Songs of the Army of the Night

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
by FRANCIS ADAMS.
“ For the cause of Labour all over the Earth .”
second edition.
London: william reeves, 185, fleet street, e.c.
“My sweet, my child, through all this night Of dark and wind and rain, Where thunder crashes, and the light Sears the bewildered brain,
“It is your face, your lips, your eyes I see rise up; I hear Your voice that sobs and calls and cries, Or shrills and mocks at fear.
“O this that’s mine is yours as well, For side by side our feet Trod through these bitter brakes of hell. Take it, my child, my sweet!”
A few words of preface seem necessary in sending out this little book. It is to be looked on as the product of the life of a social worker in England, in his travels, and in Australia. The key-note of the First Part—“England”—is desperation, or, if any hope, then “desperate hope.” A friend once reported to me a saying of Matthew Arnold’s, that he did not believe in any man of intelligence taking a desperate view of the social problem in England. I am afraid that saying relegates me to the ranks of the fools, but I am content to remain there. I believe that never since 1381, which is the date of the Peasants’ Revolt, has England presented such a spectacle of the happiness of the tens, of the misery of the millions. It is not by any means the artisan, or the general or the agricultural labourer, who is the only sufferer. All society groans under the slavery of stupendous toil and a pittance wage. The negro slavery of the Southern States of America was better than the white slavery of to-day all over the earth, but more particularly in Europe and in America. Capitalism is built on the dreadful wrong of recompensing Labour, not according to the worth of its work, but according to the worth of its members in the market of unlimited competition, and that soon comes to mean the payment of what will hold body and soul together when in the enjoyment of health and strength. Landlordism is built on the dreadful wrong of sharing with Capitalism the plunder of Labour. Why are