N

INETY per cent of the soldiers now

in the British army worked for a daily wage before the war-that is to say, they have come from the so-called working classes. Never in all their lives before have these men been as well clothed, fed, or looked after in every way. Unless death or serious disability intervenes, the period of the war will, in the future, be looked back upon by most of them as a time of surcease from all the ills of poverty such as had been their lot before, and of freedom from anxiety as to the welfare of their families. Never has the woman had so much cash in hand given to her out of her husband's earnings as the Government now allows for her subsistence, and the soldier knows that if he is killed or crippled a pension will be forthcoming. Only those familiar with the grinding and sordid poverty in which the average English workingman has lived in the past can realize the peaceful and care-free state of mind in which hundreds of thousands of the English soldiers now live.

The workingman who for one reason or another has stayed at home has never before been given the opportunity of earning larger wages, and while the cost of living has greatly increased (about seventy per cent), and the workingman's family is thoroughly unskilled in the art of economical living, it is the employer, whether the Government or a private individual, who has taken the increase largely upon himself.

The real burden of the war has fallen upon what is called in England the lower middle class, in which are found the shopkeepers' assistants, the minor clerks, the men with small single-handed businesses, and others of like incomes. Enlistment has in many cases resulted in permanent loss of position, destruction of business, or interruption of plans for betterment. The pay of the soldier and the Government allowance to families, while they seem liberal to those who have been manual laborers, do not equal the former incomes of these people from the middle classes. Some relief has been afforded by grants made from special funds raised for the purpose, but this relief is not evenly distributed, and when it is received is rarely equal to the loss incurred. In consequence homes

have been broken up, the education of children interrupted, and a scale of living adopted for the family necessarily considerably below the standard of pre-war days.

It is these people who will suffer most from the war and who will have no chance after the war to secure redress, for they are not combined in effective organizations and are subject to competition from every one seeking employment who may be of the same class and whose qualifications for employment consist principally of the need for money on which to live. They will be crushed between the class below and the class above, as they have always been and always will be. These people are looked upon as negligible in politics or industry. There are always more than enough of them; women can often take the places of men, and they can call no halt to any activity of the nation should they attempt to attract attention to their grievances through some concerted action, for of this they are incapable.

Money and property possess great power in England, and until the coming of this war had been able to keep the activities of organized labor well under control. The capitalistic stronghold was by 1914 being seriously threatened, however. Its stoutest battlements were being undermined, and it had been only through almost ignominious compromise that disaster had been averted. A Liberal Government had joined with labor in an attack upon vested rights and interests long held to be inviolable. In July, 1914, the country was on the verge of great industrial strikes and lockouts, seemingly inevitable. Then came the war with its reactions, and the war has proved a temporary solvent of a serious situation.

The conflict between labor and capital, which in England is more of a class war than it is elsewhere, has been only postponed, however, and the question now most frequently asked, aside from conjecture as to the probable duration of the war, is as to what is going to happen in the days of peace to come. Will things be taken up just where they were left off? Has the war brought new difficulties, or has it perhaps decreased those of former days?

To the workingman who has been in the

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through a bitter experience before this is a realized and accepted fact.

The demand on the part of labor that the unions shall determine the conditions under which women shall be employed means that their competition with male labor is to be restricted, and gives promise of a sex war even more bitter than that which has been fought over the suffrage. A minimum wage and some form of unemployment insurance may come to pass without serious opposition, for these schemes for the betterment of labor conditions have already found favor with the Liberal party. Compulsory unionism and no reduction of wages from present scales will be controversial matters and will have to be fought out between employer and employed before a settlement can be reached. The net result will probably be a compromise. The opinion of the Government authorities, who are guided by the advice of large employers, is indicated plainly in all wage controversies now arising. Day after day one branch of trade or another makes demand for increased pay, ostensibly to meet increased cost of living.

The men always demand an increase of wages. A settlement is generally reached whereby the men get more money but not in the form of an increased wage. It is paid as a war bonus." Both sides to the controversy are looking to the future. The men want wages raised so that they can demand a continuance of the same rates later after

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the war. The public or private employer is not averse to paying more money for work done at the present moment, for the justice of the plea that food is costing more is realized. This same employer knows, however, that it is much more difficult and more provocative of trouble to lower wages than it is to do away with bonuses, so a compromise is reached by the payment of a liberal increase in pay in the shape of a war bonus but with no technical increase in wages. It is hoped by the employers that when a marked decline in the cost of living takes place, as will undoubtedly come to pass soon after war conditions are at an end, it will not be difficult to cut off certain payments made obviously to meet a condition of affairs no longer existing.

