Review of Reviews, 1/I1I06. 



THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM, 



A STUDY IN PRACTICAL POLITICS. 



By Percy R. Meggy. 



THE BATTLE OP ARMAGEDDON. 



The long-expected battle of Armageddon has 

 commenced ; seers have foretold it, prophets have 

 predicted it, poets have described it; the booming 

 of its artillery is heard among the hills ; the smoke 

 from its guns is mingling with the clouds ; the war- 

 ring hosts are massing on the plains ; the muttering 

 of the combatants soars above the storm ; their vari- 

 coloured banners are tossing in the breeze ; privilege 

 and monopolv are inscribed on the one, equal op- 

 portunities for all on the other. Anarchists with in- 

 furiated looks carrying bombs, Socialists with hearts 

 inflamed aganst wealth. Communists with their heads 

 full of visionary schemes, Capitalists clinging desper- 

 ately to the present order of things. Individualists 

 seeking more or less vainly to educe harmony from 

 the surrounding chaos, and a host of other ists too 

 numerous to name, all form part of the disordered 

 throng which is enlisted, consciously or uncon- 

 sciously, in the great fight that is going on. 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL. 



Most of the battles of which history tells have 

 been fought for objects which the bulk of the 

 people cared little about, and the issues involved 

 in which few people could ha\e defined at the time 

 or can even now define, but there is no mistaking 

 the object of the present war, for war it undoubt- 

 edly is, and it will never cease till its object has 

 been attained. And that object can be expressed 

 in the single word JUSTICE, and justice may be 

 defined as equal opportunities for all who are born 

 into the world. To each age is allotted its dis- 

 tinctive war. As has been more than once pointed 

 out but cannot be too often repeated, since it marks 

 the line of social development that is being traced, 

 religious equality was the watchword of the i8th 

 century, political equality of the 19th, and now 

 social equality is the watchword of the century 

 which has just commenced. The two former have 

 been achieved, or so nearly achieved that little more 

 remains than to gather up the fruits of the victories 

 that have been won, but the last and greatest of 

 all, to which the two former served but as pre- 

 liminaries, is by far the most important, as it will 

 prove by far the most difficult, of all the wars which 

 have ever been waged by the human race. But 

 there is no doubt as to the ultimate result, since 

 the cause for which we are fighting is the cause of 

 Justice and of Truth, those twin-born and mightiest 

 of the angels who have never been known to suffer 

 permanent defeat when tliey huxe once entered into 



the strife. The Anarchist, the Socialist, and the 

 Communist have each a more or less definitely con- 

 ceived solution for the ills with which, society is 

 afiflicted. The old-style Individualist is the only 

 one who occupies about the same position which 

 he ever did, who still relies on his time-worn for- 

 mula of " Whatever is, is right," and who seems deter- 

 mined to defend the present state of society with 

 his latest breath. But times are changing fast, the 

 old order is everywhere giving place to new, and, 

 unless the Individualist is prepared to very con- 

 siderably enlarge his platform and modify his front, 

 he will go down in the coming struggle in the pre- 

 sence of forces some of which are of overwhelming 

 strength. 



THE OLD INDIVIDUALISM. 



The old school of Individualism has its most 

 striking representative in Mr. G. H. Reid, whose 

 latest programme of 20 clauses scarcely contains a 

 single plank that is calculated to win the sympathy 

 of such as are suffering from the present unjust 

 condition of society, and of such as would gladly, 

 nay, enthusiastically, support a party that would 

 ad\ocate a return to Justice and head a movement 

 based on sound economic lines for giving equal 

 opportunities to all. In view of the negative and 

 unsatisfactory character of the attempt made by 

 the anti-Socialists to wage war on behalf of the dis- 

 inherited and the oppressed, the great mass of the 

 people naturally look to those who belong to their 

 own ranks, who understand their needs, and who 

 have themselves felt the iron that is entering into 

 their soul, for some remedy that will lighten their 

 toil, and a willing ear is accordingly lent to the 

 schemes which the extremists propound for the cure 

 of society. It is true that in opposing Socialism 

 Mr. Reid is taking what I believe to be the right 

 course, that in advocating the repeal of the Union 

 label and of the preference to Unionists clause he 

 is acting in the real interests of the workers as a 

 whole, and that he deserves our warmest gratitude 

 for his timely denunciation of the sham preferential 

 proposals put forward by a Government which 

 would apparently father any principle, however un- 

 just, with the view of prolonging its moribund and 

 miserable life. All that is good so far as it goes, 

 but something far more radical is required if In- 

 dividualism is to retain its hold on the masses. 



IN SBAKOH OP A GUIDE. 



We have arrived at a stage in our history when 

 some guiding principle is absolutely necessary to 



