the case of the Germans rather to save
their sense of honour whilst remaining here than to defeat any very
strong longing on their part to return to the trenches.

In a reasonable state of society there would be another difference. The
Belgians would offer to work so as not to be a burden to us; whilst the
German prisoner would say--as he actually does, by the way--"No: I am
not here by my own will: if you open the door I shall go home and take
myself off your hands; so I am in no way bound to work for you." As it
is, our Trade Unions are up in arms at the slightest hint of either
Belgian or German labour being employed when there is no shortage of
English labour!"

*The Minority Report*.

All this exasperating anomaly and deadlock and breakdown would disappear
if we had a proper system of provision for our own unemployed civilians
(there are no unemployed soldiers: we do not discharge them between the
battles). The Belgians would have found an organization of unemployment
ready for them, and would have been provided for with our own
unemployed, not as refugees, but simply as unemployed. How to do that
need not be explained here. The problem was worked out by one of the
hardest bits of thinking yet done in the Socialist movement, and set
forth in the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws
and the Relief of Distress, 1909. Our helplessness in the present
emergency shews how very unwise we were to shelve that report.
Unluckily, what with the wounded vanity of the majority of the
Commission, who had been played off the stage by Mrs. Sidney Webb; the
folly of the younger journalists of the advanced guard, who had just
then rediscovered Herbert Spencer's mare's nest of "the servile State,"
and revolted with all the petulant anarchism of the literary profession
against the ideal Interfering Female as typified in their heated
imaginations by poor Mrs. Sidney Webb, who became the Aunt Sally of our
young artists in stale anti-bureaucratic invective; and, above all, the
mulishly silent refusal of our governing classes to see why the
unemployed should not be simply left to starve, as they had always been
(the Poor Law being worse than useless for so large a purpose), nothing
was done; and there is consequently no machinery ready for dealing with
the refugees. That is why we must treat them for the moment simply as
unguarded prisoners of war.

*The General Strike Against War.*

But if the problem of une