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still be without an ally, as we still are without an army of our own.

It is plain from the history of European diplomacy before 1895 that German statesmen sincerely desired, and even insisted upon, the resurrection of the British Army before the decision was taken to challenge our naval superiority. At the end of the nineteenth century the power to mobilize 250,000 British troops for service in Europe would have secured the peace of Europe as well as the safety of the Fatherland. How would the same event affect the issue to-day? It would render the invasion of the British Isles a very remote contingency, even in the event of British defeat at sea at the beginning of the war. The landing of such a force on the Continent would probably be sufficient to turn the scale in a war between France and Germany, and it would render the complete and rapid victory of the latter almost impossible, provided the British commander was of even moderate ability. Finally, it would enable the British Government to abate the oppressive taxation, which has otherwise been rendered unavoidable by the competition in naval armaments. It is probably too late to recover the lost confidence of the German people, or to induce them to trust the guardianship of their interests at sea to the British Navy, but directly the British military forces have been revived so as to turn the scale in the decisive struggle, the Powers of Europe, and Germany most of all, can be compelled to listen to reason in the question of limiting naval armaments if the demand is made by our Government. It may be added that no other argument is likely to have the least weight in the matter.

If the British people ceased to fear German hostility, if they could depend on their army to render invasion impossible, even after naval defeat, and if the power to turn the scale in a Eu

Wars nowa

ropean war had the effect of stopping the almost open hostility of rival shipbuilding, it might confidently be hoped that the ancient friendship between England and the German Powers would return, but in existing circumstances such friendship is impossible. For let us briefly consider the alternatives open to us under our present scheme of armament and alliances. Even if we beat Germany in the shipbuilding race, the feeling of hostility will certainly remain. At any moment we may find ourselves committed to a war with her, as so nearly happened last autumn. The friends of peace assert that such a war would settle nothing. This statement, however, is one more proof of how the friends of peace misunderstand the world they live in. days are apt to end decisively, and at any rate they all effect important settlements. If France and Russia defeated Germany in the next war, and England assists the victors, the new situation is not likely to be even approximately as favorable to Britain as the present. The balance of power, in fact, would be wiped out, and there would be no guarantee of its renewal. Moreover, if France took the place of Germany as the acknowledged rival of Britain, her antagonism would threaten British security even more directly than the enmity of Central Europe, on account of her geographical position. It would become imperative to re-establish the balance of power destroyed by our own connivance; for a real balance of power now exists approximately, and would exist actually, if England resuscitated her military strength.

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support and make good, but the conşideration which may appeal most powerfully to our House of Commons is the inordinate cost of the present policy, which guarantees nothing. The revival of the British Army on the scale indicated, that is, to mobilize from 250,000 to 300,000 troops for European service, demands, not increased expenditure, but improved organization and more economical administration. No one need expect that Germany will be bought off by cessions of territory and similar claims on her gratitude. The Goths were not grateful to the Romans for paying ransom, nor are the Germans grateful for the surrender of Heligoland. If they were presented with Gibraltar, Malta, and Egypt by Viscount Haldane on his next trip to Berlin, they would still remain ungrateful; but they would certainly become hungrier than ever before. The lesson The Fortnightly Review.

of all history is that a nation must rely on its own strength both for immediate safety and to secure advantageous alliances. There is also one other lesson of equal importance which the British people have still to learn, namely, that an island Power can no more dispense with an army than a Continental Power in these days can disregard naval development. Land and sea power must be proportional and symmetrical, like the muscular power of the human body. An Empire with naval superiority, and which also possesses land forces in proportion, can count on maintaining the record of England under the Plantagenets and of modern Japan. But a naval Power without land forces inevitably goes along the broad and easy path followed in turn by Tyre and Carthage, Holland and Venice, by all the purely naval States of the world's history.

Ceoil Battine.

REVELATIONS OF INDUSTRIAL LIFE.

To say that the general description of the British workman one reads in the Press is distorted or exaggerated is, in my opinion, a generous way of exonerating the average writer from the charge of gross inaccuracy. I know of no author or journalist who has yet accurately portrayed the inner domestic life or the everyday experiences of the British working man. Whether the ability to describe the working man truly pertains to literary acumen or to the science of Psychology, Physiology, or Philosophy I know not; but I do know that as a theme for an essay it is of entrancing interest, deep study, and circuitous and almost labyrinthian involution. It is not because of these seemingly monumental difficulties that so many fail in the work of description, but because of the extreme difference of environment. The surroundings of

the average middle-class writer are not at all conducive to a full comprehension of the secret troubles of industrial competition. A naturalist will devote half a lifetime to studying the habits and food and life of a microscopic insect. A geologist will delve and scrape and chip and weigh tons of strata to resolve a problem of crustacea. A historian will revel in mountains of books and dry-asdust records to discover the genealogical origin of an ancient royal family. But when an account of the most wonderful of all human beings is called for a half-hour's visit to a so-called typical family and an investigation of the brilliancy of the kitchen fire irons is considered sufficient to dub the author "one who knows."

