"But," said one in amazement, "they would not do that in real life?" "They are doing it every day," I said. "This school is old, badly ventilated, overcrowded. It is a danger to your health and mine. Yet, if I asked for a new school, the whole village would rise up against me. 'More money on the rates!' they would cry, and they would treat me very much as the people in the play treated Dr. Stockmann." * * * I find it difficult to discuss the causes of the war with the bairns. I refuse to accept the usual tags about going to the assistance of a weak neighbour whom we agreed to protect. We all want to think that we are fighting for Belgium but are we? I look to Mexico and I find it has been bathed in blood because the American Oil Kings and the British Oil Kings were at war. President Diaz was pro-English, Madero was pro-American, Huerta was pro-English ... and the United States supported the notorious Villa. Villa's rival, Carranzo, was pro-English. It is an accepted belief that the American Oil Kings financed the first risings in order to drive the British oil interests out of the country. Hence, widows and orphans in Mexico are the victims of a dollar massacre. Can we trace the present war to the financiers? It is said that the Triple Entente is the result of Russia's receiving loans from France and Britain. I cannot find a solution. I am inclined to attach little value to what is called national feeling. The workers are the masses, and I cannot imagine a German navvy's having any hatred of a British navvy. A world of workers would not fight, but at present the workers are so badly organised that they fight at the bidding of kings and diplomatists and financiers. War comes from the classes above, and by means of their press the upper classes convert the proletariat to their way of thinking. A more important subject is that of the ending of wars. The idealistic vapourings of the I.L.P. with its silly talk of internationalism will do nothing to stop war. Norman Angell's cry that war doesn't pay will not stop war. But a true democracy in each country will stop it. I think of Russia with all its darkness and cruelty, and I am appalled; a true democracy there will be centuries in coming. For Germany I do not fear; out of her militarism will surely arise a great democratic nation. And out of our own great trial a true democracy is arising. Capitalism has failed; the State now sees that it must control the railways and engineering shops in a crisis. The men who struck work on the Clyde are of the same class as the men who are dying in Flanders. Why should one lot be heroes and the other lot be cursed as traitors? The answer is simple. The soldiers are fighting for the nation; the engineers are working primarily for the profiteers, and only secondarily for the nation. Profiteering has not stood the test, and the workers are beginning to realise the significance of its failure. VII.