Fabian Tract No. rsr. 

\ 

THE POINT OF HONOUR,: 


A CORRESPONDENCE 

ON ARISTOCRACY AND SOCIALISM. 


By RUTH CAVENDISH BENTINCK. 

PuBLISHED AND SoLD BY 

T HE FABIAN SOCIETY. 


P RICE ONE 

LONDON 

THE F ABIAN SociETY, 3 CLEMENT's INN, STRAND, W .C. 
O c TOBEH I 9I o. 



THE PoiNT oF HoNOUR. 

DEAR CHRISTOPHER,


My attachment for you personally was, as you know, very great.
It is therefore a dreadful shock to me to be forced to recognize a 
rebel and a traitor in one who was a relation and a friend ; but to 
me it seems demoralizing to remain on good terms with bad people 
-a man's character being shown by the company he keeps--so I 
find it impossible to associate with a person of your stamp, just as it 
would be impossible for me to keep up a friendship with a forger or 
any other immoral person. Forgive my plain speaking, but l am a 
plain man and about to speak out rny mind for the last time. 

I have tried to make every allowance for you. You have always 
been endowed with an unfortunate disposition, intolerant of anything 
savoring of restraint, impatient of procrastination, and contemptuous 
of prudence-which I even recollect your calling a 
"ditch-begotten virtue," an expression which of itself betrays you as 
an intolerant crank. 

The Dangers of Too Much Knowledge. 

Owing to various deplorable circumstances, and also in a large 
measure to your own reckless and headstrong disposition, you have, 
I admit, been brought into contact with many facts which are not 
generally realized ; and these you have only looked at through your 
own perverted spectacles, which incline you to attribute all those 
things, which you ignorantly and arrogantly assume to be unmitigated 
evils, to the defects of our present social system. 

As you see, I have taken all the extenuating circumstances into 
account. I will not even ask how it is that one brought up as you 
were can so forget our family traditions and the ideals pertaining to 
his rank as actually to avow himself a Socialist. I have made full 
allowance for the causes which may have induced you to adopt the 
mischievous course you are now pursuing. I own you have seen 
things which at first sight may arouse indignation. Your spirit 
revolts at what you consider to be "injustice"; but is it "injustice" 
? A better balanced mind would penetrate below the 
surface of things and realize its own inability to define abstract 
justice. 

Sentimentalism in Foreign Policy. 

For instance, when justice is meted out to some person or per-
s~ns in Spain or Russia, Egypt or India, you and people of yourk1dney are apt to jump to the conclusion that it is an ''injustice" 
because the sentence does not happen to meet with your approval. 


3 

This frequently leads you into making seditious utterances provocative 
of endless ramifications of disorder ; and yet you know 
perfectly well that it is not possible for a government office to 
vouchsafe a reason for its actions, therefore the justification for them 
does not get published, and many are led astray by misguided and 
short~ighted sentimentalists who refuse to see any but one side of 
these questions. You do not consider that the men on the spot 
have spent their lives in studying the best means of dealing with 
the native population, etc., and are therefore better able to say what 
is considered'' justice" in those regions than people who have never 
been in the country, and cannot expect to grasp the full significance 
of its problems in the same way as the officials, or even as well as 
those who go to such places in search of sport. 

The Uses of Aristocracy. 

With regard to our own country, how could it get on without 
the aristocratic class? Look at the work, often hard, generally tiresome, 
and always unpaid, which they do on county and district 
councils, school boards, magistrates' bench, etc., to say nothing of 
various charities. 

Of course there are black sheep in every flock, and I do not deny 
that the "smart set" gives occasion for anything that Socialists may 
say of them ; but, after all, they are not many in number, and are 
mostly aliens or risen from the middle classes, therefore the present 
argument does not apply to them. I own that many things in 
England are far from being perfect ; but this is the case in everycivilized country, and it would benefit no one were I to go and live 
in some mean and monotonous street amongst the myriads of beings 
who are degraded beyond redemption in our filthy cities. Most 
people in our class will do more good by keeping an oasis, where 
culture and beauty, art and literature, may find a home and not be 
overwhelmed by the ocean of brutal ignorance and coarse hideosity 
surrounding us. 

