lo 
LAND & WATER 
June i,\, ujiy 
was the best judge of the condition that made his investment 
profitable, it Was his right to dictate to society the general 
anangements of its life. If the cotton spinner said that he 
could only make a profit by working children for 15 or 
20 hours," the State might regret but could not dispute the 
necessity. The State existed in short, not to promote the 
good life for its citizens, but to provide the most encouraging 
atmosphere for capital. Men and women were thought of 
cnlv as instruments. 
^ The economic theorv which led to resistance to the Factory- 
^ Act and caused it to be believed that the lot of the working 
classes could never be radically improved, was developed partly 
from this awe and respect for the power of capital, and partly 
from the observations of conditions which are in truth abnor- 
mal but were believed to reflect some general law. The enclo- 
sures, the destruction of common rights, and two or three years 
of famine prices brought the villages in the closing years of the 
eighteenth century to the verge of starvation. The ruling 
class adopted as a remedy the practice of supplementing 
wages from the poor rates in proportion to the number of 
children in a family- Thus at the ven," time at which the res- 
traint on ])opulation to be found in the possession of a certain 
economic independence was removed by the enclosures and 
the extension of the factory system, a great stimulus was 
offered to the growth ai population by this habit of sub- 
sidising wages. The natural result was a wild increase in the 
birth rate. 
Malthus with this phenomenon before him propoundetl a 
theory which came to be inteqireted as meaning that poverty 
and vice were the means by which nature kept this tendencj' 
in check. 
It was believed that population tends to increase faster than 
the resources of nature and that pON-erty and misery were the 
safeguards of society. This was an iron law which reformers 
had to recognise, for if the poor were made too comfortable 
the food of the world would not go round. Tiic whole of this 
gospel of des[)air was produced in short by an exceptional phase 
which led to this jianic about over-population. Meanwhile 
another iron law was invented, based upon Ricardo, the dis- 
covery that the share of the profits of industry which goes to 
labour was fixed by economic forces over which all the will and 
intelligence of man had no influence. That share might be 
distributed differently between the recipients, but it could not 
be increased. As Professor Marshall has shown, the political 
economy of the time was profoundly affected by the ascen- 
dancy of the mathematical sciences, and mathematical laws 
were applieil to the working of industry. The Wage Fund 
theory which John Stuart Mill disowned in i86g was an 
example of this kind of reasoning. The economists had 
interpreted the phenomena of their time by elaborate mathe- 
matical laws and they twisted those laws into a knot in which 
they tied up the human will. Thus the view that Trade 
Unions were wicked and mischievous, that the working- 
classes must necessarily live in a greater or less degree of 
ignorance and squalor, that the needs of industry should dictate 
the laws of the State, and that it was essential to industry that 
women and children should be sweated, the general gloom of 
the science which deserved its name of dismal was produced 
by the effect of the rise of the new industry on the imagin- 
ation of the age. The circumstances of the great war aggra- 
vated its disturbing conditions and to contemporary observers 
they seemed permanent and to belong rather to human 
nature than to special circumstances of time or place. 
This philosophy depreciated human life and human 
character, limited men's ambitions for their society, and set 
up an ideal which involved a semi-servile status for a large 
number of its citizens. The first crude extravagances were 
arrested as time went on but the nineteenth century never 
(juite escaped from its shadow. \Vc shall see in our next 
article what the war has done to destroy it. 
The Stockholm Conference 
By H. M. Hyndham 
1 knew well tliat anything given up, in passing from war 
lo peace, is lost to the careless .side ; since, when people 
sencraily have once made up their minds for peace, they will 
not renew the war for the sake of what lias been sacrificed ; 
tlii.s, therefore, remain.s in possession of the holders- 
i)cmosthencs on " The Embassy." 
