ns;
and any number of Bastilles fell as the temple of the victories rose.
But though I had but a hurried glance at such things, there were
among them some that further aided the solution of the problem.
I saw the larger achievements of the later Romans; and the lesson
that was still lacking was plainly there. I saw the Coliseum,
a monument of that love of looking on at athletic sports,
which is noted as a sign of decadence in the Roman Empire and
of energy in the British Empire. I saw the Baths of Caracalla,
witnessing to a cult of cleanliness, adduced also to prove the luxury
of Ancient Romans and the simplicity of Anglo-Saxons. All it
really proves either way is a love of washing on a large scale;
which might merely indicate that Caracalla, like other Emperors,
was a lunatic. But indeed what such things do indicate,
if only indirectly, is something which is here much more important.
They indicate not only a sincerity in the public spirit,
but a certain smoothness in the public services. In a word,
while there were many revolutions, there were no strikes.
The citizens were often rebels; but there were men who were not rebels,
because they were not citizens. The ancient world forced a number
of people to do the work of the world first, before it allowed
more privileged people to fight about the government of the world.
The truth is trite enough, of course; it is in the single word Slavery,
which is not the name of a crime like Simony, but rather of a scheme
like Socialism. Sometimes very like Socialism.

Only standing idly on one of those grassy mounds under one of
those broken arches, I suddenly saw the Labour problem of London,
as I could not see it in London. I do not mean that I saw which side
was right, or what solution was reliable, or any partisan points
or repartees, or any practical details about practical difficulties.
I mean that I saw what it was; the thing itself and the whole thing.
The Labour problem of to-day stood up quite simply, like a
peak at which a man looks back and sees single and solid,
though when he was walking over it it was a wilderness of rocks.
The Labour problem is the attempt to have the democracy of Paris
without the slavery of Rome. Between the Roman Republic and the
French Republic something had happened. Whatever else it was, it was
the abandonment of the ancient and fundamental human habit of slavery;
the numbering of men for necessary labour as the normal foundation
of