THE COLONIZATION OF GILEAD.

 The Cologne Gazette has the following:—

 " 'Palestine for the Jews!' Among our orthodox Israelites and Christians unfriendly to the Israelites this has always been a favourite cry : ' Palestine for the Jews,' and has gained strength in proportion as the power of the present political ruler over the 'beloved land' wanes away. The English preacher, Nugee, who has interested himself in this matter, expounded on the 14th of the month, in a public lecture, a plan which of late has assumed a practical shape. The Englishman, Oliphant, has laid the plan before the Sultan. It is that the land of Gilead and Moab, embracing the whole territory of the Israelitish tribes of Gad, Reuben and Manasseh, shall be converted into a Jewish colony, the Sultan being paid in cash for the territory, a proposition which the Sultan has already favorably entertained. Still more, Goschen, the recently appointed Ambassador Extraordinary of England, at Constantinople, has expressed himself as well disposed toward the furtherance of the plan. The territory in question embraces about 1,500,000 English acres, and is at present inhabited only by nomadic tribes. The colony is to remain subject to the Turkish power, while yet its immediate Governor is to be an Israelite. In this manner Judaism is to to regain a firmer foothold in its own land, and the colony itself ultimately become a rallying point for the scatterred people of Israel, around which, it is hoped, an ever-broadening girdle of new settlements will form itself. The purchase money for the territory of the new colony is to be contributed by the free-will offerings of patriotic Israelites. Two railroads or highways are to be built, the one ascending from Jaffa to Jerusalem, the other extending from Haifa to the further side of the Jordan. Sir Moses Montefiore has already interested himself in these significant enterprises, furnishing material aid for the same. For the road to Jaffa, the Turkish Government has already made a concession, with the proviso that the work shall be commenced by next January at the farthest. Still further, the construction of a ship canal from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Akabe and the Red Sea is contemplated. Palestine is again to be re-opened, under the influence of the ideas of the nineteenth century, if only the Jews themselves are ready, with their contributions and their settlements, for their own land."

The London Times has the following:— "A negotiation is said to be on foot between the members of the house of Rothschild and the venerable Sir Moses Montefiore on the one hand, and the Ottoman Government on the other, for the cession, under certain conditions of the Holy Land. The Ottoman Government is already at its last grasp, for want of ready money. The Jewish race wish a 'habitat' of their own. As the Greeks, though a scattered people, living for the most part in Turkey, have a Greek kingdom, so the Jews wish to have a Hebrew kingdom. This, it will be remembered, is the leading idea of George Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda.' Few persons, and probably the gifted authoress herself not more than others, imagined that the dream of the Mordecai of those pages was in the least degree likely so soon to be realized. Information as to the nature of the new Jewish State, whether it is to be theocratic or royal, is uncertain, but the arrangements in reference to it are in progress. Prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves, more especially when those who believe in them are possessed of the sinews of government. The day when 'the Dispersed of Israel' are to be gathered into one is confidently looked forward to, not only by Hebrews, but by multitudes of Christians. The author of ' Alroy' would be gathered to his fathers in greater peace, were he permitted under his administration to see this day and be glad. Superstitious persons, who think that the end of the world is to be preceded by the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, will be inclined to lend serious belief to Mother Shiptons's prophecy that the earth is to see its last days in 1881."

Jewish Herald (Vic. ), 13 August 1880 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article149435852

The Influence of Judaism upon the Intellectual Development of Mankind.

 (By Bernhard Pomeranz.)

(Translated for The Hebrew by P.B.)

Who is there that is not familiar with the wonderful story of the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert? The historic narrative describes how the “pillar of fire” lighted their journeyings by night and the “ pillar of cloud ” protected their wanderings by day. This is symbolical of the later history of God’s chosen people.

For nearly two thousand years, the history of our race has been one of perpetual wandering through a wilderness of exile. The “ pillar of fire ” has been the symbol of that ardent enthusiasm for the national or Jewish ideal, which has sustained and guided us through the long nights of oppression and fanatical persecution. But, with the dawn of a brighter day, when the sun of tolerance, liberty and equality rises over us, we observe the “ pillar of cloud,” symbolical of selfishness, materialism, and indifferentism which have cast their shadow over the higher aims and ideals which should animate us.

The anti-Semitic movement which, in recent times, has sprung up in many continental centres, may prove after all a blessing in disguise, and serve to fan into flame the smouldering embers of a holy patriotism and enthusiasm, causing us to rally once more round the standard of Judaism. Then may we cry unto our enemies and detractors, “You have desired our death, but the Lord has made it our blessing.”

The activity of our enemies teaches a useful lesson, teaches us our duty, what we should do and what we should leave undone; the faults we should renounce, the virtues we should cultivate.

The best source whence to gain counsel and advice is the history of our own people, for therein we find the reflection of the spirit, the tendency and the destiny of our race.

Historia Magistra Vitæ said the Romans : That which is experience to the individual is to a nation its history. History lays bare to us the life of a nation and teaches us to adapt to our future conduct the lessons of the past; as was said by Israel’s greatest prophet to the people : “ Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations.”

The study of our National History is not only useful, but it is also interesting in the highest degree. There are two powerful reasons which make Jewish history particularly attractive, and its study so fascinating. Firstly: The history of nearly every nation other than our own is the history of a single race or nation, of its origin and development, a record of its relations with its neighbours, its successes and its failures; its decay and final extinction or absorption into another race. But the history of our people on the other hand brings us into contact with all the nations of the world, and is therefore universal. We meet with the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Persians; our ancestors lived in the Greek, Macedonian and Roman Empires ; we came into contact with all the national groups formed during the middle ages, and are citizens at this day in every country of the globe. We meet all on our way in the study of the history of our eternal race.

Secondly : Israel was the first nation to lay the foundation of a so-called Philosophy of History. It was the first to perceive, underlying the struggles of rival nationalities and in the complications of national policies, a universal principle; and, recognising in its existence, a distinct purpose, proclaimed its history to be, and to be intended as such, a sure guide for all the world. Again, it was Israel that first formulated the axiom that “nations prosper by virtue and perish by vice.” It is, therefore, the originator of the fundamental principles of the world’s moral code. Neither the ancient mythologies nor heathen histories teach anything like that. Hesiod and Homer are silent about it just as are Herodotus and Tacitus. In the Homeric songs it is written that the gods do interfere with the destinies of nations and direct them according to their fancies and the end of the Trojan war is described as the realisation of the will of Zeus. But all we can learn is that the gods favored some above others from pure fancy, without a moral motive, without any regard to right and justice, and frequently in opposition to justice and morality.

I shall now endeavour to show when and how Judaism has influenced the moral and intellectual development of mankind and impressed it with the stamp of its own spirit, the understanding of which will also be an indication of the proper conception of our duty and a guidance for our conduct in the present and future.

The spirit, the essence of Judaism, can briefly be characterised in the words of the prophet, “ Love truth, love peace !” Judaism appeals to the mind and to the heart of man. Its fundamental doctrine is the unity of God, as the highest principle of the world ; the existence of fixed laws in nature and the unity of all forces and of all spirits. Judaism demands peace, peace of the man within himself, peace with his fellow man, and in its last consequence, the peace of the world. The whole tendency of Judaism is contained in two words : Monotheism and Messianism. To realise and to carry to victory these ideas, is its destiny in accordance with the prophecy: “You will carry the light of civilisation before all mankind.”

