New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1918-07-31
BRITISH LABOR AND THE WAR

enClreCy, MT. Arthur aGAcaooA SAVOl @uo
the benefit Of his three years Of study and
contact with the British labor move
ment and the British army. And he
shows us how preposterous is the belief
current in. some quarters in this country
that the British workingman is Stacker
and defeatist because he is laying plans
to do away at home with the same
Prussianism that his brothers and sons
are fighting in France. 1t is determin-
alton that he shares with the army.
''The returned discharged soldier is
one of the radical forces in England, ;"
writes Mr.. Gleason, "Mr. Balfour is
not a Bolshevik, but las trustee OF the
Carton Foundation) he issued an able
report in which his investigators wrote:
Many of the men who return from the
trenches to the great munition and ship
building centers are, within few weeks
of their return, among those who exhibit
most actively their discomfort with
present conditions. To a very large
number of the men now in the ranks,
the fight against Germany is fight
against Prussianism, and the spirit Of
Prussianism represents to them only an
extreme example of that to which they
object in the industrial and social in
stitutions of their own country. They
regard the present struggle as closely
connected with the campaign against
capitalist and class-domination at
home"
Nor, says Mr.. Gleason, are these Brit
ish workers the victims of Socialist pro-
paganda, men under the spell of dogma
and theory. "The British Labor Move
ment is essentially British. 1t has none
of the internationalism which damns
the nation where the worker earns his
bread and pretends to crave an inter-
national brotherhood, which will abolish
the instinct of nationality. The British
worker is a strongly localized person,
who functions through his workshop,
his factory, his branch committee and
his district committee. He is an in
dividualist, and so has always Stunned
the big units of organization. He has
never swallowed the MARKHAM philosophy,
and his orthodox Socialist societies have
a membership of few thousand. His
collectivism has all come piece-meal,
step by step. 1t is the product of one.
hundred and fifty years Of trial and
error, Of local experiment. He is dis
trustful Of the Socialist State, because
he dislikes officials, red tape, regulation
and bureaucracy. He sees today
great volume of production under col
lective control, and he realizes that the
potential area Of control under Socialism
and cooperation may soon bring three
fourths of industrial capital under col
lective administration, and at the same
time bring into the service of national
and local government an actual majority
of the adult population. But he plans
to mitigate the coming age of State
ownership by workers control His
shop stewards and national guilds and
Whitley Committees are all part Of his
plan for management by the worker.
But he has been in the army,
and he has seen that there in an i'm
mense amount of national wealth which
can be spent for community purposes.
So certain ideas are remaking him. He
draws up comprehensive scheme for
common education through his Workers
Educational Alliance. If seven thou
sand millions of pounds can be spent on
gas, guns and shell, he means to spend
few millions of pounds on the education
of the children Of his nation. He plans
to leave the rotten houses of the slums.
He wishes status rather than
welfare. He is not an anarchist, nor
paper legislator, nor an idealogue.
He is patient and good-humored. And
he is British. Therefore, the British
worker is a rallying-po against the
Infection of vague theories and misty
dreams under whose cover predatory
nations can operate. He and his ideas
are immune from anti-national revolu-
tionary centers. He is Of one blood,
one belief, the member Of homogeneous
race"
This is the man and the British Labor
Party his political means Of expression
which Mr.. Gleason finds we have mis-
understood and antagonized through the
policy initiated by Mr.. Gompers and
carried out by his American Labor
Mission. The pacifst minority in Brit
ish labor is extremely active, and Mr..
Gleason does not minimize the danger
Rather he points to the policy of the
British Labor Party, with it's insistence
on a democratic settlement in harmony
with labor's' plans for social recon.
struction, as the most powerful factor
in combating the spread Of Bolshevisrr
and pacifsm, and holding the Nation
in limo until tho German military marty