Unluckily, what with the wounded vanity of the majority of the
Commission, who had been played off the stage by Mrs. Sidney Webb; the
folly of the younger journalists of the advanced guard, who had just
then rediscovered Herbert Spencer's mare's nest of "the servile State,"
and revolted with all the petulant anarchism of the literary profession
against the ideal Interfering Female as typified in their heated
imaginations by poor Mrs. Sidney Webb, who became the Aunt Sally of our
young artists in stale anti-bureaucratic invective; and, above all, the
mulishly silent refusal of our governing classes to see why the
unemployed should not be simply left to starve, as they had always been
(the Poor Law being worse than useless for so large a purpose), nothing
was done; and there is consequently no machinery ready for dealing with
the refugees. That is why we must treat them for the moment simply as
unguarded prisoners of war.


*The General Strike Against War.*

But if the problem of unemployment among our own people becomes acute,
we shall have to fall back on the Minority Report proposals or else run
the risk of a revolt against the war. We have already counted on the
chances of that revolt hampering Germany, just as Germany counted on the
chances of its hampering Russia, The notion that the working classes can
stop a war by a general international strike is never mentioned during
the first rally to the national flag at the outbreak of a war; but it is
there all the time, ready to break out again if the supplies of food and
glory run short. Its gravity lies in its impracticability. If it were
practicable, every sane man would advocate it. As it is, it might easily
mean that British troops would be coercing British strikers at home when
they should be fighting Potsdam abroad, thus producing a disastrous and