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42 We must attend, therefore, in surveying the tendencies of the time, to what such extremists may contemplate.

These appear to desire to pass from the conditions of the moment to much stronger measures. They regard the recent outbreaks with dissatisfaction, as being irregular, informal, and unauthorised, and they indicate another departure still. They would turn the forces of low grade labour to more definite account. The strike, whenever called for, should be so organised as not to drag itself out or prolong the agony: it is to be universal, summary, and final. Add to this that the indirect and intermittent control of the State by a small Parliamentary party is to be superseded by a party sufficiently strong to form a government, and that this labour organisation is to be rendered international, so that external considerations may not interrupt its domestic triumph. But a general strike is to be the real power in the State. Thus, having trodden the round of trade unionism, socialism, syndicalism, and disorder, we are finally to be starved into an autocracy wielded by a few.

Two separate issues are here involved under one head. First, shall we be content to be ruled in this way? He who estimates the future of England can decline even to consider such an outcome, for it would mean the abrogation of any future at all.

But the second issue, and this must be looked at carefully, is whether labour can improve matters