The state and the order of the world is confounded with
the capitalist. Before the war the popular so-called socialist press
reeked with the cant of rebellion, the cant of any sort of rebellion.
"I'm a rebel," was the silly boast of the young disciple. "Spoil
something, set fire to something," was held to be the proper text for
any girl or lad of spirit. And this blind discontent carried on into
the war. While on the one hand a great rush of men poured into the army
saying, "Thank God! we can serve our country at last instead of some
beastly profiteer," a sourer remnant, blind to the greater issues of
the war, clung to the reasonless proposition, "the state is only for
the Capitalist. This war is got up by Capitalists. Whatever has to be
done--_we are rebels._"
Such a typical paper as the British _Labour Leader_, for example, may
be read in vain, number after number, for any sound and sincere
constructive proposal. It is a prolonged scream of extreme
individualism, a monotonous repetition of incoherent discontent with
authority, with direction, with union, with the European effort. It
wants to do nothing. It just wants effort to stop--even at the price of
German victory. If the whole fabric of society in western Europe were to
be handed over to those pseudo-socialists to-morrow, to be administered
for the common good, they would fly the task in terror.
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