Let us now observe by the light of history when and how Israel has borne this spirit into the world. For this purpose we may divide our history into three epochs :

1. The Mosaic era to the return from the Babylonian exile.

 2. The Talmudic-Neo-platonic period.

 3. The time of our dispersion.

During the first epoch of Jewish national life, the influence of Judaism upon the non-Jewish world was, as a matter of course, limited, During that time our nation was preparing itself for its high mission, its literature was in a state of development. It was during this period that the ideas relating to God and Man underwent a process of fermentation and purification in the mind and heart of our people. But even at that time, this great intellectual movement, initiated chiefly by the prophets, had considerable influence upon other nations living in the neighbourhood of Canaan. This monotheistic doctrine pierced the dense clouds of Asiatic heathenism in every direction, and the God inspired Seers of Israel not only directed their fiery denunciations at their own race, but also at the inhabitants of the surrounding countries.

Through the Babylonian exile, and later under the rule of the Persians, the Jews came into close contact with the Babylonians and the Persians. Conflicting influences now asserted themselves—civilization and enlightenment from Judaism, darkness and corruption from those nations of whom we read in the Talmud: “ The names of the Angels, as they appear in the book of Daniel, they have borrowed from the Babylonian mythology, and thus grafted a foreign branch upon their own tribe.”

Part II.

It was only during the second epoch of Jewish national life that the influence of Jewish ideas made itself felt upon the heathen world. This was effected by the Bible, by means of its Greek translation, the Septuagint.

The Holy Writ, this book of books (of which even Goethe, the “ great heathen,” said that to it he owed in a great measure his education), was to the heathen world, up to the end of the third century, a book sealed with “ seven seals.” It was by its translation into Greek, the language understood and spoken by the civilized peoples of that time, that its contents became accessible to all civilized nations and the common property of mankind. “ The Septuagint,” says a prominent writer, “was the first apostle whom Judaism sent out to convert the world.”

One can imagine the powerful and even startling impression this work must have exercised upon the people of those days. A new field of thought, conception and principle was opened at once to the heathen world. Especially were the philosophical and cultured Greeks and Alexandrians struck by this original work of human intellect, feeling partly attracted yet partly repulsed by it, until the school of the Neo-Platonics, with their great and noble thinker, Philo, as leader, made them acquainted with the spirit of the sacred writings and, by means of an allegorical explanation of its contents, brought into harmony the Jewish with the Greek philosophical conceptions.

Even at that period we find Judaism at work welding the ideas of the Orient with those of the Occident by influencing the Neo-Platonism in Egypt through the Jewish philosophical school at Alexandria, and also by impressing its character upon the “ Gnosis ” through the Essenes, the forerunners of the Kabbala, in Palestine.

In such manner the ground was prepared for the growth of a new doctrine, Christianity. By lifting the Bible out of the prescribed circle of the Hebrew scholars to whom alone its language was intelligible, and by the endeavours of the Jewish savants of Alexandria to accommodate the sacred writings to the philosophical mind of the Greek thinkers, the conviction gradually took hold of the heathen world’s representatives, that they had hitherto lived in utter darkness, and that a better and truer doctrine was now before them. They became conscious of the littleness of their mythology, and the depravity of their morals, but they were deficient in moral strength to elevate themselves to the ideal height of the Jewish doctrine. Then arose men who undertook the work of mediators, who, in order to introduce part of the Jewish doctrine into heathenism, made concessions to the latter, diluting Judaism to make it tasteful to the heathens, and thus originated a religion which, thanks to the duplicity of its character, was able to propagate and make its way in the world, but which, still in consequence of its duplicity, became necessarily the enemy of its parent, Judaism. But not only indirectly by Christianity did Judaism give a great impulse to the intellectual life of mankind, but for a lengthened period it had a direct influence upon the mind and heart of the deeply agitated heathen world.

For it is an erroneous impression, that Judaism intended to remain a national religion only without showing any inclination to proselytism. This opinion is founded upon the fact, that, with the sole exception of the converting of the Idumaces by force, Judaism has never made proselytes by fire or sword. That the aspiration to become a universal religion, as announced by the prophets, did exist and that about two hundred years before and after the Christian era the doors of Judaism were open and thousands of heathens became converts—of this there is no doubt whatever. It is proved by the many stories of conversion, which Talmudic tradition has preserved ; also by the writings of contemporary Greek and roman authorities, who censure the apostasy of their countrymen and appear angry at the influence and adoption by them of Jewish spirit. For many of these proselytes, particularly for the “ metuentes,” who only observed certain Jewish morals and customs, without having accepted the totem of the union, Judaism was in most instances only a state of transition from heathenism to Christianity. Yet many became Jews pure and simple and remained true Jews for ever. It was only in later times, when experience showed the instability of conversion, politically as well as from a religious point of view, that Judaism ceased its efforts at proselytising and expressed just anger at the disappointments experienced, in the words : “Proselytes are the most dangerous disease on the body Judaic.”

This seclusion from the outside world was in reality the result of obedience to the law of self preservation as, after the loss of their political independence the Jews were scattered over countries, where the new creed gradually took firm root, and with increasing strength and power, lessened its tolerance. The new creed did not feel secure in the possession of its inheritance, as long as there existed a people who denied its right of ownership. It was therefore a vital matter either to christianise the Jews or to eradicate them absolutely and entirely. That was the cause of the first missionary mania, of the period of hatred and destruction that evolved canonical laws against the Jews, and the bloody persecutions and fanatical disputations.

But this struggle, which on the part of Judaism was purely defensive and carried on with intellectual weapons only, assisted considerably in the strengthening of the Jewish ideas and their propagation amongst mankind. Already the disputations from which the Church expected great advantages, had an opposite effect and caused doubts in many a Christian’s heart. This gave birth to a new branch of literature, called Apologetics, intended originally only to serve as a means of defence against the attacks of religious opponents. From this branch, even non-Jewish opponents of the Church took their sharpest weapons of attack. From the publication of the contra-gospels, written by Jews in the second century, and causing much trouble to the fathers of the Church, up to the time of Frederic the Great, Voltaire and other freethinkers ; all the opponents of the established Church found material for their effective and disintegrating polemics in the writings of the Jewish philosophers.

This circumstance explains the fury of the Church against Jewish literature and its endeavours to destroy by fire the Talmud and other literary products of Jewish intellect. But these endeavours of the Church missed their aim.

Here again we see Judaism exercising a lasting influence upon the modern world. The strife, provoked by the Church against the value of the writings of the Jews of that period, caused Reuchlin and other men well versed in Hebrew, to defend Jewish literature. A great literary battle was fought for and against it. The most prominent men of that age and the representatives of the universities entered the arena, and the strife ended with an unquestionable victory for Jewish literature and saw the appearance of a man, who was destined, with Bible in hand, to make a breach in the rotten walls of the Church—the appearance of Martin Luther.

Part III.

The Reformation, which founded the Protestant Church, was, as regards Judaism, a great step towards the truth and a return to the ancient faith. The more any sect frees itself from superstition and dogma, the nearer it approaches the original source of religion, the doctrine of Judaism. One of the consequences of the reformation was the deeper study of the Hebrew language by Christian learned men, and a deeper insight into our literature by the help of the works of Jewish linguists and commentators, such as Raschi, Ebsn Esra and Kimchi, who materially assisted in the understanding of our sacred writings and the fructification of contemporary Christian writers with the Jewish spirit.

A revolution, similar to that effected in the Occident by Judaism giving an impulse to Christianity, was accomplished, seven hundred years later, in the Orient by the foundation of the Mahomedan religion.

