of freedom, to a powerful race of men, happy in the fruits of the highest civilization. He finds a dingy and ignoble. looking people, dressed in second-hand clothes which they never wash; and as to the hats of men and women, to the Eastern mind such hideousness of angle and color is an almost inconceivable offence. But those who have seen the pageant need not go to the East for reflection. In front of the show, as a kind of model audience, stand the average East End boy and girl, making characteristic remarks upon the episodes as they pass. Why is it that in not a single one of those scenes could that boy and girl be admitted among the other children without appearing instantly as an unendurable blot upon the whole? Not even

The Nation.

among the ugliness of the Elizabethan costumes could the lower degradation of our working-class children's clothes be tolerated. It is not only the difference in class, for the pageant represents all classes with fidelity, and the contrast is too sharp for money to wipe out. We admit the advance, the astonishing improvement even within a single generation, but why is progress so dull? Why, if the inward and spiritual grace is increasing, is there so little outward and visible sign? A grubby suit, a greasy cap, a torn pinafore, and mother's cast-off boots-what would the Sartor make of those as evidences of civilizing grace? What "organic filaments" of future worship do they represent among mankind?

Before his departure for his shooting expedition in Africa, Mr. Roosevelt wrote a series of articles in which he discusses the question how far those who are opposed to Socialism can work with Socialists in Social Reform. Than this there is scarcely any subject more important. As we have more than once pointed out, Socialism owes much of its advancement to the blindness, deliberate or accidental, of its alliesthe people who lightly assume the title and wear the uniform of the party without any clear idea of what its real aims and motives are. It is to them that argument has to be addressed. We need not greatly concern ourselves to contend with the Graysons and the Blatchfords and the Shaws and the Hyndhams; our concern lies with those sentimentalists and loose thinkers who pin themselves to the coat-tails of Socialism without considering the texture of the article. We have no great fault to find with Mr. Roosevelt's manner of dealing with the subject. He is sound

and vigorous, and with one or two exceptions very clear as to what he means. But his articles are curiously lucid in their revelation of his limitations. He knows his own mind and is able to make others know it, but it is not a great mind. We find no distinction or originality of thought; he thinks and says nothing that has not been said and thought oftentimes before. He has neither power nor wish to wander in the byways of subtlety; he has not the power to drape the commonplace with distinction, he is content to assert it with robust virility and with simple honesty of purpose. He is the man of action not of thought: sometimes his action will outstrip his thought; he is, like Anthony, "a plain, blunt man, who dearly loves his country." A fine character, a most useful citizen; but Mr. Roosevelt, the writer, has destroyed much of the glamor which surrounded Mr. Roosevelt, the ruler of eighty millions of people.

For the purpose he has in view, how

ever, Mr. Roosevelt's limitations do not make him the less useful; indeed, they may almost increase the weight of his arguments, trite and obvious though they be. Sentimentalism, the lust of novelty, the mental habit of regarding phenomena from one aspect, niggling subtleties-the things, in fact, which go to the making of the selfdelusion of what Mr. Roosevelt calls "parlor Socialists"-are not to be brushed aside with the feather dusters of philosophy, but with the rough besom of common-sense. And this the ex-President wields with a muscular hand. He is as much a believer in the virtues of the North-Easter as ever was Charles Kingsley, he opens the window and lets it play on the neurotics who call themselves Socialists. "The parlor Socialists, be they lay or clerical," he says, "deserve scant consideration at the hands of honest and clean living men and women." Dishonesty and impurity, with the sapping of the national fibre and the moral degradation which they involve-these are the main counts in his indictment of Socialism. And, be it remembered, Mr. Roosevelt comes to the question with a mind clearly alive to the evils which Socialism would destroy; with an almost passionate revolt against "the individualism of the Tweed Ring," against the selfishness of capital, against privilege, with a burning sympathy for the poor and oppressed. His sympathies have even led him into indiscretions, to a straining of the law, to some loss of reputation for wisdom. Of all men not avowed Socialists, the disciples of that cult might have looked to him, if not for approval, at least for mild and indulgent criticism; in him the sentimental self-styled Socialists might have expected to find countenance for their benevolent attitude towards the doctrines of Marx and his followers. And behold, in him they find a ruthless enemy of the fundamental doctrines which

they maintain from conviction, or to which their thoughtless amiability leads them to assent.