That is my ideal and the work my artistic perception prompts 
me to carry on. There will always be squalor and ugliness enough 
for you to wallow in, because as fast as you sweep it up in one placeit will reappear in another, so long as every individual unit does not 
"do his duty in that state of life unto which it has pleased God to 
call him"; or, in other words, till everyone tidies up his own pigsty 
before attempting to clean up the farmyard-and if all the pigs did 
that there would be far less dirt in the world. 

The Responsibilities of the Classes. 

I have a strong belief that the thing nearest one's hand is one's 
first duty ; that we have inherited certain work and responsibilities;
and that if we neglect those and plunge into work of our own 
choosing, we are not doing what God intended, and end in doing _... 
more harm than good. As it is, I think most people of our class are 
honestly endeavoring to tidy up their own corner of the world 
before trying to tidy other people's. This is the duty which I hope 


4 

and believe I should endeavor to fulfil were I the meanest mole-
catcher on the estate instead of its owner, and I only wish you could 
say as much instead of spending your time in making discontented 
and disloyal citizens ; for this is a sorry occupation any fool is 
capable of, though it takes a wise man and a truly religious one t<? 
make people happy and contented, each in his sphere. 

Do you remember our early days and all the " secondary gods," 
as you were pleased to call them-old Hannah, the stud-groom, the 
keeper, etc.? They gave you a very good example, for were they 
not all absolutely contented in their several positions? Would that 
you had assimilated some of their strong common sense ! But yourrebellious and predatory instincts were apparent even as a child. 
1 have not forgotten your nocturnal expeditions to the lower gardens 
nor the fruit you kept hidden in the moat. I know your people 
pretend to be amused by the words "robbery and confiscation," but 
the aim of the equal distribution of wealth, though in itself ideal, is 
an object which can only be attained by appealing to man's predatory 
instincts, and the proposal to despoil one set of people for the 
benefit of another can only be called "confiscation," and, as such, 
can hardly fail to produce demoralization. 

Socialism Demands a Higher Morality. 

I do not, of course, share the ignorance of those who confound 
feeble and isolated instances of Communism with Socialism, and I 
am well aware that Socialism has never been tried by a nation. 
This in itself proves nothing, though the probability is that the 
experiment would have been undertaken long ago had there been 
any reasonable expectation of success ; but the success of Socialism 
presupposes an improvement and elevation in human nature which 
we are not justified in anticipating: it assumes the complete eradication 
of all selfish instincts, the surrender of all natural affection, 
and the grinding down of all degrees of intelligence to a common 
level. The realization of Socialism suggests a barrack-like monotonous 
existence in which one set of people will be perpetuallywatching another to see that no unfair advantage is being taken, a 
life in which there will be little or no scope for originality or independence, 
and in which there will be nothing to look forward to, as 
the incentive to progress will be absent. 

And even then the inequality and "injustice" will remain. To 
take only one instance. I am less physically attractive than X., 
although perhaps equally deserving. Why should X. enjoy the 
privilege of ensnaring the affection of some desirable female, whilst 
I am spurned? 

In the interests of common justice I demand that X.'s classic 
features and model proportions should be planed down or distended 
to my own level. X.'s attractive exterior is in no sense due to his 
own exertions ; it represents an unearned increment to which he 
clearly has no right, and it is only fair that he should be called upon 
to sacrifice it on behalf of the community of which I am one. This 
argument applies with even greater force to the opposite sex. 


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No. Ifyou got your Socialistic State to-morrow and everybody 
equal and enjoying the same advantages, in six months' time those 
with brains and intelligence would come to the front and those without 
them would sink, for the former would take advantage of the 
latter. The whole idea is so Utopian, so idealistic, so totally unpractical 
! What man who has had to deal with men and their 
administration on a big scale has ever been a Socialist? Poets, 
dreamers, ranters, people with an exuberance of philanthropy and 
no practical knowledge, people who are dissatisfied with their conditions, 
those who have sunk to the lowest depths and have nothing 
to lose-there is your Socialist raw material and I wish you joyof it! 

Fatalism. 

Believe me, the huge fabric of modern civilization is working out 
its own evolution, and to try to increase the speed of the machine 
by pouring cans of liquid into it which it is totally unprepared to 
assimilate, will only result in a shudder of the machine, a spitting 
out of the liquid, and procedure by evolution as before. 