It is well known that Mahomed communicated to a great extent with Jewish learned men, and was made acquainted by them with the Bible and the hagadic part of the Talmud. It was this acquaintance with the Jewish sacred writings, that induced him to free his fellow natives from heathenism and convert them to Monotheism. Mahomed, says Renan, was at a certain time of his life a Jew, and it can be maintained he remained a Jew all his life long. The Koran is imbued by a Jewish spirit. Mahomed has made the Jewish ideas with all their traditions and rites conform to the intellect and feeling of the Arabs, he “ Arabified " Judaism. In company with these “ Jewdified ” Arabs, with the Moors of the Pyrenaic peninsula, the Jews worked hard during the middle ages to preserve science to the world. This is one of the greatest services Judaism has done to mankind. Whereas over the whole of Europe there was entire darkness ; as with the call: “ God wills it ” crusades were undertaken and tens of thousands of families put to death, while wonders and relics are almost the only theme under discussion over the whole of the Occident; while Christianity was submerged in a bottomless abyss of superstition without the slightest inclination for the investigation of truth and science : during all that time the Jews remained on the path of science and worked to increase human knowledge. There existed during those times a legion of deep Jewish thinkers, prominent physicians, natural philosophers, and last, but by no means least, translators of the Greek and Arabic literature for the benefit of Europeans.

By translating the works of the Greek philosophers and naturalists into Arabic, and the philosophical and medical works of Arabic thinkers and savants into Latin, they provided the Occident with a knowledge of classical antiquity, and by doing so and also by making Europe acquainted with the philosophy and natural science of the Moors, they greatly assisted in the revival of science in Europe and became thus the standard bearers of Humanism in the fifteenth century.

And from another quarter the enlightening influence of the Jewish-Spanish school made itself felt, by giving birth to one of the greatest thinkers Judaism ever has produced, Spinoza. Spinoza, prompted by the writings of Ebn Esra, lays, through his Biblical and political treatises, the foundation of a rational investigation of the Bible and thus becomes the apostle of freedom of conscience. Urged thereto by the works of Maimonides and a study of the Kabala, he introduces with his “ Ethica more geometrico demonstrata” a mathematical method of investigating the science of metaphysics, and becomes the principal founder of modern philosophy.

During the 18th century the tendency of religious thought be came more liberal, more tolerant. This tolerance emanated from puritanical, Bible-loving England. It made itself appreciated throughout France and Germany where Lessing and Herder were the champions of the newly awakened freedom of thought. These liberal ideas were closely allied to the spirit of Judaism and were more in sympathy with the teachings of the Old Testament rather than the New.

Renan, not without reason and justice, calls the prophets the first true socialists. These prophets, who detested injustice, who had fiery words of condemnation for every kind of oppression, exploitation and slavery, who with all the enthusiasm of their great souls preached absolute equality in the eyes of the law and the possible perfect equality of ownership; these prophets who, as a means to counteract undue accumulation of property, had instituted the year of release :—these prophets gave to the world the socialistic idea three thousand years ago. It was the office of their successors, such men as Lassalle and Marx, to make the spark a blazing flame.

Thus we see Judaism during the whole course of its history in the workshop of humanity, industrious, courageous and untiring, working for the realisation of its ideals : truth and peace ; unity as a principle of the world, and unity as a principle for life.

And not without success.

Unity as a principle of the world is accepted to-day and taught by modern science ; in unity as a principle of life in the progress of humanity the better part of mankind already believes.

If these ideals are not yet fully realized it is not the fault of Judaism, but the cause is heathen sensuality, in the chains of which the larger part of mankind is still fastened, for, as the poet says:

Dass in der Wiege

Die Menschheit noch liege

Beweisen zur Genüge :

Mönch, Sclave und Kriege.

Therefore our mission is not yet finished. Therefore it will be our duty to fight with all our power against the spirit of darkness and injustice, against narrowminded dogmatism and bigotry, the greatest enemies of enlightenment, progress and Judaism.

Australasian Hebrew (Sydney, NSW ),  November 1896 

u/nla.news-article261028086

CARLYLE'S LATTER DAY PAMPHLETS.

 We publish below several extracts from a work intituled ' Latter Day Pamphlets,' edited by Thomas Carlyle of London, along with certain remarks of the London Times of 26th December.

' In the days that are now passing over us even fools are arrested to ask the meaning of them ; few of the generations of men have seen more impressive days. Days of endless calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded ; if they are not days of endless hope too, then they are days of utter despair. For it is not a small hope that will suffice, the ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. There must be a new world if there is to be any world at all ! That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there— this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final. It is a time to make the dullest man consider and ask himself,— Whence he came ? Whither he is bound ?— a veritable ' New Era,' to the foolish as well as to the wise.'

 What Mr. Carlyle had in his mind when he wrote thus, presently appears. It was the outbreak of Republicanism in 1848. Well might any but a very cool observer of that astonishing movement imagine that ' Doomsday was come ; ' that ' since the irruption of the northern barbarians there had been nothing like it ; ' and that ' the state everywhere throughout Europe had coughed its last in street musketry.' But we now see the breadth and depth of the movement, and perceive that it was immeasurably inferior in importance and significance to several which have occurred since the overthrow of the Roman Empire — far below the first French Revolution, further still below the Reformation. The fact was that Europe had been vaccinated by the Jacobins, and would not take Sansculottism again. A second advent of ' the Mountain ' was a thing morally impossible. And now that the smoke of the barricades has cleared away we see clearly that the movement was confined to the capitals or great cities, and that even there it was a revolt rather than a revolution. No great political, much less any great social change, has been produced. 

There has been no overthrow of a privileged class or substitution of a free for an arbitrary government, such as resulted from the first French revolution. Of the monarchs that were temporarily expelled, the majority have either returned to their seats of government in person, or devolved their power, diminished only in name, to a younger and more vigorous successor. One monarchy alone has been completely overthrown ; and in this instance a constitutional King has been followed by an unconstitutional and even absolute President. The ' State ' has not 'coughed its last,' and Doomsday is indefinitely adjourned.

 So again, far from its being impossible that ' things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine,' there is but too much reason to apprehend that by a natural though lamentable reaction they will re turn into an an older and sorrier routine than ever. The first effect of the insurrection has been a great increase in the force of standing armies— an element which certainly is not favourable to political progress. The next effect may, perhaps, be a European war, which, whatever may be its result, is sure to suspend all liberal movements, to exalt the power of the sword, and to impoverish and crush the people. And what is more important still, absolutism both civil and religious, is everywhere deriving dangerous strength from the natural fears of the peaceable and the rich. France is an evident instance. Germany is equally so. In Italy a winking Madonna consecrates the victory of a reinstated Pope. Even in England men who have windows and tills to guard begin to talk too lightly of their liberty ; and the greatest theological movement of the day, which Mr. Carlyle, seeing only from a distance, takes for the smallest, is radically absolutist in civil matters as well as in spiritual. Every where the tide is running against freedom.

 Of the social evils of England Mr. Carlyle takes a view no less exaggerated than his view of the political situation of Europe : —

 ' Between our black West Indies and our white Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it with our fierce Mammon worships and our benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply and demand — Leave it alone; — Voluntary principle,— Time will mend it: — 'till British industrial existence seems fast becoming one huge prison swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral ; a  hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive ; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating with the  nether deeps, as the sun never saw till now.' Those scenes, which the Morning Chronicle is bringing home to all minds of men — thanks to it for service such as newspapers have seldom done — ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death ; three million paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said needlewomen to die ; these are but items in the sad ledger of despair.'

