tions. In the East, in Africa, everywhere, in Egypt,
Tonkin or the Congo, the European is thus bound to promote the growth of
serfdom. And so he does. But soon he finds that everywhere there are
similar competitors. All the nations evolve on the same lines, and wars,
perpetual wars, break out for the right of precedence in the market.
Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the sea,
wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to
neighbouring states; wars against those "blacks" who revolt! The roar of
the cannon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the
states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we
know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers.

Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is
idle to talk of education when the workman's child is forced, at the age
of thirteen, to go down into the mine or to help his father on the farm.
It is idle to talk of studying to the worker, who comes home in the
evening wearied by excessive toil, and its brutalizing atmosphere.
Society is thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in
such conditions freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding
a greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees that the
breath of liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he
turns round, changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation
and government by the sword.

A vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers is
needed to uphold these privileges; and this array gives rise in its turn
to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of threats
and corruption.

The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the
social sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without
self-respect, without sympathy and mutual aid, human kind must perish,
as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the
slave-keeping ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling
classes, and they have elaborated a whole system of pseudo-science to
teach the contrary.

Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should
share with those who have not, but he who would carry out this principle
would be speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments are all very
well in poetry, but not in practice. "To lie is to degrade and besmirch
oneself," we say, and yet all civilized life bec