me but by asking in his turn questions which
were but a variation of my own. He said: "Our people don't seem to
understand anything but 'each man for himself.' The miners hold up
the country for higher wages, and the country has to pay them; the
railwaymen do the same, and the country must find double fares and
high freight. They hit their own class hardest of all, because dear
coal and high tariffs touch everybody. And they don't even help
themselves, because directly wages are raised, up goes the price of
everything. Now what I want you to tell me is how are they going to
stop all that when they are the Government? For it will have to stop."

He is right: it will have to stop; but I don't see how the Labour
Party is going to stop it. So far as I can make out, the Labour Party,
as a responsible, political body, has no control whatsoever over the
trade unions; and the trade unions, as such, none over their members.
How, then, is one to look forward with comfort to the establishment
of a Labour Government? It will take a readier speech than even Mr.
Webb's, a more confident than even Mr. Smillie's to illuminate this
smoke-blurred scene whereon we make out every trade union preying upon
Mr. George's vitals (which are, unfortunately, for the moment our
own vitals), and with a success so disastrously easy as to make any
prospects of a return to sane, honest, dignified or just government
almost hopeless! Mr. George is destroying himself hand over fist, and
the sooner the better; but one does not want to see England go down
with him. I am all for anarchy myself when once it is thoroughly
grasped by everybody that anarchy means minding your own business.
But we are far from that as yet. Anarchy at present means minding, and
grudging, other people's business. Such anarchy is not government, but
plundering with both hands.

My point, however, is that, if we are to have a Labour Government,
it must be a Government of a nation, and not a class-affair. When the
Duke said that the King's Government must be carried on, he meant the
Government of King George or King William. Our present Prime Minister
means the Government of Mr. George, which is a very different affair.
In its way of simple egotism it is precisely the meaning of the trade
unions, and can be shortlier put as "After me the deluge." And that
won't do. We want neither autocracy nor anarchy; and just now the one
involves the other.

A COMMENTARY UPON BUTLER