would only
mean the jubilation and the prosperity of the merchants, the brokers,
the railway and shipping companies of both lands. There would be an
increase in _their_ riches (and an increase in the number of their
employees). It would mean more merchant palaces in Park Lane, bigger
dividends on the shares of transport companies; but after that the
general position of the manual workers in both trades, the numbers
employed, and their rates of wages would be much as before. Prices also,
as regards the general Public, would be but little altered. It is only
because this great trading, manufacturing, and commercial class has
amassed such enormous wealth and influence, and is able to command the
Press, and social position, and votes and representation on public
bodies and in both Houses of Parliament, that it succeeds in impressing
the nation generally with the idea that _its_ welfare is the welfare of
the whole people, and its prosperity the advantage of every citizen. And
it is in this very fact that its great moral and social danger to the
community lies.

It must not be thought (but I believe I have said this before) that in
making out that the commercial classes are largely to blame for modern
wars I mean to say that the present war, and many previous ones, have
been _directly_ instigated by commercial folk. It is rather that the
atmosphere of commercial competition and rivalry automatically leads up
to military rivalries and collisions, which often at the last moment
(though not always) turn out contrary to the wishes of the commercial
people themselves. Also I would repeat that it is not _Commerce_ but the
_class_ interest that is to blame. Commerce and exchange, as we know in
a thousand ways, have the effect of drawing peoples together, giving
them common interests, acquaintance, and understanding of each other,
and so making for peace. The great jubilation during the latter half of
the nineteenth century--from 1851 onwards--over world-wide trade and
Industrial Exhibitions, as the heralds of the world's peace and amity--a
jubilation voiced in Tennyson's earlier _Locksley Hall_--was to a
certain extent justified. There is no doubt that the nations have been
drawn together by intertrading and learned to know each other. Bonds,
commercial and personal, have grown up between them, and are growing
up, which must inevitably make wars more difficult in the future and
less desirable. And if it had been possible to carry on