§ 33

The precious gift of leisure, in which our working class might acquire more funds, we have not taught them to use; on the contrary, their leaders have taught them that they have a right to be idle, to obtain high wages for bad work, and in their leisure do whatever they like. This is something very near to Anarchy; any way, it is a principle which, if persisted in, will ruin England. No! The thing to do them good is to teach high principles and lead them on to be useful citizens. And that must be done, unless Democracy is to prove a disastrous failure! We have got to begin again, to start from the bottom—that is the clear duty for the future, and the only one that will succeed in the long run. If Democracy fails, it will be through apathy in the conduct of our systems, of leaving them to chance, and bad organisation. We have got to bring classes together, not separate them. Working men have to bring their share of labour into the halls of Democracy. An educated class has to bring its share, and the rich class, in its own sphere, has to bring its share. The rich have to supply means for labour, the labourer to do his labour up to the highest point of honour. The Educated Class has to seminate from the flowers ripened by study, and so each class, working out its own destiny hopefully and earnestly will contribute to general progress, which is the end to which democracy, to succeed, must strive. One class must not try to supersede another. That would only mean some form of Tyranny. There can be Tyranny from democracy, but only through Anarchy, which is as destructive to one class as another. To put down Anarchy, Force has to be resorted to. Anarchy is quite as great an enemy to Freedom as Autocracy. It calls out the worst form of human passion, resulting in civil war, the greatest evil that any nation can encounter. Russia is going through it, poor Russia, perhaps presently to become a victim to godless Germany! France went through the fire. France, for a time, lost her soul. The most delicately organised people in Europe turned themselves into brutes for a time.

What came after? The great conqueror, Napoleon. What did he conquer? Practically all Europe, save England! What remains to-day of his conquests? Nothing! Had Napoleon used his genius, which was second to none other in history, in consolidating France, in putting her intellectually as well as conventionally at the head of nations, which, by her innate genius she might have been, Europe would be a different place to-day. Napoleon failed, not because he was a conqueror, but because he tried to conquer wrongly. He threw away his force in War, he might have spent it in Peace. The French Revolution was the parent of his egoistic ambition, as Tyranny is the child of Tyranny. A revolution in England—by that is meant a War of Classes—would certainly give rebirth to Military Rule. This has been said before; it needs to be enforced by reiteration.