Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/106



in the pre-War epoch there was widespread discontent with the failure of real wages to rise as they had risen in the preceding periods, the discontent had no revolutionary character. The spirit and traditions of our people had never imbibed the sort of revolutionary spirit prevalent in some continental peoples; partly, because we believed ourselves to possess popular self-government applicable to the bettering of our conditions; partly, because of an element of caution in our character which prevented our resort to quick, simple, and violent remedies. Though, as will be seen, post-War disturbances have had some effect on our traditional attitudes, the failure of our workers, even of aprofessedly Socialist Labour Party, to agree upon any general intelligible policy attests the truth of my assertion that the application of reason and justice to drastic reforms is or appears to lie outside the limits of our national character. It may be that the conservatism of the cliché, “human nature being what it is,” can be overcome by some power of “sudden conversion” in the political-economic mentality. But until and unless that happens it seems foolish either to desire or to fear any “revolutionary” policy in this country.