Chapter VI - The Uses of "Protection" Part I: Signaling the Continent

CHAPTER VI THE USES OF "PROTECTION." PART I: SIGNALING THE CONTINENT A. FABIAN LEADERS AS PROPONENTS OF INTERNATIONALISM AND " FREE TRADE" In the autumn of 1923, after a short term of Tory Government, Mr. Baldwin, who had replaced Bonar Law in May, made a speech at Plymouth in which he declared that England must have a pro tective tariff and since his Government was pledged not to enact tariffs, they must have a mandate from the electorate. Noone wanted an election so soon again. But one ensued and brought Labour into office, if not into power. The mystery of the cause of the unwelcome election can be explained partially by the exigencies of European affairs. To all appearances, the Govern ment was constrained· to break its strong opponent in order to free itself to deal with Europe. Labour in Opposition had made the Government's pos~tion on foreign policy unbearable. 1 In any case, Tory policy in dealing with Europe required that Conserva tives provide an educative experience for the voters in order to make a radical change in fiscal practices; amorphous public opinion had to be articulated and that section which bespoke Labour re orientated.

When the election of 1923 was declared by Labour Party leaders to have for cause the effort of Tories to unseat Labour, the spokes men maintained that the issue of Protection was farcical. Actually, on both sides the word " Protection" indicated a view on how to deal with industry in foreign relations. Tories stood for trade under Capitalism, with tariffs; Labour stood for trade under Socialism, with planning or "cooperation." The opinion that the Conservatives intended to try to break the power of Labour was 1 Cf. e.g., Churchill, The Aftermath, p. 269. Also, J. A. Spender, Great Britain, Empire and Commonwealth, 1886-1935 (London: Cassell and Com pany, 1936), pp. 638-647. 196 Uses of U Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 197 asserted by MacDonald and Henderson, and· by the editor of the NS. But a Fabian, Henderson, was as responsible for the inci dence of the election as any Tory, and his reason was rooted as much in the international problem as was Baldwin's. If Hender son had stated, in response to the Plymouth speech, that he and his Party also believed in a certain amount of protection, he would have been stating the truth and the Government might have gone forward with a well-criticized programme of tariffs, expanding a bit on the already operative" McKenna tariffs."

In order to see how the Labour differed from the Tory attitude it is necessary to see how Fabianism was a creed of internationalism and how the· Fabian mentors of Labour cut large figures in the Continental International. Henderson, out of his long experience with Tory thinking, and never unmindful of. the episodes in Petrograd, in Stockholm, in Berne, where he demonstrated a desire to work with Socialists, even those who were national enemies, had seen instantaneously the opportunity and the challenge in Baldwin's Plymouth speech asking. for a mandate on Protection, and he had " pushed him off the bank " 2~that is, he had forced an election, as Mrs. Hamilton relates. " We'll get an election out of this," meant Labour would get a chance to propagandize at home and abroad. Henderson could count on thousands of young men for whom Socialism was a religion,3 on .the increased numbers of unionized non-manual workers among whom the women's· vote had, in October, 1923, doubled its count to 868,OOO~4 He had ordered the Party staff to arrange a public luncheon at which he hymned Free Trade and asserted the Party's answer to the challenge of Baldwin's "Plymouth plunge." His real objective could have been to increase the power of Opposition by· releasing it from the Liberal Party so as to be in a position to dictate foreign policy. Labour under MacDonald was currently taking much responsibility in handling domestic matters. 5 Again, every demonstration of 2 Hamilton, op. cit., p. 233.

3" London Diary," NS, XXII (November 10,1923), 139. 4 NS, XXII (October·27, 1923),67. 5 NS,XXI (April 21, 1923) 34, refers to the Ministry's surrendering power to the Opposition, for instance, in the case of a strike of agricultural workers.

198 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 political action must needs hearten, edify, educate the elements of political Socialism abroad. "Free Trade" consoled the German workman. The McKenna safeguards, aimed against France, were not called tariffs. If Prime Minister Baldwin placed reliance on the known facts that" Labour had its own views on trade policy: views about bulk purchase, public corporations, and even, in some cases, infant industry, tariffs," 6 he did not count heavily enough upon what l\1rs. Hamilton termed Labour's unanimous opposition to "any super-imposition of tariffs on inefficient Capitalist industry." The reader must guess what Mrs. Hamilton meant. Socialists thought Capitalist business" inefficient" if it did not produce for " need." Their concept of need was far more extensive than the visible market. Withstanding" super-imposition" could suppose that imposition of tariffs "vas allowable. "Industry," efficient or " in efficient," provided jobs. Upon an equivocal attitude the Party built a Free Trade fort from which Fabians bombarded Bald win's " safeguarding of industry "platform. The fact· was that Labour held to a half-and-half view as n1uch as Conservatives.

The difference seemed to lie in a policy to work either· with Busi ness or with Parties. As Mrs. Hamilton states, . . . interest was definitely focused on the Party, so was hope, from those, above all, who looked across the Chan nel to the great problem of international peace. Hender son had got the organisation behind the idea into such shape that he was not in the least afraid of a strain in the second election.'1 It is noticeable that tariff and international peace are linked to gether in 1\1rs. Han1ilton's thought. If she used the words cor rectly she admitted that « inefficient" Capitalist industry was fitter for nationalization than if it gained efficiency proportionate to that which "infant industry" would gain by protection, and it is tenable that by « inefficient Capitalist industry" was not meant domestic industry alone. Fabian readers of the NS were fully MacDonald was becoming a national success. Tory policy makers were using him on the domestic front already, and the NS noted it.

6 Hamilton, Ope cit., p. 233. '1 Ibid., p. 233.

Uses of U Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 199 aware of the rise of a newly rich industrialist class in Germany currently typified by Hugo Stinnes. If there was anywhere an industry thriving, it must be warped into the international Social ist system of "democratic" control. The slogan " Free Trade" held out a hope to German workers. Meanwhile, Fabian publicists were demanding that business relations of British private com panies with the Soviet Government be encouraged. 8 The Party concentrated its attention upon all those elements of private in dustry, especially raw materials, involving tariffs and labor supply, which were likely to be brought under State direction with a view to forwarding the economic partnership of Britain and Germany; and it asked private industry in England to work with the Party-Government in Russia-all to a given end, the capture of trade and commerce by Socialism, as Shaw said, '" at the con sular level."

B. THE FABIAN VIEW OF GERMANY: Two RIVALS IN THE FIELD Fabians saw two great pillars of force in Germany, namely, the Centre and Social Democracy. It might be better to say they saw the tower· of the Centre disintegrating (as they believed) and envisioned Socialism replacing it. Affinity for the latter was natural; it was entirely secular. British Socialists unspokenly sought to replace the" tower of the Centre" with an amalgama tion of the secular Socialistic forces under a " Labour" order like the Centre " tower" but more like the shadow of a tower lying aslant the nation, because it was an ideal construct and not a real order. The criterion by which Fabians judged the German prob lem patterned their judgment of Bolshevik Russia. They could not keep a correspondent in. Russia but in Germany there were three: Robert Dell, formerly on the Fabian Executive, and Massingham, who had returned to the Fabian fold by way of the NS, after being dismissed from The Nation's staff; and there was Levin J. Schiicking, son of a prominent German family.

In the Russian case, they assumed that an indigenous move ment based upon the zemstrovs and soviets had been captured 8 NS, XXII (December 15, 1923), 289. The Marshall and the Becos Companies were estimated to be ready to engage in a business involving £40,000,000.

200 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 by a unifying if ruthless force in the form of a partisan com mittee under a sort of Robin Hood called Lenin, a Marxist " cruel" indeed but "clement," a social democrat. The estab lished one-party rule, Fabians believed up to the time of Lenin's death,9 could. be overthrown by the forces of democracy after the benefits of its dynamism had been appropriated, in organization. Fabian Julius West had not lived to revoke the myth to which he had given currency and which Fabians Haden Guest and Mrs. Snowden enlarged. 10 In the case of Germany, Fabians had learned before the war from Fabian W. S. Sanders, in a pamphlet published in 1913 11 that Social Democrats in Germany were imitators of English Socialists and like Fabians were trying to build up and maintain Trade Unionism as well as social democracy. To be noticed was the separated growth of the social and the political elements in 9 When Lenin died in 1923, the NS carried articles on his character and work. For example, in C. M. Lloyd's" Lenin's Legacy," NS, XXII (Jan uary 26, 1924), 442, we read this typical piece of philosophy: Lenin's weak ness was his intolerance; his firmness in purpose was his strength. He was implacable, a fanatic, yet he made a "masterful experiment," the only European Socialist who did. He was Marxian with a touch of Bakunin and averse to Kautsky. He was" cruel" yet, during the terror, upon appeal was even too "clement." To preserve his achievement and continue his work, England followed by France, to be followed by Italy and the Czechs, must extend credits; for Lenin, far from making any "sordid bargain" contrary to Bolshevism, arranged for credits from private companies. Again, for G. D. H. Cole, "The Socialism of Nikolai Lenin," ibid., 473, Lenin's use of Capitalism was to infuse power in the workers toward a workers' State.

George Bernard Shaw, in a letter to the writer, said NEP was pure Fabian ism, and that Stalin" among a million others" spoke for Fabianism today. There might be some connection between this statement and the fact that all NS articles on Lenin's demise pleaded that Britain help keep steady the Russian State until control would be established by Lenin's successor and not by some visionary or sentimental groups. 10 Julius West, The Russian Revolution and British Democracy, Fabian Tract No. 184 (London: Fabian Society, 1917). Cf. also, Mrs. Snowden's lecture reported in FN, XXXII:2 (February, 1921). The ideals of inde pendence, peasant proprietorship, proportional representation, committees on wages, disputes and insurance, and federation with neighbor states were active in 1921, according to Mrs..Snowden. 11 W. Stephen Sanders, The Socialist Mov,ement in Germany, Fabian Tract No. 169 (London: Fabian Society) 1913.

