XXXIII] LITERARY WORK, ETC., 1887-1905 221 



Century" (in 1901, in the Morning Leader), and (in 1903) an 

 article on "Anticipations and Hopes for the Immediate 

 Future," which was written for a German paper (the Berliner 

 Local Anzieger\ but which was too plain-spoken for the editor 

 to publish, and which I accordingly sent to the Clarion. As 

 it gives my latest views, expressed in the plainest words, on 

 some of the most important problems of the day, I give it 

 here for the consideration of a wider circle of readers. 



ANTICIPATIONS AND HOPES FOR THE IMMEDIATE 



FUTURE. 



I am looking to the coming year with no expectation of any great 

 change, political or social, but with a hope and belief that the great 

 movement among the workers in favour of a more rational and more 

 equitable system of government, and of social organization, will continue 

 to grow as it has been growing during the last few years. I trust that, 

 in the more advanced countries — especially in Germany and France — it 

 may become sufficiently powerful, even within the coming year, to 

 exercise a decided control over the reactionary party, and even be able 

 to initiate, and perhaps to secure, some important legislation for the 

 extension of individual freedom, and for checking military expenditure. 



As to the future (Hmiting ourselves here to the twentieth century), I look 

 forward to the same movement as destined to produce great and beneficent 

 results. 



The events of the past few years must have convinced all advanced 

 thinkers that it is hopeless to expect any real improvement from the 

 existing governments of the great civilized nations, supported and con- 

 trolled as they are by the ever-increasing power of vast military and 

 official organizations. 



These organizations are a permanent menace to liberty, to national 

 morality, and to all real progress towards a rational social evolution. It 

 is these which have given us during the first years of this new century 

 examples of national hypocrisy and crimes against hberty and humanity 

 — to say nothing of Christianity — almost unequalled in the whole course 

 of modern history. 



Scarcely was the ink dry of the signatures of their representatives at 

 the Hague Conference, where they had expressed the most humane and 

 elevated ideas as to the necessity for reduction of armaments, for the 

 amelioration of the horrors of war, and for the principle of arbitration in 

 the settlement of national difficulties, than we find all the chief signatories 

 engaged in destroying the liberties of weaker peoples, without any rational 

 cause, and often in opposition to the principles of their own constitutions, 

 or to solemn promises by their representatives, or in actual treaties. 



England carried fire and sword into South Africa, and has robbed two 



