question, has either been unable to do so, or have found it expedient to postpone committing itself (_see_ p. 58). Yet the Party, after invoking fire from Heaven on the Government as retribution for its policy of opportunism in regard to industry, calls upon the country to witness that Labour has a considered and well-thought-out industrial policy, which it euphemistically calls “democratic control,” and announces with ingenuous _naïveté_ that it is such a system as will always harmonize with the special circumstances and requirements of each industry! Who is the opportunist? The Government in adhering to continuance of the established organization of industry—on which the greatness of England’s trade and commerce has been built up—or the Labour Party, which, without any clear idea of what it would put in its place, would destroy the existing organization in the complacent expectation that by some process of abiogenesis a better system will soar like the Phoenix from the ashes? There would be a short and sharp retort from the members of any of the great Trade Unions, for example the Amalgamated Engineering Union, were the Labour Party to propose to reconstruct that proud organization on the basis of a resounding formula. The Executive Committee of that Union—supposing it, agreed to consider any such gratuitous suggestion from even a Labour source—would insist—at least it always did with me during the war—that general phrases should be reduced into clear, crisp and definite proposals, each one of which could be subjected to a microscopic scrutiny of the most searching kind, sufficient to reveal its true nature, its effects direct and indirect, and its remotest implications. Is not the nation entitled to similar information? In Part I, chapter IX, I outline the injury to industry and the country that would inevitably result, in my judgment, from any socialistic reconstruction of industry. Here I am only concerned to show that when the flowing garments of flowery phraseology are respectfully removed, they are seen to cover nothing but a hollow lay-figure without the least semblance to even an articulated model. This is what we are invited by the Labour Party to set up and worship as the future genius of British industry. The Recent Change in Labour’s Proposals