 We do not wish the prophet to prophesy smooth things to us; but we wish him to prophesy true things ; otherwise he will produce either incredulity, despair, or a vague impression that something extraordinary must be done— which is very fatal to all practical reform. To write so wildly on the subject is just the way to relax real effort and increase the amount of indolent sentimentalism and ineffectual rhetoric. And surely, for a social philosopher, who is bound to base his conclusions upon facts, Mr. Carlyle has the strangest mode of obtaining his information. His notions of the industrial classes, generally, seem to be derived from certain highly seasoned pictures of the very worst class of a metropolis ; that is, the very cesspool of civilized society. Is this sensible ? And might it not be well to look a little into ' Mac-Crowdy's ' statistics and the ' Dismal Science'? Of the existence of the ' thirty thousand outcast needle women ' we yet seek proof. Pauperism is a terrible evil— one which deserves and is receiving the best attention of our best men. If Mr. Carlyle has anything practical to say upon the subject, he will be gladly heard ; but before he can say anything practical he must learn the cause of the evil which is to he cured. It does not arise from 'benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses,' nor from 'mammon-worship' either; but from certain causes naturally incident to society in an old and overpeopled country, which it is the province of the ' Dismal Science ' to investigate and correct. And as to the Morning Chronicle reports, and the 30,000 needlewomen, Mr. Carlyle would here be nearer the mark if he directed the sword of his satire against luxury, which draws all this vice and misery in its train. But luxury is a disease of the body social, and Mr. Carlyle's fixed faith and fixed idea is that, all our evils result from want of intellect in the head.

 The two offices upon which Mr. Carlyle especially fixes are the Foreign and the Colonial. And he is right here. But the reasons which he gives are wrong. The reason why these offices are in worse odour than the rest, is not that they are particularly deep in 'owl-droppings,' or that the clerks in them are not men of genius and ' brothers of the radiances and the lightnings,' or that the Colonial-office does not leave the colonies alone and turn its undivided attention to the Irish, or that the Foreign-office does not take up the potato rot and cease to 'protocol' and mix itself in the affairs of Europe. The Colonial-office is in bad odour, partly owing to the spirit which at present rules it, partly from the inherent difficulty of governing distant dependencies, especially when the Government is representative and the dependencies are not represented. And the Foreign-office is in bad odour, partly and principally because Lord Palmerston is Foreign Minister, and partly because just now there is a great call for economy, and people are very anxious to find good reasons for putting down ambassadors.

 The Colonial-office Mr. Carlyle proposes to reform by turning it to its proper function of organizing Irish labour. Under the Foreign-office he proposes, with some witty politicians, to ' put a live coal.' We have had no continental interests worth caring for since the time of Oliver Cromwell. As we have certain cottons and hardwares to sell, and Portugal oranges to buy, we may need ' some kind of consul.' Ambassadors are to be 'sent on great occasions ; otherwise we may correspond with foreign Potentates through the cheap medium of the penny post. This scheme for reforming the Foreign-office is not original ; but the scheme for reforming the Colonial-office quite makes amends.

 The task of reforming Downing-street in general was destined by Mr. Carlyle for our lost Sir Robert Peel. But who that ever studied the character of that lamented statesman can hear without a smile of his 'privately resolving to go one day into that stable of King Augis (Augeas) which appals human hearts, so rich is it high piled with the droppings of 200 years, and, Hercules-like, to load 1000 night waggons from it, and turn running water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till the antique pavement and the real basis of the matter show itself clear again ;' or of his asking himself, in the character of 'the reforming Hercules, what work is now necessary, not in form and by traditionary use and wont, but in very fact, for the vital interests of the British nation, to be done here,'

 But of course the great remedy is Hero worship,— to choose ourselves a Lama, or from six to a dozen of them after the example of the people of Thibet, who have ' seen into the heart of the matter ;' to get the divinest men into Downing-street in place of the present Parvuluses and Zeros; who might just as well be elected without so much cost and trouble by throwing an orange skin into St. James'-street and taking the man it hit ; and generally to increase ' the reverence for Human Intellect or God's Light and the detestation of Human Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness.' As a practical suggestion to set us going in this scheme of universal reform— which otherwise, now that Sir Robert Peel is gone, would be rather vague— Mr. Carlyle proposes that the Crown should be empowered to nominate part of the Ministry to seats in the House of Commons, without constituencies, of which he speaks in the most disparaging and anti-democratic terms. This again is not original. But it is original to imagine that such an arrangement would open the Cabinet to ' the whole British nation, learned, unlearned, professional, practical, speculative, and miscellaneous,' and that if it had been in force 50 years ago, instead of having ' meagre Pitt' for First Minister, we might have had ' the thundergod,' Robert Burns.

Britannia and Trades' Advocate (Hobart Town, Tas. ), May 1851 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article225557511

NATIONAL GUILDS.

 (By Professor Murdoch.) 

The present time may perhaps be known to future historians as the Age of Bewilderment. It is a time of swift and stupefying disintegrations of belief; a time when the authoritative voices have lost their old dogmatic tone, and the prophets are put to shame, and the experts visibly confounded; a time when the old faiths have crumbled, and the old formulae have failed us, and the old certitudes—the cherished doctrines, the rooted convictions—are torn up and blown hither and thither like dead leaves by the mighty hurricane which has come raging and roaring through the world. Nowhere is this so manifest as in the field of industrial relations. None but the obvious charlatan any longer dares to speak with assurance of what the industrial future may hold in store for us. We know that it will be different from the present; beyond that barren knowledge, all is groping and conjecture. Nevertheless, if we look steadily at the chaos and confusion around us, we do presently begin to discern, or to think, we discern, hints of a certain definite drift of opinion; we do begin to see which way the wind is blowing. In the industrial world I submit that the wind is blowing, though gustily enough, m the direction of national guilds.

 At the risk of seeming to utter the stalest of truisms, one must remark that during the last hundred years we have been presented with four main attempts to solve the industrial problem—the problem, that is, of the relations of Capital and Labour to one another and of the State to both. Individualism was followed by Socialism, Socialism by Syndicalism; and now Syndicalism is being rapidly superseded in its turn by the idea of National Guilds, an idea to which some of its apostles have given the rather misleading name of Guild Socialism.

 Dickens has stated in one immortal phrase the comfortable gospel of Individualism: "Every man for himself and God for us all, as the elephant said when he danced among the chickens." The theory of Individualism was, briefly, that the private employer was to settle his own relations with the employed, while the State stood aside and minded its own business. The practical applications of this alluringly simple creed gave England the spectacle of, in Mr. Sidney Webb's words, "women working half-naked in the coal mines; young children dragging trucks all day in the foul atmosphere of the underground galleries; infants bound to the loom for fifteen hours in the heated air of the cotton mill, and kept awake only by the over-looker's lash; hours of labor for all, young and old, limited only by the utmost capabilities of physical endurance." England, the England that had lately emerged from an heroic struggle for the liberties of Europe turned herself into an industrial hell, so appalling that, though some may still sigh in secret for the good old days before the State began to pry and fuss and meddle in industry, no one openly advocates a return to such conditions. As an avowed creed, Individualism is dead and done with, one of the evil memories of mankind.

 It was succeeded, inevitably, by Socialism; I mean, of course, neither the socialism of the red flag and the barricades and the swift and sudden and relentless seizure of land from  the landlord and of capital from the capitalist, nor the mild, hum-drum, respectable, unadventurous Fabian socialism which aims at the gradual training and equipment of a vast army of State officials; I mean something wider, some thing which includes these and innumerable other creeds, all of which have this belief in common, that salvation cometh by the State, that the industrial problem is to be solved by the action of the State. This is a belief, which no longer animates any large body of thinking persons.