In the vast network of most complicated inter-relations which 
builds up the civilized world, can you honestly believe that it is 
possible to straighten out the tangle and have everything nice and 
smooth, and everyone doing exactly as they should for each other's 
benefit ? The modern industrial world is, alas ! so constituted that 
the conditions you deplore must ever be with us in some form or 
other, and nothing that you or I can do is capable of altering what 
may, for all practical purposes, be looked upon as one of nature's 
laws. 

There are other countries besides our own, and the adoption by 
one nation of a purely Utopian idea would dislocate the whole 
machine to its own injury; other nations would take advantage of the 
madness, and the crazy people who had accepted this form of social 
conditions would be crushed out of existence, for its Socialism would 
be an unnatural state, and therefore doomed to extinction. 

Our Nation of Shopkeepers. 

Great Britain is a kind of vast shop, which either handles and 
distributes the goods of foreigners, or supplies other countries with 
its products. The vast majority of the population is employed in 
distributing or producing these goods, and the sale of the goods is 
dependent upon their being of the same, or better, value than those 
which are produced elsewhere. Eliminate competition between 
British producers, and the value of the goods will diminish and their 
price incre::ase. What, in that case, would become of the millions of 
men and women whose labor produces the goods in question? 

The British Isles, already overpopulated, are incapable of sustaining 
the forty-four millions who now inhabit them unless the product 
of their labor can be exported, and it is impossible to believe that a 
nation which forbade private profit could compete successfully with 
rivals who adhered to the system of competition. 


6 

It is futile to talk of Socialism as a cure for all ills as long as the 
world is what it is. You cannot make people subservient to an idea 
and go against their natural inclinations and interests for the sake of 
an idea. 

Classes a Law of Nature. 

Look at nature ; and if you can find a successful state of 
Socialism among animals or plants, Twill take all this back. But 
until you do, I shall continue to assert that Socialism is not only a 
waste of your time, but a wicked waste, inasmuch as you are now 
spending your life in rousing a turbulent and dangerous spirit 
which, when once called forth, you may find it is beyond your 
power to allay ; and you may yet live to regret your reckless 
wickedness in appealing to men's baser passions and setting class 
against class. But I will not enlarge on this theme ; I have already 
written enough to show you how deeply I regret that we have 
indeed arrived at the parting of our ways, and that in future we 
must be as strangers to one another. 

PoNTEFRACT. 

DEAR P.


So our divergent opm10ns have strained your friendship to the 
breaking point ; but mine is still intact, although you call me a 
philanthropic, idealistic dreamer and a wicked thief appealing to 
men's baser passions, all in one breath. 

Do you remember that legend about the first Norman robber 
recorded in our line? How he, being about to engage in battle, 
rode down the lines, reviewing his forces and giving orders? He 
commanded one of his officers to begin the attack by storming a 
certain position. This wretched fellow, glancing at the site indicated, 
replied that it could not be done. Our ancestor lifted his 
brows. "What, then, do you suggest?" "I cannot say," replied 
the captain, helplessly. Whereupon, without further waste of time 
or talk, it is related that our amiable forefather, "raising his battleaxe, 
clove his head in twain,'' remarking that "it contained neither 
courage nor ideas, but only a mouth to eat," and so rode slowly on 
down the lines, the matter being of no great importance. 

"Toujours 1' Audace." 
Now that callous old savage was right. If we have neither 
courage nor ideas, and placidly proclaim our inability to attack and 
deal with the difficult questions of the day-riding the while decked 
out in burnished armor, exacting respect from those we imagine 
ourselves born to lead, and expecting to have our greedy mouths 
filled with the choicest food the army commissariat has to offer-
well, then we deserve to have our handsome, but inefficient, heads 
"cloven in twain," that's all. And yet this is the position you take 
up when you say'' we cannot alter present conditions." Is not the 
present chaotic industrial system of man's own making? If so, it is 
capable of amelioration, alteration, and eventual reconstruction by 


7 


man : it is no more a law of nature than that we should wear 
trousers or tall hats. But it is a natural law that certain people 
should feel impelled to persuade their fellow men that humanity is 
capable of attaining something incomparably higher and better than 
that which it has already reached. But for these restless individuals 
we should all still be happily engaged in scratching up roots and 
trapping birds for our meagre sustenance, coloring our bodies with 
clay as our only artistic effort, lining our fcetid caves with dead 
bracken as our only luxury, and killing one another as our onlypastime. 

