ative in his views,
conventional in his manners, and simplifies the problem of patriotism
to a single-eyed obedience. When he took over the business of raising
the first levies for the present war he was confronted with the
problem of the English Trades Unions--the very last problem in the
world which one could reasonably expect such a man to understand. And
yet he did understand it; he was perhaps the only person in the
governing class who did. If it be hard to explain to the richer
classes in England, it is almost impossible to explain to any classes
in any other country, because the English situation is largely unique.
There is the same difficulty as we have already found in describing
how vast and even violent a transformation scene the growth of the
great army appeared; it has been almost impossible to describe it to
the chief conscript countries, which take a great army for granted.
The key to the parallel problem of the Trades Unions is simply
this--that England is the only European country that is practically
industrial and nothing else. Trades Unions can never play such a part
in countries where the masses live on the land; such masses always
have some status and support--yes, even if they are serfs. The status
of the English workman is not in the earth; it is, so to speak, in the
air--in a scaffolding of artificial abstractions, a framework of rules
and rights, of verbal bargains or paper resolutions. If he loses this,
he becomes nothing so human or homely as a slave. Rather he becomes a
wild beast, a sort of wandering vermin with no place in the state at
all. It would be necessary to explain this, and a great deal more
which cannot possibly be explained here, before we could measure the
enormity of the enigma facing the British official who had to propose
to the English the practical suspension of the Trades Unions. To this
must be added the fact that the Unions, already national institutions,
had just lately been in a ferment with new and violent doctrines:
Syndicalists had invoked them as the future seats of government;
historical speculators had seen in them the return to the great
Christian Guilds of the Middle Ages; a more revolutionary Press had
appeared to champion them; gigantic strikes had split the country in
every direction. Anyone would have said that under these circumstances
the very virtues and attainments of Kitchener would at least make it
fairly certain that he would quarrel with the Trades U