manded the resignation of the under-secretary of posts and telegraphs, whom they disliked; they demanded the right to organize themselves into labor unions; and they asked for stricter civil service regulations, removing them from the influence of politics. The third point was not refused, the other two were promptly rejected. The first one would destroy the authority of the cabinet, the second the autonomy of the State. If the men were allowed the privileges of ordinary labor unions, they would have the right to

strike - that is, to annul State

authority.

The men did strike. France was isolated from the world for a week. Socialists were holding up the State. The Government promptly dismissed scores of ringleaders, introduced soldiers into the service, local chambers of commerce lent automobiles and hands to sort and deliver letters. Then the men went back to work. In a few months they struck again. This time the Syndicalists - the violent Socialists called a general strike of all workers to back the State employees. But the call went unheeded, and after some marching, a little terrorizing, and much talking, the men resumed their letter carrying.

During this time Briand's school masters threatened to strike. As minister of education he promptly dismissed one or two of the hottest pedagogues who had signed a virulent circular. This stopped their scholastic threats.

So ended the first attempt of Socialist State employees to wring concessions from a Socialist-Radical Government. State is a greater tyrant than the private employer," they complained in their anger.

Briand was now made prime minister - the first Socialist prime minister in the world. And he showed himself the most adroit Frenchman since Gambetta.

The employees of the railways struck for better wages and better conditions of labor. Briand, before the strike, had met a committee of the men and promised to do what he could for them. The companies, through his mediation, granted the raise in wages and promised to consider the other points. But the restless men

In the Chamber of Deputies he told the Socialist group that the railway strike was a conspiracy against the State, and that if he had not found legal means for putting it down he would not have hesitated to use illegal means. Words cannot describe the scene that followed. lids were slammed, yells and cries filled the air, excited deputies rushed, shouting, down the aisles toward the tribune where the premier stood smiling at the tumult. Above the turmoil were heard the strains of the "International," the Socialist war

Desk

THAT HAS SUCCEEDED THE MARSEILLAISE AS THE HYMN OF RADICALISM. "ALL SOCIALISTS ARE INTERNATIONALISTS, PLACING HUMANITY ABOVE PATRIOTISM"

song. In a twinkling the ministerials started the "Marseillaise," and for the first time in history in a parliamentary assembly the strains of the hymns of the political and social revolutions were blended.

Within a few months Briand fell. His former comrades voted, with their enemies, to end the rule of the man they consider an arch-renegade.

To recapitulate: parliamentary action

by Socialists, following years of agitation, has disestablished the Church and secularized education; it has reorganized the army and made it representative of the lesser bourgeois instead of the aristocracy; it has failed to alter the character of the bureaucracy, though the gradual coloring of public opinion by propaganda makes this achievement certain of ultimate accomplishment. Actual control of the Government by Socialists has been uniformly a failure, from the Socialistic point of view, because of the conservative effect of office holding.

Forsaken by their allies, disowned by their own ministers, the Socialists keep on growing at the rate of 10,000 a year. The present Chamber of Deputies has twentyfive more Socialists than the last. Their most significant growth is among the peasantry of southern France, where, under the leadership of Compère Morrel, a gardener, they are flocking to the red flag by the hundreds.

All Socialists are opposed to standing armies. They are internationalists, placing humanity above patriotism.

In France, anti-militarism has reached its highest point. At present it has somewhat subsided under the shadow of Morocco. But in 1906-7 it had the country frightened, and many antirepublicans fled across the border. Antimilitarism had found a prophet in an obscure school-master from Auxerre, Gustave Hervé, who had said the suitable word: "The flag arose from dirt," and who was made famous in the way France lifts men to fame, overnight. He came to Paris and started a daily paper. The Socialists adored him. Jaurès espoused him.

He was several times imprisoned for his virulent rhetoric. He is now serving a four-year sentence. I contrived to call on him in prison, and found him the most inoffensive little man imaginable, with mild eyes and an attractive, childish manner. "What will happen to the nations when your ideal is realized?" I asked him.

"There will be no nations, only an interethnic fraternalism. Governments have been made a fetish, and humanity forgotten. I want to reverse this - humanity first, all else afterward. Some country must begin to abolish the army. France, that has begun so many splendid movements, will begin disarmament under compulsion of the proletariat."

There is a good deal of unrest in the army. Some years ago when the soldiers were sent to the Midi, to quell the wine growers' revolt, the officers found their companies sullen and disobedient. One third of the conscripts came from workingmen's homes, where soldiering is not loved. Seven hundred thousand young men are constantly in the army; 350,000 every year are transferred from the ranks of toil into the ranks of idleness. The economic burden on the workman is enormous. He willingly lends his ear to the lesson of revolt. It is only a matter of time when the leaven will saturate the lump.

In 1907 the Socialist national convention determined to oppose war by every means, "even unto a general strike and workers' insurrection." There are thousands of humble people in France to whom this is gospel.

The feeling between France and Germany is extremely bitter. Yet last summer, when the Morocco affair threatened peace, the Socialists held anti-war demonstrations. And the International Socialist Bureau met in Zurich to consider how the workingmen of both countries might unite to prevent war. Of course, many Socialists would become soldiers in the event of war. But who would have dreamed, twenty-five years ago, that the workingmen of Europe would be united into a vast international, anti-military brotherhood, so powerful that even the Kaiser dare not ignore them?

Anti-patriotism does not bear the obloquy in France that it does in America. Among a people where there is no spiritual fervor for their country, where patriotism may mean adhesion to any one of several forms of government, there is not much. reproach in being called unpatriotic.