Nowadays these pioneers are styled "agitators" because they 
disturb the brain calcifying prejudices which so agreeably numb our 
intellects, and they, deeming themselves the unworthy little tools 
God is pleased to work with, consider it is their duty to ensure that 
the world does uot remain what it is. They believe mankind is 
improving steadily, and, at times, even rapidly. So surely as I am 
like a god compared to pala:olithic man-hairy, bull-necked, long-
armed, flat-headed-so surely will the man of one hundred and fifty 
thousand years hence be as a· god compared to me. 

Our Intolerable Civilization. 

Already you are yearning for an improved environment. The 
thousands of" mean and monotonous streets,'' with their myriads of 
stunted and misshapen beings, breathing dirt-laden air and thinking 
with dirt-laden minds, disgust you. Then why tolerate them? 
Your artistic and fastidious nature prompts you to flee from all that 
is abominable and shut yourself up on your own estate, surrounded 
only by people or objects whose companionship and contemplation 
strike no jarring note ; but this does not prove you superior to the 
struggling millions, toiling in crowded towns under conditions which 
do not admit of their developing any sense of beauty. I can only 
admit your claim to excellence when I find your artistic perceptions 
strong enough to goad you into fighting ugliness outside your walls 
as well as in, and not acquiescing in its prevalence in your country 
any more than you would in your individual home. 

The Ideals of Aristocracy. 

You reproach me with forgetting the ideals of our class, but it is 

precisely these traditions and ideals that have made me a Socialist. 

The only reason that every intelligent member of our family is not 

one is due to the fact that most of the others were sent to school 

young or had these ideals destroyed otherwise. 

All things carry within them the seeds of their own dissolution, 

and aristocracy is no exception to this rule. I maintain that no 

one, saturated as we were in the spirit of a once proud race, could 

fail to grow up into an uncompromising Socialist the moment he 

applied his tenets to modern conditions-unless some powerful

influence counteracted his early training. 

Let me remind you of the two dominant ideas which were set 

before us from the beginning. 


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The Governing Class. 

Idea No. 1 was that we were unquestionably superior beings. The 
world was full of inferior beings placed there on purpose to do our 
bidding and minister to our wants. These inferior beings were good 
creatures in their way, so long as they did as they were told, pehavedrespectfully, and were content "in that state of life" in which God 
''had been pleased" to place them. Any inclination on their part 
to leave this "state of life" was little short of blasphemy. Any 
leisure they might have must be spent, not as they chose, but as the 
superior beings thought best for them, any claim they might make 
to appreciate art of any sort instantly became a jest. You may still 
find traces of this lingering in Punch : Mary Ann going to a Wagner 
concert after cooking the mutton, or a blacksmith in a picture 
gallery, both still serve as side-splitting jokes (though one wonders 
if any prehistoric beast can still be found to emit simian cachinnations 
over them). In short, life for these inferior beings was to be a 
life of hard work, and they ought to enjoy it-but as for enjoyinglife itself ... ! That was reserved for the superior beings. 

Fight for the Weak. 

Idea No. 2 was that we must always fight for the weak againstthe strong, against the oppressor for the oppressed, for the forlorn 
hope, in the losing cause, and this against all odds and at the cost of 
any personal sacrifice. If you were one of three hundred on a sinking 
ship, yours the right to be the two hundred and ninety-ninth 
person to leave that ship-the proud and enviable position of beingthe three hundredth belonging to the captain. If adrift in a boat, 
your honor required that you should do your share of the rowingand do without your share of the food. If lost in the desert with 
only one tepid water-bottle between three people, it was for you to 
see to it that the water was only drunk by two and that neither of 
these two should answer to your name-and so forth. 

All children are by nature generous and heroic ; they respondreadily to such teaching, probably only because it appeals to their 
artistic and dramatic instincts ; but, whatever the cause, they undoubtedly 
respond. Not that they become little angels revelling in 
self-denial. We were selfish little brutes and fought like demons ; 
all the same, you remember, we formed a high ideal of what the 
imaginary person would do or say under any given circumstances, 
and we made up stories and planned adventures in which this 
splendid individual did all manner of brave and impossibly quixotic 
things. 

How Children see it. 