Mr. Roosevelt's position is, we believe, the position of all sane men, by which we mean men who can penetrate the nebulous haze of abstractions and see facts as they are. No one can pretend that things are as they should be; the most callous cannot contemplate without despair the vast sum of human misery; the terrible disparity between wealth and poverty appals the imagination. We dare not cling to bald individualism in the face of so much helplessness; the commonest humanity and decency revolts against the undisturbed operation of the law of the survival of the fittest. Indeed in our complex society that law cannot have a fair chance of operation, the conditions which can give it free play are hopelessly disturbed. Hence our laws for the protection of workers, of women, of children, of those who cannot protect themselves; hence our provision for the poor, our intrusion on parental authority, and the like. This is easy; the difficulty begins when we ask how far we are to go. Socialism sees, or professes to see, no alternative between itself and cold individualism. Practical common-sense dictates a middle course, which shall deal with phenomena as they present themselves without reference to outlying theories. This compromise is, of course, imperfect and full of difficulty if not danger. For always there is the difficulty of finding a stopping-place, there is always the danger of an indiscreet step that may launch us on the downward course towards Communism. In our haste to remedy admitted evils we may find ourselves committed to what Mr. Roosevelt calls "a glorified State foundling asylum and a State free-lunch counter."

Nothing can be more grievous than precipitancy in Social Reform, a phrase which is being seriously distorted from

his Bill, Mr. Lloyd George makes belated discoveries in Germany. Prudence would have placed the investigation before the process, but there we are committed to an ill-considered, extravagant scheme, and to a disastrous precedent. Again, many people would strive to cure poverty by a minimum wage, which in its turn would blossom into equality of reward. The true, or scientific Socialists preach the doctrine openly. "Under the labor time-check system of exchange proposed by Socialists, any laborer could exchange the wealth he produced in any given number of hours for the wealth produced by any other laborer in the same number of hours." The doctrine of that sentence must shock the common-sense and common justice of very many socalled Socialists, yet they pursue a policy which aims at making it not only doctrine but law. To say that Hodge, digging for a twelve-month, shall reap the same reward as Mr. Edison or Mr. Marconi, inventing for the same period, will appear to "parlor Socialists" absurd; yet they are not only drifting towards it, they are actually propelling the boat. They are blind not only to the economic, but the moral results of their policy. In railing against the "privilege" of Capital, they are creating a "privilege" of Labor more corrupt and destructive. If it be wrong for the capitalist to exploit the community, it is surely wrong for the idle and worthless workman to exploit the thrifty, as he woul! do under a system of equal rewards, which put simply means that he would put into the common store what he liked and take out what he wanted. "Such a proposition," says Mr. Roosevelt, "is morally base.

The worst wrongs that capitalism can commit upon labor would sink into in

significance when compared with the hideous wrong done by those who would degrade labor by sapping the foundations of self-respect and self-reliance"

The confusion of thought in which the Socialist becomes involved when he talks of labor and capital is as alarming as it is deplorable. It is terrifying to think of the possible domination of men who find the source of wealth in manual labor, or whose modifications of that crude Marxian dogma are at best but nebulous, and who regard money as a thing to be destroyed in favor of primitive barter. The disproof of them is so easy. Pushed to extremity they must confess that the world has outgrown barter, that there must be some medium of exchange. Take them then to Johannesburg and ask them how that medium could be extracted from the reef by labor alone, much less by manual labor, and the refutation of their theory is complete and crushing. As has been said, we do not ask the thoroughpaced Socialist to consider these things. Presumably he has considered them, and whether he can swallow the conclusions, or cannot see them, his case is hopeless. we have a right to expect and demand that the self-styled Socialist shall face the consequences of his present course of action on approval. Let him consider, especially the Christian Socialist. the logical consequences to domestic life and morality of the negation of the right of individual ownership, which applied to property, must extend to wife and child, as Mr. Belfort Bax well points out. Let him consider the atrocious consequences of measuring reward by wants and not by achievement. Let him consider how his unregulated sympathy, which abhors the survival of the fittest, involves something worse the supremacy of the unfit. It is high time, more than high time, that Social Reform, SO

