I could n't help thinking, as I turned the afternoon over in my mind, that this thin, impassioned Scotch lecturer, with his long arm and lean finger raised over his excited students, was a seventeenth-century Calvinist-model 1925. Here was Scotch passion for theology, Scotch skill in dialectic, and Scotch attraction to a hell-anddamnation ethics. In an hour's talk the speaker said much that was true, but he marshaled his facts around a philosophy; he drove a passion into his words that made the thing not a student's gathering but the preparation for a holy war. Which he would, of course, be the first to admit. Certainly, a holy war against Capitalism.

And I thought too of what he had said to me as we drove to the meeting, in a car that belonged to a Socialist city councilor. 'You know, I'm an enthusiastic member of the Scottish Home Rule organization.' He said this gently, half-humorously, with a droll smile. No one knew better than he the practical impossibility of that. 'You see,' he added, 'we should then have Socialism established and running in Scotland, while the English were still talking about it!'

I repeat: Glasgow is in Scotland. The Clyde is in Scotland. And the 'Wild Men' are braw lads and Scotch.

III

You won't get to know a Clyde Wild Man by interviewing him or by hearing him criticize the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons. Or by watching him stir the proletariat on a Glasgow street corner. You'll begin to know him if you catch him without any front. When he's eating and drinking, when he's singing and 'clowning,' when he's consorting with his own in a gathering of the clan. I went to a festival that had all of this in it, because Jimmy

Maxton, one of the kindest and most lovable men on earth, asked me to go.

It was upon the occasion of Pat Dollan giving up the leadership of the clan. I say 'clan' because that good Scotch word comes naturally to mind to describe what the newspapers call the Glasgow Federation of the Independent Labor Party. It was the chairmanship of that from which Pat was resigning. Let me see: It's a sort of Glasgow Labor Tammany Hall, if I may mix metaphors. It's what has organized Glasgow into sending a majority of Labor M. P.'s to Parliament. And now of course an explanation is due as to why an Irishman should organize Glasgow. I can't say I can really answer that, except to say that he speaks Scotch. It gives you a very funny feeling, if you've never known such phenomena before, to meet a man with a pure Irish name and a pure Irish face, and have him open his mouth to say: 'Hoo's a' wi' ye?'

The gathering took place in an old Scottish mansion at the centre of a huge estate. Once private property, it had been bought by the city of Glasgow and 'socialized.' The grounds are a park now, the house open for meetings and 'shindigs' for anybody. Glasgow has a way of doing that. A beautiful estate and mansion house near Loch Katrine is owned by the municipality, and every city councilor may spend two weeks' vacation there each year. Practical Scotch Socialism.

We had high tea in the dining-hallso high that it almost touched dinner. I sat with two Socialist M. P.'s, a Socialist city magistrate, and a Socialist Unitarian minister who talked to me about the reactionary clergy of Boston. After tea we drifted, chatting, chaffing, and laughing, into a large room with rows of chairs, where we began to sing and make speeches and 'clown.'

Pat Dollan began it. He presented

Davy Kirkwood, Labor M. P. for Dumbarton and Clydebank, war deportee, wildest of Clyde Wild Men, with an iron kettle, a white toga, a red rag, and a package of porridge.

Said he: "You all know that Parliament has decided to serve porridge in the House of Commons dining-room to all Scotch M. P.'s. You will agree with me that as served by the Scotch, with salt, it's the foundation of our greatness. Now in the interests of Socialism it has been proposed to provide porridge for every man, be he English or Scotch, in Parliament! [Cheers] Davy Kirkwood is the man for the job! [More cheers] Therefore,' said Dollan, raising the kettle, and the package of Quaker Oats tied with the red rag to a stick, 'we present these, as a joint contribution of the Scottish Independent Labor Party, to our representative, Davy Kirkwood, for the reform of Parliament!'

Kirkwood is lifted upon a chair, with all the weapons in his hand and a torn sheet fluttering from his shoulders. All the men and women at the Socialist sociable and all the lads and lasses stampede. I tell you, Kirkwood is a man to delight a crowd. He is biglimbed and tall, with black hair, and Scotch features, and a broad Lanark burr in his speech. And he has the gift that was Keir Hardie's, of never getting out of himself. In the Commons or on a street corner, he is always a Clyde worker and a Scotsman.

I can't pretend to put down the speech that he made in the Lanark tongue, but here is the English of it:

'I take this opportunity,' said he, 'of telling you a story that has a serious meaning in it.' (And, funny thing, it had, too.) 'In the House of Commons, of which I am a member, there are two dining-rooms, one being for members and one being for visitors. Now according to rules of the House of Commons

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Kitchen Committee, to which I belong, any member who has visitors pays sixpence a plate. Well! Sir Lyndon MacCassey writes the Kitchen Committee a letter, asking that, in consideration of his services and duties, and his being Sir Lyndon MacCassey, and this, that, and the other, he be relieved from the detail of the sixpence. Now it happens,' Davy continues in a lowered voice, 'that Sir Lyndon sat on the board that deported me out of the Clyde. [Anticipatory gurgles] And little did Sir Lyndon MacCassey think, thinks I, when he deported me out of the Clyde, that I should be sitting on a Committee in the House of Commons, reading Sir Lyndon MacCassey's letters.