Now you will take note that once these two ideas are thoroughlyassimilated, once you have imbued a child with the conviction that 
it is his privilege to fight for the rights of the down-trodden, and you 
at the same time place a down-trodden people of his own race under 
his nose, whose rights he feel s he ought to do battle for, then youhave already-so far as ethics are concerned-your Socialist to hand! 


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You have only to add a few elementary principles of political economy 

and you have your practical Socialist up-to-date. The thing is 

inevitable. Inevitable, too, the fierce resentment I experienced on 

discovering that the aristocracy were not attempting to live up to 

their own ideals, dead within them, and out of whose detritus the 

fungus of pocket-politics now sprouts instead. Inevitable, too, my

exultation on finding the old ideals enshrined in the hearts of the 

people as they prepared to follow the fiery pillar to the promised

land. 

It is well to remember the "secondary gods." They were about 
as contented as governors of provinces usually are-and we owe 
them much-especially the great man who kept the cinnamon 
turkeys and always held his hat in his hand, even when ropes of rain 
were coming down, so great was his respect for all superior beings, 
even when they were very small indeed ; and the coachman who, 
when out riding, never forgot his n place," but kept so far behind us 
as to render ordinary intercourse impossible-a pompous proceeding 
which so enraged us that you recollect we crossed and recrossed the 
ford after rain, knowing his horse had a fancy for lying down in 
water and always hoping we might drown him-a pious wish which 
was once nearly fulfilled, the horse rolling over his leg in a strong 
current, causing us much terror and hard work in extricating him-
still speechless and respectful-from the river bed. Yet this man's 
abject servility furnished us with our first chance of seeing English 
people who were not personal retainers. Do you remember the wild 
gallops to distant villages? the sweets and nuts flung over playground 
walls to amuse children who surely thought us mad? the 
poacher? the pastrycook? the gipsies? and all the wonderful people 
outside the park walls? ... and now you have shut yourself up 
and out of England again, and tell me that "justice" is an attribute 
I am unable to estimate correctly ! 

Here we both see the same fact under different aspects. Surely 
if each man's individual conscience does not revolt at what he personally 
thinks unjust, there would be no justice at all ! The unjustwould have it all their own way, whilst the righteous ones sat in a 
subdued row, twiddling powerless thumbs and softly murmuring, 
"What we see appears to us cruel and unjust, but let us not opposeit till we are quite certain that we are capable of arriving at a 
correct definition of abstract justice." So one might sit gazing contentedly 
at the Crucifixion. Thus in point of fact many dzd sit. Yet 
I do not seem to notice that later generations have specially revered 
those n well-balanced minds " for the part they played on that 
occasion. 

Roughly speaking, injustice is strength taking advantage of its 
power to crush weakness. Injustice implies a lack of imagination. 
"Justice'' should be impartial, but no human being has sufficient 
imagination to place himself in the position of another so entirely as 
to be absolutely impartial. For that reason, n justice" zmtemperedby mercy-which is merely the result of imagination-is invariably 
injustice: a truth which the great Duke of Wellington perceived in 


IO 

that moment when he asserted that "military law" was no law at 
all. 

The Men on the Spot who Know. 

You hold that the omniscience of the "man on the spot'' shquld 
be taken for granted, and that no action of his should be criticized. 
In I 567 you would have maintained that the Duke of Alva was 
right in his treatment of the Netherlands because he had a greatknowledge of the world, and that therefore his "bloody council" 
was assuredly the best means of dealing with and governing people.
You would l:ave maintained that the views of the one hundred 
thousand artizans who emigrated to England were not worth listening 
to, and that the "strength of mind'' Alva showed in sending 
Counts Egmont and Horn to the block was beyond praise. Yet, in 
spite of his methods of "dealing with problems on the spot," his 
fleet was eventually destroyed, and he was only too thankful to 
leave a country where he boasted of having executed no less than 
eighteen thousand men. 

In our own days the "Congo atrocities" were perpetrated byChristians who had "studied the problems on the spot." It is the 
carping spirit inherent in a few people which acts as a necessaryrestraint on those who might otherwise get drunk on overmuch 
authority. Their vanity makes them susceptible to public opinion,
and they weigh their actions a little more when they know these are 
liable to be criticized by somewhat exacting compatriots. Lord 
Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corruptsabsolutely." I only object to this wielding of absolute power. 