But

alluring

in its immediate aspect, should be analyzed, and that some formula for its application should be arrived at. That the State should stand aloof is impossible, and becomes more impossible with each succeeding lapse towards Socialism. We must find some guiding principle before the momentum becomes irresistible. We cannot entirely remedy our present evils by laws, economic or moral. Something they can do, but the less we rely on them the better. In far greater part are these remedies to be sought in the formation of character, and in the stimulus of individual effort. Thus the The Outlook.

State may endeavor-nay, should endeavor, to provide for its citizens equality of opportunity, by an intelligent fiscal and economic system. But there the function of the State ends. The reward of the worker, he having opportunity, must depend upon himself and his merit. And so, as a beginning of a larger formula, let us say that the State shall never do anything which can be done as well, or nearly as well, by private enterprise. That will do as

a first application of the brake to a vehicle which is already encroaching on the speed limit.

I.

Mrs. Thrush. What do you think of that hawthorn?

Mr. Thrush. Oh, no, my dear, no; much too isolated, it would attract attention at once. I can see the boys on a Sunday afternoon. "Hallo, there's a tree that's bound to have a nest in it." And then where are you? You know what boys are on a Sunday afternoon? You remember that from last year, when we lost the finest clutch of eggs in the county.

Mrs. Thrush. Stop, stop, dear, I can't bear it. Why do you remind me of it? And as for Sunday afternoons they never ought to have been invented.

Mr. Thrush. There, there, compose yourself, my pretty. What other suggestions have you?

Mrs. Thrush. One of the laurels, then, in the shrubbery of the Great House. Mr. Thrush. Much better. But the trouble there is the cat.

Mrs. Thrush. Oh, dear, I wish you'd find a place for me; I assure you it's time.

Mr. Thrush. Well, my notion, as I have said all along, is that there's noth

ing to beat the very middle of a big bramble. I don't mind whether it's in the hedge or whether it's on the common. But it must be the very middle. It doesn't matter very much then whether it's seen or not, because no one can reach it.

Mrs. Thrush. Very well then, be it so; but do hurry with the building, there's a dear.

II.

Mr. Tree-Creeper. I've had the most extraordinary luck. Listen. You know that farmhouse by the pond. Well, there's a cow-shed with a door that won't shut, and even if it would it's got a hole in it, and in the roof, at the very top, there's a hollow. It's the most perfect place you ever saw, because, even if the farmer twigged us, he couldn't get at the nest without pulling off a lot of tiles.

Do you see? Mrs. Tree-Creeper. It sounds perfect. Mr. Tree-Creeper. Yes, but it's no use waiting here. We must collar it at once. There were a lot of prying birds all about when I was there, and I noticed a particularly noisy flycatcher watching me all the time. Come along

quick; and you'd better bring a piece of hay with you to look like business.

III.

Mr. Wren. Well, darling, what shall it be this year-one of those boxes at "The Firs," or the letter-box at "Meadow View," where the open-air journalist lives, or shall we build for ourselves like honest wrens?

Mrs. Wren. I leave it to you, dearest. Just as you wish.

Mr. Wren. No, I want your help. I'll just give you the pros and cons.

Mrs. Wren. Yes, dear, do; you're so clear-headed.

Mr. Wren. Listen then. If we use the nest-box there's nothing to do, no fag of building, but we have to put up with visitors peeping in every day and pawing the eggs or the kids about. If we use the letter-box we shall have to line it, and there will be some of the same human fussiness to endure; but, on the other hand, we shall become famous-we shall get into the papers. Don't you see the heading, “Remarkable Nest in Surrey"? And then it will go on, "A pair of wrens have chosen a strange abode in which to rear their little fluffy brood-" and so forth.

Mrs. Wren. That's rather delightful, all the same.

Mr. Wren. Finally, there is the nest which we build ourselves, running just the ordinary risks of boys and ornithologists, but feeling at any rate that we are independent. What do you say? Mrs. Wren. Well, dearest, I think I say the last.

Punch.