the Socialists, those to which greatest
efforts must necessarily be given, those which alone must be fought for,
are precisely the ones that must be brought about "at the expense of the
enemy."

In no other country has public opinion either within the Socialist
movement or outside of it so completely despaired of democracy and the
people. In none has the spirit of popular revolt and militant radicalism
been so long dormant. Yet, there can be little doubt that the British
masses, encouraged by those of France, Germany, and other countries,
will one day recover that self-confidence and self-assertion they seem
to have lost since the times of the "Levellers" of the Commonwealth, two
hundred and fifty years ago. It may take years before this new
revolutionary movement gains the momentum it already possesses in
Germany and France. But the great strikes of 1910, 1911, and 1912 (see
Part III, Chapter VI) and the changes in politics that have accompanied
these strikes show that this movement has already begun. There is
already a strong division of opinion within the Socialistic "Independent
Labour Party," and this organization has also taken issue on several
important matters with the non-Socialist Labour Party, of which,
however, it is still a part.

After the unsatisfactory results of the elections of 1910 the conflict
within the Independent Labour Party became more acute than ever. Mr.
Barnes, then chairman of the Labour Party itself, and Mr. Keir Hardie,
the chief figure in its Socialistic (_Independent Labour Party_)
section, criticized severely the tactics that had been followed by the
majority, _led also by two members of the same "Socialistic" section_,
Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Snowden. It is true that the difference was not
very fundamental, but it is interesting to note that MacDonald and
Snowden and their avowed non-Socialist trade-union allies were accused
of giving so much to the Liberals as even to weaken the position of the
Labour Party itself to say nothing of the still greater inconsistency
of such compromises with anything approaching Socialism. Mr. Barnes and
Mr. Hardie pointed out that the timid tactics pursued had endangered not
only the fight against the House of Lords, but also the effort to keep
down the naval budget and the proposed solution of the unemployment
question that was to have acknowledged "the right to work." That is, Mr.
MacDonald and Mr. Snowden had been so anxious to please the Liberal
gov