 In France and America Socialism was succeeded by Syndicalism, a doctrine which sprang out of the worker's discovery that the politician was a broken reed and that the bureaucrat could be as much a tyrant as the worst private employer. The discredit into which, all the world over, politicians and parliaments have of late years fallen—whether justly or unjustly I do not pretend to know—made inevitable the coming of some such philosophy as that of Syndicalism.. The syndicalist was essentially anti-socialist; he was 'more hostile to the State than even the old individualist had been. He pinned  his faith to industrial combinations, arrayed for battle against capitalism; and his method was violence. His choice of methods was a fatal mistake, because if the appeal is to violence the worker must always, in the long run, be beaten; but his worst blunder was his attitude towards the State. By taking up that attitude, he not merely threw away an indispensables weapon, but quixotically put that weapon into the hands of the enemy. The failure of the great Australian strike of last year—essentially a  syndicalist adventure—showed many thoughtful men among the strikers where the fallacy of syndicalism lay.

 On the heels of Syndicalism came the doctrine of National Guilds, a doctrine which has made great strides since the war began, and which, as even the London "Times" admitted the other day, "is stirring great numbers of the younger workers, and is receiving quite inadequate notice in the general Press." It has certainly received quite inadequate notice in Australia; we are destined, if I am not mistaken, to hear much of it in the near future. The best exposition of it, so far, is to be found in a book entitled "National Guilds," by Mr. A. R. Orage, the editor of the "New Age," a journal which has been preaching this gospel, week in, week out, these many years. Another book which the inquiring spirit may be strongly advised to read is the remarkable volume, "Authority, Liberty, and Function," by Ramiro de Maeztu, a Spaniard, who writes excellent English, and who seeks to give  the doctrine a philosophical basis.

 A recent article in the "Round Table" points out that the adoption of the Whitley Report by the British Government is a momentous event in the ordering of British life:  "It lays firm the foundations of the new industrial order which the country expects to see after the war—and upon a basis of absolute equality between the two chief partners in the industrial process, management and labour." Now it is true the Whitley Councils are not National Guilds but they are unquestionably a step in that direction; their establishment is one among the innumerable straws which show which way the wind, in Britain at all events, is blowing. The doctrine of National Guilds appears to combine what is best in the ideals of the trade unionist with what is best and most practicable, in the ideals of the socialist; it avoids the fatal error of Syndicalism, in that it clearly recognises the necessary functions of the State: but the name sometimes given to it, "Guild Socialism," is, as I have said, rather misleading, for the National Guildsman has no belief whatever in the State enterprises which we commonly call socialistic. He pins his faith to the idea of a combination of all the men and women—labourers, administrators, hand-workers, brain-workers, skilled and unskilled—connected with a particular industry into a guild which shall manage that industry as a national undertaking. He does not seek to supplement wages by the method known as "profit-sharing:" he seeks rather to abolish the wages system and to substitute therefore a genuine partnership. In the work of the guild the State participates, regulating and controlling on behalf of the community. Syndicalism aims at the creation of guilds so powerful as to be able at their own sweet will to hold up the community; a madness into which the National Guildsman does not fall, being saved by his altogether saner and sounder view of the true relation of the State and industry. I am not going to attempt however, an exposition of this new gospel. Frankly, I am qualified neither to champion nor to condemn, nor even to expound, this or any other industrial creed. But I suppose that even a rank outsider, who confesses with shame that he has never read through a text-book of economics, may be allowed to recognise that the industrial condition into which we have fallen is intolerable in the present and full of darkest menace for the future. Even an outsider may be allowed to feel convinced that the problem will never be solved except by the substitution of some form of partnership for the present relations of employer and employed; and that, unless a sufficient number of people can be brought to recognise this in time, the present war of the nations will be followed by an industrial war within each nation, more horrible still. And my sole purpose in writing these lines is to draw some attention to a proposal which has not yet, in Australia, attracted the notice it deserves; a proposal which may be right or wrong, but which is at any rate an honest attempt to grapple with the facts which lie at the root of industrial discontent. Some in our midst are already thinking along these lines, as a recent correspondence in the columns of the "West Australian" shows. No one, I imagine, believes that the Guild idea can be suddenly realised, in England, or anywhere else; the change must come bit by bit, as all great and salutary changes do; and the essential preliminary is that as many minds as possible should be set brooding over the matter.

West Australian (Perth, WA),  1918  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27473534

Peace Treaty Disaster

  ——

REPUBLIC EVADES WORKERS 

——

Ominous Figures In Background

 ——

By SOLOMON BRIGG

 EARLY 1919

It was early in 1919 that the Weimar Constitution establishing the ill-fated Weimar Republic finally took shape.

The work was entrusted to the National Assembly, and although the elections had shown that 23,400,000 Germans had voted in favor of Democracy against 4,700,000 opponents from the Right and 2,300,000 from the Left, the Government's chief concern appeared to be escape from the influence of the Workers and Soldiers' Councils.

 Control by the working class was not acceptable to the new rulers, so the drafting of the new constitution was undertaken at Weimar, well removed from the democratic influences of Berlin.

 Concessions were certainly given, but already could be seen in the background the ominous figures of the major industrialists, who were destined to destroy the new Republic.

 The Socialist revolution was not to be socialist In form, and in the transfer of powers the old bureaucrats of the Prussian regime succeeded in maintaining their machine almost intact.

 Own Theories

 Thus the actual drafting of the Constitution was not undertaken by the Workers' Councils, but by Herr Preuss, a well-known official of the Prussian Ministry of the interior, who succeeded In undermining all the objectives of the Socialist majority and imposing his own theories of a minimum of democratic rights. 

Strange, indeed, was the conduct of the leading doctrinaire socialists.

 Instead of insisting upon the adoption of their platform they acquiesced in the decisions of the reactionary Preuss.

 The Weimar Constitution rejected the central plank of socialism, but promised the socialisation of all enterprises which were "suitable" for social administration.

 In other words, the Government was satisfied with the right to participate in the administration of industry, with all profits and final responsibility still the prerogative of capitalist proprietors.

 Costly Disputes 

The trade unions were given representation on the federation controlling the industry, while Factory Councils were established for the purpose of providing the basis of job control. Although the membership of the trade unions increased to eight millions within a few months, they found themselves involved in a series of costly disputes, in which the employers invariably secured all the gains, while the Government refused to intercede. 

Investigation committees were established early in 1929 to report upon the socialisation of the mining and potash industries, while the Government even went so far as to draft a law to provide for the socialisation of the electrical industries.

 But Big Business proved too active, and all the initial enthusiasm soon disappeared, leaving the powerful industrialists in control.

 In January, 1919, there was a general strike in the Ruhr area, and the socialisation of the mines was proclaimed. The workers were armed and took possession of the buildings. But once again Noske rushed his Prussian Old Guard troops to suppress the workers. In attempting to keep to the "middle of the road", the Government was actually building the machinery that was to encompass the destruction of the Republic.

 Driving Wedge

 The Weimar Constitution was bourgeois republican in form, while the bitter dissensions between the various groups of Socialists made it easy for Hitler later to drive a wedge into the proletarian movement. On the positive side, the Weimar Constitution achieved the unification of Germany, removing the barriers offered by the existence of hereditary rulers in the various States, while the disappearance of the Hohenzollerns enabled the people to think in terms of the nation rather than in terms of the Prussian oligarchy.

 Thus the first step was the centralisation of all forms of government.

 The constituent States, or Lande, were in future to receive most of their revenue from the proceeds of national taxation, so financial control was highly centralised, making it possible for the Governor of the Reichsbank to exercise such enormous influence in the political affairs of the day.