You accuse the" misguided sentimentalists" of never seeing any

but one side of the question. This is indeed true. No matter what 

paper you take up, you are sure to see "necessary measures of 

repression " com mended, exhortations to a greater display of" firm 


ness," etc. ; and all this from panic-stricken, pale-faced persons,

wielding pens to order at their dreary desks, and who, never having

been on the spot, are no more fit-according to your own theories 

-to form public opinion than those "sentimental cranks," who 

have, at any rate, the courage of their theories, and who may fre


quently be found to have formed the same because they have 

roamed the world in many an unbeaten track. 

Patriotism no Monopoly. 

I dwell upon this at some length because it is a pose of our 
"class" to speak as though they had a monopoly of patriotism. If 
any reform is proposed at home they scream, "Think of its effect in 
India!" or" Do not indulge in parish politics, but remember the 
susceptibilities of the Fiji Islanders and Basutos!" Well and good ; 
but let an Englishman raise his voice in protest against some 
arbitrary measure or unfair sentence passed in any of our distant 
dependencies, let him hint that our country's honor is at stake, and 
the aristocratic imperialists fling themselves on him at once. He is 
a "traitor," he "ought to be shot," and so forth. 


II 

If your imperialist carried his " man on the spot" theory to its 
lo~ical conclusion, he would believe that only men who have lived 
With and amongst those they legislate for are capable of knowingwhat it is they require. In this case the interests of miners would be 
banded over to those who had themselves worked in mines, and the 
·Concerns of cotton spinners to those who had spun cotton. But no; 
the leisured class fancy themselves born with a sort of marvellous 
-intuition that takes the place of knowledge, and expect everyone to 
acquiesce in their decrees, when these should in "justice" only 
~pply to the one and a quarter million people in this country whose 
mterests the deer park dwellers may fairly be said to understand. 

Aristocrats as Administrators. 

You ask me to look at the work done by Lhe upper classes on 
·County councils, as magistrates, etc. It is precisely because I have 
.looked that I accuse. They are mostly so unwilling to attack the 

more serious problems of our time that they even display an occasional 
activity in opposing those who would. Hence a fitful interest 
in local matters, usually in order to prevent any progressive 
measures being enforced, and to guard what they conceive to be 
their own interests. One hears rich men derided for not giving 
larger sums to the party funds. On enquiring why a man who 
appears to take no interest in politics should spend his money thus, 
the reply is, " Well, it's a very good form of investment." This 
sentence sets one thinking. 

Of course, many rich people and numerous captains of industry 
do excellent work; but I doubt your finding these exceptions invariably 
belong to the ancient nobility, who, taking it all round, 
resist most strenuously any attempts on the part of the working man 
to manage his own affairs. Now I agree that every pig should attend 
to his own sty, but I see certain pigs attempting to compel other 
pigs, less fortunately situated, to restrict their energies to attending 
to the upkeep of the selfish ones' styes, and prevent them from 
bestowing any attention on their own ! I note, in passing, that to 
my simile of an armed knight proudly asserting his right to lead 
the attack on apparently invulnerable enemies, you retort with an 
appropriate comparison concerning swine. 

Is Sport Culture ? 

You suggest that those who feel unequal to the task of fighting 
our twentieth century dragons are keeping "culture, beauty and 
art" alive in some restful oasis. Let us be candid. Do the leisured 
class fulfil this function? You and I have been associated since our 
childhood with people who did little, when they had money, except 
spend it on idle ostentation. Their lives were supported in luxury 
by a host of parasites ministering to their self-importance, and you 
are well aware that the character and general upbringing of this 
class tends to produce a highly conventional, ill-informed and narrow-
minded type. Our sons are hardly brought up to this duty of 