But a few weeks ago England was threatened with a general tie-up of all the railways. The men were already in receipt of a fiveshilling war bonus. They asked for an increase of ten shillings in wages. The

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struggle was sharp but short. It was well understood that the money asked was not the real matter in dispute. Supported by public opinion as to the criminality of a strike at this time, the Government stood firm on principle but yielded in the matter of money. Wages remained the same, but the war bonus was increased from five to ten shillings a week. Weekly wages, even including war bonuses, have not gone up in such measure as the cost of living has increased, except to the comparatively small number who are doing extraordinarily well on piece-work; but, with the improvement of transport and distribution that is promised by the Government as coming soon, the cost of living may very possibly decrease by spring to such a degree as to make the average earnings of labor equal to what they were before the war, if not better. Women who have gone in for munition work are making higher wages, as compared with the possibilities open to female labor before the war, than are a majority of the men, and no little jealousy is found among the male workers in consequence.

A remarkable condition will confront English industry after the war. The country is now one vast machine shop. In the early days of the war machine tools were purchased on English account in all parts of the world at any price that might be asked. It was a notorious fact in America a year or so ago that a large metal-turning lathe could not be had for love or money, owing to the demand from Europe. English works that covered an acre two years ago now cover many times that amount of ground, and here, there, and everywhere factories have sprung up overnight, as it were, and are now the hives from which the thousands upon thousands of newly trained workmen and workwomen are turning out military equipment.

Enthusi

This transformation of a country that a short time ago worked at conservative speed, each factory in its own way and under its own methods, into a feverishly active community, restrained by no union rules or walking delegates and less given to drink than has been the case for many years, is one of the remarkable results of this war. asts who view this condition are immediately inspired to dreams of a future in which England, with the world at peace, will switch all this skillfully directed energy and willing labor onto the manufacture of goods for home consumption and for export without the loss of a day and without a hitch due to any

necessary changes in ownership, direction, and management. These dreams will not come true, however, in the very nature of things, especially English nature and English things. There is going to be a period of vast reaction and relaxation of effort as soon as peace shall come. How long this may last will depend largely upon the terms of the treaty that must be made between labor and capital before the new epoch is inaugurated.

Not

For years labor has been insistently demanding an increased share of the increment earned by capital invested in industry. getting this in the amount considered as due, the spirit of labor has become revengeful rather than progressive. English unionism has been a fight against capital rather than a fight for labor. English capital is of exclusive habit and unsympathetic nature. It will do better for itself when it becomes more democratic and responds more readily to human need.

One interesting result of the war has been the complete collapse of internationalism in labor. In July, 1914, there existed an agreement between the labor organizations of the larger countries of Europe to the effect that, if war should threaten, everything possible was to be done, even to the point of a great international "down tools," to defeat the intention of any government belligerently inclined. This agreement was especially definite between the English and the German labor interests. When war came, this agreement vanished as completely as if it had never been thought of. Members of the same international brotherhood took up arms against each other without question or hesitation, and thus labor organization lost all semblance of being a power in international affairs. That this was a bitter disappointment to some of the English labor leaders is undoubtedly true, and some of these men went so far in their efforts to keep England out of war as to expose themselves to serious charges of disloyalty. This attitude did not remain for long, however, for they soon realized that they stood alone and that no help was forthcoming from any country on the Continent. This disappointment brought with it a reaction to another extreme, and these same men are now among the most earnest of those who would carry on the war until it is fought to some decision. Labor is now so completely nationalized that when certain American labor leaders recently suggested co-operation with the English unions in an

attempt to influence the final peace negotiations, to the end that the general cause of labor throughout the world might benefit, the Americans were practically told to mind their own business and that English labor would act entirely upon its own judgment.