It is quite true that there is a general condition of existence for all human beings-food, clothing, shelter, rest, rec

reation, and so forth-but the difference in details between that of the working man and of his middle-class biographer is as marked as that of a caged bird and a free bird of the woods. The average middle-class man lives to eat. The working man eats to live. The former has his clothes made to fit his limbs; the latter makes his limbs fit the clothes. The former has his house built and furnished to suit his taste and his comfort; the latter subordinates his taste and his comfort to the limits of his purse and his home. In every phase of life this general differentiation is conspicuous, and no writer, so far as I know, has yet fully elaborated the hidden details of the working man's life. I propose to do this. Not as a scribe revelling in a vocabulary of floral phraseology, nor as a biographer versed in romantic incidents of historical data, but as "a plain blunt man, that love my friend."

Born fifty-eight years ago, in the Walworth Road, I started as a breadwinner at nine years of age, and am still struggling for a bare subsistence in the ranks of the great industrial army. To me, as to thousands of others, the tragedy of industrial warfare has been a constant source of anxiety and worry, and the unconsidered trifles, which most writers would dismiss as n'importe, have impressed and oppressed me seriously.

To begin with the birth of the child. Every child of working-class parents is

Born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.

The amount of trouble to which the workers' children are born varies considerably. If the parents are in comfortable cicumstances, the likelihood of the child being well cared for is tolerably good. If the parents are poorly off, then the child has less chance of being properly reared. There are ap

proximately three fundamental conditions necessary to ensure strong, healthy, intelligent children; (1) Wholesome food; (2) intelligent care; (3) genial and healthy surroundings. In connection with No. 1, the fulfilment of that condition in the vast majority of cases borders on the impossible, because the amount of wages paid to the breadwinner is seldom sufficient to procure wholesome food, even if the worker had the necessary knowledge of the essential constituent qualities of foodproteids, carbohydrates, fat-to know which to buy. And though he may know what is required, and purchase his foodstuffs accordingly, it by no means follows that he will get wholesome food even then. The amount of adulteration practised by manufacturers of foodstuffs is alarming, notwithstanding the efforts of our legislators and administrators to check the evil; and the worker is, of course, the victim.

As to No. 2-intelligent care-this also depends greatly upon the social status of the parents. If the parents of the parents had been in a position to give their children a good training and comfortable home, then the babies we are referring to would probably fare better. Heredity plays an important part in these matters, and the hereditary taint of child-slavery in the "forties" has not by any means been entirely eradicated, so there is a further difficulty from this source.

No. 3-genial and healthy surroundings. In London this factor is almost impossible of acquirement. For is it not true that for a radius of two miles beyond London habitations the air remains impregnated with more or less poisonous gases? And certainly the social environment in many workingclass neighborhoods is far from being conducive to intellectual health. genial chacacter of the surroundings is not less doubtful than the healthy.

The

Rows upon rows of flat, lifeless bricks and mortar, an entire absence of anything approaching art or nature, the mixed stench of numerous factories and workshops, the distracting noise of incessant traffic, and the look of anguish and anxiety on everybody's face, are aspects not calculated to impress the young and inquiring mind with any pleasant anticipations of future joy.

These, however, are the average conditions under which the town-bred child (and I am not speaking now of the poorest class by any means) is reared into manhood. Amongst the poorest class of workers, in which, strange to say, the production of offspring is most prolific, the conditions of birth alone are hard enough to mar any child's future. The mother has to work-either at home or out, or bothtill within an hour or so of her delivery. Then either the parish doctor or a midwife is called in to prevent, if possible, the death of either the mother or the child, but is apparently unable to do anything more than sit by and advise the poor woman to be patient and brave, and so forth, and to administer some drug, or a prescription for a drug, and, at the last moment, perhaps, to render physical assistance. The rooms in which these "incidents" occur are as varied as the rates of wages in the different branches of industry, for the worker is taught to cut his coat according to his cloth. Sometimes the woman has to go to the lying-in hospital, sometimes she is confined in the same room in which she and her husband and family sleep and eat and play; and during her actual hour of trouble the rest of the family are turned out to shift for themselves as best they can. But it is not of this unfortunate class I want to speak. Their sorrows and woes are pretty well known. I want to reveal the state of mind and body of that class of workers whose wages are too high to attract the attention of phil