Uses of it Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 201 Germany which was unlike the Fabian-fostered united or joint growth of these elements in Britain. Like the British Socialists, Sanders said, the German Socialists were proud of their descent in the words of Engels "not only from Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen [concerned with social ordering] but also from Kant, Fichte, and Hegel [concerned with political ordering]." 12 The two sets of names of philosophers are indicative, by the fact that Social Democrats trace their lineage to both groups, of the politi cizing of social ways of life, and the warping of economics out of the private juridic order into the public order-the S~te.13 Like the English-even more so-German Socialism aspired "to bear art, philosophy and science to the masses." (This would mean to cover or overshadow with the political-the Party-all the social orders, estates, industries, associations, and in so doing, to preempt the centre.) Li'ke Fabians, the German Socialists organized women and young people. Sanders stated that, unlike their British counterpart, the German movement had had to go underground: they had been called "Reds," and local religious societies had organized committees to protect youth from their doctrines. Sanders indicated that there was some rapport between Socialist societies and Trade Unions, for organized workers had subscribed funds and erected office buildings for, the Social Democrats to use jointly with themselves. But there was' no political synthesis of Trade Unions and Socialist societies as yet, in Germany.l1 The German Social Democrats, according to Sanders, had out12 The vital difference between these two elements became clear and its fissionable nature evident to editors and readers of the NS when the Wheatley Housing Bill came up under the Labour Government. The Trade Unions were as intransigent on the subject of "dilutees" as the Capitalists on price of materials. The matter recurs weekly in the NS, XXIII-(April 19, 1924), 33, for example.

13 This displacement of Economics was condemned by Pope Pius XII when he addressed the International Union of Catholic Employers Associa tions. Cf. full text in the United States News and World Report (June 17, 1949), 32 f. This address, later described as the magna carta of economic freedom,outlines the means of release from Statism in subsidiarity. 14 Labour's effort to assume equal rights in management could only succeed by national legislation which would destroy free enterprise faster than" nationalisation."

202 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 grown their naive belief in "the early Marxian myth of a final collapse of capitalism" and they never used the plea " that noth ing but socialism is of any use ."-Sanders added significantly "in order to shirk the task of grappling with immediate prob lems." This is a fine distinction, it shows a difference between Fabians and pure Socialists while emphasizing the similarity of methods of German Socialists and British Fabians before World War 1. Idealistically, the Fabian ethic was, briefly: Never use the H excuse" that only Socialism will work, to cover a disin clination to serve politiCally.15 It is strange, unless one reads the phrase discriminatingly, to find the divorcement from a " nothing but" attitude praised. Sidney Webb's stand in speak ing to managers in 1919 16 was surely one of "nothing but Socialism will do." .In any case, the German Socialists' constant struggle was, according to Sanders, bringing about the replace ment of theory with experience so that a "self-respecting, seli confident and purposeful democracy which when it does attain political power, will have learned to use it soberly and with judgment in the tremendous task of chang;ng the Gennan Empire into a German cooperative commonwealth." Here was the telic objective of international Socialism stated at the point of greatest realizability, before World War 1.11 Even during the war, Henderson, with all that his personality connoted, sought col laboration with the Socialist element in ·Germany.18 Few took 15 As of 1950, the reading public learned that the Labour Party in Con ference rejected the invitation to Britain to confer with foreign Minis ters on the Schumann (French) Plan to pool the Ruhr resources. The Party distinctly said it would not cooperate except under Socialism. The Parliamentary Party and the Cabinet has seemed embarrassed but Mr. Laski, whose posthumously published" A. Program to Prevent World War ·111"

appeared in the United Nations World, IV (June, 1950), pp. 18-21, said Mr. Strachey should be expelled from the Party for taking (as spokesman, no doubt) this anti-Schumann-Plan stand. A single radio newscast, not pub lished afterward, told of Strachey's public apology and reprimand by Attlee in Commons. Laski's article had insinuated, however, that Britain's stand would enable her to be mediator between the United States and U.S.S.R. The truth is that the Party does want "only Socialism" but it is not expedient to demand it now, as it was not in the 1920's. 16 Loc. cit., p. 54. "11 W. Stephen Sanders, Ope cit., pp. 2 and 23. 18 Cf. Snowden, Autobiography, p. 478.

Uses of It Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 203 note of the ending in 1920 of the conflict between" confessional" and "interconfessional" Trade Unions in Germany after the Bishops, meeting at Fulda, had asked for amalgamation or joint conventions of the Catholic Workers Association and the Chris tian Trade Unions. This led to a joint platform seeking col laboration of Capital and Labour at the Works Council level, and pressing for some public controls,· for shareholding by workers, for solidarity of all trades and classes, and against the" socialist footing of the class war," against socialization, against worker possession of factories or workers' direct influence in industrial affairs in genera1.1P The Fabian· Society found two rivals in the field they sought to preempt, convinced that the synthetic jewel of political socialism lay buried in it. Late in 1920, the position of the British ILP (it must be recalled that it belonged to the "two-and-a-half" inter national) was discovered in the melee of postwar German Social ism, and the impossibility of the survival of its ideals especially in Germany hinted by adroit reporting. 20 The NS commented on the union of German Independent Socialists of the "left wing" with the German Communist Party and the possibility of this union's absorbing the Syndicalist Communist Labour Party a drawing together of far-left forces. It noted that the attempt to find common ground between Communism and the policy of the " right wing" in order to cover that ground with a political party which would also foster a Fourth International, absorbed the energies of the residual Socialists. This marked out the area left free for Social Democracy. But the Socialists were divided, left and right, and, most significantly, it was said The British ILP, whose Administrative Council has just recommended to the branches for adoption a new pro gramme which is largely Guild Socialism, is in close touch with the minority of the Ger1nan Independents. 21 19 Cf. ILO Studies and Reports, Series A, No. 21 (Geneva, 1920).

2'0 NS, XVI (November 6, 1920), 123. 21 Ibid. Italics are inserted. Also, after World War II there is obvious association of the British Labour Party with Social Democrats. Recently, Victor Gollancz received glowing tribute for social democratic action from Clemens Munster, "Das Portrat: Victor Gollancz," Frankfurter H efte (2 Jahrgang, June 1947, Heft 6), 593-596. Many Social-Democrat biographies date 1945-1950.

204 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 It becomes clear upon reflection that ILP was invading the ground which Fabian Socialism should, true to its principles, have pre empted. Reports from Germany in the N S provided surveys and suggestions. If ILP took the middle area, from which it was to be extruded, Fabians were encouraged to consider reaching across it and far into the Left, even into Communist preserves for leverage to create a Labour front. But ILP was not the same kind of rival as the indigenous and dynamic order known as " the Centre." After the War and the Revolution, Fabians learned if they had not known before, of this other force, the "Centre" which had been "the strongest party in Germany during the last thirty years." 22 In· the face of persecution Catholics had developed a movement of far-reaching importance on the people's level, that is, in library associations, music societies, motivated travel-pilgrim ages. This centre fostered also a People's Association 23 which Carolus, "Botch on the Rhine," The Nation, Vol. 168 (May 14, 1949), 549-551, gives a succinct account of old occurrences: Pictured is Scheidmann, opponent of Ebert the future Socialist president who favored the monarchy, proclaiming a free democratic German Republic from the window of a res taurant wherein he and his fellow Social Democrats had been seated arguing whether the Kaiser's grandson should be enthroned or a republic created when news came that Liebknecht, the Sparticist, had proclaimed a German Soviet Republic. The article is critical of both the Christian ·Democratic Party and the S.D.P. but British Labour's present-day collaboration with S.D.P. is demonstrated. The" friends" .of S.D.P., "the British Labour Party . . . informed" the S.D.P. of the forthcoming instructions adopted in a Washington conference of Bevin, Schumann, and Acheson which yielded to S.D.P. centralizing demands.

22 Levin J. Schiicking, "The Decay of the Centre," NS, XVI (March 5, 1921),637 fI. 23 The words, "the centre" and" Centre Party" indicate two concepts; the former embraces the latter which serves as the political expression of a social force generated in hierarchical ranks of like-minded persons. When social, Le. democratic units are politicized, they can be induced to subsume political governance, whether of republics or of monarchies-recalling Italy. The German social centre, which was essentially Christian, was made up of persons united often in free associations or private societies of many kinds which may well have typified that democratic order which Pius XI advised should not be politicized, in QA, loco cit., p. 30 where subsidiarity is praised; also when he restated Leo XIII's advice against "political democracy." Cf. Leo XIII, Christian Democracy (New York: Paulist Press, 1941), pp. 6 f.

l!ses of (( Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 205 found <fUt the most remote voters; it made deliberate appeal to the intellectuals and, again, interested itself in reform movements so that its support was needed to pass labor legislation. According to Levin Schiicking, the German N S correspondent in 1923, the "Tower of the Centre" 24 was composed of "members of all sorts of social strata from the plain man to the grandee." Schiicking's article shows that Socialists in thus delineating or articulating the social areas encompassed by a religious body, made the culture thus created to. appear not to be autochthonous, and hence the area became proper spoil, to be invested by Socialism by way of secular "social democracy" toward "industrial de mocracy." 25 Schiicking's report revealed fissures in the" tower" that had been the Centre and this enabled Socialists in Britain to see the possibilities of procuring a social democratic foothold in the cultural area seemingly about to be vacated in the Reich. The tower was cracking because the unique dynamic creative of Centre unity, accord'ing to this correspondent, had been "persecution"

and this had been stopped by the Republic. In Schiicking's view, the imperialistic, even chauvinistic, attitudes of the "clerical" party were changing into acceptance of outright separatism; on the school question, the Centre seemed willing to sacrifice the " throne" for the" altar." This NS correspondent did not com prehend as "persecution" the situation he reported wherein, for example, the liberal Republic demanded all ~upils' attendance at non-denominational schools. This was a "demand" of the old German Social Democracy 26 and by 1921 it had changed the Centre into " a peerless political adversary." The Rhineland and 24 Schiicking, op. cit., pp. 637 f. 25 This term included in the long run all working society, even farming. Agriculture as an industry, far removed from subsistence farming, but bridged into the democratic industrial scheme by cooperatives and State planning of production, was included in "industrial democracy." Cf. S. L. B.

(Bensusan), "Bribes for Farmers," NS, XXII (December 1, 1923), 237, where this authority on Socialism for farmers complains the Government has no plan for cultivation control, no funds for under-standard farmers, no Wage Board, only the machinery for fair wage enforcement. A special study of the agricultural feature of Fabian activity would be most enlightening. 26 Cf. Sanders, op. cit., p. 24, where the Social Democrat" demands" (not by-laws nor bases) are listed. Fabians advised TUC to formulate tI demands " and eschew political statements.