The bureaucracy has been very irritating to the workingmen. Its army has been used to suppress their demonstrations. On the 1st of May, Labor day in Europe, I walked the streets of Paris, and everywhere were soldiers. The Place de la Concorde was an armed camp, and at regular intervals troops of cavalry galloped significantly down the avenues.

The most significant phase of Socialism in France is the revival of the anarchistic teachings of Proudhon. It is called Revotionary Syndicalism, after syndicates, or labor unions. These syndicates form a national organization whose doctrine is revolution, whose policy is violence, and whose method is the general strike. The philosopher of this movement is Georges Sorrel, a shrewd thinker and clever rhetorician, always a dangerous juxtaposition of talent. The basis of his logic is violence. Society is wrong because the oppressed are complacent.. If they were volcanic, the surface of things would be changed. Everything that condones complacency is evil. The parliamentary Socialists are a failure because they are "no longer thinking of insurrection." The only political principle that will survive is "class war."

This destructive teaching attracted not only violent labor agitators, but scholars like Professor Hubert Lagardelle, and brilliant leaders like Victor Griffuelhes. These prompters of violence are men of ease and comfort, who receive you gently in carpeted libraries, far removed from the gore of rebellion. They have revived the tradition of conspiracy-the eruptive spirit of the masses must be wielded by an "active, conscious minority."

These masses, organized into the General Confederation of Labor, were incited to strikes and all manner of violence, which resulted in constant collisions with the police and the soldiers. This turbulence was at its height a few years ago. There

was the most outrageous use of adjectives. "Rip up the bourgeois," "Cut button holes Cut button holes in the capitalistic skins," were war cries. There was an abundance of talk about putting vitriol into wine, ground glass into flour, and dynamite in the coal bin. It all ended in Gallic panic, and composure. Sorrel has now left the Syndicalists for the Royalist camp. And Paul Louis, a little journalist, is writing for them. He was anxious that I should not regard him as a "mere anarchist."

"We believe in organized society," he

CONFEDERATION

almost a million, why not of 15,000,000? There have been general strikes in Belgium and Italy and Scandinavia. Why not in all countries on the same day? It is merely a matter of organization."

The Syndicalists claim more than 300,000 members, and are growing. The most significant additions to their ranks are the school masters who have formed an organization for protecting themselves against unjust political demands, and for raising their pay. Thiers, before he became President, while still a functionary

Quelques Retraites do groa fonotionnaires de la République bourgeoise

PLACEMENT GRATUIT au siège des Syndicats adhérents.

said, "but not for the exploitation of capital. Such a government would be local, not national. Each locality would have its economic functions taken care of by the local government. There would be a league of all communes for purposes of coöperation. At present the Government is a government by property for property. We can overthrow it only by the general strike."

"But is the general strike possible?" I asked.

"Why not? We have had strikes of

of monarchy, objected to the establishment of government schools in every town because he did "not want a red priest in every village." To-day he would find these red priests of Socialism everywhere. I was told that 70 per cent. of the primary and secondary school men are inclined toward Socialism. Some of the text books are written with a Socialistic bias. Herve, for instance, has written a school history of France.

But in spite of the numbers of those who have embraced Socialism, in spite

of its power, you are impressed with the vagueness of it all. There is that elusiveness about French Socialism which, to an Anglo-Saxon, is exasperating. In vain In vain you try to pin down a French Socialist to something definite. He always slips away from you with his unctuous rhetoric. "We French so dearly love the dramatic, the romantic. We adore triumphant insurrection," one of them said to me after I had tried for half an hour to glue him down to a definite proposition.

Now, this zeal and this vagueness are just the two characteristics that you must find in a propaganda, a ferment that is to work lasting changes in the established order of things. Its indefiniteness lures, its zeal propels, the unthinking masses.

In France the movement has gradually democratized the populace. It has made war increasingly difficult. It has driven employers of labor into the defensive. It has not yet destroyed the ancient bureaucracy, but it is at work.

It has not made very deep inroads upon

the domain of private property. France is a country of men of modest property. It has more land holders than Germany, Austria, and England combined. It is a frugal, income-loving land. But thousands of peasants and small shop-keepers are Socialists. Their Socialism is speculative, their property is actual a duality that never troubles a Frenchman.

Meanwhile Socialism is spreading rapidly. It has multitudes of adherents among the educated classes. One is amazed at the number of college professors, scholars, lawyers, and authors that are Socialists. And even Anatole France, the last of the great French literati, aristocrat of aristocrats, has taken his place by the side of Jaurès in the warfare for the poor.

Socialism is spreading into every corner of France. Nothing seems able to check it. It is an ever-increasing current of discontent and protest. And it will require great genius to guide it—if it can be guided.

I

BY

F SOMEONE could only have told me before I left college, how different my business life would have been!

Even now, I seldom pass the great hotel that, like a giant sentinel, confronts the traveler as he emerges from the Grand Central station into 42d Street, without being mentally transported to the time I arrived in New York to begin a business career.

College days were not very far behind. me then and life was still enshrouded in that nebulous glamour without which no one can ever live and succeed. To me, that great, towering thing did not mean

"thou shalt not enter"; it simply stood against the dark sky as a sort of exhilarating promise as real to me as its massive sides of stone and steel. To this sense of material charm and hope, to youth, abundant vitality, and a Puritanical home training, I owe the fact that I never faltered during the long, weary years that have intervened.

I have always promised myself and others that, if the day ever came when I felt that I had found my life work, I would lose no time in telling the story of my struggle, in the hope that those who are giving their lives to the education of