The policy of the strike for anything and everything is not only anti-social; it is anti-Socialist. Writing on the strike outbreak of 1911,[2] I said: "The mass strike is rarely effective, save in a negative fashion. It is successful mostly when used against some particular object or for some definite purpose of the moment. It can be used to break an objectionable agreement; it may prevent the putting into force of an unpopular law, or the passing of some tyrannical measure; it may check an attempt to suppress popular liberties, such as they are; and it may prove the best possible means of preventing war between two countries, if action in that direction be taken equally in both countries. But as _the_ means for the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of the Socialist Republic it is useless. Those who rely upon the general strike as _the_ means for the realisation of Social-Democracy are like the ancient Gauls, of whom it is said that they shook all States and founded none." Sporadic and Lightning Strikes Anti-Social and Anti-Socialist. What applied to the strike movement of 1911 applies with even greater force to the present strike ebullitions, in which the presence of Russian Bolsheviks is to be noted. This is all in accordance with the Bolshevist plan of "world revolution" for which roubles are being plentifully furnished, mainly through agents in Sweden. The prevailing idea is to pull down bourgeois society, no matter what the consequences. If conditions generally in the countries of Europe under capitalism to-day were like what they were here a century ago, coupled with an absolute monarchical tyranny such as that which existed until recently in Russia, then there might be something to be said for the destruction of bourgeois society by any means that would bring it down. Nothing under such conditions could be worse for the mass of the people. But with the destruction of the State in these islands would go the trade unions built up by years of solid labour and sacrifice, the co-operative societies, just now beginning to take a wider outlook on things than mere "divi." hunting, and the democratic political institutions of which the people can make far more use than they do when they choose to exercise their intelligence and bestir their energies. Then the increasingly complicated nature of production, distribution and exchange has also to be considered. A piece of grit will often throw elaborate and delicate machinery out of gear, but we do not regard it as a revolutionary agent on that account. The control of a few engineering workshops by shop stewards, puffed out with vanity and a "little brief authority," will not provide the food necessary to feed the people of these islands. We have, too, an indication of the spirit of liberty with which they are animated in the massed picketing at Glasgow, not against blacklegs and non-unionists, but against fellow trade unionists who refused to aid "unauthorised strikes."