206 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 Westphalia had by proclaiming their threat to seek anneX;fltionto France or Holland, respectively, won a victory on the school ques tion. When Schiicking wrote, moneyed· members were deserting the Centre Party, working members were pulling apart in a move against "big Capital," university students were disaffected and moving " left," while upper classes and bureaucrats were moving " right." 21 The Centre Party, he wrote, was not positive whether to endorse monarchism or not.28 (But, for that matter, even Social Democrats had not been republican before the war.) It was difficult to politicize social theory in Germany. In an analysis of the Socialists' opposition, Schiicking said, in " The Difficulties of Democracy in Germany," that in creating the consti tution of the Weimar Republic Socialists had been the only in sistent republicans. Then," Democrats" were created out of old National~Liberals and Conservatives who had cloaked themselves in democratic sounding titles like Volkespartei in order to par ticipate in the making of the Republic. Schiicking-did not credit this force with the relative civil order which developed out of the then-reigning chaos of "workmen and soldier councils" bent on proceeding farther with the Revolution, nor with the defeat of Sparticism. 29 But he admitted" the idea of social justice and true democracy had a marvelous growth" after the war, pointed up by these conversions to political democracy. Nevertheless, the move ment toward nationalization of mines 3'0 and for "free schools"

21 By 1923, "the Centre Party" included persons of such diverse character as Erzberger who was assassinated because he signed the Versailles Treaty, and Wirth, the one-time Chancellor; like W.. Marx who was a delegate with Stresemann to the London Dawes Report Conference, and Chancellor Bruning. The head of the party was the prelate, Kaas. ~ Schiicking, Ope cit.,pp. 637 f. 29 Cf. Carolus, "Botch on the Rhine," loco cit., p. 228. 80 J. L. C., "Our BookShelf," FN. (November, 1922), reviewing Alfons Horten, Sozialisierung von Kohl.e und Stahl (Berlin: Verlag Neues Vater land, W. 62), revealed a nascent Fabian society in the Fatherland: "It is interesting to learn that the League of the New Fatherland has adopted Socialism as one of its objects. Scientific research and propaganda are to be undertaken on the lines of the Fabian Society (etwa in Sinne der Londoner Gesellschaft der Fabier). The Committee's introduction to a valuable study by Alfons Harten on the' Nationalisation of Coal and Iron' gives also a list of its prominent supporters, of whom the best known in this Uses of U Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 207 for· all, was lost, the correspondent said.. Furthermore, republican ism was not secure. Because of poverty, school texts full of monarchism had had to be kept in use generally.31 Indeed, the typi~al wealthy speculator-industrialist, Hugo Stinnes,32 and cer tain groups of Rightists and the press which he could command, advocated return to monarchy. (A tendency on the part of leftist sympathizers to exaggerate incipient rightist movement in order to furnish an excuse for a drive further left must be taken into account in reading reports from Germany.) Another reaction producing element, anti-Semitism was rising, H the socialism of non-socialists ... its wire-pullers ... made much more than an ingenious means of diverting the popular antipathy against capitalism and capitalists" from its proper object. Neurotic as it was, " Anti-Semitism has at present become the supreme way of discrediting democracy all round." 33 This was a study of the forces opposing social democracy. Since September 1922 a re formed Social Democratic Party had existed.

It can be said that the sentiments of British Socialists, quite congruously, chimed with the Social Democrats by reason of their republicanism-something which was not, indeed, an anti-State republicanism, and could be used to foster State-capitalism-their secularism,34:and the material objectives inherent in H democratic" country is Professor Dr. Franz Oppenheimer, the economist, who is interested in various schemes-of productive cooperation. "... The reason for publishing the first pamphlet on the subject of the Nationalisation of Coal and Iron is due to the clear realisation that in a very real sense these commodities constitute key industries in a modern economy. Once they are nationalised it will be a comparatively easy matter to Nationalise or control other industries." 31 As here reported, loco cit., p.204, note 22, textbook changes were made in Thuringia and suppressed by the Reich. Dell's reporting was as lopsided as this argument about texts and monarchical trends .shows. However, Socialists of Dell's stamp sought an opportunity to rewrite school texts.

32 Dell later, in the NS, XXII (December 8, 1923), 260 £, blamed Stinnes' class for prevalent luxury spending amid starvation; and he also blamed the Socialists in the Cabinet because, he said, they could have stabilized the currency and would not do so. . 83 Schiicking, II The ·Difficulties of Democracy in Germany," NS, XVI (April 2, 1921), 750 f. s, As opposed to the Centre. In two articles, "Political Confusion" by Robert Dell, who had been on the Fabian Executive before the war, and 208 Fabianism tn the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 "The Struggle in Europe" by C. M. Lloyd, cognizance was taken of two hypothetical plans taking shape for Europe embodying the Socialism of industrial democracy and the sociality of two ways of life, one agricultural and the other industriallabor-capital collaboration. Cf. NS, XXII (November 17, 1923), 171 tt, and ibid. (December 8, 1923),260 f. Neither hypothecation can be said to have been objectively criticized: Dell stood too far Left in his style of interpretation and Lloyd's attitude was wholly Fabian.

Dell overlooked the Church's early grasp of the nature of Communism and Lloyd excluded from his criteria the fundamental Christian societary philos ophy informing Belloc's thought. Both Lloyd and Dell outlined mere hypotheses in the manner in which Marx suggested that the wars of the eighteenth century were wars of Protestantism vs Catholicism, in his The Secret Diplomacy of the Eighteenth Century. However nebulous, the out line of each revealed the misconceptions of Fabians and social democrats concerning the Church. Dell interpreted the suppression of the Munich Putsch as "the defeat of the Pan-Germans by Separatists . . . the Vatican needs a substitute for the late Austrian Empire." He averred that a Ludendorf-Hitler-Kahr Protestant Empire under Bavarian hegemony, a Wittelsbach reigning, was opposed by a Catholic proposal for a bloc of nations from Poland to Italy under Austrian hegemony. This meant war because France would· form a counter-bloc with Slavonic States including Russia and excluding Poland. All this Dell envisioned as he reported that republicans in Berlin were rejoicing that the Republic had been saved, "Ludendorf and Hitler were really beaten by the Bavarian clericals ... in particular Cardinal Faulhaber." With more inconsistency, Dell opined that Stresemann should have used the emergency powers to prevent the return of the crown prince. It will appear in another connection that he excoriated Stresemann for using emergency powers against the so-called Labour government in Saxony. Now he advocated outright intervention of the Allies against Munich: It would not be the same thing as the" disastrous intervention in Russia"; it would not be dangerous-the" Fascists " would not fight and the Reichswehr was doubtful; non-interventionists were making to Poincare a "present of the Rhineland"; "It would probably be enough to send a few aeroplanes over Munich and inform the Bavarian Government that they would bomb the town if it did not capitulate within twenty-four hours."

Since Fabians injected the religious issue, it may be observed that Sidney Webb boasted that British Labour was not secularist nor anti-religious: "The British Labour Party is the only Labour or Socialist Party in Europe that is not secularist and anti-religious." Mrs. Hamilton quotes Webb in her Sidney and Beatric.e Webb, p. 31. We know that the Labour Party is not a Socialist Party but one devised by and infiltrated with Socialists determined to capture the labor movement. Not to be secularist is a double negative. Some Fabians like Doctor John Clifford tried to be Christians and Socialists. It was said in Clifford's obituary, NS, XXII (November 24, 1925), 208, Uses of ttprotection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 209 industrialism. The poverty under attack was not the kind which currently the Quakers were trying desperately to relieve in Germany and Russia 35 but the sort which made for the retention of antiquated textbooks-something Schiicking worried about.

Mr. C. M. Lloyd eited Belloe from the Saint Martin's Review where the latter, according to Lloyd, argued for a French hegem ony and for an agricultural and Catholic "bloc" in Europe opposing the industrial-financial "bloc" domi~ated by Berlin. Mr. Lloyd's criticism indicated his Fabian way of thinking and exemplified the ,guidance usually given to N S readers on selected topics. "What is Italy doing in this galley [with France, Spain, Poland, Rhine Valley, Upper Danube and parts of the Balkans] ? " Apparently he thought of Italy as an anti-clerical State and one unrelated to Southwest Europe, regardless of the social com plexion of its masses. Again:" the domination of this 'agricul tural, traditional culture' bloc or the attempt to put it into opera tion would not give us peace, but war." He did not state why he should write that this agricultural incentive, bound naturally to reduce the rate of increase of the number of the proletariat, should mean war; but, as Dell had said that the realization of the" Vati can" dream involving Austrian hegemony would mean war, Lloyd said that the favoring of an agricultural civilization and French he gemony meant war. 36 Belloc, of course, had adduced no concept of that he was" gentle" albeit a II fierce writer and speaker." The II wicked"

to, him were II Episcopalians and Romans." Cf.Clifford, Socialism,and the Teaching of Christ, Fabian Tract No. 78 (London, 1913). It was first printed in 1897. It is not the purpose to discuss it here nor to trace changes in Webb's thought. The religious attitudes of Wells, Wallas, and Bertrand Russell are well known. C. E. M. Joad who propounds II Common Sense Theology" is head of the Department of Philosophy of .Birkbeck College, University of London, since 1930. He is one of the II northern Fabians" according to Mrs. Cole. In general the Fabian attitude toward religion is characterized bya positive indifference which is like the II antitheism" of Auguste Comte. 85 Cf. Advertising pages in the NS, XXII, passim. Relief was begged for (White) Russian adults and German children. 86 On the score of secularism, incongruous as it may seem to be in a discussion of internationalism, it should' be noticed that in October of 1923, a pleasant correspondence took place between two Fabians, Mr. Ratcliffe and Mr. Standring, and the editor of the NSconcerning their preferences for II funerals without theology," and C. T. Gorham advised the latter, who 210 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 industrialized agriculture. To BeHoc, agriculture was a way of life, not business. Lloyd said Germany was an " entity" and one particularly at enmity with France. The BelIoc ideal which he scorned offered the hope of eliminating Franco-German enmity.

In the face of contemporaneous separatism, Mr. Lloyd impugned BeHoe's knowledge of Germany psychology. It must be observed that it is doubtful Belloc meant to advocate absolute political separation when he· advocated liberating agricultural civilizations from industrial domination. Disregarding the peasant culture which loomed so large in· BeHoc's mind, Lloyd stated that France was not an U agricultural civilisation" and that she aimed to develop her own and Germany's industrialism. He again made a .misrepresentation of the Belloc ideal with his overdrawn picture of "France leading the Catholic peasants of Europe against the Protestant Captains of Industry and Finance in Berlin." Lloyd showed himself incapable of metaphysical thought. His critici~m overlooked the main features of BeHoc's reasoning-the Benedic tine ideal which once created a culture in barbarian Europe by making a fusion of liturgical life with living on and by the land.

