The Labor enquirer., 1885-04-11

Arabs amid the jubilation of the press
when-oh horror l-Khartoum is fallen
and fallen, too, into the hands of the
Soudanese themselves. Gordon. nc
more! In Fleet street is there a cry
lamentation and weeping and great
mourning. Never was the dust of hero
so watered by newspaper gush before.
Nowadays, however, we produce emotion
like other things primarily for profit
and only secondarily for use. Time was
when men poured forth each his own
grief in his own manner when they sor-
rcwed for some great departed. Under
the rule of the CREST industry we have
changed all this. Now the factory system
I and the division of labor supersede indi-
yidual emotion it is distilled for US by
tie journalist, and we buy it ready-made
from the great vats in Fleet, street and
Printing-house square. The result is
that the public sometipes have amotlon
forced upon them when 1t suits the pur-
veyor, for other reasons than the great
ness Of the departed. Perhaps it is so in
this case. Anyway, from the well-watered
dust of Gordon rises up for the Times,
Pail Mall, and their clients, the fair pros
pect of British protectorate at Kbar-
toum, railway from Suakim to Berber,
new markets, fresh colonial posts, etc.
Cabinet ministers once D1ore bow before
the all-powerful press, and whispering
they will ne'er consent-consent to the
reconquest of the country in the interest
of English commerce-fot the perma-
nent railway from Suakim to Berber can
mean nothing less than this.
Citizens, if you have any sense of JUS
tice, any manliness left in you, join US
in our protest against the wicked and
Infamous act of brigandage now being
perpetrated for the interest solely of the
privileged" classes of this country an
act of brigandage led up to through the
foulest stream of well-planned hypocrisy
and fraud that has ever disgraced the
foreign policy even of this commercial
age Mehemet Achmet (the Mahdi), the
brave man who in oriental fashion is
undertaking the deliverance of his coun-
try, has repeatedly declared through his
agents his willingness to release the
Bashi-Bazouk garrisons, and give guar
antees to refrain from aggression in
Egypt. Mr.. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was
in position, even when the "Christlan-
hero" was wantonly waging an offensive
war against the ,Mahdi, to ensure the sue
cess of negatiotlons for his release, as
we'll as that of the garrisons, had he been
allowed to make them, as he assuredly
would, had this been the real object in
view. But such an arrangement was not
quite good enough for the market
hunters and filibusterers for whom the
Influential" press writes. "Not this
man, but Wolseley," cried they; and
Wolseley was sent, avowedly to rescue
their nominee-who by that ostentatious
pietism which, as they were well aware,
gilds everything with a certain section
of the British public, had already so
we'll served their turn-but in reality to
engage in the conquest of the devoted
land upon which from the first their
vultures' eyes had been cast.
- And finally, we ask you to consider
who it is that have to do the fighting on
this and similar occasions. Is it the
market-hunting classes themselves? Is
it they who form the rank and file of
the army? No! but the sons and
brothers of the working classes at home.
They it is who for miserable pittance
are compelled to serve IN these CONNER
cial wars. They it is who conquer for
the wealthy, middle and upper classes,
new lands for exploitation, fresh popu-
lations for pillage, as these classes re-
ouire them, and who have as their re.
ward the assurance of their masters that
they are "nobly fighting for their queen
and country"
PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF THE SOCIALIST
LEAGUE.