 Disastrous Blow

 But the most disastrous blow of all was the signing of the Peace Treaty, which imposed such crushing terms of humiliation upon the German people. Germany had set its faith in President Wilson's 14 Points, but when its representatives reached Versailles in 1919 they found themselves face to face with the tigerish Clemenceau and Lloyd George, with memories of his "Hang the Kaiser" campaign still fresh in his mind.

 The Allies backed up by the insistence of the international banks— including J, P. Morgan and Sons— were insistent that the terms offered were the minimum, and all the pathetic idealism of Woodrow Wilson could in no way abate the harsh conditions. It was thus a bitter paradox that the Social Democrats, who had raised the flag of revolution to force Germany into peace, should be called upon to bear the brunt of all the odium attached to that peace.

 Versailles rankled deep in the heart of every German, and when Hitler was seeking a rallying cry to secure support for his plot on behalf of Monopoly Capitalism, there was no more potent slogan than "Down with the Treaty of Versailles," while the Social Democrats were pilloried as betrayers of their country.

 Refused To Sign

 Schiedemann, the Chancellor, indignantly refused to sign the terms and, together with the Democrats, left the Government in June, 1919. The Government was immediately reconstructed under Gustav Bauer— a Majority Socialist leader— and Socialism was committed to the fatal policy of fulfilling the conditions, including reparation payments.

 H. N. Brailsford, in his penetrating study, "Property or Peace," sums up the situation rather admirably thus:

 "The truth about this Republic that died so easily is that It was never more than half-alive. The Republic was born in defeat: it lived through humiliation; it went down in slump. Its signature, and not that of the imperial Warlord, was set to the treaty that stamped Germany as guilty untouchable, on the fringes of human society; it was excluded through its formative years from the League of Nations; it must acquiesce, while the Allies, supported by colored troops, occupied the Rhineland, and sit by passive while the French occupied the Ruhr; its was the currency that the inflation degraded, and its the policy (though the burden of reparations and occupation set it in motion) that wiped out the savings of the small middle-class and brought its standard down to a proletarian level; it was the tributary that must send the surplus of German toil by the one-way road to Paris and New York; its was the flag that only rationed armaments might defend, while the Poles across its border assembled great guns and tanks and aeroplanes for the use of conscript millions.

 "The Powers that imposed these burdens and humiliation of a struggling Republic were themselves based on the sovereignty of the people, and in their more exalted moments believed that they had fought the war to make the world secure for democracy."

 That appraisal reveals the tragedy that was the Weimar Constitution in all its facets.

 Instead of a complete social transformation, the Socialists were satisfied with an external political change, but below the surface the Junkers and major industrialists held an even tighter rein than ever.

 No Transition.

 There was no transition— only a change in nominal rulers. Thus the Weimar Constitution provided that authority to interpret the Constltutlon was to be vested in the Supreme Court. No Republican had ever been appointed to that body, and its decisions were always adverse to the Socialist regime, so that the Monopoly Capitalists were as secure as ever.

 Brailsford explains this surrender thus:

 "The German Republic sprang from a spontaneous mass revolt of the workers. It doomed itself to defeat, because in the early days the party that assumed leadership lost the initiative. It postponed indefinitely its proper aims. It dropped into a posture of passive defence. It ranged itself in ever-widening coalitions with sections of the middle-class, and, therefore, it fought only to hold the ground which these also valued— civil liberty, Parliamentary institutions and International peace.

 "In its attachment to these it was stubborn and sincere. But It never forced an issue or launched a challenge; always it was countering the moves of its adversaries: and choosing at each turn the lesser of the two evils confronting it." 

Yet during this time Germany had the largest Communist Party of any country outside Russia. Internationalist organisations flourished, and international Communism regarded Berlin as its intellectual headquarters. Of its activities Brailsford is no less scathing when he declares:

 "The record of the German Communists was, if anything, less excusably futile than that of the Socialists. The Socialists were the victims of an illusion about legality. The Communists had no such illusions. Yet, proclaiming from first to last the duty of physical resistance, they, too, went down without a blow."

 So even in its first year the Weimar Constitution exhibited all the elements of weakness that were to provide the fuel for its destruction.

Labor Daily (Sydney, NSW ), 1935

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article236480305

Is patriotism a decaying virtue ?

 Or, not to beg the preliminary question, is it a virtue at all ? Mr. GOSCHEN has been lecturing the rising generation of England upon the necessity of maintaining a lofty national spirit, but has scarcely touched either of these questions in its simple form. To define patriotism as love for, and pride in, one's country is easy. To arrive at a solid ethical basis for it is quite another matter. It is a commonplace to assert that self-sacrifice for the sake of fatherland is the citizen's duty. But why is it a duty, and when does it cease to be a duty ? These are questions which the orator and the poet ignore, but which dry-light philosophers and coarsely unpoetic natures begin to agree in examining. From HOMER, TYRTÆUS, and HORACE down to SCOTT or TENNYSON, the whole race of bards sings in unison that it is dulce et decorum to die for one's country, and that the man " whose heart hath ne'er within him burned " for his native Greece, Italy, England, or Caledonia, however " stern and wild " or otherwise those lands may be, is doomed to be, and deserves to be, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung. And with the poets go all those of mankind who are apt to yield to mere generous impulses and unanalysed affections. " Our country, right or wrong," appears to them a maxim as unquestionable as the fifth commandment. With them, too, agreed the older order of idealistic philosophers. PLATO went so far as to maintain that the fatherland and its laws were things deserving of more honour and reverence than even parents themselves. But the world, which "advances" on so many lines, intellectual and moral, has been obliged to advance on this line also. The modern student of ethics shakes his sapient head at patriotism as a virtue Mr. SIDGWICK remarks that "whether a citizen is at any time morally bound to more than certain legally or constitutionally determined duties does not now seem to be clear ;" and therein he but follows cautiously KANT'S dictum that a country has no inherent natural right to the obedience of its citizens. To moralists of this type patriotism is an objectionable disturbing element—an impediment to the play of pure reason, and the faculty of seeing things as they are. OVID once committed himself to speaking of "the love of fatherland, stronger than reason," and that anything should be stronger than reason is naturally a heinous condition of things to the philosophic mind. Nor would we quarrel with the philosopher thereat. We would only ask him to be careful that, in constructing his syllogisms, he has taken all the necessary factors into account.