As we shall see in discussing the Fraser group, young Fabians '''ere seeking to do for modern society what the Church once did for Europe. Concluding, Lloyd wrote, " Neither do we accept the proposition that either F ranee or Germany must dominate Europe," and the rest of the paragraph insinuated that Belloc and France wanted civil war in Germany; it ended saying, "Every one knows ho"\v vital to us is the recovery of German mar kets.... " Lloyd continued, saying B'eHoc "blandly" asked for recognition of French machinations in the Little Entente and Poland. Turning to the League of Nations, he admitted the League's weakness and suggested strengthening it by the admis sion of Germany and Russia. He summarized: The antithesis between an agricultural traditional France and an industrial and financial Prussia is a false one. had to improvise on occasion, that there were available at the Rationalist Press Association two suitable manuals. See NS~ XXII (October 29, 1923), 44. Fabian secularism was patent and concrete. The Tories could not take a position or find a weapon against this monism save in a It red scare." It was with this brand of non-religion that English Socialists eyed the Centre.

Uses of it Protection."Part 1: Signaling the Continent 211 The alternatives are the rule of force and the rule of international law and international common sense.31 [Toward this end] this country must pursue its struggle with France. 38 To be as lacking in subtlety as Lloyd, it might be said he ad vocated war on France so England could run a synthesized or synchronized France and Germany. It is patent that Belloc's ideal of peace in an arrangement favorable to a traditional societary order was not acceptable to the Fabian Socialist who would polit icize all social orders, industrialize agriculture, and permeate the political organization of Europe to bend it in favor of a Labour axis. The picture of Fabianism taking a position in Germany which blamed France for Germany's troubles and overlooked the machinations of Communists so far as to encourage the fusion of Socialists and Communists under Moscow leadership, which detested the non-political Socialism of ILP and was inimical to the Centre (something both democratic and hierarchical) does not exonerate the British Social Democrats from blame for Germany's plight. But they were among the first to see America coming in, and a new note crept into Dell's writing. He began to sound an alarm that the German Republic was endangered 3D-he who had advocated "saving" Germany by letting Communists run the Socialists, misguided by his confusion of "medieval" with " fascist." 40 It may be asked how great was the influence of Schiicking and Dell. The ans\ver is found in the fact that they were the only and the constant correspondents employed by the New Statesman which was widely read in all liberal circles. Reader. reaction was quick on any given issue. There was no reader reaction against the reporting of the German scene save in an almost solitary instance-from Germany.

31 Whatever "international commonsense" may mean, it belongs in a dictionary. of terms like soviet equity, and sovereign equality. 38 NS, XXIII (November 17, 1923), pp. 171 f. Compare ibid. (Decem ber 8, 1923) 260 f. 89 Cf. R. Dell, "Anglo-German Relations, "NS, XXI (October 6, 1923), 731 f. 40 Cf. Dell's letter of May 10, 1924, in NS, XXII, p. 125.

212 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 C. DESIGN FOR " PARTNERSHIP" BY MASSINGHAM: WOOING THE LEFT BY DELL Between the titnes when Labour came into Opposition and when it formed a Ministry, capitalist America, which sought a debt settlement with the France which made large loans to the Little Entente and Poland but was too poor to pay her debts to America, was entering into the effort to bring order into Central Europe. Readers of the NS were made aware of the object of a Lloyd George errand to America. 41 It was to "press to an issue the plan of an impartial fact-finding commission on German Repara tions that \vas first proposed in America last December" (1922). Lloyd George had treated Mr. Hughes' New Haven speech em bodying the proposal for international investigation as " a positive American policy." Then, French occupation of the Ruhr had thrust into abeyance any concrete action. President Coolidge however, had encouraged the view unemphasized by his late pred41 NS, XXII (October 13, 1923), 2. Only on December 1, did the NS's Political Correspondent divulge that the Cabinet of Baldwin had coalesced on a "Protection" issue to forestall Lloyd George. Lord Amery had dis closed that a "transatlantic bird" had divulged what was to be Lloyd George's new "thunder" which Tories started by the Plymouth plunge.

But Senator LaFollette had toured Europe that summer and by October a chain of events began which led to Locarno. Colonel House announced America would come into a plan to set up a committee of experts on repara tions settlement if all parties would consent. Cf. N S, XXII (October 27, 1923), 66. This nod to Poincare meant a face-saving device for France. England reversed itself and asked Germany not to ask to come into the League and to cease resistance in the Ruhr. See, NS, XXI (October 6, 1923), 731 f. MacDonald had hitherto (cf. ibid.) expressed a complete understanding with Baldwin's Government on the first stand, i.e., urging German resistance. Lord D'Albernon dropped his own activities in which he had been using a committee of experts. of his own. German sentiment congealed about the Republic and against England but with some confidence in Labour. The stage was set. It is hard to conceive how MacDonald, who understood Baldwin when his note to France encouraged German resistance, could fail to understand when the exigencies of America's entering the picture changed all. Labour would have to go into power; France and Germany to go a little left. The Dawes Plan, the Commercial Treaty; then Locarno would follow. Locarno was early outlined by the NS, XXII (November 24, 1923), 201. Shaw claims to have outlined it in his The League of Natiofts, Fabian Tract 226, (London) 1929.

Uses of It Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 213 ecessor. There would be no world economic conference imme diately but American adherence to the Hughes' proposal was positive although it did not connote the assumption of initiative by the United States. It is impossible to understand the Fabian Socialist opposition to the activities of Lloyd George and his kind unless one sees the shaping up of hvo forces struggling for the capture of power. It is not well expressed to say this was the struggle of Communism versus .Fascism. These were twin ideolo gies conceived of Socialism by materialism in Europe, disputing primogeniture. The struggle which British Fabians, calling them selves Socialists, envisioned was one of Business against Labour. Capital would soon be coming in from American sources and German capital would be put to work, the best principles of industrial democracy must prevent the sinking back of labor to the level of a commodity. But Fabians held that only as a politi cized order could those who worked by brain and hand gain the potency to dictate the developmertt or evolution of industry in their own interests. This presupposed a servile or welfare state but not immediately a monolithic state. Fabian Socialism, except perhaps· in the thought of Shaw and Cole, did not foresee the State's withering away among free associations, nor envision a syndicalist utopia in the" orders" of Guildsmen. 42 All the Fabian literature bears out this description. Statism is the core of Fabian ism. Deviations within its margins of techniques, and its tenden tious philosophy remain subjects of study and dispute. It can be seen ,vorking in the attitudes of the N S on the apparent Baldwin,...

Poincare stalemate, the running commentary on Germany's plight and France's mischief, and in the hopes expressed for the outcome in Germany. That the means to ends to many of which no right thinking reader can dissent were properly chosen, may not always be assumed. Nor can the acceptance of their monism by one who assents to their ethos be presumed. Although the correspondents who kept the N S readers informed .2 The Communists did not differ on U industrial democracy" but on the tempo of the becoming of the servile and totalitarian state,' itself a stepping stone to anarchy-the statelessness of pristine innocence. They looked no further than U the Revolution "-the acceleration o£ the State's becoming all administrative, and disappearing. The question o£ the Party's abdication in favor of the syndicalistic and stateless society was not discussed.

214 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 as to German developments, Massingham 43 and Dell, differed in style, both interpreted events in the light of America's imminence and the" tendency'" toward international Socialism in the N S. Both are important because they: reveal the criteria of the Party attitude on tariffs and the meaning of "Protection." Together they represent the Fabian character on two positions, the social area which they disputed with ILP and the social area to left of that. " Wayfarer" saw in the new Stresemann Government a sort of Oliver Cromwell "cum-Parliament" 44 autocracy in which " Stinnes has played fair." With reparations rendered impossible and security gone (hatred of France" aglow'''), the Government which replaced Dr.Cuno had gained one advantage'; it served to "ward off a Communist revolution." There was beginning to be a feeling that the Stresemann Government might be the one to get Germany on her feet. The President, Ebert, was a Socialist and Socialists served in the Cabinet. The autocracy which had moneyed backing, and Parliament, could possibly render Germany amenable to England's economic partnership-one in which both Labour and Tories sought to break the grip of France. Massing ham, from whom we get the best statement on Labour's idea of tariffs, seemed more devoted to the English and German national interests than Dell, but he viewed possible separatism in Germany with some equanimity while blaming France for subsidizing revolt in the Palatinate and Ruhr and in the Balkans. 45 He revealed the fact that the Government was troubled by knowledge of a surplus 43 Wayfarer saw in the Stresemann Government a bourgeois settlement and expected no "man £1Unt" for "socialists." Cf. NS, XXII (November 17, 1923), 176. Wayfarer and Dell differed in viewpoint. Pease seemed to find a middle course between them. For example, he reviewed Henry Strobel (Finance Minister in the Prussian Revolutionary Government of 1918), Socialisation in Theory and Practice, in FN, XXXIII :11 (November, 1922). Strobel condemned· Communist methods of socializing industry in Russia and Hungary, and Pease, the Fabian historian (always nearer centre than left or right of it), remarked: "We may query the opinions of English touring· parties [Massingham?] and doubt the accuracy of press correspond ents [Dell?, Schiicking?] but we can hardly question the .;tatements of a German statesman writing for the German public."

But the editor of the NS followed Dell for the most part. 44 NS, XXII (October 20,1923),43 f. 45 NS, XXII (October 27, 1923), 75.

Uses of U Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 215 of steel which Germans might dump on England and for this problem's solution he offered the Fabian proposition: Since Trade was. not a "scrap of cut-throats" but " a mutual or cooperative enterprise," Germany's general production should be increased to absorb the steel surplus, as it could if developed. Russia, pal pably reviving, needed Western credit and goods. German pro duction restored \vould absorb more steel than the surplus left after French consumption and it was to "British interest" to enter into. " economic partnership" with Germany. It was plain that the credit to Russia would come from English bankers and the goods from German and English surpluses,46 created by planning, a word not yet in ordinary parlance but connoted by " economic partnership." To summarize, Massingham pointed out a Germany with which England might wOJ.·k in a free-trade axis, with a view to. employment, by increased production made possible by " part nership" which should not be burdened by commitments to the Dominions. England would be senior partner, of course. Agri cultural questions were entirely subservient to industrialism. Yet the ILP was agitating the agricultural question. But to speak of agriculture was to involve the politicians in Empire Preference schemes and warning had to be given that the truth of England's (~1acDonald-Baldwin) attitude toward Preference and Protec tion, which impinged upon self-interest and was contingent upon the" partnership" of Germany, must not be told lest it weaken the Imperial bond. So Labour must sloganize "Free Trade." 41 46 NS, XXII (October 29, 1923), 43 f. Nowhere is the system of produc tion for profit and scarcity for price-raising better contrasted with the tenets held by Socialists than here. "Capitalism" was indicted, deservedly.

