secured, on the one hand, by Nationalisation and Municipalisation and, on the other, by the steeply graduated Taxation of Private Income and Riches) that will have to be found the new capital which the community day by day needs for the perpetual improvement and increase of its various enterprises, for which we shall decline to be dependent on the usury-exacting financiers. It is from the same source that has to be defrayed the public provision for the Sick and Infirm of all kinds (including that for Maternity and Infancy) which is still so scandalously insufficient; for the Aged and those prematurely incapacitated by accident or disease, now in many ways so imperfectly cared for; for the Education alike of children, of adolescents and of adults, in which the Labour Party demands a genuine equality of opportunity, overcoming all differences of material circumstances; and for the organisation of public improvements of all kinds, including the brightening of the lives of those now condemned to almost ceaseless toil, and a great development of the means of recreation. From the same source must come the greatly increased public provision that the Labour Party will insist on being made for scientific investigation and original research, in every branch of knowledge, not to say also for the promotion of music, literature and fine art, which have been under Capitalism so greatly neglected, and upon which, so the Labour Party holds, any real development of civilisation fundamentally depends. Society, like the individual, does not live by bread alone-does not exist only for perpetual wealth production. It is in the proposal for this appropriation of every Surplus for the Common Good-in the vision of its resolute use for the building up of the community as a whole instead of for the magnification of individual fortunes-that the Labour Party, as the Party of the Producers by hand or by brain, most distinctively marks itself off from the older political parties, standing, as these do, essentially for the maintenance, unimpaired, of the perpetual private mortgage upon the annual product of the nation that is involved in the individual ownership of land and capital.

THE STREET OF TO-MORROW

The House which the Labour Party intends to build, the four Pillars of which have now been described, does not stand alone

in the world. Where will it be in the Street of To-morrow? If we repudiate, on the one hand, the Imperialism that seeks to dominate other races, or to impose our own will on other parts of the British Empire, so we disclaim equally any conception of a selfish and insular "non-interventionism," unregarding of our special obligations to our fellow-citizens overseas; of the corporate duties of one nation to another; of the moral claims upon us of the non-adult races, and of our own indebtedness to the world of which we are part. We look for an ever-increasing intercourse, a constantly developing exchange of commodities, a steadily growing mutual understanding, and a continually expanding friendly co-operation among all the peoples of the world. With regard to that great Commonwealth of all races, all colours, all religions and all degrees of civilisation, that we call the British Empire, the Labour Party stands for its maintenance and its progressive development on the lines of Local Autonomy and "Home Rule All Round"; the fullest respect for the rights of each people, whatever its colour, to all the Democratic Self-Government of which it is capable, and to the proceeds of its own toil upon the resources of its own territorial home; and the closest possible co-operation among all the various members of what has become essentially not an Empire in the old sense, but a Britannic Alliance. We desire to maintain the most intimate relations with the Labour Parties overseas. Like them, we have no sympathy with the projects of "Imperial Federation," in so far as these imply the subjection to a common Imperial Legislature wielding coercive power (including dangerous facilities for coercive Imperial taxation and for enforced military service), either of the existing Self-Governing Dominions, whose autonomy would be thereby invaded; or of the United Kingdom, whose freedom of Democratic self-development would be thereby hampered; or of India and the Colonial Dependencies, which would thereby run the risk of being further exploited for the benefit of a "White Empire." We do not intend, by any such "Imperial Senate," either to bring the plutocracy of Canada and South Africa to the aid of the British aristocracy, or to enable the landlords and financiers of the Mother Country to unite in controlling the growing Popular Democracies overseas. absolute autonomy of each self-governing part of the Empire must be maintained intact. What we look for, besides a

