The men who would come to the top in a civil war would be fighters and strivers; they would not be the kind of men to wisely model and patiently and justly rule or lead a new State. Your barricade man may be very useful--at the barricades; but when the fighting is over, and his work is done, he may be a great danger, for he is not the man, usually, to stand aside and make way for the builders to replace by right laws the wrong laws which his arms have destroyed. Revolution by force of arms is not desirable nor feasible; but there is another kind of revolution from which we hope great things. This is a revolution of _thought_. Let us once get the people, or a big majority of the people, to understand _Socialism_, to believe in _Socialism_, and to work for _Socialism_, and the _real_ revolution is accomplished. In a free country, such as ours, the almighty voice is the voice of public opinion. What the public _believe in_ and _demand_ has got to be given. Who is to refuse? Neither King nor Parliament can stand against a united and resolute British people. And do not suppose, either, that brute force, which is powerless to get good or to keep it, has power to resist it or destroy it. Neither truncheons nor bayonets can kill a truth. The sword and the cannon are impotent against the pen and the tongue. Believe me, we can overcome the constable, the soldier, the Parliament man, the landlord, and the man of wealth, without shedding one drop of blood, or breaking one pane of glass, or losing one day's work. Our real task is to win the trust and help of the _people_ (I don't mean the workers only, but the British people), and the first thing to be done is to educate them--to teach them and tell them what we mean; to make quite clear to them what _Socialism_ is, and what it is _not_. One of the things it is not, is British imitation of the French Revolution. Our method is persuasion; our cause is justice; our weapons are the tongue and the pen. Next: As to seizing the wealth of the country and sharing it out amongst the people. First, we do not propose to _seize_ anything. We do propose to get some things,--the land, for instance,--and to make them the property of the whole nation; but we mean that to be done by Act of Parliament, and by purchase. Second, we have no idea of "sharing out" the land, nor the railways, nor the money, nor any other kind of wealth or property, equally amongst the people. To share these things out--if they _could_ be shared, which they could not be--would be to make them _private_ property, whereas we want them to be _public_ property, the property of the British _nation_. Yet, how often have you been told that Socialists want to have the wealth equally divided amongst all? And how often have you been told that if you divided the wealth in that way it would soon cease to be equally divided, because some would waste and some would save?