prising, therefore, that the Fabians alone made any headway; that the Socialist League was abandoned by Morris as a failure after a patient and laborious trial; that the Independent Labor Party, a later formation, adopted parliamentary methods; and that the SocialDemocratic Federation, after keeping up the struggle for a declaration of the class war for years, had finally to choose between assimilating its methods to those of the Independent Labor Party and being crowded out of the field of Labor agitation.

It is unnecessary to say that Morris was from the first impatient of Fabianism as an essentially superficial movement. But he was fundamentally the most practical of all the Socialists. When he quarrelled with facts, he set to work at once to alter them. He was quite accustomed to be laughed at and explained away in a superior manner, both from the popular and the academic point of view. In all the arts and crafts which he had touched with his own hands, the laughter and the superior explanations had been hastily checked by the discovery that he had effected a revolution whilst his critics were idly chattering. But the same qualities which enabled him to alter unpleasant facts when he could, enabled him to face them when he could not. When he found after trying his hardest that the English people would not join the Socialist League or allow the Social-Democratic Federation to convince them that they belonged to an ungentlemanly class, he accepted the situation and considered how to make the best of it. His inevitable isolation as a man of genius was of course not less among avowed Socialists than elsewhere; but it compelled all the sections to listen to him when they would not listen to one another; and the Hammersmith Socialist Society, a faithful bodyguard surviving from the extinct Socialist League, provided for him within his own curtilage a platform on which every Socialist was proud to speak.

What he himself said to the sections from this platform will be found in the following pages. It gives his reasons for advising the other Socialists not to quarrel with the Fabians. And it gives his warning to the Fabians that it is one thing to formulate on paper a constitutional policy, and another thing to induce people to carry it out when the Equality and Communism to which it leads are abhorred instead of desired by them.

I must add a word of editorial explanation. It was Morris's habit, fortunately for posterity, to write his lectures at full length instead of trusting to extemporization. How he found time to write so many, even when he was reviving the lost art of fine printing in his spare time, I cannot imagine. He certainly did not find time to revise them. Besides, he seems to have had the Shakespearian habit of never blotting a line, perhaps as part of his general rule not to waste time in cobbling a bad job, but to do it over again. The manuscript consists of fourteen pages of white foolscap. There are words scored through and replaced by others before the ink was dry, but no reconstructions made on revision, a ceremony which was clearly never gone through. The last half of the paper must have been written against time in great haste: more words are left

out than in the earlier pages; and occasionally a sentence becomes a hopeless no-thoroughfare. The grammar, too, is hasty: the verb agrees with the nearest noun, which is not always its subject. The ands are sometimes written at full length, and sometimes indicated by anpersands, just as we have printed them. The spelling is for the most part conventional; but the s is always doubled in disappear and disappoint, and there is never more than one g in aggressive. The italics represent Morris's own underscoring. The punctuation is very hasty; but as the sense never depends on the position of a stop, I have altered or supplemented it freely for the sake of clearness. I have been very reluctant to meddle with the words; but on page 10, line 48, I have changed "anything" to "like everything"; the footnote on page II occurs in the manuscript as a rather obstructive parenthesis; on page 12, line 48, I have been Vandal enough to alter the characteristic phrase "their wealth-nay their riches" into "their wealth-or rather their riches" because I found that the "nay" in this passage conveyed to a typical reader the impression that Morris thought more of riches than of wealth (a misunderstanding which would almost bring him back from the grave to protest);* on page 14, line 4, I have altered "which doesn't involve into which will then no longer involve"; and on page 15, line 4, I have changed "as they are now and probably must be to be successful under the guidance of one man to "as they are now (and, to be successful, must probably remain) under the guidance of one man." Morris's friends, as to myself, these changes will seem mere impertinences; but others will find the meaning made clearer by the changes. At all events, those who are offended can correct their copies. The rest of the very few departures from the manuscript are only replacements of obviously dropped articles or prepositions, and need no apology. I believe that the words "of making" on page 11, line 5, should be "to make"; but I have not altered them, as such a change would affect the meaning. Finally, I may say that the back of the manuscript, which lay before Morris as he sat listening to the debate on the platform after his lecture, is adorned with decorations in pencil, which began, schoolboy fashion, with several arrows-not, it must be confessed, the clothyard shafts he describes in A Dream of John Ball, but fat, short, heavy-headed bolts for a medieval machine gun. Then comes a sort of fishing rod with Gothic crockets-or perhaps it is a conventionalized lily leaf. The rest is the familiar decoration of flower and scroll and leaf with which his hand was so often busy in idle moments. His notes of the discussion run as follows: "old age pensions-Mordhurst one road-means-luxury or necessity-opponent-come Bradlaugh— Bullock-work man."

