State, in any capacity--military,
naval, or civil," should be considered both treason and mutiny.

"In my judgment loyalty and _treason_," he writes, "ought to mean
the same thing in the civil service that they do in military and
naval services. The door to get out is always open if one does not
wish to serve the public on these terms. Indeed, I am not sure that
as civilization progresses loyalty and _treason_ in the civil
services will not become more important and more vital than loyalty
and _treason_ in the military and naval services. The happiness and
the prosperity of a community might be more easily wrecked by the
paralysis of its postal and telegraph services, for example, than
by a mutiny on shipboard.... President Roosevelt's attitude on all
this was at times very sound, but he wabbled a good deal in dealing
with specific cases. In the celebrated Miller Case at the
Government Printing Office he laid down in his published letter
what I conceive to be the sound doctrine in regard to this matter.
It was then made plain to the printers that to leave their work
under pretense of striking was to resign, in effect, the places
which they held in the public service, and that if those places
were vacated they would be filled in accordance with the provisions
of the civil service act, and not by reappointment of the old
employees after parley