THE WORLD REVOLUTION 29 



for peace, and if the conquerors exact hard terms 

 a defeated nation will, at the first favourable oppor- 

 tunity, repudiate such terms and so with the men." l 



Here it will be seen we are face to face with the 

 standards of international war, where all conditions 

 of legality have come to rest on force. We are, 

 indeed, in the presence of that last argument 

 already being advocated under many forms in the 

 official military textbooks of the central States 

 of Europe in which expediency had become the sole 

 criterion of conduct directed to the end of success 

 in war at any cost whatever. 



There need be no desire to attribute to the 

 responsible leaders or to the body of the rank and 

 file of the labour movement in the West a conscious 

 intent or consent to these lowering of standards. 

 Enormous forces of quite a contrary direction were, 

 indeed, behind the labour programme. What we 

 are watching is rather the labour movement as 

 a whole becoming enveloped in the irresistible 

 tendencies of the universal movement in civilization 

 which was now everywhere falling back rapidly on 

 the actualities of force inherent in it. As syndical- 



1 Cf. "When a class issue of any importance is raised. Might 

 makes Right always and everywhere," quoted from a Syndical- 

 ist handbook written by Charles Watkins, and indorsed by Tom 

 Mann. Vide The Nineteenth Century, Sept. 1911, "The Labour 

 Revolt and its Meaning," by J. Ellis Barker. 



