new
fact of a working-class criticism of social values into play. The old
workman might and did quarrel very vigorously with his specific
employer, but he never set out to arraign all employers; he took the law
and the Church and Statecraft and politics for the higher and noble
things they claimed to be. He wanted an extra shilling or he wanted an
hour of leisure, and that was as much as he wanted. The young workman,
on the other hand, has put the whole social system upon its trial, and
seems quite disposed to give an adverse verdict. He looks far beyond the
older conflict of interests between employer and employed. He criticises
the good intentions of the whole system of governing and influential
people, and not only their good intentions, but their ability. These are
the new conditions, and the middle-aged and elderly gentlemen who are
dealing with the crisis on the supposition that their vast experience of
Labour questions in the 'seventies and 'eighties furnishes valuable
guidance in this present issue are merely bringing the gunpowder of
misapprehension to the revolutionary fort.

The workman of the new generation is full of distrust the most
demoralising of social influences. He is like a sailor who believes no
longer either in the good faith or seamanship of his captain, and,
between desperation and contempt, contemplates vaguely but persistently
the assumption of control by a collective forecastle. He is like a
private soldier obsessed with the idea that nothing can save the
situation but the death of an incompetent officer. His distrust is so
profound that he ceases not only to believe in the employer, but he
ceases to believe in the law, ceases to believe in Parliament, as a
means to that tolerable life he desires; and he falls back steadily upon
his last resource of a strike, and--if by repressive tactics we make it
so--a criminal strike. The central fact of all this present trouble is
that distrust. There is only one way in which our present drift towards
revolution or revolutionary disorder can be arrested, and that is by
restoring the confidence of these alienated millions, who visibly now
are changing from loyalty to the Crown, from a simple patriotism, from
habitual industry, to the more and more effective expression of a
deepening resentment.

This is a psychological question, a matter of mental states. Feats of
legal subtlety are inopportune, arithmetical exploits still more so. To
emerge with the su