92 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE COMMON ENEMY 93 vast socialization of railways as well as of forests, and many national sources of production, all are a menace to greedy competitive individualism. The capitalist class in England has been groaning over the measures forced upon the ruling class to insure the producers and follow the social organization of Germany.
Like Gurth, thrall of Cedric the Saxon, the German workingman gets his due parings of the pigs he tends for his master. The German Dr. Hall informs us further walks on Sunday in his own woods, he lights his house with his own electric plant, and generally feels that he is not wholly dependent upon a wealthy class of monopolists. One of the reasons the vulgar rich of America are bitterly anti German is that this social or.
ganization is a success and is a menace to private monopoly.
Of course, like Gurth of old, the German workingman gets his kicks and cuffs, and, like as not, more cuffs than pork parings. But, like Gurth in the good old days, whose praises Carlyle sang so well, he, too, feels that he is not an entire stranger to his master household. His place may not always be a comfortable one, but then he knows that he has a place in Germany social system, and that, whatever his place, it is at least his own. Of course, says Dr. Hall, this social organization is not socialism, and more especially not democratic socialism; but it is the highest type of social organization in the general interests of all that the world has seen; and this distribution of ownership, if not always of control, has been producing as a natural result democratic self respect. Every German who travels cheaply and comfortably on the third class of a railway, well managed, with fine stations, feels this is my railway.
Like Gurth, therefore, who loved his master and was ready to lay down his life for him, the German Socialists too are ready to lay down all they have at the feet of their government. Of the love which Gurth bore his master, Carlyle testified in a passage of remarkable eloquence. The Feudal Baron had a Man Soul in him, to which anarchy, mutiny and the other fruits of temporary mercenaries, were intolerable: he had never been a Baron otherwise, but had continued a Chactau and Bucanier. He felt it precious, and at last it became habitual, and his fruitful enlarged existence included it as a necessity, to have men around him who in heart loved him; whose life he watched over with rigour yet with love; who were prepared to give their life for him, if need come. It was beautiful. it was human!
Of the German Social Democrats Dr. Hall says with less eloquence but more to the point. But Social Democracy counted the cost, and placed its buildings, funds and leaders at the disposal of the Government. And Frank died among the first and was honored by the nation. few months later Dr. Hall gave classic expression to this view of the case Germany vs. Allied Capitalism in a communication to the same New Review, in which he said. Of course this is a capitalist war, but only because England made it so. It began as a war on the most primitive lines of barbaric territorial ambition on the part of Russia. Her landed aristocracy wanted more land and more peasants and a seaport for grain export. The feudal ambition wanted Constantinople and the sea way. Industrial capitalism is still an exotic in Rus.
sia, and of German, English, Jewish and American Extraction.
It would never have at this stage of the game begun a world But England is in the individualistic state of industrial exploitation and found her match in a State Capitalism infinitely more efficient and educated, and Russia, France and Belgium are England pawns in her game. England wanted, e. England Whig plutocracy, that masquerades under the name of democratic Liberalism wanted to crush the competition of Germany State Socialism or Capitalism. France also has been burning under a sense of injury, not because Alsace and Lorraine were taken, but again because State Capitalism was taking her industrial leadership from her, and making her a second rate power.
Thus England found willing tools. We who are Socialists know that Germany is not a democratic Socialist state. At the same time it is the most advanced experiment in collectivism ever made, and the way Germany is smashing the individualistic inefficiency of Russia, England and France, is one of the most remarkable arguments in favor of the extenwar.