who have fallen on the field of battle in furtherance of the ideals and aims which inspire British Democracy and on behalf of which British Labour has sacrificed so much and so freely.

December 22nd, 1917.

A. H.

THE AIMS OF LABOUR

CHAPTER I

THE POLITICAL LABOUR MOVEMENT

WITH the coming of peace the world will enter upon an era of revolutionary change to which there is no parallel in history. In this country, as in every other, the war has already profoundly modified the economic system of pre-war days, and has introduced far-reaching innovations into industry. Methods of State control which would once have been regarded as intolerable infringements of the rights and liberties of both employers and workmen have been accepted without effective protest even from those bred in the individualist tradition of the last century. Some of these changes are admittedly only temporary and provisional. They were dictated by national necessity, and were introduced upon the explicit understanding that an unprecedented situation had arisen which called for bold and drastic measures. Those measures which relate to trade union practices and customs in the work

shops, in particular, are governed by strict pledges for the restoration of pre-war conditions when the national crisis is over. Nevertheless, the extent and importance of these changes in methods of production, the control of industry, the management and distribution of labour, and the limitations imposed upon the activities of financiers and the enterprises of individual capitalists, practically involve a revolution, the effects of which will remain when the necessity which gave them their sanction has passed away. Most of them are permanent. In four crowded and eventful years we have gathered the fruits of a century of economic evolution. We have entered upon a new world. With the main features of this new world we are still unfamiliar. We cannot yet begin to measure the material effects of the war upon the commercial and industrial system upon which our civilisation has been based.

Still less can we estimate the results of the inner revolution of thought and feeling which has accompanied these material changes. Yet we are beginning dimly to see that the old order of society has dissolved. A new social order is taking shape even in the midst of the stress and peril of the time. This revolution is fundamental, for it touches the springs of action in the great mass of the common people. Greater changes in the material structure