anthropists and charity donors; who are themselves too proud to show the distress they endure; and who, as a result, have to bear, in quiet patience, unknown hardships and sufferings. In these families the baby never comes at the right time. It is always either when the husband is out of work, or the quarter's rent is due, or the taxes have to be paid, or the other children want new clothes or boots, or some unexpected burden has been sprung suddenly upon them. The margin between distress and comfort is so fine that a natural function may be turned into an unnatural disaster by reason of the period at which it takes place. The maternity clause in the National Insurance Act may help to alleviate, in a very slight measure, the anxiety felt in these cases. It will not remove the trouble altogether. At these timesand, as far as possible, all arrangements are made beforehand-the capacity of the family income is strained to the uttermost. Out of the pound or thirty shillings which is received from the coffers of a benefit society the doctor's charges have to be met, the fortnight's pay to the monthly nurse has to be made, and the extra cost of living, in the shape of little delicacies for the woman, have to be borne. Imagine what that means, when every penny of wages is swallowed up every week to keep the family on the better side of the poverty line. It is not that this class object to the struggle, but that, struggle as they may, they never seem able to escape from the necessity of a continuous and incessant struggle.

No sooner does the mother leave her bed and start on her household duties than one of her other children falls ill

possibly because the nurse, in order that the child should not cry and distress its mother during her illness, allowed the little one to do certain things it ought not to have done. The father returns from work, and his wife meets

"Why, She is her."

him at the door with uplifted finger entreating silence. "What's the matter?" is his suppressed query. Florrie doesn't seem very well. sleeping now, so don't wake This man, strong, powerful, and courageous, who would have battled against fire and water, would have faced a raging wild beast, or have wrestled against any odds to have saved one of his family from pain, is, like Samson of old, shorn of his locks of courage and strength by the insidious poison of conscious financial inability to meet any greater burden. He creeps softly to the side of the bed and looks at his child. Her face is hot and scarlet; she is burning with fever. "Have you sent for the doctor?" he inquires, knowing all the while what the answer will be. "No, dear," his wife replies; "we Owe him" But there is no need to finish the sentence. A cry of agony is kept back with a choking effort, and he turns away from the bed, sick and sad and ready to do anything. Some men fly to drink, others lose their temper and say things to the wife, while others sit and brood and finally abandon all effort. A few are indifferent and callous, and allow things to take their course; and a very, very few fight on and win.

But let me return to the children. They live and grow into boyhood and girlhood. They are thin, pallid, and more or less anæmic. They fuss with their food, and never seem to have a healthy appetite. Colds are in constant attendance upon them. Their livers are so weak that the sight of a piece of fat meat produces all the symptoms of a bilious attack. Headache and drowsiness are as common as the day. They have no desire to learn, and a genuine physical effort is entirely beyond their capacity. With constant illnesses and ailments, with oceans of drugs, emulsions, poultices, and quack remedies, they manage to reach their

teens. All the while father and mother have little else than worry.

A new form of anxiety now presents itself to the heads of this industrial household. "What shall we do with our boys?" "What shall we do with our girls?" Every morning, every night, every dinner-time (that is, if the father goes home to dinner) this vexatious question is raised, discussed, and adjourned; and, suggest what they will, nothing seems to be suitable to the physical or mental capabilities of either the boy or the girl. Ultimately the boy becomes a clerk, because Mr. Amos at the chapel has a vacancy for one in his office. He starts at five shillings a week, and works about sixty hours for it! He is not really worth the money but Mr. Amos is a very nice man, and so kind. Later on the girl is engaged for a twelvemonth to learn the typewriter, and she has to serve six months for nothing. The net result of all this is that the amount from father's weekly wage, usually devoted to food and clothing, has to be reduced to meet the extra cost of keeping these two children at work. Cheaper and better to send them into the woods and fields to develop their physique and establish their health, but-they must begin to do something to earn their living. Oh, the wickedness of it! Oh, the irony of it! Do you wonder at the cry of physical degeneration?

Meanwhile the trials and anxieties of the parents are growing more and more. What appear to be mere twopenny-halfpenny incidents to the ordinary person not engaged in industrial strife of any kind are, to these anxious parents, a source of uneasiness, depression, and hopelessness.

This does not exhaust the list of family troubles by any manner of means, although, perhaps, it is one of the most trying. When children come into the world it is only natural that parents should desire to see them grow up

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