THE principal aim of the Germans at the pic^ent 
time, as it has been for many months past, is to open 
serious negotiations for peace while their armies 
are not manifestly beaten, while their forces occupy 
Beigmm, Serbia, Russia, " Poland, a great portion of Rou- 
mania and the wealthiest manufacturing districts of France, 
while their Alliances are practically intact and, above all, 
wnile the Hohenzollern Hynasty isstill in complete control 
of Germany itself. Their General Staft knows perfectly well, 
and the German people are slowly learning the truth, that the 
main objects for which the war was entered upon— the 
leadership of liuropc and world- domination — cannot possibly 
he achieved by the Central Po'vers ii.is time. The battle oi 
the Mame v, as the first important set-back to the plan which, 
we can now see, was so nearly successful. 'Since then, in 
sjMte of all victories on the Eastern front, every cLiy that has 
passed has pushed the aggressors farther back from their 
real goal. Now the great question arises for them: "How can we 
make use of our present position to cajole the Allied Govern- 
ments and peoples into peace chaflerings which will save the 
appearance of defeat and leave us such advantages that we 
may begin afresh, when conditions are much more favourable 
to us than they have proved to be on the present occasion ? " 
That is the qiiestion now exercising the German mind. And 
the answer to it must be given quickly. . 
We may set aside the idea of revoliition in Germany. 
This, if it comes at all. will not come during the war. At 
present, no real distinction can be made between the 
German Government and the German people. The 
whole nation has been completely hypnotised from above 
with the ideas of the fitness ..of the Fatherland for 
world supremacy, Deulschland Vber Alles, the majesty 
and rectitude of organised and successful force, the 
superiority of the individual Germans to the men of any 
other race, the holiness of victory won in the great cause of 
the Prussianisation of humanity. These conceptions domi- 
nated every section of German society when the war began. 
There is little to show that they do not dominate it now. 
Those, therefore, who reckon upon popular risings in the 
Central Empires to shorten t!ie war deceive theiuselvcs just 
as completely as the highly placed politicians here at 
home who, in the face of all w.uiiingi to the contrary, 
belie\ed, in July 1014, that the German Social Democratic 
Party could stcj) the war. 
It is not iiiternid trouble of a revolutionary kind that 
compels ^ German generals and statesmen to intrigue for 
peace. They feel the growing j)ressurc upon their military 
resources in every tjcpartment ; they recognist; the submarine 
campaign to force the Allies to negotiate'will probably fail ; 
they doubt whether their troops can stand up much longer 
against the British and French on the West front, and 
the entry of the United States into the war on the side of 
Germany's enemies. There is now no hope for Germany of. 
eventual success. The longer the war goes on, with America 
coming in to strengthen her opponents in every way, the 
worse it will be for Germany and her friends. Even wholesale 
disaster is now within the bound.-; of [jossibilitj'. 
Rut it would never do for Germany to propose definite 
terms of peace, whether she intended to break them imme- 
diately, as usual, or to maintain them just so long as she 
could not help doing so. To set forth definite proposals, 
such as the Allies would be in the least likely to accept, would 
be a public confession of failure, which even German soldiers 
could not but read as a virtual surrender. The thing to do. 
consequently, is to get peace talked about, as if the Central 
Powers were most reasonable in every way, and only the mf)n- 
strous pretensions of the .Allied (Governments would prevent 
the peoples from securing forthwith that cessation of the war 
wliich they all ardently desire. Nations are weary of the 
war : the tremendous sacri^ic.es in men and money are telling 
very heavily even upon Great Britain : the suicide of the 
white race is being regarded as a dc«<perate fact which may 
]iroduce incalculable results ; never did peace sound so 
blessed a word to many of the winning combination as it does 
to-day. There is a growing section, even in France, which, 
would welcome a settlement upon almost any terms. 
Now there are two quarters from which Germany could 
rely upon getting valuable help, which would enable her to 
produce general uneasiness and favour her underhand peace 
piopaganda without in anyway committing herself. The first 
quarter is the neutral States of Europe. These countries 
have made enormous profits for their mercantile and com- 
mercial classes during the war. Though, at heart, greatly 
afraid of Germany, the Mammon of unrighteousness has 
greased their palms and salved their consciences. They 
have served the pCirposcs of the aggressors excellently well. 
But now they, too, are beginning to feel the pinch of hard 
times, and the (.lermans, by their submarine campaign, and 
