Another grave blunder in social policy was made when feepaying elementary schools were compulsorily abolished in 1918. These schools were maintained in several districts in response to the demand of parents, who wished their children to have the advantages of the higher social standard that was generally to be found in the fee-paying school. Often a parent would send a child right across the town to a fee-paying school rather than to a free school in the immediate neighbourhood. Surely this was a spirit that ought to have been encouraged in every possible way. It meant a healthy parental ambition for the social progress of the child. Socialists object to parental ambition; it conflicts with their policy of levelling down. In their view, fee-paying elementary schools were agencies for developing a middle-class mind among working-class children. The Labour party therefore in 1918 demanded that these schools should be abolished; the local authorities protested, the parents protested; and the Coalition Government yielded to the Labour party. One of the most valuable reforms that the present government could undertake would be to permit the re-establishment of fee-paying elementary schools. Every local education authority should be empowered to establish a fee-paying elementary school in any neighbourhood where it had reason to believe that the parents wanted a school of this type. The local authority should also have power to fix the fees. The broad effect of this reform would be to stimulate the sense of self-dependence, which is not merely the best antidote to Socialist propaganda, but is an absolutely essential condition for national progress. Another matter of urgency is to restore to the wage-earning classes the liberties of which they were deprived by the legislation which placed trade unions above the ordinary law of the land. That trade unions have done much useful work in helping to improve the position of the wage-earner, and may do more, no one denies. But that is no reason for endowing them with the power to exercise an absolute tyranny. Let them live, as other institutions have to live, on their merits. In order to protect the individual wage-earner against trade union tyranny the law ought to provide that all trade union ballots must be secret. At present thousands of working men who have no sympathy with socialism are terrorised into voting for Socialist officials to govern the union. A similar terrorism is exercised in the matter of trade union contributions to the political funds of the Socialist party. Few men can venture to stand out by themselves and say that they object to the levy. The fair way of dealing with the matter is to provide that the levy shall only be made upon those members of the union who have expressed their willingness to pay it. In addition, it is most important that the Trades Disputes Act should be amended so as to prevent the terrorism which is now practised in the name of peaceful picketing. These are some of the more obvious reforms which a Conservative ministry ought to undertake. It will be said they are reactionary. Of course they are. They represent the healthy spirit of reaction which inspires a swimmer who, finding himself in the trough of a wave, makes an effort to rise to the crest. The moral strength of our population is being lowered by the legislative achievements of loose-thinking sentimentalists working hand in hand with vote-hunting cynics. We have to escape from this trough which threatens to engulf our civilisation, as the kindred policy of panem et circenses administered by an all-pervading bureaucracy engulfed the Roman Empire. The only way of escape lies through insistence on the primary human duty of self-dependence. The argument above referred to, that the adoption of a definite policy of anti-socialism by the Conservative party would create a political danger, shows a lack of appreciation of the real issues. The issues to-day are very different from those prevailing in the nineteenth century when there was a more or less regular see-saw between the two parties. The people who really governed the country then represented only a small fraction of the total population. The issues raised were mostly of little interest to the minds of the masses. Probably a majority even of those who had votes regarded an electoral contest as primarily a fight between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. To-day the issues are fundamental. They affect the whole body of the population; they influence its daily life; they will decide its future existence. On the one side we have the general body of Conservatives and a few Liberals half-heartedly upholding the value of personal liberty, of public economy, and of individual enterprise. On the other side we have a well-organized group of zealots for socialism, deliberately planning to impose on the people of the United Kingdom an all-pervading Socialist tyranny. Already the Socialists have captured, through the follies of our law-makers, practically the whole machinery of the trade unions; they have succeeded in gaining control over many co-operative societies; they are strongly represented among the elementary school teachers and among the officials of the employment exchanges; their presence is not unknown in the higher branches of the Civil Service. The doctrine that they teach is cleverly represented as an up-to-date device for delivering mankind from the thraldom of capitalism; in reality it is a world-old delusion that universal prosperity can be secured by confiscating the property of the "Haves" for the benefit of the "Have Nots." There is nothing new about socialism. Even the modern form of the creed due to Karl Marx is mainly based on pictures of the conditions prevailing