Though all ages, even the most barbarous, and all countries, even the least eminent, have believed in the citizen loving, belauding, and dying for his native land, there have, no doubt, always been self-centred individuals and constitutional cynics who have asked themselves, when they dared not ask their neighbours, why a citizen should recognise any obligation to anything beyond his own precious self. Side by side with ÆSCHYLUS or PLATO or HORACE went those who held that " any land where you are prosperous is your fatherland." Such persons would never have won a battle of Marathon, or brought their country through to the brilliant issue of Zama. Fortunately they were few in number, and had little to say in the destinies of the country for which their affection was such cupboard-love. But in those times their number increases daily. There are many circumstances which tend to replace the fine old patriotism by a watery "cosmopolitanism" which might, perhaps, better be called sheer blank indifference. Among the ancients the zeal for home, with its Lares and Penates, and for the State, with its religious and other institutions, was inevitable. Foreigners were barbarians, cut off by other languages, other gods and rites, other customs. The natural attitude of state to state was one of hostility. To go abroad meant to sacrifice much comfort, all ambition, and most of the privileges of a free man. It was banishment, felt as keenly as by NORFOLK in " Richard II." In later times, however much new religious ideas had brought mankind into closer brotherhood and rendered national customs more homogeneous, yet travelling was uncommon and difficult, the disabilities of aliens were great, and perpetual wars kept alive everywhere the sentiment of distinct nationality. In modern times the facilities of travel and relations of trade have made nations better acquainted with others' virtues and their own deficiencies. Ease of emigration and the success of emigrants have made the breaking of the tie with the home land more and more commonplace. That any races were born to be permanently hostile to each other is a doctrine now held only by French and Germans relatively to each other. Increased intercourse has produced a closer similarity of constitutions, dress, and customs. The linguistic difficulty has been largely surmounted. Religious intolerances and antipathies retain no great potency among the more civilised of peoples. Moreover, the vogue of philosophic scepticism is dissolving all sorts of primitive ideas. The so-called education of the present day, confident in its miserably jejune logic, is apt to look upon one's country as just so much earth, and on the state as so much machinery, neither one nor the other being capable of inspiring a tender sentiment. Democracy, uninformed by any great idea, and looking upon the state as but a temporary majority of persons, will recognise no obligation of self-sacrifice for anything so commonplace as " the country." Yet again, the growth of industrial unions extending from country to country induces many workers to place the interests of their trade first and of their fatherland but a poor second. Socialists openly proclaim the same doctrine. The result of all these circumstances is that patriotism as a sentiment shows clear signs of decay ; and that cosmopolitanism, whether regarded as a transcendental conception of a wider human federation, or as a mere negation of patriotic sentiment, is gaining ground. Men are beginning to treat the fact of their being born and nurtured in a certain country as only a geographical and historical accident not entailing any moral obligation. Mr. GOSCHEN acutely notes two spirits which seriously affect patriotism in practice. The one is the spirit of parochialism, which will sacrifice the gravest national interests for the sake of getting a town pump, and will bear a national humiliation if only it can secure the new post-office. If Mr. GOSCHEN lived among ourselves, he would witness the spectacle of a community which has been brought to realise all too keenly how far parochial districts will go in bringing disaster on the country for the sake of their own little railway or other local fancy. The other spirit is that of party, which will sometimes lead one faction to welcome disaster to the whole nation provided the disaster brings discredit and defeat to the other side. It remains to be seen whether party spirit will be overcome by patriotism among ourselves when a Government proposes manfully to act for the public weal against all the clamours of parochialists.

We do not believe in Jingoism, if Jingoism means to be Chauvinists. Bragging of one's country in season and out of season is not patriotism. It is intrinsically no better than bragging of one's village, a proceeding of which any other village can see the folly and feel the offence. None the less, natural regard for one's village, then for one's province, and thence for one's country, is a thing to be commended and not analysed. It may be partly due to unreasoning affection for old associations, partly to love of the friends whose circle is in the locality, partly to that self-esteem which will not admit inferiority of the place from which one comes. In the case of a great country it may be pride in its power and history. It may even be a sense of solid obligation for the advantages derived from its superior institutions, in which we have shared. It may be, and in the case of Englishmen it is, all these things. To dissect our patriotism and call it ethically baseless may be sport for philosophisers, but it is death to milder men. " Impressions are often juster than judgments," and we declare for the natural sentiment. If the result of patriotism is to maintain the power and high character of the fatherland, to keep it superior or at least not inferior, to others, and to improve the individual's own morale by the habit of making sacrifices in its behalf, we do not care for all the syllogistic counter-demonstrations of all the logicians and moralists. In these days, when wars are scarce and patriotic deaths but little called for, the true patriot is he who deliberately encourages his affection for his country as a whole, who looks broadly and enthusiastically at its interests, and who disregards the cries of party or of parish when the country itself cries otherwise.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic.),  1893, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8532444

EVOLUTION OF MODERN SOCIALISM.-No. 5.

 (BY FRANK STONEMAN).

(1) ORIGIN.

Guild Socialism is the reflection in the intellectual sphere of the revolt against Parliamentary action, and inaction, chronicled in Article IV. Though the formulation of its theories is the work of a handful of "intellectuals," it is no closet philosophy. A close study of trade union conditions and a resolute and energetic attempt to grapple with the actual problems of industry, acquit it of the charge of Utopianism. Though it has made more headway among University men with a radical bent than among workingmen, it is beginning to influence trade union policy here, in Britain, and in America. Guild Socialism originated as a revolt against Fabianism. As the admirable schemes of the Fabian Society, designed by the patient, passionless, and tireless Webbs, became more definite, a fierce feeling of revolt stirred among many of their co-workers and disciples. This bureaucrats' Utopia meant the destruction of all spontaneity, and of all liberty. It meant a State created in the image and likeness of the Civil Service. It meant the minute regulation of life, not according to the will of the people, but according to the will of a trained and disciplined administrator. The State would take over industry from the great joint-stock companies; would eliminate waste, muddle and inefficiency; would abolish pauperism; would see that every child was "well born and brought up"; would sterilise or segregate the unfit; would ease the path to the grave by pensions and insurance schemes, and would leave nothing to individual or independent social groups, but a routine of ordered duties. Parliament, a clumsy and inefficient body, would become a machine for registering the decisions of the expert, public opinion would be the echo of the still small voice of the expert; the turmoil and struggle which make life hard, strenuous, and interesting, would cease because everybody would surrender his own private foolish desires, and cut the cloth of daily life according to a fashion designed by the expert. This threatened apotheosis of the expert drove those who valued life more than the means of life to seek other solutions. Mr. Belloc drank yet another jug of beer and wrote, "The Servile State." The name had more influence than the book, and the term became a stigma sufficient to damn attempts at State paternalism. Mr. H. G. Wells, with rage in his heart, wrote the "New Machiavelli," in which appeared Oscar and Altiora Baillie—a cold capable couple who pulled wires whereat Parliamentary caucuses and Local Government committees carried out their irreproachable scheme of Social amelioration. L. T. Hobhouse, who was approaching Socialism by the route of Liberalism, discerned resemblances between the Imperialism of Lord Milner and the Collectivism of the Administrator. And finally a coterie of artistic souls saw in the "Selfridge State" the perpetuation of the dull uniformity which is the heaviest burden modern industry has laid on life. These last were the men who have since formulated the theories we know as Guild Socialism. The "New Age" was their chief expression, and G. D. H. Cole, S. G. Hobson, and A. R. Orage the chief promulgators of the new theories. 

(2) FUSION OF SYNDICALIST AND COLLECTIVIST IDEAS.

 Guild Socialism is the child of Syndicalism and Collectivism. The romantic strain in its composition yearns after the violent methods of its turbulent French father, but it follows the tidy ways of the mother, it scolds with a rather amusing petulance. "Syndicalism," writes Mr. Cole, "is the infirmity of noble minds. Collectivism is only the sordid dream of a business man with a conscience." ("Self-Government in Industry," G. D. H. Cole.) That is to say, the Guildsman recognises the necessity for efficient organisation, but refuses to sacrifice freedom and spontaneity to efficiency. Consequently he holds that industry should be controlled in such a way as to leave the fullest possible freedom to the worker.  The question of remuneration is quite secondary. What is of prime moment is whether the workman shall have a voice in the government of his own working conditions. Guildism, therefore, rejects the Collectivist objective of State Socialism, and adopts the Syndicalist ideal of producers' control. The State, representing the community on a geographical basis, reflects the views of the organised consumers. Though it might ultimately be a better master than the capitalist, because there is no skimming off of the productive surplus, it would leave the employee as much a "wage slave" as he is now. He would be subject to a great hierarchy of administrative officials, who would regulate his working life down to the minutest detail. The subjection of the man to the machine, the bitterest of all the bitter draughts that capitalism has made us drink, would be intensified. And the pretence of political self-government must finally vanish from such a community. The conditions of employment influence the characters of men, at least as much as the diversions of their leisure hours. A man chained to such a servile system would become a very slave in soul. He would be even less capable of electing competent legislators than is our present democracy. Real government would fall into the hands of the principal civil servants. We should arrive then at a Dictatorship of the Efficient. Man would have sold his birthright of freedom for the pottage of good wages, and increased leisure.

