I am aware that there has been of late in Socialist circles something of a reaction against this sort of thing, as also against the futile Marxian prophecies to the effect that “economic forces” would produce a “Crisis” which would have the effect of abolishing the capitalist system whether anyone wanted it abolished or no. But the reaction has taken an entirely wrong turn. It has resulted so far in nothing better than an outburst of sheer sentimentalism as unacceptable to the hard conservative common-sense of the workers as the doctrinaire revolutionism that preceded it. The chief expression of this sentimentalism may be found in the repudiation of the Class War by the leaders of the I.L.P. and the substitution of vague talk about Universal Love and the Brotherhood of Man. Now here the I.L.P. leaders have got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick. The existence of the class war is a fact of common observation. A short walk down any street with your eyes open will show it to you. Indeed it is obvious that there is and must be a permanent antagonism between the buyers and sellers of labour--or if our hyper-economic critics prefer it of “labour-power.” And moreover this fact of the class war is a fact, which every workman (as also every capitalist) recognises in practice, if not in theory. All trade unionism is built upon his recognition of it; so is the demand for a labour party. The error of the S.D.F. did not lie here. The Marxians were not wrong in saying that there was a class war; there is a class war. They were not wrong in saying that the worker ought to be educated in class-consciousness; they ought to be so educated for their class-consciousness is the best foundation for our propaganda. Where the Marxians were wrong in regard to the class war was in their tacit assumption that “class-consciousness” was identical with Socialism. It is not. Socialists and Trade Unionists are alike in their _recognition_ of the class war, but they differ widely in their attitude towards it. The Socialist wishes so to organise society as to bring the Class War to an end; the Trade Unionist wants the war to go on, but he wants his own class to get better chances in it than they get at present. As regards practical matters the path of the two is for the present largely identical. Extended factory legislation, old age pensions, housing, the municipalisation of monopolies are desired by Socialists and Trade Unionists alike, though not entirely for the same reasons. Here and there, on Trade Union Law, on Compulsory Arbitration in industrial disputes, in some instances on Child Labour, the attitude of the two may appear different, but it only requires the better economic education of the unions to bring them into line with the Socialists on these points. Nevertheless, the distinction as well as the relation between the two must be kept constantly in mind, if the attitude of the typical manual worker towards Socialism is to be understood.