There is one direction in which the influence of labor is extremely powerful in English politics, and that is in its almost unanimous opposition to the protection of English industry by means of import duties. The German trade bogy does not seem to have frightened the English laborer from this position, in spite of all the uproar as to foreign competition after the war. The faith of a few in the wisdom of free trade for English industry has been somewhat shaken, but the great strength of the free-trade sentiment in England still lies with two classes-the workingmen and the "intellectuals." of a guard against German "dumping,” and for the purpose of giving preference to oversea parts of the Empire, a scheme of moderate import duties may come to England in the near future, but it will be an experiment to which many Englishmen will agree reluctantly and with grave doubts as to its real utility or economic wisdom.

In the guise

The effect of war upon English labor has, on the whole, been beneficial. The workers who are absent on pressing errands of Empire are being well cared for, as are the families they leave behind. Those who are at home are doing better for themselves than ever before. The standard of living has been raised for the families of all and the drink evil has been controlled to a marked degree. A feeling of independence has come to the worker. For the first time in his life he has money to spend, and he is spending it. A sense of power comes naturally to man or woman who is in demand for what he or she can do. Unchecked by union restrictions, the wage-earner is getting all the money he can, and the employer is getting more labor per man. There is a spirit of freedom and exhilaration throughout the industrial world that has given rise to a vast optimism as to the future.

The employer is biding his time, however, for he is better aware that all existing conditions are artificial. He is increasing his plant, setting aside a goodly portion of his profits as reserve, and fighting for definitions of terms rather than for actual advantage which he does not need just now. He is paying large war bonuses, but not high wages. He is

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training new workers that he may have some leverage on the labor market in the days to coine when the cost of production must be reduced.

The workingmen in the trenches are fighting side by side with their employers for a common purpose, with no place for jealousies, and all in good fellowship. They are writing home to the effect that they do not see why this status of affairs should not maintain in industry after the war. It should in theory, and in some cases it will continue to a certain degree; but when the nation goes back to the old order and no man can have more than he earns, the bitterness of the struggle will again cloud the vision of both employer

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and employed, and what is done in the great workshops and the mines will represent to the worker merely the minimum effort that must be given for the maximum wage to be secured, and to the employer the maximum labor that can be secured for the minimum wage that must be paid.

The problem of the relations of labor and capital is as old as man, and even this great war will bring no real solution. The controversy will be carried on in England as long as it exists anywhere in the world, for that is the way of the English. Liberty of thought and action is a precious possession, and it soon dies out of a too unanimous nation. London, England

"H

AD we fulfilled the German definition of neutrality, stille setzen,' there would long since have been nothing left to defend. They all look to us for some peculiar brand of neutrality. They ask of us the impossible."

De Reynold, one of the foremost Swiss historians, now a staff officer and one of the founders and leading spirits in the Swiss Nationalist Society, then defined the vigorous neutrality Switzerland feels herself obliged to maintain. As he spoke of the menace on all sides from without, his arm designed a curve suggestive of the scythe which would have cut down his compatriots had they not been continually on the alert. Such was his authority and fervor that I quite forgot his rather diminutive size. My uncertainty as to his age had made me hesitate on first meeting whether to address him as the colleague or venerated professor of the young friend who had given me a letter of introduction. Over the desk hung the portrait of an eighteenth-century ancestor, a haughty old patrician of Freiburg. His descendant so resembled this old soldier that he could have stepped into his uniform. It was not the simple Swiss burgher who spoke, but the proud defender of a long tradition. "We Swiss have a common heritage of liberty to defend. Our first task since the war has

been to clear suspicion within, a suspicion due largely to insidious disintegrating forces from without. Neutrality in the face of such odds has at times seemed even less attractive than war."

"Should neutrals chloroform themselves until the end of the war?" asks Lombard. In reply to taunts from without Millhoud protested, vigorously, "Neutre ne veut pas signifier pleutre." (A neutral doesn't mean a numskull.)

Forces working from without have been the most immediate menace to Swiss unity. In a previous article I emphasized German propaganda both because of its extent and intensity. It reached directly the German two-thirds of the Swiss population. The German conception of neutrality was perhaps the most extraordinary of all. Hermann Onchen, of Heidelberg, in his book " Germany or England" defines the neutral state as a small organism which fattens itself by profiting from the discords of greater ones. Arnold von Salis in "Between War and Peace" declares: "Who is not for us is against us. There is no word in German for neutrality." "We mourn that a people of such sound German stock-tüchtige allmanische Stamm,' declared Gustav Rothe, "can sit at the feet of a struggle which throws in the balance the very name and soul of Germany."