But Socialism, in arraigning Capitalism, presumed to usurp all political factors and even the cultural character of a social unit. By working on masses ideologically and not on individuals ethically, it arrogated all human areas to itself and necessarily failed to be the religion it sought to replace. Its criticism produced a puritanical conscience which manifested a feeling of guilt in regard to possession of property. 47 Cf. "A London Diary/' NS, XXII (October 20, 1923), 43 f. Fabians did not in fact argue for Empire preference after this time. J. H. Thomas in his My Story (London; Hutchinson and Company, 1937), p. 205, expresses his view based on his Trade Union policy and backed by the brilliant Fabian economist, William Graham, that tariffs should be favored. He narrates the story of the advantage taken by Tories to embarrass Labour on this moot 216 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 H We are all imperialists because the Empire has disappeared."

was the N S ans\ver to Australia and New Zealand and H the maniacs" who asked revision of Bonar Law's pledge of no fiscal reform in this Parliament (1923).48 Only the fact that Labour held office at the time accounts for later N S .lip service to agri culture in reporting the ILP conference concerning which the NS emphasized "control of importation" and H world regulation." 49 We can see that the Socialist plan to work with Capital by credit rather than by tariffs represented the clearest cleavage between the Tories and themselves in the response each side made to hopes aroused by American interest. American interest involved accept ance of the Dawes Plan and this Plan could· be pressed upon Germany by a government which could garner some support of· H the left." The left -would cooperate, however grudgingly, with a government amenable to the ideal of production It for need" not for profit, which involved tariffs. l\1assingham's formula. on steel exemplified this. It is fairly clear that if Baldwin's political machine wanted the Dawes Plan only a Labo'ur Government could get it for them.

But if Massingham laid down the line on tariffs, Dell laid it down on politics. He was the Socialist H idealist" playing for support of a real Socialist regime-not a mere modus vivendi with It autocracy" howsoever Crom,vellian, or with Tory pacifica tion schemes, or with the Centre. In the same week that Lloyd George's departure was interpreted, Robert Dell 50 distinguished betvveen H Socialists and Fascists." point, especially where Labour's official policy and the Dominions' demand clashed. cr. ibid., pp. 208 £. 48 cr. NS, XXI, 725 £ and 728 £. 49 Cf. NS, XXIII (April 26, 1924), 54. MacDonald and Trevelyan (for Education) had made speeches at the ILP Conference. The ILP was still a power. M Dell was correspondent for the Manchester Guardian also, and well known in Geneva. Cf. his The Geneva Racket (London: Robert-Hale, Ltd., 1941). He greatly favored the Labour viewpoint and the Russian cause.

This book was published posthumously by American crypto-Socialists. Dell died in 1940. He had been President of the International Association of Journalists accredited to the League of Nations. Also, he had been expelled from France for disclosing peace negotiations between France and Austria in 1917 and had earlier been charged with treason for proposing to write a Uses of II Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 217 Now, along with the excoriation of Socialists by Communists in Germany came the false identification in opprobrium, of" .fas cists" and industrialists by Moscow-led Marxists. As if to in crease the urgency for greater power for" Labour" in Britain, Dell reported the resurrection, after three days fall, of Strese mann's Government which he considered as a breathing spell which could not last. Hitherto four, now three Socialists were included in the StresemannCabinet. He believed there was opposition to the Stresemann Cabinet from Herr Stinnes (Mas singham said Stinnes "played fair" (through the V olkespartei (Conservatives, according to Dell, who had put on a democratic cloak after the war). Dell was disgusted with what he considered the weakness of the Socialists in Germany. He especially deplored the fact that the parliamentary Socialists had little contact with the Socialist Party throughout the country, while the Socialists in Parliament refused support to Socialists in the Cabinet. He wrote that he saw some probability that Communists by means of the changed policy "under wise Russian influence" would form a united front with the Socialists; and he expressed satisfaction and the hope that since Labour could not get into power by constitu tional methods there would be "no senseless outcry in England"

when U Labour" became strong enough to act. To" conquer power" against the Trusts and deal with Reparations,51 a govern ment of the "Left" was best for Germany and that should be fO'rmed by the Communist-Socialist front which Dell named It Labour." Otherwise a government of "reaction" was H in evitable." This was Dell's message, borne out in all he wrote home for Fabians. Exception was never taken to any of his opinions by editors, contributors or letter-writers save .by an occasional German letter-writer. The correspondent from Germany contributed a great deal to book charging France with having started the World War. Cf. The Sunday Star, July 21, 1940, p. A-10, Washington, D. C. Earlier, he had been an ardent Francophile. To compare his reporting in the NS with that in the Manchester Guardian would be valuable but not· for present purposes. He also wrote for The Nation in New York. 51 NS, XXII (October 12, 1923), 6 f. On May 10, 1924, he confused U medieval" and fascist while defining U reaction."

218 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 the situation in which a subsequent British Labour Government could evoke some confidence in Left, even far-Left, circles. It is not the writer's intention to precipitate a ready-made opinion as to the attitude which the Fabians' informant assumed; but it may appear to the reader that the Fabians were getting (from the N S) and giving out the opinion of one of their own who stood in a special position in Germany. Dell saw rising from the field where the to,ver of the Centre had fallen, as he believed, three wraiths: Fascism, Socialism, and the ghost of the old Centre. He detested Fascism with its anti-Semitism and militarism but he sometimes confused with it rightist elements which' feared and detested Fascism as much as he did. He threw the weight of his opinion to the Left asking for a Socialist-Communist synthesis. Only after the Dawes Plan was about to be accepted when Labour wanted it, did Dell speak well of the Centre. 52 Then he showed the Centre as dignified, consistent,working only on its own terms with the . Nationalists 'who were even then, Dell said, aiming to destroy confidence abroad so that no loan to Germany would be forthcoming. Dell turned even more bitterly upon the Volkes partei accusing it of vacillation. If, as some publicists would have us believe, the Communist Party of Germany was then being used by Moscow to further Hitler's rise, Dell could not have known this since even the rank and file KPD did not.53 By October 20, Dell reported with scorn that Vorwarts and the Socialists in Parliament had "awakened" to the fact that the German Republic was" in great danger." 54 He interpreted state ments made in Vorwarts to fit in with his own conviction that 52 ct. NS, XXIII (June 7, 1924)~ 246 f.

53 Cf. Ossip K. Flechtheim, DieKPD in der Weimarer Republic (Offen bach: Bollwerk-Verlag K. Drott, 1948). It seems indisputable that (1) Communists were blind and stubborn in their attitude toward Socialists and in their failure to understand Germany; (2) some evidence supports the thesis that a Moscow-led action defeated the aims of the rest of the KPD; (3) a radical element favored the rise of a die-hard regime on purpose to glean the fruits of revolt against U reaction" for their radical ends; (4) certainly the manner of acting of the KPD, as Professor Ehrmann says, served "at least objectively" to foment the rise of Hitler. Cf. review by H. W. Ehrmann in The American Political Science Review, XLIII (April, 1949)~ 374 f. 5·4 Dell's diction smacks of KPP semantics, e.g., "army of reaction!"

Uses of it Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 219 a "military dictatorship. existed." It was U exercised by Doctor Gessler, Democrat and friend of Ehrhardt." As Ehrhardt was the leader of a rabble band of U condottieri," Dell seemed to seek to discredit Gessler by association and weaken Stresemann by stressing sentiments which the Jatter deemed it inappropriate to express at the time. Dell interpreted the situation by over emphasizing what Vorwarts stated as warning or fear: The Socialists in the Reichstag had gone along with Stresemann and Gessler. (Those in the Government were helpless to prevent those outside it from joining with Communists, as had been done in Saxony.) Gessler was head of the Reichswehr, "the army of reaction." 55 Socialist cooperation had been given, said Dell, with the understanding that the Government would subsequently use its powers against the "military dictatorship" in Bavaria (where, in Dell's judgment, Munich was the ripest place for a Socialist-Com munist coalescence). Dell designated Chancellor Stresemann as the partner of Stinnes, one popularly believed to have profiteered out of the inflation, and both thought to be in sympathy with the Monarchist Party-monarchist and militarist, for General von Seeckt was" hand in glove with Doctor von Kahr," the Bavarian "dictator."-" The Fascist organizations know where to go for their arms when the Day arrives," Dell wrote in October 1923.

He was quite unfair to Stresemann and Stinnes. He opined, in self-contradiction, that Stresemann played the counterpart of Bonar Law in the stand he took on the Ruhr question. Upon what objective basis opinion formed from data which Dell supplied could be .grounded, it is hard to see. His" Labour front " was nebulous. He stated that the Reich was. partial to (the now re55 Actually· Gessler was trying to -keep this army from· direct reaction. Cf. Robert Dell, "The Reactionary Offensive in Germany," NS, XXII (October 20, 1923), 39 f. He casts angry aspersion on Vorwiirts and the parliamentary Socialists. He favored the' Saxony "Labour-and-Socialist" government which he knew was Moscow-:-led and he was wrathy with the Reich for countenancing the military government set up in Bavaria. .This investigator has the permission of Professor David Baumgardt, formerly Professor of Ethics, University of Berlin, to relate that at that time Gessler sought his advice o~ ~ the ethics of his peculiar position. Gessler was trying to keep things fluid and to keep. his· hand in to prevent the Reichswehr from going Nazi.