 Furthermore, producers' control seems a natural development of the present system. Within the structure of capitalist controlled industry have grown up the trade unions. From being organisations to secure better conditions they have become militant associations, reaching out their hands for power. Would they bow the neck to the State yoke even if bribed by higher wages ? Present tendencies indicate no hope of such an attitude. The post office servants in France and Britain kick against the authority of the State, and the more radical trade unions, the world over, are asking not for nationalisation, but for self-government in industry. 

So far Guild Socialism is in line with Syndicalism. But whereas the Syndicalist believes that the State will be destroyed or will atrophy when the workers take over industry, the National Guildsman believes it will remain to perform functions which could not adequately be performed by a Federation of Guilds.

 The first of these is to safeguard the interests of the consumer. Both the Syndicalist and the Collectivist are wrong when they assert that because we are all (except the idle rich and the idle poor) consumers and producers there is no conflict of interests between these two classes. Man's chief concern as a consumer is to get goods cheaply. His chief concern as a producer is to get fair remuneration and decent working conditions. We are grouped as consumers with other people who inhabit the same locality. We are grouped as producers according to the industry or profession in which we work. The only way to reconcile our interests is to elect responsible bodies to represent us in each capacity. A balance will then be maintained between the conflicting interests of the whole community. This involves a theory of the State which is radically different from the traditional view, and no less different from the Marxian conception. 

(3) THE GUILD THEORY OF THE STATE. 

The theory of Sovereignty generally accepted to-day is that the State, as the supreme representative of the community, has the right to limit the activities of every individual and of every smaller social group. The Marxian theory, accepted by Revolutionists, is that the State is but an organ of capitalism, maintained to preserve order among the exploited class. National Guildsmen maintain that the legitimate function of the State is to represent the whole community as consumers. As producers people will be represented in the National Guild, which will represent and govern their trade or profession, and in the Guild Congress, which will represent the whole body of producers. Thus sovereignity will be divided between the Legislature and Local Governing bodies on one side, and the Guilds on the other. The line of demarcation between their respective spheres will be tolerably clear because of their very different functions, but an independent judiciary will be necessary to decide disputed cases. In deciding on a policy which affects the whole community, such as a war, joint conferences of the Legislature and the Guild Congress may be held. 

Despite the obvious objections which strike the most uncritical on examining this theory National Guildsmen maintain that it is essential. Not merely capitalist domination, but any concentration of power is inimical to individual liberty and the freedom of social groups. Unless the spontaneity and vigor of the smaller social groups and of the individual who is not a "dominating personality," are preserved by a policy of non-interference, the centralised government will establish the "Servile State.''

 This new theory of Sovereignty, which bears some affinity to the older doctrine is Laissez-Faire, or non-interference with individual action, has a respectable juristic backing. Gierke, the great German jurist, and Maitland, one of the greatest of English legal historians, have advanced the doctrine that an association which arises spontaneously to satisfy some legitimate human need, has an inherent right to exist and to take on new functions. If this theory be accepted, trade unions do not exist by favor of the State but in their own right. Furthermore, they may take on new functions without permission of the State, and when they have grown to their full dimensions the State has no right to interfere with them. In the Guild community the State, i.e., the existing Governmental machinery shorn of its coercive power over industry, and the National Guilds will exist side by side, each performing a communal function, and each sovereign in its own sphere.

 (4). THE METHOD OF APPROACH.

 This theory of ultimate character of the Guild community determines the line of action advocated by Guildsmen. They neither eschew political action like the Syndicalist, nor deprecate direct industrial action like the Collectivist. Since the State is not sovereign, it does not matter whether capitalism is destroyed by "constitutional" means or not. It is purely a question of tactics. And as capitalism, with its economic power, is the substance, while the State, with its political power is but the shadow, the Guildsmen lay heavy emphasis on the necessity for industrial action. The unions must concentrate on the task of building a new society within the old. Before capitalism is destroyed, the trade unions must have perfected an organisation capable of controlling industry. Then they must strike hard, both in politics and industry. They must, by a series of strikes, acquire Self-Government piecemeal. In some cases nationalisation will precede Guild-control. Therefore they must gain and keep control of the Parliamentary machine, taking care, however, that the strength of unionism is not drained away in a futile attempt to achieve everything by political action. The main guard of the Socialist army must be a federated system of strong "blackleg-proof" unions, organised on an industrial basis. The political movement will be mainly occupied in preserving the rights of free speech and free association, and in keeping the coercive force of the State from being used by the employers.

 (5) PRODUCTION UNDER THE GUILD SYSTEM.

 A series of distinct but connected changes rather than a grand "coup," such as a general strike, is anticipated. Probably the railways and the mines will be controlled by Guilds under a semi-Socialist State, while the remainder of the industry is still in the bonds of capitalism. When the great key industries, which, having the most powerful and militant unions, may be expected to "go Guild" first, have established self-government, something in the nature of a "landslide" may be expected. The final act of the Sovereign State will be to divest itself of its coercive power over industry. This power will then be vested in the Guilds consisting of a number of National Guilds, each of which controls a whole industry, e.g., mining, transport, steel manufacture, textile industry and the like, and a federation called the Guild Congress.

 The Parliamentary and Municipal machinery will remain, purged of capitalist domination, to control society in all those matters which concern men as neighbors, and as theirs of the same traditions. Freed from the burden of regulating industry, and no longer subject to pressure from predatory interests, the State will devote its energies to assisting the spread of culture, and the growth of art. It will leave the economic side of the national life to the Guilds, and become the guardian of the higher common interests of the community.

 (6) CRITICISM.

 Such, in a broad outline, is the theory of Guild Socialism, its originators are conscious that no society will ever be established exactly in accordance with their plans. But they hold that the successful fashioning of a new commonwealth depends on the knowledge of economic and political tendencies possessed by those who sway thought and passion. They realise that they are attempting to forecast organic changes. Consequently their attempt to visualise a new order, and indicate the method of approach to it, is of immense value, though the realisation will differ from the plan. Criticism centres mainly round two points. First, the division of Sovereignty. Second, the preservation of the present Governmental machinery in a Socialistic community. Collectivists and Constitutional Theorists maintain that either the organised consumers, or the organised producers must ultimately be Sovereign. Revolutionary Socialists maintain that the existing State will perish when communism is once established, because its function will be gone. Both criticisms are weighty. Neither should detract from the practical lesson that Guildsmen have to offer the Socialist movement. The present task is to built up "blackleg-proof" unions on an industrial basis in order to face concentrated capitalism with an organisation having an equal economic weight, while at the same time maintaining in the legislatures a party powerful enough to legalise what is won on the industrial field. The future society will almost certainly leave the control of actual working conditions in the hands of unions of Guilds of producers. It will also retain the State, or establish some new central organisation, to represent the whole community, and reconcile the claims of conflicting groups. Much will depend on the success or failure of the Soviet system in Russia. Indeed, the success during this century of the Socialist movement seems to hang on the outcome of the great experiment of the first Communist Government. Guild Socialism is valuable, mainly for its revival of idealism in British Socialism, for its insistence on freedom, even at the expense of mechanical efficiency, and for its attempt to reconcile the claims of the worker struggling to be free with the claims of the member of the community striving toward decent living conditions.

Truth (Perth, WA ), 11 June 1921,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article210048694