essential to safe action. When men are filled with enthusiasm they are
apt to apply their new principles rashly in schemes which are bound to
fall, just as over-confident soldiers will in battle sometimes rush a
position prematurely which they cannot hold, because the general line of
their army has not advanced sufficiently to support them. Sacrifices
are made with no permanent result, and the morale of the army is
injured.

In the rural districts the advance must, in the nature of things, be
from production to consumption, and with urban workers inversely from a
control over distribution to a mastery over production. I have often
wondered over the blindness of workers in towns in Ireland, who have
made so little use in the economic struggle of the freedom they have to
spend their wage where they choose. They speak of this struggle as the
class war; but they carry on the conflict most energetically where it
is most difficult for them to succeed, and hardly at all where it would
be comparatively easy for them to weaken the resources of their
antagonists. In warfare much use is made of flanking movements, which
aim at cutting the enemy's communication with his base of supply.
Frontal attacks are dangerous. It is equally true in economic warfare.
The strike is a frontal attack, and those they fight are entrenched
deeply with all the artillery of the State, the press, science, and
wealth on their side. What would we think of an army which, at the
close of each week's fighting, voluntarily surrendered to the enemy the
ground, guns, ammunition, and prisoners captured through the previous
six days? Yet this is what our workers do. The power opposed to them
is mainly economic, though there is an intellectual basis for it also.
But the wages of the workers, little for the individual, yet a large
part of the national income if taken for the mass, goes back to
strengthen the system they protest against through purchases of domestic