There is a brilliant magazine published in New York which takes pride in edging a little to the left of the leftmost radical, wherever for the moment that may be. Its editor is a poet, and he writes eloquently of the proletariat and the worker. Not long ago I was speaking of this editor to an actual leader of labour--a man who is a radical, and who also takes a daily part in the workers’ struggles. “Yes,” he said, “he certainly can write. He is one of the best writers living.” And he went on wistfully, “If the labour movement only had a writer like that!” There is another brilliant magazine published in New York which takes exquisite pains to inform the reader that it is radical. In precise columns of elegant type, Puritan in its scorn of passion or sensation, it weekly derides the sentimental liberal for ignorance of “fundamental economics.” Not long ago it made the startling discovery that Socialists favour taking natural resources out of private ownership. And its “fundamental economics,” whenever they appear in language simple enough for the common reader to understand, turn out to be nothing more dangerous than that respectable and ancient heresy, the single tax. Another method of definition is now in common use--a method which seems easy because of its mechanical simplicity. People are arranged in a row from left to right, according to their attitude toward the existing order. At the extreme right are the reactionaries, who want to restore the discarded. Next to them are the conservatives, who wish to keep most of what exists. At their elbow are the liberals, who are ready to examine new ideas, but who are not eager or dogmatic about change. And at the extreme left are the radicals, who want to change nearly everything for something totally new. Such an arrangement is a confusing misuse of words based on a misconception of social forces. Society is not a car on a track, along which it may move in either direction, or on which it may stand still. Society is a complex, with many of the characteristics of an organism. Its change is continuous, although by no means constant. It passes through long periods of quiescence, and comparatively brief periods of rapid mutation. It may collect itself into a close order, or again become dispersed into a nebula. There is much in its development that is cyclical; it has yet undiscovered rhythms, and many vagaries. The radical and the reactionary may be agreed on essentials; they may both wish sudden change and closer organization. The conservative may be liberal because he wishes to preserve an order in which liberal virtues may exist. Or a liberal may be so cribbed and confined by an unpleasant constriction of social tissue that he becomes radical in his struggle for immediate release. The terms are not of the same class and should not be arranged in parallel columns.