•' sheltering culture" or encouraging science in the expensive schools 

12 

we send them to. The more intelligent may tell you the difference 
between Lybia and Lydia, or afford some immaterial detail concerning 
the Hittites, but their ignorance as to the history, laws, 
literature or geography of the Empire they are taught to boast of is 
phenomenal. Other contemptible nations may have a history, or 
even laws. These are beneath our notice. Political economy' would 
be classed as "rot." No; games are of paramount importance to the 
"governing class," therefore what the oasis really shelters is "sport."· 
Mill said, " Science takes cognizance of a phenomenon, and endeavors 
to ascertain its law ; art proposes to itself an end, and looks 
out for means to effect it." Which of these two processes is going 
on at the present time in any of the "oases" known to you and me? 
Even the cultivated oasite is not clamorous in his demands that 
others may share in, or be given opportunities for learning to appreciate, 
those things which are, after all, the only ones that make life 
worth the living. Surely he may be compared to a man who is 
being rowed by others in a heavy sea, whilst he sits warmly clad on 
the dry seat, nibbling pate de foz"e gras sandwiches, sipping champagne, 
and occasionally throwing the dripping oarsmen a weevilly 
dog-biscuit in order that their strength may be kept up sufficiently 
to go on rowing him! Would you be surprised if some day they 
heaved him overboard? No; you would do it yourself. We are 
not so unlike after all, and perhaps our quarrel-if quarrel it belies 
far back in those fruit-stealing days when, having committed 
every possible crime, you repaired to the billiard-room and practised 
skilful strokes, whilst I, no less steeped in sin, vanished in the 
library behind fat tomes on anthropology, whose musty and alluring 
smell is in my nostrils even now, and whose precepts I never forgot. 
Your very letter proves a transition in human nature. Here you 
are, an avowed opponent of my every thought and deed, actuallyendeavoring to "make allowances" for me! Time was when the 
only allowance you would have made would have been one of distance 
as you aimed a sharp stone at my head, or of quantity as you poured 
some death-dealing drops in my drink. In these days you find yourself 
weighing extenuating circumstances in my favor. It is but a 
short time ago that we burnt heretics and witches at the stake, and 
starved people to death, and, in some countries, reserved that worst 
torture of all, the "Iron Maiden," for the worst criminals of all, 
namely, those who desired to improve their country's condition. 
Some might still wish to see those methods made use of now, but 
public opinion-which is after all only private opinion in the aggregate-
has changed, and, with it, our customs. Even I recollect men 
denouncing trade unions and declaring that the sooner English 
workmen imitated the Chinese and learnt to live on a handful of 
rice the better for them and for the country ! What fool would say 
this now? And this process of amelioration which manifests itself 
in ever greater tendency towards concerted action and combination 
would not seem to you a "despoiling of one set of people for the 
benefit of another" if you studied the writings of modern economists 

more carefully. 


13 


The Failure of Individualism. 


The prejudice against Socialism is due to the prevailing habit of 
looking at all the existing evils caused by an obstinate individualism 
and then saying : " That is what Socialism will be, only ten times 
more so!" At present a cut-throat competition forces selfishness 
upon us, insecurity and grinding poverty destroy natural affections, 
and want and destitution reduce millions of intelligences to one 
common level of devitalized incapacity. The passions-not the 
reasoning powers-survive. Mournful, barrack-like institutions are 
here now testifying to the failure of a system which denies men 
security in their own country, and assumes the only incentive to be 
money-forgetting appetite, not to mention vanity. It is an insult 
to all the finest minds of any and every epoch to suggest that the 
alteration of a vicious system would eradicate the wish to excel 
from our nature. Only we hope to do so in future without materi. 
ally injuring others. Socialists desire that "those with brains and 
intelligence " should "come to the front," but they also claim 
that those less gifted should enjoy security, respect, and leisure as 
citizens performing necessary labor for the welfare of a gratefulcommunity.

You confound natural with fictitious inequalities when dealingwith the "unearned increment " of X.'s physical attraction. We 
want to enhance natural advantages by giving all equal opportunitiesof developing mentally and physically to the utmost. Look at our 
women! See how these fictitious and cruel disabilities now preventgirls-intended by nature to grow into beautiful women-from 
becoming real " women" at all-battered, twisted caricatures, with 
drawn faces and cunning or heavy eyes. The same applies to men. 
May God forgive you your insolent allusion to ''physical inequalities"
which conjures up such visions that, for the moment, I cannot. 
Socialism being a comparatively new faith, it is remarkable how 
many of those holding it have already been found in positions where 
they had to deal with men on a large scale. Dozens of names 
suggest themselves to me had I the space, but I must confine myself 
to reminding you that the father of English Socialism, Robert Owen, 
managed a cotton mill at nineteen, and was part owner of the New 
Lanark Mills when twenty-eight.

