Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/107

 My pre-War experience, as teacher, journalist, traveller, and general mixer in movements and groups, went to confirm my earlier view that progress would come by a concessionaire policy of the owning classes, together with elements of economic betterment for the workers achieved by public policy and finance. This, at any rate, seemed to be the path to be taken by a people averse alike to idealistic theories and revolutionary practices and conscious of their power to bend their popular Government to meet their urgent economic needs. The temporary stoppage of rising wages during the pre-War period was compensated by old-age pensions, better provision for the poor, and improvements in education, health, and other social services. Though a Labour Party, formally addicted to Socialism, showed signs of growth in all industrial centres and in Parliament, it was not seriously regarded as a menace to the rule of the possessing classes and their Government.

The War struck several blows at this complacency. In the first place, it showed that in British democracy the people and their elected representatives had no effective control over foreign policy with its vital issues of peace and war. Secondly, it showed that while several millions of able-bodied workers were taken from the productive into the destructive services, and the wealth of the nation was lavished recklessly upon the expenses of the War, huge profits were acquired by the owners and managers of the businesses