""Well," I says, "who is this feller, Sir Lyndon MacCassey, who asks to be relieved of his dues to the Kitchen Committee, and thinks he can do it, with no one daring to think or to ask questions, because he's this, that, and the other?" So I advocates,' says Davy with a yell, 'that Sir Lyndon MacCassey be charged, not sixpence, but a shilling! [Hoarse cheers] But,' says Davy, 'I was willing to compromise; and I did compromise with the Kitchen Committee, so's we ended by making Sir Lyndon MacCassey pay sixpence like everybody else! [Prolonged cheers]

'I'm not a brilliant and an awfully educated sort of man,' cries Davy, 'but I want to say this that I've never yet met my equal! [Cries of 'Hear, hear!'] I've never met the man to whom I would kiss my hand or bow my knee!' [Head over teakettle cheering]

Davy had taken the burlesque porridge business and draped it with impassioned words upon the rights of man. His audience had laughed at first, but they ended in an ecstasy of cheers.

It needed a bit of clowning to cool the air. An inspired person shoved Maxton, the thinnest man in the British Labor Movement, up on top of two

chairs. Jimmy is one of those persons who are so thin that you think them a little thinner every time you see them. That, however, is an optical illusion, for official statisticians of the Labor Party know that Maxton has n't varied a milligramme in the quarter century. The Party avers that he lives upon cigarettes, coffee, and Socialist agitation. I incline to accept this view. However, when his skeleton giddily reached the height of two chairs and his frame was exposed to the view of all, someone shouted, 'Porridge did it!'

That deflated the meeting very properly, and when the laughter subsided Jimmy began to speak.

'I take this public opportunity,' said he, to explain to the Independent Labor Party why I don't have my hair cut.' Jimmy wears about his shoulders a mane of black hair that frames his ascetic face, and next to the expected revolution in May he is the most popular subject of conversation in Socialist circles. 'Jimmy Stewart'

a veteran Glasgow Socialist - 'is my barber.' A roar at this, and Scottish pleasantries from the other Jimmy. 'As my hair is universally known through England and Scotland [cheers], all the more fashionable girls have been going to Jimmy for bobbing, bingling, and shingling. [Cheers and pandemonium] I receive, as is only to be expected, a reasonable commission.'

That was the way it went on. Anybody called upon, M. P.'s and all, abandoned himself to clowning. And finally they sang the old Scotch songs, and one new one to the tune of 'Keep the Home Fires Burning.' I remember the last two lines:

'Stick to Marx, my hearty; damn the Laibor Party;

Keep the hell fires burning for the bourgeoisie!'

The two serious speeches were Jimmy Maxton's about Pat Dollan

this being the honorable and sad occasion of his resignation and Pat's reply. They were full of local Glasgow political personalities and history, which I did n't understand. But one thing that hit me about Dollan's was that he, and all the Glasgow I. L. P. with him, looked upon Jimmy Maxton as the successor of Ramsay MacDonald, as leader of the Labor Party, and as future Prime Minister of Great Britain. I won't say till later what I think about that.

The sociable ended with the singing of the 'Red Flag,' to the tune of a Scotch ballad.

IV

The British Labor Party held its Conference at Liverpool in October. I went up from London, and talked with a lot of people with local leaders, national organizers, trade-unionists, M. P.'s, and ex-Prime Minister MacDonald. The British Labor Party is stronger to-day than it ever was. Its threatened divisions did n't materialize. Communism was pitched out by the heels, and Ramsay MacDonald came back. Not only did MacDonald and the moderates - Cramp, Thomas, Henderson, Clynes and Companytriumph in the matter of keeping the Communists out, but they gained a distinct ascendancy over the Left Wing of their own party.

But that is n't the subject of this article, which concerns solely the Clydebankers. I bring all this up to ask what the Wild Men of the Clyde felt about Liverpool. To speak frankly, they felt a little wild about it. They're the insurgent wing of the party, the Bull Moosers; and while they're quiet through party discipline they have pent-up feelings. The Scottish Laborites, including Glasgow, are not Communist, except for a handful under Will Gallacher, but they

My aim in this paper is not to praise or to scourge the politics of Scottish Labor, but to describe a particular section of it the liveliest, and rosiest, and most powerful. I have tried already to show that it touches the people at many points: from the vote they cast at the polls to the education they get in a Labor college. It gets into their high teas and their festivals and their Scotch music. But, above all, Clyde Socialism is a workingman's religion.

