method advocated by Syndicalists and
Suffragettes to rouse the sleepy world from indifference to their
wrongs. In this collection of essays, contributed during the last year
or two, as occasion arose, to the _Nation_ and other periodicals, I have
included some descriptions of the causes likely to incite people to
rebellion of this kind. Such causes, I mean, as the inequality that
comes from poverty alone--the physical unfitness or lack of mental
opportunity that is due only to poverty. Those things make happiness
impossible, for they frustrate the active exercise of vital powers, and
give life no scope. During a generation or so, people have looked to the
Government to mitigate the oppression of poverty, but some different
appeal now seems probable. For many despair of the goodwill or the power
of the State, finding little in it but hurried politicians, inhuman
officials, and the "experts" who docket and label the poor for
"institutional treatment," with results shown in my example of a
workhouse school.

The troubling and persistent alarum of rebellion calls from many sides,
and as instances of its call I have introduced mention of various
rebels, whether against authority or custom. I have once or twice
ventured also into those twilit regions where the spirit itself stands
rebellious against its limits, and questions even the ultimate insane
triumph of flesh and circumstance, closing its short-lived interlude.
The rebellion may appear to be vain, but when we consider the primitive
elements of life from which our paragon of animals has ascended, the
mere attempt at rebellion is more astonishing than the greatest recorded
miracle, and since man has grown to think that he possesses a soul,
there is no knowing what he may come to.

I have added a few other scenes from old times and new, just for
variety, or just to remind ourselves that, in the midst of all chaos and
perturbation and rage, it is possible for the world to go upon its way,
preserving, in spite of all, its most excellent gift of sanity.

H.W.N.

LONDON, _Easter_, 1913.

CONTENTS

CHAP.
I. THE CATFISH
II. REBELLION
III. "EITHER COWARDS OR UNHAPPY"
IV. DEEDS NOT WORDS.
V. THE BURNING BOOK.
VI. "WHERE CRUEL RAGE"
VII. THE CHIEF OF REBELS
VIII. THE IRON CROWN
IX. "THE IMPERIAL RACE"
X. THE GREAT UNKNOWN
XI. THE WORTH OF A PENNY
XII. "FIX BAYONETS!"
XIII. "OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US"
XIV. THE GRAND JURY
XV. A