It may be remarked incidentally that social reform would receive a considerable impetus from such a policy. Not only would periodic mobilizations take the workers for a time out of the foetid atmosphere of their slums and factories and perhaps make them less contented to return, but the heads of the army would themselves be compelled to become social reformers and insist on some decent minimum of housing and factory conditions in order to keep up the physical efficiency of the material of which they would have to make soldiers. Herr Molkenbuhr the German Social-Democrat pointed out to the Socialist Congress at Amsterdam this year that this had happened in Germany even under an undemocratic and often really oppressive form of conscription. An immense impetus given to housing and factory legislation would be among the by-products of Army Reform, if carried out on the right lines. I have left myself no space here to deal adequately with the Navy. I will therefore pass it by here with the remark that an invincible navy is absolutely essential to the welfare of the workers of this country, whose food comes almost entirely from overseas, and that the navy has never been like the Army a menace to popular liberties. It is generally thought that our navy is in a much more efficient state than our army is known to be in; but a thorough overhauling would do it no harm and might expose weaknesses which we do not suspect. At any rate any attempt to weaken our naval predominance should be resolutely opposed by all Socialists as by all sensible men. Of course an effective army and navy will cost money. But the Socialist will be by no means so frightened of high estimates as the old Radical who regarded all taxation as being of the nature of a compromise with Satan. The Socialist knows that at least £600,000,000 a year goes at present into the pockets of landlords and capitalists and shareholders generally, and, until this is absorbed, the cry of “ruinous expenditure” cannot be expected to appall him. THE FETISH OF FREE TRADE.