among English factory workers a century ago, pictures now, happily, altogether out of date. Yet, because some poverty still exists, the Socialist proposes to destroy the forces which create all wealth; because some persons are still working under harsh conditions, the Socialist proposes to make every citizen the slave of the State. There is not the slightest risk of the general body of electors of the United Kingdom voting for socialism if only the real issues involved are made clear. Instead of clearing the issues the Tory Socialist proposes to confuse them by offering to go half-way. HAROLD Cox RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOKS ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: MAN AND WRITER. A Critical Biography. By J. A. STEUART. Two Vols. Sampson, Low. 328. net. This biography is certainly "critical," in the sense of showing up its subject's faults; but Mr. Steuart has completely failed in his avowed aim of giving us a definitive biography of Robert Louis Stevenson. To one reader it seems that this failure is due to a certain lack of imaginative sympathy in Mr. Steuart. He has attempted to be coldly just to the memory of a great romantic writer, surely a method unlikely to be successful for such a purpose, and the result is a picture of a self-opinionated, idle, ungrateful writer of " a few essays, a few tales for boys." Robert Louis Stevenson was something much greater than this, and all Mr. Steuart's researches into his disreputable association with certain young women, his ingratitude to his "just and loving father," and his quarrel with Henley, do not really detract from Stevenson's reputation, as Mr. Steuart evidently thinks that they do. Nor do they give any more true an insight into the character of this wayward being than did the too-honeyed praise of other writers, whom Mr. Steuart condemns. It may be remarked, too, that Mr. Steuart's own estimate of Stevenson is occasionally uncertain, as when (on page 110, volume I) he writes: "Neither then nor later had Stevenson any real taste or gift for wrestling and suffering in the deep places of the soul,' and (on page 164 of the same volume): "He had . . . an infinite capacity for deep and poignant emotion, and when that emotion turned inward on himself, he suffered exquisitely." Irrelevance is another fault of Mr. Steuart's as a biographer. An instance of this is to be found in the number of pages devoted to the opinions of the worthy folk who published Treasure Island " as a serial story. What does it matter that these people thought poorly of its merits, because it did not conform to serial conventions? Does a great story of adventure like "Lord Jim" conform to them, or, indeed, to any "literary conventions," and is it any the less a work of supreme art for that? Would that someone like Sir James Barrie would apply a delicate and human sympathy to Stevenson's life, rather than that a writer like Mr. Steuart should attack it with a scalpel, and leave us nothing but dry bones. EVERY-DAY LIFE ON AN OLD HIGHLAND FARM. By I. F. Grant. With a Preface by W. R. Scott, Adam Smith This extremely interesting book is a good example of the knowledge that may be obtained of the former social and industrial life of a district by a sympathetic investigation of such a superficially dull record as an old account book. Miss Grant brings to her task the understanding of a native, and the trained observation of a student, and she is able with this equipment to bring back to life the work and recreations of the different people who were associated with a Highland farm in the eighteenth century. William Mackintosh of Balnespick was a tacksman," one who leased from the Chief of his Clan a certain holding of land, and let off some of it to sub-tenants; but Miss Grant shows that there was more than this in his position, for the "tacksman" became to his sub-tenants something of a Chief of the Clan in miniature; he was their banker, their adviser and even their scribe; so that the people on his land became a definite little community, although they might include men of different hereditary clans. The pages of William Mackintosh's account book contain references to his various functions, and Miss Grant supplies additional illuminating chapters on "The Psychological Atmosphere" (the love of music, the superstitions of the people, and their legendary lore), and on the conditions of the countryside. It remains to be said that the book adds some important facts to the history of agriculture in the Highlands, which will be useful to general historians. RACIAL REALITIES IN EUROPE. By Lothrop Stoddard. With three Maps. Charles Scribner's Sons. 12s. 6d. net. Mr. Lothrop Stoddard has now turned his attention to racial problems in Europe, and endeavours in this volume to set out racial distinctions and the probable effect of racial clashes on the future of Europe. He believes that the fair-haired Nordic (or, loosely, Scandinavian) race is the dominant factor in European politics, because it tends to produce leaders, explorers, and administrators, although the members of this race will often quarrel for supremacy, as when Germany and England recently went to war. French policy tends to be confused by the fact that all three chief European races-Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean-are present within its borders. In later chapters he turns to a consideration of the policies of different countries, and his scientific detachment allows him to be severely critical of certain allies of his country and ours. The Poles, for example, he sums up as "the Bourbons of Eastern Europe— 'learning nothing and forgetting nothing ""; and he is equally severe with the Balkan nations of the "Little Entente." In this, In this, it may be |