Page:Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois (1912?).pdf/27

Rh damaging allegations and to show that the Labor Party was just as patriotic as any other party could possibly be. So its first move was to adopt a system of universal military service, and the next to undertake vast schemes of national defense. The attention and admiration of the country were directed to the fact that the Labor administration was the first to build small arms factories, to revise the military establishment so as to secure the greatest efficiency and to prepare the nation for deeds of valor on the battlefield.

At the time this was done there was a crying need for new labor legislation; the system or lack of system of arbitrating labor disputes was badly in need of repairs; workingmen were being imprisoned in some of the states for the crime of striking; the power of government was often used to oppress and overawe strikers, even when they had been perfectly orderly and their cause was absolutely just. These, with many other evils of the workingman's condition, were pushed aside in order to perfect the defense system and get the small arms factories in good working order, for such were the plain indications of the game that the Labor Party had started out to play. "We're in; let us stay in."

The next thing to attest properly the true spirit of patritoismpatriotism [sic] that burned and throbbed in the Labor Party was to send the Prime Minister and eighteen members of Parliament, at public expense, to the coronation puppet show. The Prime Minister was, in fact, one of the bright ornaments of that precious occasion, and was universally admired as he pranced around in knee pants and other regalia. He is by trade a steam engineer, and for years lived by the work of his hands. He was said greatly to enjoy the gew-gaws of the occasion. I do not know whether this is true, but certainly he presented a sad and humiliating spectacle as a representative of the working class, and one that would never have been offered to the world except for the necessity of "playing the game." It would have been bad politics for the