220 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 actionary) Bavaria and was supporting "White Terror" 56 in Saxony which, he said, was more loyal than the Reich, to the republic, and where a Communist-S9cialist coalescence had set up a "Labour'" government. He wrote that cooperation of Socialists in the Reich Cabinet was proving" one of the greatest obstacles to a general united front." In Saxony, for example, Socialists and Communists united might choose secession; so workmen in Bavaria and the Reich must save the Republic. There existed in the Reich, Dell thought, a " veiled" Kapp putsch. The" Fascists" had arms; the workmen none. Reichswehr officers were "re actionary" and counted, accurately, on the loyalty of their men. Expecting the army to make a union with the Fascist organiza tions, Dell quoted a Saxon Government statement, "German Capitalism had begun an offensive against the workmen." He, 56 This notion of H White Terror," a term reminiscent of France after. the Restoration as well as of Ukranian ferocity aroused by the Red Terror in Russia, was applied by NS writers to the civil controls inaugurated by leaders who had to cope with countries once under Communist domination-a prob lem which is usually not presented to imagination. Fabian feeling came out in a review of Oscar Jaszi's Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary, which was graced by an introduction of R. W. Seton-Watson. Cf. NS, XXIII (June 7, 1924), 262. The Fabian reviewer said Bela Kun's mistake had been that he did not handle the peasants as Lenin dit!. There was no encouragement for Horthy's civil order, termed "old, narrow, class-rule [d] "; basing itself on ignorance and s,ervitude of peasants, hence, na tionalistic, chauvinistic, corrupt. The Fabian reviewer averred that atrocities listed by J aszi were undocumented.. He concluded that if the Reds had been cruel and ignorant, the Whites had been cold and refined, masquerading as "Gentlemen." The writer urged that loans be not withheld but. that nothing be done by any government to "thwart the efforts of the Hungarian demo crats as they have thwarted them in the past." The NS explicitly advised editorially against the Government's making a loan to the Roumanian King and Queen (they had come to England to plead for one), lest it be used to support reaction and postpone the rising of "democratic" forces. The N S took the same attitude toward giving arms to prevent occupation of Bessarabia, saying it did not believe Trotsky had said Bessarabia was the first step to Constantinople. (NS, XIII, pp. 219 and 242.)-ln the same way in 1950, "progressives" of ADA convictior~ advise against the United States' supporting" decadent governments" (like Syngman Rhee's republic) and advocate a United States Titoism (formerly Trotskyism) to put on a program in the rescued countries of "dynamic democracy" which means politicized democratic units-Socialism, of course. Cf. speech of Senator Wayne Morse in the Congressional Record of July 10, 1950, pp. 9936 f.

Uses of U Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 221 himself, said he believed there was an inexplicable lockout in progress; and he insinuated that some explanation might be found in the fact that inflation made some manufacturers wealthy. There had been a sudden and to Dell a mysterious rise of gold prices which seemed " part of the manoeuvre." He suggested that such procedures were calculated deliberately to goad Labour into revolt in order to crush it. It is clear from this reporter's methods that he was not informed of the government's real nature or purpose, and that he hoped to obtain better knowledge of its financial resources by public guessing. He was in touch, no doubt, with some one in Communist leadership. He was positively one of the Labour-minded persons willing to take common action, if not to hold common ideas with Communists. Whether Fabians realized it or not, while their correspondent pressed for a Labour front, even one Communist-created, in Germany, the KPD, while officially breathing slaughter upon Socialists and the "Social Fascists," at the national level, either on account of blindness or because of the secret intent of leaders who would know how to use revolt against "reaction," was serving to propel the rise of Hitler. 57 The comtTIunisticconfigurations in Dell's thought are silhouetted plainly in the light of his \vrath with the" Ebert-Stresemann-Gess ler Triumvirate," their" coup d'etat" in Saxony (it was legal), the" cowardice, self-seeking and corruption" of the drifting rank and file of the Socialists, who, he said, were deserting and betray51 Guenther Rheinhardt, "Hitler's Prewar Red Allies," in Plain Talk, IV (February, 1950), 48 ft, goes much further than Ehrmann, to say that Flechtheim's documentation proves that Moscow used KPD to foment Hitler's rise. H. Remmele declared" when the Fascists will be in power the United front of the proletariat will come into existence and will sweep away everything." (Dell, and those he might persuade would be ready in the CI unitedfront.") Reinhardt says Flechtheim shows that Moscow used the immoral Thaelmann in despite of the KPD's Central (national) Committee, to carry out orders inimical to the interests of KPD: 1) the Swastika burgeoned beside the· Sickle and Hammer; 2) riots, in 1921 and 1923, ordered by Moscow, weakened the KPD and strengthened Hitler. These were the days of Ruth (Eisler) Fischer's disillusionment. She is still a Social Demo crat.

A national cabal has been known to garner resources for patriot ends from financial" corrpution" created by subversives.) 222 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 ing the workingmen, as he interpreted the fact that Socialists in the government had obtained cooperation of Socialists in the Saxon Landtag to repress the" Labour" government. Dell was mystified by the apparent acquiescence of the Allied Military Con trol with illegal rearming, particularly in Munich. This was only one year after Mussolini's "March on Rome" and already in Communist parlance the term Fascist bore a stigma. Dell had adopted the custom of dubbing every anti-Communist group as Fascist 58 while in the Communist manner he reviled Socialists in the Government, dividing them from Socialists in the country. Reasoning such as Dell expressed could only contribute to the rise of Hitler by weakening the rational support at home and abroad of the Stresemann Government which had to lean upon Gessler's help in the hope of avoiding collapse. The attrition caused by Socialist-Communist coups, for which Dell sought approval was a constant threat to stability.59 He called for outright allied inter58 The graph of the Fabian readers' growth in knowledge about Mussolini is traceable in the pages of the NS for 1922 and 1923, passim: He was an old Socialist, but Socialist no longer. Italian Socialism was a spent force.

He should control the hoodlums among the Fascists (the N S got· the idea of "banding together" out of fasces but not the historical concept of authority and order by law which the fasces represented to Il Duce). Respect was due the Italy he had recreated. He had obliterated Trade Union lines (they were anti-Socialist but also "anti-political and syn dicalist") and he had politicized the cooperatives. Cf. NS, XXI (August 11, 1923), 510. His proportional representation plan worked all too well toward personal dictatorship. for the head of the Party. But J. M. H., reviewing the Labour Publishing Company's publication of Odin Por, Fascism, told NS readers the Turin Constitution was the" work of a radical idealist" (D'Annunzio); that nationalism was inherently revolutionary in Italy, that the Social-Communists' mistake when they seized the factories in 1923 consisted in not beginning on the agricultural, cooperative-Soviet level; and they offered "no alternative State," while Fascists "seized the State." The reviewer told Fabians that Por was over-optimistic in finding that the character of Fascism outlined in A. E.'s The National B.eing was "econoinic democracy" based on "work, production and the cooperation of the classes as well as on national feeling"; but J. M. H. did not say why he thought A. E. was wrong. Cf. "'Recent Italian History," NS, XXI (Septem 1, 1923), 598.

59 Fabian Robert Dell's anger with the Reich and" its socialist president," Ebert, for putting down the" Socialist-Communist" governments in Thu ringia, for example, was boundless. He saw the objectives of the Reich Uses of (( Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 223 vention on legalistic grounds, that is, to punish violation of the Treaty.GO He believed-and he was an authority on French Government only as being for" the Interests" and wrote that the Thuringian and other possible Socialist governments, Saxony, for example, asked an incoming Labour Government in England to "make' it a condition of any help to Germany" that equality be accorded Socialist governments. Cf. Robert Dell, "In Occupied Thuringia," NS~ XXII (January 5, 1924), 359f. [It was unfortunate indeed that certain genuine reforms such as Loeb's State Bank in Thuringia (developing the State by loans, and importing gold) and the Greil school text reforms· should have to perish in the expunging of Communism by the Reich; and that a condition of inequitable taxation re sulted in the social contrasts of spending orgies in cafes with hunger in workingmen's homes.] Dell believed at this time that Germans were betrayed by their own leaders and industrialists. Cf. ibid.~ p. 389. In his "The Father of the Schieber," NS~ XXII (February 23, 1924), 564, Dell called Herr Haverstein, President of the Reichbank, the" Father of the Schieber."

He snarled, "make the harpies [government subsidized industrialists who offered passive resistance in the Ruhr] disgorge!" Dell advocated "gold value" for money and taxes. He admired Loeb in Thuringia and excoriated Haverstein. Both were bankers aiding their governments; but Loeb's was "Labour" and Haverstein's was the Reich. The expedient, Communist guided separatism had his approval. In other words, he bespoke Fabian support for a Socialist,' Labour and Communist-aided front against the party of republican authority, weighting his argument with the recitation of the .financial sins of that authority's supporters. This undermining of authority by the technique of disclosing sins of government officials in order to be in a position to come forward with a program for" social democracy" is one of the penalties of having a political system in which the basis of political authority is ill-defined. An attitude such as Dell fostered in NS readers contributed something in the not-too-Iong run to the. collapse of. the Weimar Republic. It is safe to say, if one will read the biographies of Snowden and Henderson, that Labour's support of the Stresemann, as later the Bruning Ministry, was half-hearted and limited to what would conduce to· converting Germany into a "social democracy." Fabians were against anti-State republicanism save as transition. No voice was raised to show the quandary of the Reich: the French in the Ruhr, the Socialist educa tional demands encouraging separatism in the Palatinate, the Communist-led "Labour" governments in Thuringia and Saxony, the Hitler element germinating in Bavaria and the demand for" reparations" which,coupled with the incubus in the ROOr which must be purged by drastic measures, inspired the device of inflation by printing press money. (Supra, note 57.) 6'0 Dell, "Political Confusion," NS~ XXII (November 17, 1923), 171 fi.

Re was producing much confusion in NS readers. Later, after an article by the Fabian, Thomson, appeared in the New York Nation~ the German "Labour" idealists conceived the idea that a Labour-governed England 224 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 affairs 61-that the French Government wished " to come to terms with the German capitalists," so there was scant possibility that the ultimatum he proposed demanding the immediate disarmament of Bavaria and the restoration of Parliamentary Government in Saxony would be accepted. The Saxon Government had been " called upon. to resign" by the Reich Cabinet but, as Dell chose to interpret it, the Cabinet was" turned out by force" and, "I understand," 62 he said, "Dr. Stresemann's first idea was to order . . . arrest [of the Saxon Cabinet] . . . for high treason . . . [and] Ebert was quite willing." This" I understand" indicates readers were offered not news but rumor. The more " reactionary" Stresemann might be made to appear, the sharper the revolt in sentiment against him, and the larger the recruitment for Social Democracy.

