Cylchgronau Cymru

belief that the only way of securing his profits was to keep his men down. Such a man would be auspicious of anything that developed the intellectual side in them. Football would be all right and should be encouraged. It would occupy their minds, and keep them quiet. Debates and classes would be anathema. Above all he would object to a personal intercourse that in his view encouraged sentimental- ism in the employing class, blunted their sense of self-interest, and ran across the lines of class soli- darity. He would glory in the fisherman's gibe in Stephen Reynolds There's no trade union like the gentry." Now, if such a man deliberately shut his eye to everything except his own personal profits for the moment, and thinks neither of the nation as a whole nor of the future of his own children, there is some- thing in his point of view. It is possible that for some time an individual employer might pursue this policy of no compromise with success. Is it a possible policy nationally, and for the long distance ? Is it a rational conservatism ? My answer would be to point to Dublin to-day. If you want that, discourage University Settlements. If you want the class war, keep the classes apart. If you want (to paraphrase George Russell's letter to the Times of November 13th) to make Dublin (or London or Cardiff) another Barcelona, with the bomb of the anarchist a frequent blazing terror in the streets-you could not devise a policy more certain to bring about the result. If, while trade is good and we are under no strain from foreign com- plications, such misery and fierce resentment can exist, as undoubtedly exists in Dublin to-day, we cannot claim that the growth of a revolutionary spirit is outside the range of practical politics. Things are not well with our industrialism. Some of us are so used to it that we never see it in the light of the eternities. Some of us live apart in the country, or in the respectable quarters of our towns, and never see it at all. It is that kind of impression, and the attitude to it of men like Anthony, that creates the bitter Nihilist spirit, as cruel and relentless in its turn as that of the Industrialism which it seeks to destroy. But a spirit like this, where all things sweet and fair, love and hope and sympathy with the oppressed, are distorted and soured, and there is only gall and wormwood left, has, thank God, found as yet little echo in the British Labour movement. The nation is not yet in fact divided into two opposite hostile camps of rich and poor. On the one side, that spirit of obligation, which in the past has been so distinctive of our national life, is still a great tradition in our upper classes. We must see to it that it becomes a tradition for the whole of the employing class, and we must broaden and modernise the range of its practical application. The Factory Acts were necessary to organize and to enforce, under the new impersonal industry of the large towns, conditions of labour, which a humane master in his own workshop and under his own eyes would have been bound to grant to one who stood in a personal relation to himself. Even so, Settlements and their like are the translations into terms of modern life of the friendly personal relations between individuals that did at least something in our villages to sweeten life and blunt the edge of political differences. And do not imagine, I should say to the employing classes, that the other side, the labour movement, is blind to this view of the question. There is indeed a small section of it, which, on the analogy of Con- tinental precedent, preaches the class war on its side, as Anthony and his like preached it on theirs. They, too, do not love settlements or the W.E.A. and have been known to call them the last stronghold of privi- lege, the last and most subtle device by which capital seeks to deflect the straight path of Revolution. But, after all, the working classes are English or Welsh like you. Blood is thicker than class. The vast majority of working men, whatever their political and industrial views, have the national characteristics of moderation and common sense, love of order and piety. Their vision is profoundly religious, and they look forward to a regenerated nation, not to the triumph of a particular class, even though it be their own. They would far prefer that regeneration should come gradually and peacefully by the good-will and co-operation of the whole nation. They fully recognise the priceless contri- bution which the richer classes can and should bring towards the remoulding of that new and greater Britain. Apart from all snobbery, they genuinely admire the qualities of the gentleman," in the sense in which you would like your sons to under- stand the word. Working people would like to think that this in effect is true. Can you make it true ? Can you live up to the ideal which is conceived for you ? It is idle to talk despairingly of the country going to the dogs, it is mad to acquiesce in the inevitableness of a class war. It is in this spirit that we ask Cardiff and South Wales to approach the Settlement Movement. That way lies Evolution. Is it to be that or Revolution ? Which will you have ?