assured the common people of the enemy that they would not exchange one oppression for another, if they overthrew their autocratic governments.

J. W. Ogden, chairman of the Derby Trades Union Congress, said to his fellow delegates:

Let us lift our minds above the clouds of doubt, suspicion and dissension that have blurred our vision and warped our judgment, and in the higher, clearer and purer atmosphere we shall discern the true goal of our aspirations and ambitions. The industrial Canaan towards which we have wended so long and so laboriously, world brotherhood, may seem farther away to-day than ever. Iit spite of that, I shall still look towards it as the salvation of the world, and the only hope of the workers.

The British labor movement is an organic growth, which, like everything else in wartime England, has gone through in four years what would ordinarily have required twenty years. The spokesmen and programs of British labor do not voice class hatred. It shares with the government and with enlightened employers in creating constitutionalism in industry: a new spirit and a new machinery. Labor is developing something different from the old-time trade unionism (with its concentration on wages and hours) and the oldtime class-conscious Socialism-broader than the one, freer than the other, typically British in its inconsistencies and in its downright competence.

What baffled some American visitors in British labor is what baffles the elderly in the life of Europe to-day: the variety, the wealth of creative impulse, the hearty dissent from custom and tradition; the zest for challenging the very origins of belief, and for shaking the foundations of venerable institutions.

It is an experimental attitude toward life. The spirit of its quest is springy and buoyant and impudent. An élan is being recaptured, lost for one hundred years of the factory system. From the ranks of the returned soldiers and the mobilized shops, new leaders will spring up and they will be young.

British labor cannot be charted off into tidy little thought forms. It is a living, growing, and moving thing. Its vitality spills over into many activities. To the observer it seems as unwieldy and topheavy and split up as the British Commonwealth of which it is an ever-growing part. But under crisis it reveals the same inner coherence as the British Commonwealth revealed under the strain of war. A community of spirit holds British labor together. Back of its machinery of action there is a profound belief. It is a belief in the worth of the individual. And this belief leads to the desire for founding a society where the common man will be at home.

APPENDIX I

STATEMENT OF WAR AIMS

AS ADOPTED AT A JOINT CONFERENCE OF THE SOCIETIES AFFILIATED WITH THE BRITISH TRADES UNION CONGRESS AND THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY AT CENTRAL HALL, WESTMINSTER, ON DECEMBER 28, 1917

I. THE WAR

THE British Labour movement sees no reason to depart from the declaration unanimously agreed to at the Conference of the Socialist and Labour Parties of the Allied Nations on February 14, 1915, and it reaffirms that declaration. Whatever may have been the causes of the outbreak of war, it is clear that the peoples of Europe, who are necessarily the chief sufferers from its horrors, had themselves no hand in it. Their common interest is now so to conduct the terrible struggle in which they find themselves engaged as to bring it, as soon as may be possible, to an issue in a secure and lasting peace for the world.

2. MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

Whatever may have been the causes for which the war was begun, the fundamental purpose of the British Labour movement in supporting the continuance of the struggle is that the world may henceforth be made safe for democracy.

Of all the war aims, none is so important to the peoples of the world as that there shall be henceforth on earth no more war. Whoever triumphs, the people will have lost unless some effective method of preventing war can be found.

As means to this end, the British Labour movement relies very largely upon the complete democratisation of all countries; on the frank abandonment of every form of Imperialism; on

the suppression of secret diplomacy, and on the placing of foreign policy, just as much as home policy, under the control of popularly elected Legislatures; on the absolute responsibility of the Foreign Minister of each country to its Legislature; on such concerted action as may be possible for the universal abolition of compulsory military service in all countries, the common limitation of the costly armaments by which all peoples are burdened, and the entire abolition of profit-making armament firms, whose pecuniary interest lies always in war scares and rivalry in preparation for war.

But it demands, in addition, that it should be an essential part of the treaty of peace itself that there should be forthwith established a Supernational Authority, or League of Nations, which should not only be adhered to by all the present belligerents, but which every other independent sovereign state in the world should be pressed to join; the immediate establishment of such League of Nations not only of an International High Court for the settlement of all disputes between states that are of justiciable nature, but also of appropriate machinery for prompt and effective mediation between states at issue that are not justiciable; the formation of an International Legislature, in which the representatives of every civilised state would have their allotted share; the gradual development, as far as may prove to be possible, of international legislation agreed to by and definitely binding upon the several states, and for a solemn agreement and pledge by all states that every issue between any two or more of them shall be submitted for settlement as aforesaid, and that they will all make common cause against any state which fails to adhere to this agreement.

3. TERRITORIAL ADJUSTMENTS

The British Labour movement has no sympathy with the attempts made, now in this quarter and now in that, to convert this war into a war of conquest, whether what is sought to be acquired by force is territory or wealth, nor should the struggle be prolonged for a single day, once the conditions of a permanent peace can be secured, merely for the sake of extending the boundaries of any state.

But it is impossible to ignore the fact that, not only restitution and reparation, but also certain territorial readjustments

are required if a renewal of armaments and war is to be avoided. These readjustments must be such as can be arrived at by common agreement on the general principle of allowing all people to settle their own destinies, and for the purpose of removing any obvious cause of future international conflict.

(a) Belgium

The British Labour movement emphatically insists that a foremost condition of peace must be the reparation by the German Government, under the direction of an International Commission, of the wrong admittedly done to Belgium; payment by that Government for all the damage that has resulted from this wrong, and the restoration of Belgium to complete and untrammelled independent sovereignty, leaving to the decision of the Belgian people the determination of their own future policy in all respects.

(b) Alsace and Lorraine

The British Labour movement reaffirms its reprobation of the crime against the peace of the world by which Alsace and Lorraine were forcibly torn from France in 1871, a political blunder the effects of which have contributed in no small degree to the continuance of unrest and the growth of militarism in Europe; and, profoundly sympathising with the unfortunate inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine, who have been subjected to so much repression, asks in accordance with the declarations of the French Socialists that they shall be allowed under the protection of the Supernational Authority, or League of Nations, freely to decide what shall be their future political position.

(c) The Balkans

The British Labour movement suggests that the whole problem of the reorganisation of the administration of the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula might be dealt with by a Special Conference of their representatives, or by an authoritative International Commission, on the basis of (a) the complete freedom of these people to settle their own destinies, irrespective of Austrian, Turkish, or other foreign dominion; (b) the independent sovereignties of the several nationalities in those districts in which these are largely predominant; (c) the uni