V

Every year in Glasgow the Socialist faithful gather together to preach and to pray in memory of Saint Keir Hardie. I went to this year's prayer meeting. The church was St. Andrew's, the largest public hall in Glasgow. Father and Mother and the kids were there, sitting row on row and in the encircling gallery, up to five thousand. A long bank of flowerpots supplied a fence of flowers, behind which sat the elders, Chairman Rankin, the Calvinistic frame of J. Maxton, and the archepiscopal stomach of George Lansbury, Labor M. P., editor and Socialist agitator. Behind these the choir boys and choir girls. And, in lieu of a hymn book or church notices, posters, yellow and black and red. After an organ recital, Rankin opened the service with exhortation and prayer — I'd call it that, all right. He put down a little political economics as a foundation, saying the present Government functioned upon the misery of the working classes, and so on; and noted - an excellent point, I thought that under the Conservatives (the last Government was Socialist, you know) unemployment had jumped from 1,270,000 to 1,400,000. But he swung into straight gospel

Socialism. Capitalist miseries, he said, were making the army of pale, propertyless people plod on to the full clear light of Socialism.' The New Jerusalem became the day when a Labor Socialist majority would sit in the British House of Commons! He used personal religious experience to vivify the thing. One night, when sleeping in the open, he said that he found himself on a sudden in the presence and novelty of dawn. It was like something that Socialism was doing to the world to-day. His words put me in mind of the revelation of Saint John.

'The new light and the new day,' he ended, on a ringing note of ecstasy, 'are not far away!'

Then, while we were still breathing heavily, he switched over to a few words introducing Jimmy Maxton, and sat down.

Instantly the five thousand Glasgow worshipers deafened the taut air with applause; they swayed in their seats, and smiled up happily and reverently at Jimmy. The new preacher began with an invocation of Saint Keir Hardie, and then passed by degrees to what I should call Socialist moral theology.

"The Scotch have always been known,' he said, 'for their thrifty ways, for hardy and simple lives. Now, as everyone knows, I've never been an advocate of flabby livin'. I've never preached that it was better for the Scotch workman to be restin' in the lap of luxury than to be livin' hard. But it's one thing,' he said, his voice cutting our ears like a drill, 'to live with simplicity and thrift yourself, and it's another to compel people to live simply and thriftily for your benefit.' There was hot lava in this, which flowed, I knew, from experience taken in his own body and nerves. 'Our simplicity of life,' he went on, 'has enabled the ruling class to keep us in

single-room apartment houses. ... I say, it is an evil thing to exploit a man's worst failings for your profit, but it is a damnable thing to take a man's best characteristics and pervert them to his undoing and your own wealth!'

I thought this the saltiest Socialism I had found in Britain. One remembered the slums of Bridgton, and the men with dead faces in unemployment queues. If it were not the whole loaf of truth, it was a large slice.

The preacher did n't let his congregation gloat much over their own misery. He told them promptly the misery was their own fault. They had been backsliders, lazy and shiftless, lacking energy, lacking faith in the religion that could save them Socialism. He beat and flayed them for their Socialist sins, for their supineness in action, their trade-union laxity, their social heresy, their little faith. And they cheered him for these scourgings louder than for his curse on the capitalist. They were Presbyterians, and had the conviction of sin in their hearts!

The preacher ended on a note that had in it both a thrill and a threat.

'I gather,' he said, 'that the press is well pleased at the moderation shown at Liverpool [annual Conference of the Labor Party]. I want to issue a warning. While the masses are ready to move forward on even keel, ready to go along constitutional paths. .. if they are hindered and blocked in carrying out fundamental changes, they will take those means that lie most ready to hand.'

And those means, as Jimmy has repeated many times to me and to others, are the general strike, and whatever of revolution may follow.

This statement was greeted with an immense demonstration.

There was even more religion in George Lansbury's half-episcopal and half-evangelical sermon than there was

in James Maxton's. He began, as was natural, to talk about Saint Keir, for he had worked with the fiery Scotsman in the early days of the movement, and his devotion to Hardie was frank and affecting. 'I don't believe in death!' he cried. 'Keir Hardie belongs to the past, and to the present, and to the future. He is with us to-day.' Then came a few words upon that new article of Labor's creed-pacifism. If this meeting were full of soldiers and sailors,' he cried, 'I would shout to them, as Keir Hardie would have done: "Don't shoot!". . . I hope to see the time,' he concluded, 'when the workmen of one country will refuse to fight the workmen of another!'

The meeting received this with good measure of ecstasy, and Lansbury went on, as Maxton had done, to personal Socialist morals.

"The question I want to ask is, "What are you folk going to do about these things?" You treat James Maxton and me very much like you treat the parsons. "Oh, he's a holy man, supposed to keep Sunday and be good. But the straight and narrow is not for me. No, thank you." Now look here. I don't care whether you cheer me again, as you've just done, — though I'm human and I like it, or listen to what I have to say. But when you look into your looking-glass to-night before you go to bed, give yourself a cheer, I say, for having done something for the working-class Socialist movement.'

This was mild. I'll put down a few of the sentences that I remember toward the end, when Lansbury really had the spirit of God at work in him.

"There cannot be brotherhood,' he cried, 'until we have swept away Capitalism from the face of the earth. Conditions are worse to-day than they were thirty or forty years ago. It is Socialism or perish, I tell you, in this or any other country. But Socialism