Concerning "Utopia," I am tempted to tell you how I once 
accompanied a motherly primrose dame of high degree when opening 
a creche in a foul industrial town. She made a short speech, in 
which she said a creche was a temporary measure to palliate tern~ 
porary evils, but that she hoped for a day when mothers would be 
enabled to feed and look after their own infants. Every subsequentspeaker (they were all millowners !) alluded to Lady T.'s " Utopianideas," with sarcastic smiles. Driving home, the dear woman protested, 
wearily," I've had nine children and attended to e~ch one, 
and I do assure you that nursing an infant is not the occupation I 
should select in paradise. Men have such odd ideas concerning 
Utopia.'' 


Socialism and Competition. 


But let us turn from her to our old friend Chambers's Biographical 
Dictionary. Here we see that "Marx's aim is not to propound 
Utopian schemes, nor even to offer programmes of social reform, 
but to elucidate an historical process which is inevitable"; and in 
this you concur, for you admit that the huge fabric of modern civilization 
is working out its own evolution, only you are annoyed when 
it betrays a tendency to evolute without consulting you. History 
shows that it is the backward nations, slow to adopt new ideas and 
unwilling to evolute, who get into an "unnatural state"; and that 
the more advanced ones, having adopted new methods, are obliged 
by force of circumstances to crush the laggard peoples out of existence. 
Moreover, if Socialism is impossible, why oppose it so 
fiercely? As to Socialism eliminating competition between British 
producers, would the value of British goods diminish and the price 
increase? Gigantic combinations are now, in the interests of 
private profit, gradually achieving the elimination of competition; 
and when you find that these amalgamations cause the price of 
goods to increase, you will also find that your only remedy lies in 
Socialism. Goods manufactured on a large scale might show better 
value than those turned out by numerous struggling competitors, 
with antiquated plant and cheap labor, on a small one. John 
Bright said that adulteration was a form of competition. Indeed, 
the dictionary recognizes it as such: "Adulteration. The act of 
debasing a pure or genuine article for pecuniary profit by adding to 
it an inferior or spurious article, or by taking one of its constituents 
away." 

When you speak of England as "a kind of vast shop handling 
and distributing goods," and appeal to my better nature by asking"what would become of the millions of men and women whose labor 
produces the goods in question" if competition were eliminated? 
my heart remains as the nether millstone, and for obvious reasons. 

What becomes ofthem now ! 

A Little Lower than the Angels. 

Nature shows it is useless to fling all manner of seed at random 
on a rough bit of ground with some ill-considered remark about 
"the survival of the fittest" as one lies down to watch the result. 
Nor, should you desire to plant an oak for future generations, will 
it avail you to stick an acorn in the crevice of some wall and tell it 
that if it is really an acorn it will become an oak anywhere. So it 
may: a little dwarfish caricature of what might have been one of 
the most magnificent growths in creation. Yet these incredibly 
silly things are what we do with the young of our own kind. 

You want me to take the example of animals. You have already 
done so, selecting pigs. I refuse to compare mankind to the rest of 
the brute creation: till you can show me animals that cook their 
food, wear clothing that is not an integral part of their bodies but 
made for them by other animals of their own kind, or sacrifice their 


IS 


lives deliberately, not only for the sake of their own young, but for 
strangers, or even merely an idea. Even "those who have sunk to 
the lowest depths" are capable of dying for another. True, it is 
difficult for their atrophied brains to grasp an idea. Even if theycould, their devitalized natures and ancemic !:Jodies would be incapable 
of working for it. This explains why 110 Socz"ahst has or ever 
wz"ll come from the slums. All our recruits hail from the artizan or 
professional classes, men who have known responsibility and had 
practical experience. The "submerged tenth," oddly enough, share 
your views concerning our faith. They cannot see that ideas do 
rule the world ; that men are subservient to them, and unll "goagainst their natural inclinations and interests" for the sake of the 
"vision splendid " God has vouchsafed them. 

Come out of your hole into England once more. Cast away the 
prejudices which blind you, and you will find a nation of aristocrats 
forming up swiftly, silently, shoulder to shoulder, in the cold greydawn, preparing to stem back the great hosts of materialism which 
have gathered in such force on e\·ery side. I entreat you, fightwith and not against us, for a long, fierce conflict it will be, duringwhich many will fall; but they shall reckon their lives well lost, 
dying, as they will, with the ideal ever before them and the sun 
rising in the East. 

Yours, 

CHIHSTOPHER. 


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