To

Morris bibliographers should note that the title Communism is not distinctive of this lecture, as he used it on other occasions on the Hammersmith platform and elsewhere. G. B. S.

See the paper on "Art, Wealth and Riches" in the volume of Morris's essays entitled Architecture, Industry and Wealth (London, 1902: Longmans; 6s. net).

Snowy

Camp Intelligence mough to Conceive, power to comp courage, to will, power enough to Compel. If our ideas of a new Sousty are any thing more than dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working. prople: : and then, I say, the thing will be done

COMMUNISM.

WHILE I think that the hope of the new-birth of society is certainly growing, & that speedily, I must confess myself puzzled about the means toward that end which are mostly looked after now; and I am doubtful if some of the measures which are pressed, mostly, I think, with all honesty of purpose, and often with much ability, would, if gained, bring us any further on the direct road to a really new-born society, the only society which can be a new birth, a society of practical equality. Not to make any mystery about it, I mean that the great mass of what most non-socialists at least consider at present to be socialism, seems to me nothing more than a machinery of socialism, which I think it probable that socialism must use in its militant condition; and which I think it may use for some time after it is practically established; but does not seem to me to be of its essence. Doubtless there is good in the schemes for substituting business-like administration in the interests of the public for the old Whig muddle of laissez faire backed up by coercion and smoothed by abundant corruption, which, worked all of it in the interest of successful business men, was once thought such a wonderful invention, and which certainly was the very cement of society as it has existed since the death of feudalism. The London County Council, for instance, is not merely a more. useful body for the administration of public business than the Metropolitan Board of Works was: it is instinct with a different spirit; and even its general intention to be of use to the citizens and to heed their wishes, has in it a promise of better days, and has already done something to raise the dignity of life in London amongst a certain part of the population, and down to certain classes. Again, who can quarrel with the attempts to relieve the sordidness of civilized town life by the public acquirement of parks and other open spaces, planting of trees, establishment of free libraries and the like? It is sensible and right for the public to push for the attainment of such gains; but we all know very well that their advantages are very unequally distributed, that they are gains rather for certain portions of the middle-classes than for working people. Nay, this socialist machinery may be used much further: it may gain higher wages and shorter working hours for the working men themselves industries may be worked by municipalities for the benefit both of producers and consumers. Working-people's houses may be improved, and their management taken out of the hands of commercial speculators. More time might be insisted on for the

education of children; and so on, and so on. In all this I freely admit a great gain, and am glad to see schemes tried which would lead to it. But great as the gain would be, the ultimate good of it, the amount of progressive force that might be in such things would, I think, depend on how such reforms were done; in what spirit; or rather what else was being done, while these were going on, which would make people long for equality of condition; which would give them faith in the possibility and workableness of socialism; which would give them courage to strive for it and labour for it; and which would do this for a vast number of people, so that the due impetus might be gained for the sweeping away of all privilege. For we must not lose sight of the very obvious fact that these improvements in the life of the larger public can only be carried out at the expense of some portion of the freedom and fortunes of the proprietary classes. They are, when genuine, one and all attacks I say on the "liberty and property" of the non-working or useless classes, as some of those classes see clearly enough. And I admit that if the sum of them should become vast and deep reaching enough to give to the useful or working classes intelligence enough to conceive of a life of equality & co-operation; courage enough to accept it and to bring the necessary skill to bear on working it; and power enough to force its acceptance on the stupid and the interested, the war of classes would speedily end in the victory of the useful class, which would then become the new Society of Equality.

Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new Society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working-people; and then, I say, the thing will be done.

Intelligence, courage, power enough. Now that enough means a very great thing. The effective majority of the working people must I should think be something as great in numbers as an actual mechanical majority; because the non-working classes (with, mind you, their sworn slaves and parasites, men who can't live without them) are even numerically very strong, and are stronger still in holding in their hand the nine points of the law, possession to wit; and as soon as these begin to think there is any serious danger to their privilege-i.e., their livelihood-they will be pretty much unanimous in defending it, and using all the power which they possess in doing so. The necessary majority therefore of intelligence, courage, & power is such a big thing to bring about, that it will take a long time to do so; and those who are working for this end must clearly not throw away time and strength by making more mistakes than they can possibly help in their efforts for the conversion of the working people to an ardent desire for a society of equality. The question then, it seems to me, about all those partial gains above mentioned, is not so much as to what advantage they may be to the public at large in the passing moment, or even to the working people, but rather what effect they will have towards