26 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



people of the United Kingdom is as widespread as it is pheno- 

 menal; it presents one of the most difficult social problems 

 to the Government of the day, and its solution puzzles and 

 confounds all the great political parties. Poverty is the 

 fundamental basis of Social agitation, and out of it springs 

 most of that political unrest which is the marked characteristic 

 of the times. It breeds turmoil, discontent, and sedition, and 

 it is the source of revolutionary propaganda. It is, in short, 

 the most dangerous factor in the political situation of our 

 country, and yet it is either treated with more or less in- 

 difference by each one of the political parties which in turn 

 assumes the reins of government, or, for other reasons, it remains 

 outside the sphere of their operations. 



Phenomenal Poverty 



The poverty of our country is as all-embracing as the 

 tentacles of the giant octopus, and millions of our unfortunate 

 countrymen and women and children are caught in its embrace 

 as the years come round ; nevertheless, nothing is done, or 

 next to nothing, to relieve the people from its deadly grip. 



Poverty naturally forms the thesis of all Socialist effort, 

 and, if in their determination to ameliorate the sad plight of 

 the poverty-stricken masses of their fellow-countrymen they 

 have suggested means which, in themselves, are repugnant to 

 perhaps the majority of the British people, the blame rests 

 rather with those who are responsible for the wrong than with 

 those who seek to redeem it. 



Speaking of the poverty of the people, one of the Socialist 

 organs has the following : — 



" To-day there are twelve millions on the verge of starvation. 

 There are twenty millions very poor." * 



Be this as it may, there is without question sufficient 

 povert}^ among the people to justify far more energetic measures 

 in grappling with it than have hitherto been taken by any 

 Government of modern times, and unless those who are re- 

 sponsible for the commonweal show a keener interest in this 

 vitally important question, and form a truer appreciation of 

 its magnitude and its enormous potentialities for evil than they 

 have hitherto done, they will be but perpetuating a great wrong 

 and inviting a social cataclysmic upheaval. Poverty has become 

 positively aggressive, and being for ever with us it has assumed 

 a dread haunting shape that overshadows the legislature and 



* The Clarion, January 10, 1908. 



