. Let us suppose, then, that the
British were seriously turned to domestic politics in 1855; let us
admit that they are so turned to-day, and ask ourselves fairly whether
we are now in a better way of reasonable living than history shows
those poor devils to have been.

If we are, it will not be the fault of the old agencies, in which
Kingsley always believed. Church and State are adrift; organised
Christianity has abdicated; the aristocracy no longer governs
even itself; Parliament has died of a surfeit of its own rules.
If fundamental reform is to come, it will be forced upon us by the
working class, and (at the pinch) opposed tooth and nail by the
privileged. But is it to come? Is the working class deploying for
action? In all the miscellaneous scrapping which we watch to-day is
there one strong man with a sense of direction? It doesn't look like
it.

Men, having learned to get what they lust after by strife, do not
easily forget the lesson. Sporadic war, like a heath fire, breaks out
daily in some part of the world; and society is as easily kindled,
and as irrationally as nations. A Jew is put out of Hungary and an
Archduke takes his place. The working men of Britain, having chosen a
Parliament which they don't believe in, and didn't want, set to work,
not to get rid of it, but to make any future Parliament impossible.
The police do their best for the shoplifters; the engine-drivers,
to help the police, prevent them from going home to bed. Sir Edward
Carson, a staunch Unionist, makes union out of the question. The
bakers, to improve the prospects of their trade, teach people to make
their own bread. The colliers--well, the colliers do not yet seem to
have found out that unless they provide people with coal, people won't
provide them with many things they are in need of.

This doesn't look much like solidarity, it must be owned; and yet I
make bold to say that the one abiding good we have got out of the war
is the discovery of the solidarity of man. Nationality (mother of war)
has been killed since we have learned from the Germans how much
alike we are at our worst, and best. Caste is mortally wounded. The
land-girl and her ladyship admit their sisterhood; the staff officer
and the batman understand each other in the light of common needs and
their satisfaction. There's the seed; water it with the dew of common
poverty and you may have one Britain instead of a round dozen, and a
League of Men to succeed a stillbo