We have studied the picture of Gennany's political plight in some detail in order to know what Fabians were learning as they guided the Labour Party in Britain toward power. Under the slogan of " Protection" versus "Free Trade," they looked for means to produce a Russo-German trade axis with an English fulcrum. They made no objection to Dell's correspondence, editorially or by letters. This kind of discussion of the German problem signalled sympathy to the Left, at home and abroad. The fact is that at that time Stresemann and D'Abernon were working out the plans which led to the Dawes Plan, the Commercial Treaty, and Locarno. While Stresemann was pictured as far Right, he actually was gathering the forces of the Left to his assistance, as Lord D'Aber non revealed in his diaries. This is discussed and documented in the section, "Broad Diplomacy." Dell's manifest sympathy would ship them arms. A letter from one Robert Eisler of Feldafing, Bavaria, to the NS, XXII (February 16, 1924), 540, indicates this belief but the editor replied that Thomson's article had been misunderstood; there was no suggestion among British Socialists of a Franco-German war with England on Germany's side. The freedom to purchase arms did not mean the Labour government would send arms. One recalls, however, that the NS opinion on airplane armament was that enough should be maintained to bargain with France.

81 Dell, My Second Country (Prance) (London: John Lane Company, 1920). 82 This "I understand" was characteristic of non-factual or non-documen tal reporting.

Uses of it Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 225 with Socialist-Communist or "Labour-front" Saxony and Thuringia was not consonant with the ostensible objection to "separatism" of which France was the abettor in the Rhineland and Palatinate,63 although it was consonant with the labour-Iefttoward-Communist thinking, because the " re-achieving" of unity would come under their" Socialism." Even though Stresemann had the collaboration of the Centre, the support of the army, and the confidence of the' Socialists. in the Government, he was .not to be allowed to forget that International Socialism had a special plan for a German commonwealth. "A new and greater Bismarck will, when the time comes, re~achieve [sic] the unity of the GerU1an people without one-tenth of the difficulties which the Iron Chancellor had to face." 64 Clifford Sharp submitted H The Crusade of Suicide" in the same issue.65 Useless except as a piece of destructive criticism, it nevertheless indicated the preparation of minds to support a bloc des gauches. Sharp associated himself with General Smuts in listing the seven sins of France: Assuming the hegemony of Europe, substituting her own plan for Versailles, subverting the authority and· influence of Britain, rousing the vengeance motive in Germany, making the neutral and Anglo-Saxon world pro German. There would be no war; no one wanted to fight. France had destroyed any possibility of Reparations; France would not pay her debt, so Britain could not pay America.

Just as the editorial policy of the NS adopted Dell's view on Germany, but spoke in a less emotional tone, so it followed Clifford Sharp's views on France, especially the opinion that she subsidized militarism in Germany. Later the editor contributed the informa tion that America, like a sleeping dog, had begun to grow1.66 There might be some pressure upon M. Poincare-in order, it seemed, to collect the debt. C. M. Lloyd wrote H The World, the Franc and the Devil" in November, 1923,'67 urging that the nation 83 NS, XXII (October 27, 1923), 65. "Ibid. 85 Clifford Sharp, "The Crusade of Suicide," NS, XXII (October 27, 1923), 68. 88 Ibid. 87 C. M. Lloyd, "The World, the Franc and the Devil:' NS, XXII (November 3,1923), 100.

226 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 take control of gold in order to control France and speaking hope fully of the possibility that America might put pressure upon the French electorate and so curb Poincare's mischief. When Lloyd wrote this the franc had been _falling for fifteen months. This gave French goods a price edge over English exports. Anglo French economic relations gave pause, no doubt, to the English political Socialists whose plan involved selling steel made in Ger many to France. For this the triumph of the' Left was needed, and toward that the fall of the franc was contributory. Without rebuttal, the proposal of outright intervention, or at least of accept ance of a Communist-Socialist coup in Germany, was allowed to stand as stated. Freedom of expression of the Dell opinion and the absence of outcry against it was at least a comfort to the Left which, upon Labour's accession to power in Britain, lent itself guardedly to the Stresemann Government long enough to push through the Dawes Plan, which thawed the congealed economic current of Europe.

D. AMERICA COMING IN: FRANCE TO BE CURBED: "CREDIT" Henceforth political configurations would be shaped by fiscal policy. The election challenge, " Protection," was quickly under stood: France must be curbed and a Conservative Baldwin could not do it. Without credit to the -Foreign Office, NS informed its readers that Belgium was coming over under London leadership asserting some independence of France. Italy, too, in all disputes, was to be counted upon to throw in its weight with Britain. It had been reported previously 68 that Lloyd George in Chicago had informed Americans that Germany had made some substantial payments, that Americans must save Germany and carry out the Hughes proposal. It is fairly evident from the sequel that Mr. Lloyd George had learned some of the Republicans' views on pro tection while in America and was preparing to repeat one of his great political feats of carrying both issues in his tentative man date: that is, he was prepared to fight for a " free trade" slogan and adjust the electorate to some protection in the face of the 68 NS, XXII (October 27, 1923), 65 f.

Uses of it Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 227 problem of the international debt.69 The Liberal Party might thus have embodied in itself the best in Tory and in Labour prin ciples. Yet the differences were not only those of· party; for Socialists in the Labour Party the" spirit" was different. It was a creed. The" spirit," for Fabian Socialists meant a socio economic drive beyond the definition of politics, and it was freighted with what has been called the "destructionism" of Progressives. 70 Economic discussions in the N S indicate that Fabians followed Reginald McKenna and John Maynard Keynes, and for the time being, the Federation of British Industries. The Fabian-Labour politicians had evolved but few fiscal ideas of their own. "De flation," they held, had been "overdone." 71 "Securing stability by intelligent control of credif" was better, the NS thought, than cutting, costs of production (wages)· and trying to undersell rivals.

Governmental order abroad would help create demand.72 Bank credit must be accompanied by an increased volume of produc tion 73 otherwise it was something mischievous and anti-social. This was said in agreement with Sir Eric Geddes, Keynes, Mc Kenna, and SIr Francis Goodenough, President of the Gas Light and Coke Company of London. But these men meant it to apply on the domestic front and the Fabians applied it to their German Russian axis. Readers were taught that" the Bank of England has in its power to expand or contract credit at will." An economic authority commanded the" weapon" of deflation, the Bank Rate. The N S disagreed with the view of Sir Felix Schuster that the gold value of the pound should be raised to its prewar parity with the dollar. It preferred a suggestion to reduce the Bank Rate. 69 Wayfarer, "London Diary," NS, XXII (October 20, 1923),43. 70 Cf. Ludwig von Mises,·" Benjamin M. Anderson Challenges the Philos ophy of the Pseudo-Progressives," in Plain Talk, IV (February, 1950), 51-58. Professor Mises links the Keynesians with the Marxists as destruc tionists and says of Anderson's work, "What is needed is a frontal attack upon the whole web of Marxian, Veblenian,and Keynesian fallacies. As long as the syllogisms of these· pseudo-philosophies retain their undeserved prestige, .the average intellectual will go on blaming capitalism for all the disastrous effects of anti-capitalist schemes and devic~s," p. 55.

'11 NS, XXII (November 3,1923),102. 72 NS, XXII (October 27, 1923), 66. 13 NS, XXII (November 3, 1923), 102.

228 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 This would bring a quick and ugly deflation; but once this spasm had passed, gold would flow in and trade revive. But, it was conceded, gradual deflation seemed to be the country's official policy. Although far less space was given to fiscal problems than to foreign political problems, it is clear enough that Fabians asked for inflation to raise prices. The new economics of the Royal Society was beginning to be publicized. C. M. H. Lloyd wrote " Stabilizing Stagnation," 14 wherein he endorsed the I(eynes-McKenna proposal for expanding credit and disregarding dollar value. He advocated" giving statutory recog nition to the present gold value" of currency, and reducing the Bank Rate to two percent. He noted with approval that America had "checked the expansion of credit twenty percent above the lowest level touched in the slump." He concluded that inflation "vas necessary to relieve unemployment, having said" Tariffs were not in all . . . circumstances a device of the Evii One" and Labour would not stump the country with the" sole equipment of a Free Trade Trombone." 15 Fabians hardly foresaw that they ,vould be in authority and per haps in the position to regulate the Bank Rate in the near future.

The pressure .for credit expansion and some inflation was directed toward banks. A touch of tariff could be tolerated. . Who cares about Free Trade or Protection? Either we know nothing about these things or else·we know that in neither camp can we hope to find salvation from our present discontents. . . . We are in favor of Free Trade because Great Britain happens to be a Free Trade coun try. If it were a Protectionist country, we should sup port Protection. . . . Unemployment [the real issue] . . . [is] a natural and inevitable feature of the II cap italist " organisation of industry. So wrote Mr. Clifford Shdrp,16 the Fabian editor of the NS, on the eve of election. On the domestic side, Fabians took a popular tack in their sails. In their recommendations for procuring full 14 C. M. Lloyd, " Stabilizing Stagnation," NS, XXII (November 3, 1923), 101. 15 Ibid., p. 98. 16 NS, XXII (November 10, 1923), 132 f.

Uses of t( Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 229 employment, not in their attitude on tariffs, lay the reason for their internationalist attitudes. Credit for English business, credit for Russia and de jure recognition, was the NS's plea; although there was little said of German credit and no such close analysis of Russian affairs as of the German. Let the City as well as the Bank of England give the necessary credit to Russia which was now socially normal, and was maintaining, it was said, a healthy currency.71 H Free Trade" where a Labour Government could manage both British and German production, curbing France, was best for the Russian British-German trade axis. A modicum of protection should have to be allowed to manage France. There was no indication in the N S that it suspected that the Government had taken its official position on protection swayed by the opinion that protection would save British industry from French competition, competition which the N S writers habitually deplored. The latter surmised that Lloyd George had acquired a notion of tariff reform but they made no prognostication of what the Tory long view might be.

Eventual defeat of Labour and Fabian inte.rnationalism was to bring ,about a steady policy of protective tariffs following the Republican policy in America, designed to reduce the power of France on the Continent in favor of British supremacy. It is strange that at this time the N S believed that " isolation," in effect, was disappearing in America. It was observed that the \Vest was making itself felt. Coolidge in the White House 18 was en dorsing Hughes' Ne,v Haven speech and La Follette was being converted from isolationism; but Reed Smoot of Utah was becoming vocal, and California's Johnson and Borah were press ing for payment of debts by France. Interpretation shows that English and American tariffs had the disciplining of France for objective, an objective the Fabians shared. " Coolidge, Congress, and Monroe" appeared over the signature of Fabian S. K. Ratcliffe.19 "Western Progressives" or " radi cals "had "invaded Congress" in force" against Eastern party 71 NS, XXII (November 24, 1923), 198.

