E. BELFORT BAX

So long as danger threatened from without public opinion tolerated the guillotine.

As to the journalist himself, it is clear that to get a living he must write to order, that is, he must write in accordance with the views of his paper, in so far as he writes at all on current topics.

If, as is contended by the advocates of “deterrence,” cruelty in punishment is justified by the “deterrent” effect which these persons credit it with, then surely the rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrew are the last word of penal wisdom. If hanging and the plank-bed are “deterrent” and hence justifiable, then … the stake and the rack are more “deterrent” and hence more justifiable.

The word patriotism, or its equivalents and derivations, is upon everyone's lips at the present time. It is a magic word which is thought by most people to cover any multitude of sins. To be patriotic in whatever cause is tantamount to being virtuous, while no worse charge can be brought against a man in popular estimation than to say he is unpatriotic.

There are some who incline to favor a “minimum wage,” but who “kick at” a “maximum price.” Such surely forget that the capitalist could here just as easily as in the case of a rise in wages compelled by a workmen’s combination, or by any other cause, take his old profits out at the other end by raising the price of the manufactured article.

We seem at, the present time to have arrived at the acute stage of the colonial fever which during the last three or four years has afflicted the various powers of Europe. Germany is vying with France, England with both, in the haste to seize upon “unoccupied” countries, and to establish “protectorates” – the cant diplomatic for incomplete annexation – over uncivilized peoples.

We would surrender once and for all this chimerical notion of one day of universal rest, and institute three days a week, or if necessary more, as; days of partial rest; i.e., on which the different sections of he community would be freed from labor in turn. In this way each section would be able rely to profit, physically and mentally, by their leisure, inasmuch as they would have the advantage of the labor of the rest of the world just as another day the rest of the world would have the advantage of their labor.

There are certain catchwords which have a marvelous charm to calm the breast political, a magic power to levitate the mind captivated by them, out of the regions of mere argument and recognition of facts. Such a hold do these words and the deified abstractions they cover have on the average man of the nineteenth century, that they and they alone are worshipped as the ultimate manifestation of goodness, beauty, and truth. To be opposed to these abstractions is to be condemned as blasphemous against the first principles of rectitude, moral and political.

No one, nowadays, pretends that juridical action alone can directly produce any fundamental economic change, but it can certainly put the capitalist in a tight place, and the special advantage of the measures proposed is that they admit of being strengthened or relaxed without violent disturbance of the status quo.

The main cause of trade depressions is over-production that is that want is produced by a glut of commodities. The working classes create during the period when trade is brisk more goods than are required for the market; they thereby forge their own chains, since a reaction ensues, with the result that millions are thrown out of work are deprived of the necessaries of life.

After all, it is not nice going to war with one’s equal or possible superior in strength – so different from those delightful “military operations” which consist in “potting”, savages with an amount of danger just sufficient to give a zest to the sport …But then the special line the skill of our ablest and most valiant generals takes is that of “thrashing a cannibal.” Thrashing a Cossack is a different sort of thing.

As to the journalist himself, it is clear that to get a living he must write to order, that is, he must write in accordance with the views of his paper, in so far as he writes at all on current topics.

If, as is contended by the advocates of “deterrence,” cruelty in punishment is justified by the “deterrent” effect which these persons credit it with, then surely the rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrew are the last word of penal wisdom. If hanging and the plank-bed are “deterrent” and hence justifiable, then … the stake and the rack are more “deterrent” and hence more justifiable.

In mediaeval times, the Sunday was a day of recreation, of fairs, Morris-dances, mystery plays, &c., and not of enforced idleness and gloom. The Puritan movement which originated at the end of the sixteenth century … till the rebellion which cost Charles I his head, embodied in its programme a strong antagonism to the old English Sunday, an antagonism which was accentuated, by the action of the opposite party who took an equally emphatic stand upon the Sunday of tradition …. a “day of rest” was ratified by a Puritan Parliament in the well-known Act of Charles II. Thenceforward the English Sunday became the dreary day it is now.

In the most ancient civilizations there is no distinction between the political or social and the religious …. The social festivals were as much religious as they were political. Political and religious functions were necessarily united in the same persons since every religions act was political, every political act also religious

Meanwhile “our” troops during the past month, have been again at their congenial occupation of slaughtering native children and burning villages

No greater or more unwarrantable restriction on freedom of speech or writing is, to our thinking, conceivable than this law of libel and slander.