constant progress in Democratic Self-Government of every part of the Britannic Alliance, and especially in India, is a continuous participation of the Ministers of the Dominions, of India, and eventually of other Dependencies (perhaps by means of their own Ministers specially resident in London for this purpose) in the most confidential deliberations of the Cabinet, so far as Foreign Policy and Imperial Affairs are concerned; and the annual assembly of an Imperial Council, representing all constituents of the Britannic Alliance and all parties in their Local Legislatures, which should discuss all matters of common interest, but only in order to make recommendations for the simultaneous consideration of the various autonomous local legislatures of what should increasingly take the constitutional form of an Alliance of Free Nations. And we carry the idea further. As regards our relations to Foreign Countries, we disavow and disclaim any desire or intention to dispossess or to impoverish any other State or Nation. We seek no increase of territory. We disclaim all idea of "economic war." We ourselves object to all Protective Customs Tariffs; but we hold that each nation must be left free to do what it thinks best for its own economic development, without thought of injuring others. We believe that nations are in no way damaged by each other's economic prosperity or commercial progress; but, on the contrary, that they are actually themselves mutually enriched thereby. We would therefore put an end to the old entanglements and mystifications of Secret Diplomacy and the formation of Leagues against Leagues. We stand for the immediate establishment, actually as a part of the Treaty of Peace with which the present war will end, of a Universal League or Society of Nations, a Supernational Authority, with an International High Court to try all justiciable issues between nations; an International Legislature to enact such common laws as can be mutually agreed upon, and an International Council of Mediation to endeavour to settle without ultimate conflict even those disputes which are not justiciable. We would have all the nations of the world most solemnly undertake and promise to make common cause against any one of them that broke away from this fundamental agreement. The world has suffered too much from war for the Labour Party to have any other policy than that of lasting Peace,

The Labour Party is far from assuming that it possesses a key to open all locks; or that any policy which it can formulate will solve all the problems that beset us. But we deem it important to ourselves as well as to those who may, on the one hand, wish to join the Party, or, on the other, to take up arms against it, to make quite clear and definite our aim and purpose. The Labour Party wants that aim and purpose, as set forth in the preceding pages, with all its might. It calls for more warmth in politics, for much less apathetic acquiescence in the miseries that exist, for none of the cynicism that saps the life of leisure. On the other hand, the Labour Party has no belief in any of the problems of the world being solved by Good Will alone. Good Will without knowledge is Warmth without Light. Especially in all the complexities of politics, in the still undeveloped Science of Society, the Labour Party stands for increased study, for the scientific investigation of each succeeding problem, for the deliberate organisation of research, and for a much more rapid dissemination among the whole people of all the science that exists. And it is perhaps specially the Labour Party that has the duty of placing this Advancement of Science in the forefront of its political programme. What the Labour Party stands for in all fields of life is, essentially, Democratic Co-operation; and Co-operation involves a common purpose which can be agreed to; a common plan which can be explained and discussed, and such a measure of success in the adaptation of means to ends as will ensure a common satisfaction. An autocratic Sultan may govern without science if his whim is law. A Plutocratic Party may choose to ignore science, if it is heedless whether its pretended solutions of social problems that may win political triumphs ultimately succeed or fail. But no Labour Party can hope to maintain its position unless its proposals are, in fact, the outcome of the best Political Science of its time; or to fulfil its purpose unless that science is continually wresting new fields from human ignorance. Hence, although the Purpose of the Labour Party must, by the law of its being, remain for all time unchanged, its Policy and its Programme will, we hope, undergo a perpetual development, as knowledge grows, and as new phases of the social problem present themselves, in a continually finer adjustment of our measures to our ends. If Law is the Mother of Freedom, Science, to the Labour Party, must be the Parent of Law.

APPENDIX V

RESOLUTIONS ON RECONSTRUCTION

ADOPTED BY THE CONFERENCE OF THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY, LONDON, JUNE 26, 1918

I. THE TASK OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION

THAT, in the opinion of the conference, the task of social reconstruction to be organised and undertaken by the government, in conjunction with the local authorities, ought to be regarded as involving, not any patchwork jerrymandering of the anarchic individualism and profiteering of the competitive capitalism of pre-war time-the breakdown of which, even from the standpoint of productive efficiency, the war has so glaringly revealed-but the gradual building up of a new social order, based not an internecine conflict, inequality of riches, and dominion over subject classes, subject races, or a subject sex, but on the deliberately planned co-operation in production, distribution and exchange, the systematic approach to a healthy equality, the widest possible participation in power, both economic and political, and the general consciousness of consent which characterise a true democracy; and, further, in order to help to realise the new social order and to give legislative effect to the labour policy on reconstruction, this conference emphasizes the necessity of having in Parliament and the country a vigorous, courageous, independent, and unfettered political party.

2. THE NEED FOR INCREASED PRODUCTION

That the conference cannot help noticing how very far from efficient the capitalist system has been proved to be, with its stimulus of private profit, and its evil shadow of wages driven down by competition often below subsistence level; that the conference recognises that it is vital for any genuine social reconstruction to increase the nation's aggregate annual produc