402 



The Review of Reviews. 



" Secular " 

 Education 

 repudiated. 



emphatically refused to be confounded 

 with the fantastic theories of French 

 trade unionism. Such voice as Sjm- 

 dicalism found proved largely to 

 express no more than impatience with 

 the action, or inaction, of the Labour 

 Party. 



Not less significant was 



the resolve 



of the Con- 



gr e s s, by 

 952,000 to 909,000, 

 to exclude Secular 

 Education from the 

 questions for discussion 

 " at any future Con- 

 gress." Here again 

 appeared the essentially 

 English spirit of deahng 

 with facts as they are 

 rather than of standing 

 stiffly by logical sym- 

 metry. The Labour 

 Party earlier in the year 

 had similarly dropped 

 out of its platform the 

 plank of Secular Educa- 

 tion. Even in the old 

 days the " secularisation" 

 of our schools, demanded 

 by the Congress and 

 the Party, was a very 

 different thing from the 

 la'icisation of the French 

 schools. It was not 

 prompted by a n y 

 animus against religion. 

 It would not even have 

 excluded the Bible from 

 the schools. It was 

 simply adopted as 

 apparen tly the easiest way 

 out of the wranglings of 



l>h„ti,tii,ll'li )..vl 



The German 



the sects. Now, however, facts have 

 shown that the secular is by no means 

 the " short and easy method " it 

 promised to be. Its advocacy was 

 dividing the ranks of Labour and 

 threatening to de\'elop, as in Germany, 

 denominational trade unions. Cathoiic 

 working men began to talk of revolt, 

 but it was the miners — 

 men who are to a large 

 extent Methodists — that 

 took the lead and forced 

 the vote. 



Labour 



Labour M.P.'s in haS alSO 

 South Germany. bCCU aC- 



tive in 

 the international 

 sphere. When in 1909 

 the naval competition 

 between this country 

 and Germany became 

 sensationally acute 

 twenty Labour Members 

 of the House of Com- 

 mons, accompanied by 

 their wives ar^d friends, 

 went on a non-party 

 pilgrimage of peace to 

 the principal cities of 

 Northern and Central 

 Germany, culminating 

 in Berlin, where they 

 were welcomed under 

 the dome of the 

 Reichstag by the leading 

 statesmen of the Father- 

 land, including the 

 present Reichs - kanzler. 

 riiat tour, which was 

 without a precedent in 

 international history, was 

 the means of eliciting the 



Crown Prince. 