No one, nowadays, pretends that juridical action alone can directly produce any fundamental economic change, but it can certainly put the capitalist in a tight place, and the special advantage of the measures proposed is that they admit of being strengthened or relaxed without violent disturbance of the status quo.

So long as danger threatened from without public opinion tolerated the guillotine.

That the policy of the dynamiter is senseless as well as criminal is evident when we consider that all the recent attempts have been directed not even against the governing classes, or their official buildings, but against places of common public resort, and were more likely to hurt friends or neutrals than foes.

The “cant” of the politician, like the cant of the “religious” man, is also protean in its guise, but its chief method is to explain away words. The politician can always show you that he didn’t mean what he says, but something rather different from what he says. Political cant consists in pretending to agreement with hearers, whoever they may be. This cant is part of the stock-in-trade of every politician, be he Tory, Whig, or Radical, and it is by its means that he tries to haul in stray votes.

The average student of any historical period invariably reads into his interpretation the intellectual, moral and social atmosphere that lies nearest to him. He cannot strip away the intervening time-content between himself and the period in question. It is the most difficult of all exercises of the imagination, and to most men, indeed, impossible, to realize that the same words, names, customs and institutions connote totally different actualities in different stages of historic evolution. People fail to conjure up the altered perspective, and the unfamiliar background on which men lived, thought and felt in another age.

The diplomatic relations upon which our present system of international comity is based are being encountered by new forces and combinations which are fast rendering them impotent and antiquated

The foreign policy of the great international Socialist party must be to break up these hideous race monopolies called empires

The main cause of trade depressions is over-production that is that want is produced by a glut of commodities. The working classes create during the period when trade is brisk more goods than are required for the market; they thereby forge their own chains, since a reaction ensues, with the result that millions are thrown out of work are deprived of the necessaries of life.

The middle and upper classes having control of the means of distribution can generally succeed in smothering an organ which is offensive to them at birth by a perfectly well-known and organized system of boycotting, and in the few cases where they cannot effect this, can at least reduce its sale by three-fourths through the same means; in any case “respectable” and paying firms will decline to use it as an advertising medium, thereby cutting off its one chance of success as a financial speculation.

The plundering goes merrily on. The explorer reconnoiters the ground, the missionary prepares the soil, the trader “works” it. The time is then ripe for protectorates and annexations, followed by the wholesale conversion of the refractory nation, by fire and sword it other means fail

The reputation of a man as a member of a party may not be homogeneous with his character in his personal relations. We have in our mind instances of persons who have been for years hard workers for the cause, whose party-character is unimpeachable, but who are nevertheless sometimes difficult to get on with in private life. And, conversely, we know some whom we would personally trust to the uttermost, but politically as far as we could see them and no farther. The former, we believe, can often, and the latter seldom, be used in the interests of the party.

The strong point of England is her cheap goods.

There are certain catchwords which have a marvelous charm to calm the breast political, a magic power to levitate the mind captivated by them, out of the regions of mere argument and recognition of facts. Such a hold do these words and the deified abstractions they cover have on the average man of the nineteenth century, that they and they alone are worshipped as the ultimate manifestation of goodness, beauty, and truth. To be opposed to these abstractions is to be condemned as blasphemous against the first principles of rectitude, moral and political.

There are some who incline to favor a “minimum wage,” but who “kick at” a “maximum price.” Such surely forget that the capitalist could here just as easily as in the case of a rise in wages compelled by a workmen’s combination, or by any other cause, take his old profits out at the other end by raising the price of the manufactured article.

We seem at, the present time to have arrived at the acute stage of the colonial fever which during the last three or four years has afflicted the various powers of Europe. Germany is vying with France, England with both, in the haste to seize upon “unoccupied” countries, and to establish “protectorates” – the cant diplomatic for incomplete annexation – over uncivilized peoples.

We would surrender once and for all this chimerical notion of one day of universal rest, and institute three days a week, or if necessary more, as; days of partial rest; i.e., on which the different sections of he community would be freed from labor in turn. In this way each section would be able rely to profit, physically and mentally, by their leisure, inasmuch as they would have the advantage of the labor of the rest of the world just as another day the rest of the world would have the advantage of their labor.

The word patriotism, or its equivalents and derivations, is upon everyone's lips at the present time. It is a magic word which is thought by most people to cover any multitude of sins. To be patriotic in whatever cause is tantamount to being virtuous, while no worse charge can be brought against a man in popular estimation than to say he is unpatriotic.