between our policy and Palmerston’s should be this, that while Palmerston confined himself to the encouragement of political liberty, we ought to aim at the promotion of economic liberty also. We should in fact try to put England at the head of the Labour interest throughout the world as Cromwell put her at the head of the Protestant interest, and Palmerston of the Liberal interest. And in doing this we should be prepared to make full use of those weapons which neither Cromwell nor Palmerston would ever have hesitated to employ. “MILITARISM AND AGGRESSION” We are continually being told by Socialists of the hazier sort that Labour has no concern with the question of national defence. We have had recently a considerable ebullition of this particular form of imbecility provoked by the efforts of one who has always seemed to me quite the sanest and most far-sighted of English Socialists, Mr. Robert Blatchford, to draw general attention to the importance of the subject. Mr. Blatchford is in controversy very well able to take care of himself, and in this instance he has overwhelmed his critics with such a cannonade of satire, eloquence, indisputable logic and inspired common-sense that it would be quite impertinent of me to offer him my support. But the episode is so very typical of the ineffable silliness of “advanced” persons that I cannot pass it by without comment. As to the contention so much favoured by those who have been assailing Mr. Blatchford’s “militarism” that England is not worth defending and that a foreign invasion would be no evil to the bulk of the people, the position has been so thoroughly dismantled by “Nunquam’s” heavy artillery that I need hardly trouble about it here. As Mr. Blatchford says, a few weeks of Prussian or Muscovite rule would probably be the best cure for reformers of this type. But the whole argument is on the face of it absurd. That your country is badly governed is an excellent reason for changing your present rulers. But it is no reason at all for welcoming (patriotism being for the moment set on one side) a cataclysm which would destroy good and bad alike--the good more completely than the bad--and would inevitably throw back all hope of reform for at least a century. As well might a man say that, since London was admittedly in many ways an ugly and horrible place, he proposed to vote for the abolition of the fire-brigade.