78 NS, XXII (October 27, 1923), 65 f. '19 S. K. Ratcliffe, "Coolidge, Congress, and Monroe," NS, XXII (Decem ber 8, 1923),261. Ratcliffe was a frequent visitor to America.

230 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 machine bosses and Wall Street." They were not isolationists, would recognize Russia and would favor government credit to support shipping of grains. "America is coming in," but only economically, Ratcliffe inferred. The United States was opposed to alliances (Ratcliffe attributed this to the Monroe Doctrine) and American power was not to be committed to unknown con tingencies. 'Mr. Hughes' words were interpreted by Ratcliffe, differing unemphati'cally with the editor, to mean " isolation" was to continue. The question was how far America would go toward social democracy in Germany and whether or not she would move solely toward debt settlement. In any case, there had to be a government having authority in Germany. The" dial tone," to use an anachronism, of the "voice of socialism in Germany" changed its pitch. Meantime, A. E. Davies, Fabian writer of "The City" in the NS, was reporting with a noticeable new verve his visit to Los Angeles, where "Southern California exudes oil," and where the Shell Royal-Dutch combine had successfully invaded, he rejoiced to report, the Standard Oil country. He caught the optimism of the outrageous land boom and said he believed the population increase would absorb the inflation created by exces sive credit. Los Angeles bankers told him the Ba1four settlement of the United States-British debt was "a shocking error": It should have been tied in with France's debt-something which must now be brought to a head. The suggestion that theW estern Croesus was· the hope of the "unhappy Continent" of Europe was not difficult to detect in Davies' correspondence. so Again, " credit" not "protection versus free trade" was the Fabian answer to the fiscal problem. "Credit" could be government controlled in the long view. "Protection" favored industrialists' independence.

Non-revolutionary or gradualist, penetrative or revisionist, as these British Socialists may be called, they nevertheless contrib uted to the evolving of " the new order," by intellectual agitation "education." No surcease from turmoil of ideas was allowed. Nevertheless, although they were not '~violent revolutionists," they counted upon the natural attritions due to constant criticism 80 A. E. Davies, "The City," NS"XXII (December 8, 1923),284.

Uses of U Protection."Part 1: Signaling the Continent 231 to begin to wear down a civilization, in the interest of their pro fessed Socialism. Waters wearing away the soil irrigate, for a time, the riparian fields. We see, therefore, that on the points of fiscal policy and inter nationalism the Labour Party was given or endowed with an ideological formation profoundly different from the Conservatives in objectives and from the Liberals· in definitions. Capitalistic nomenclature underwent redefining. Principles of "tariff" and "foreign .relations,'" which Tories honored, became obsolete, "British interest" lost its isolation and " credit" and " coopera tion" replaced raisons-d'etat. On one side, British· hegemony was directly sought as the fulcrum of an axis for trade, because of British Labour's interest in a " new order" ; Industrial Democ racy, for all the world, at last. Beowulf would again reduce the miasma; this time, of " decadent" Capitalism. 81 The. election took place December 6, 1923. England was not sure then what sort of a Government was in. No party had a clear majority. Only the Fabians were sure and ready. As a result of the election, on the domestic side a " Socialist Govern ment" was said to have been elected by people who voted for a Labour Party which, spearheaded by Fabianism, had forsworn its prime Socialist characteristics, leaving these characteristics sequestered in the Annual Labour Conference Report. Many men, and more women voted Labour, to find they had elected Socialism. They had chosen from a program offering tariffs or no tariffs, and they found they had elected an international mandate.

Webb credited MacDonald with having been the first to recog-' 81 To follow Mr. John Parker, M.P., and president of the Fabian Society in 1948-1949 when he writes in his Labour on the March (Penguin Books, Harmsworth, Middlesex, England and 245 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1947), that "The Old Fabian Society which had been particularly active in the field of ideas in the period immediately before 1914 did not recover its intellectual leadership after the first World War," p. 24, is to be misled. Mr. Parker was quite young in the 1920's and no doubt takes his history of the Society from the founder, E. R. Pease, who ends his account with 1914 and makes some addenda in the 1924 edition. The Society was in a period of very active maturity in the 1920's. No study of Fabianism in the fourth decade of the twentieth century will be understood without the story of how the pattern was laid in 1923-1924.

232 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 nize the results of the election.82 Labour would be obliged to assume the burden of Government, leaning upon Liberal support; or, as Webb wrote to the editor of the N 5,83 subside into im potent criticism. The Tories indeed had won a postponed victory; for already threats of a new dissolution were heard; the sug gestion was abroad that should Baldwin ask for a dissolution, the King might refuse and-it was now said-send for a favorite. The early plan for Labour Party procedure was Fabian in spired. MacDonald, whose Fabian amanuensis was Herbert Morrison,84 invited to l\fr. \Vebb's Grosvenor Street house those who together mapped out the policy of the· Party according to which the Party would not refuse to take office but would procure a vote of nonconfidence after the Speech from the Throne, thus avoiding the necessity of inaugurating the new Government with an out-and-out Socialist statement, as advocated by the ILP.

Webb was joined in this meeting by Fabians and sometime asso ciates Snowden, Clynes,85 Henderson, and Thomas, and the non82 Hamilton, op. cit., p. 235. She does not say how she learned this. 88 Letter to the editor from Sidney Webb, NS, XXII (December 15, 1923), 301. 8~ Hamilton, op. cit., p. 200. Fabian Herbert Morrison worked very closely with MacDonald 1) when the latter, at Will Crooks' behest, sought the old Labour politician's seat in 1921, and 2) when MacDonald, knowing the Continental situation, drew ILP away from its "sentimental" (Mrs. Hamilton's word) attraction toward "the Soviets." (To write "Soviet" today would have a different meaning.) Kirkwood, op. cit., p. 224, and other places, shows how little the present-day" soviet" notion was effective in Clydeside. Mrs. Hamilton's opinion that the ILP of Clydeside was com mitted "to a policy aggressive in its emphasis on the class struggle and contemptuous indifference to international issues, except where Soviet Russia was concerned" (Hamilton, op. cit., p. 231) reveals the devoted Henderson follower's viewpoint but is contradicted by everything in Kirkwood's My Life of Revolt, as well as by the review of Cole's writings discussed infra in another connection. The principal localism and professionalism im bedded in Guild Socialism to be found in this group constituted an obstacle to a world-wide movement to bring Labour into power. It appeared to Fabians as the nearest thing to the recalcitrant and splintered Socialist groupings of the Continent which British Socialists had to contend with in international conferences in pursuit of their designs· to evolve from interna tional Labour Socialism, political power. They vilified and disparaged it.

85 Cf. His Lecture of November 3, 1922, Mrs. Webb, chairman, FN, 1921-1924,J\ppendix.

Uses of tI Protection." Part 1: Signaling the Continent 233 Fabian MacDonald,86 whose daughter, Ishbel, was a Fabian, soon to be the first lady of No. 10 Downing Street. It was characteristic Fabian strategy that on creating the Minis try they decided to maintain the usual panoply and customary uni forms. Henderson would have preferred not thus to demonstrate H continuity" with the past but he had a more important fight on his hands, the ILP demand for a Labour Government's King's Speech, emphatically Socialist. The less to alarm the Tory feeling of England, the more Fabians must discipline the Scottish left. Those who stood on their principles and hoped that the advent of Socialism was to be marked by a breach with the past were dis appointed. Their disappointed attitude was termed H sentimental ism." 81 So, with the usual British pageantry, the Socialist Gov ernment merely shifted into office on a vote of nonconfidence in a Tory Speech from the Throne. They were destined to be re markable for" constitutionalism."

A certain amount of concern for the national interest can be credited to both sides. To Tory interest in the general good might be attributed the tranquillity with which the Government changed hands; for Baldwin might have resigned immediately and saved himself humiliation but to have done so would have caused con fusion, or " Chamberlinite inanities." 88 Labour's gradualness and 86 Fabian mistrust of MacDonald probably stemmed from the knowledge that he was capable of making peace with a reaction farther on the Right than Webb. Again, MacDonald was currently incurring the enmity of Wheatley. Wheatley's friendship was cultivated by the Fabian Society. He died in 1930, unattached, detested by Mrs. Hamilton the biographer of the Webbs, Henderson, and MacDonald. On November 19, 1924 (cf. FN, XXXVI, January, 1925), he had lectured to them, for example on "The Difficulties of Capitalism," when Mrs. Webb presided. He was a leader of the Clyde~iders whose interest in revision and repudiation of reparations and debts, sprang from a particular reason in Clydeside industry. Mrs.

Webb introduced him as an "administrative Socialist," no longer to be thought a "Red Revolutionary." But in his ensuing lecture, he said he was "more of a revolutionary than ever" but despaired of achieving economic welfare through the masses: Only through persuading capitalists to support nationalization should the revolution be brought about. 81 Hamilton, OPt cit., p. 236. It is interesting,and not unimportant, that to adhere to a principle in the face for a demand for an utilitarian practice in expediency is by Marxists called " sentimental." 88 Wayfarer, "London· Diary," NS, XXII (December 15, 1923),300. The 234 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 indefiniteness prevented a (" Red") Socialist scare from ma terializing in a great flight of capital from the country.S9 It is im portant to emphasize a matter easily overlooked but very important in the interpretation which this study puts upon the data: There was an accord between the Conservative and the Labour Parties.

As late as November 10, 1923, Massingham used the exact words, cc unspoken entente with Opposition." 90 and again the editor on December 1, 1923, exposed the fact that Conservatives needed better spokesmen for "Protection" than they had, that Labour had no objection to Mr. Baldwin who could do far better than Lloyd George with Poincare; but Baldwin's only fault was, he could not make Europe pay attention. 91 Mr. Davies' weekly column, "The City," reported a slight break in the stock market, and an early rally. But to the self-interest or patriotism of neither Party is the quietness of the transition attributable. TheUnited States of America was about to accept responsibility for the guid ance of economic recovery in Europe. 92 Furthermore, no one was NS's Political Correspondent believed Chamberlain wrote the Baldwin Plymouth Speech. See,-NS, XXII (November 3,1923), 100. 89 In the debacle of 1931, the flight of gold was a tragic contributing factor. Cf. Sidney Webb, What Happened in 1931: A Record, Fabian Tract No. 237 (London: Fabian Society, 1932).