◆¹ And this brings us to that class of questions which, in ordinary language, are called questions of policy, and amongst which foreign policy holds a chief place. Successful foreign policy means the maintenance or the achievement of those conditions that are most favourable to the industries of our own nation; and this means the conditions that are most favourable to the homes of our own people. It is too commonly supposed that the greatness and the ascendancy of our Empire minister to nothing but a certain natural pride; and natural pride, in its turn, is supposed by some to be an immoral and inhuman sentiment peculiar to the upper classes. No one will be quicker to resent this last ludicrous supposition than the great masses of the British people; but, all the same, they are apt to think the former supposition correct,—to regard the mere glory of the country as the principal result of our Empire; and such being the case, they are, on occasion, apt to be persuaded that glory can be bought at too dear a price, in money, struggle, or merely international friction. At all events, they are constantly tempted to regard foreign politics as something entirely unconnected with their own immediate, their domestic, their personal, their daily interests.
I am going to enter here on no debatable matter, nor discuss the value of this or that special possession, or this or that policy. It is enough to point out that, to a very great extent, on the political future of this country depends the magnitude of its income, and on the magnitude of its income depends the income of the working classes—the warmth of the hearth, the supply of food on the breakfast-table, of every labourer’s home,—and that when popular support is asked for some foreign war, the sole immediate aim of which seems the defence of some remote frontier, or the maintenance of British prestige, it may well be that our soldiers will be really fighting for the safety and welfare of their children and wives at home—fighting to keep away from British and Irish doors not the foreign plunderer and the ravisher, but enemies still more pitiless—the want, the hunger, and the cold that spare neither age nor sex, and against which all prayers are unavailing.
APPENDIX
Early in this year [1894] I published in the Fortnightly Review two articles under the title of “Fabian Economics.” These articles were not written or published until some months after the first publication of the present volume. I wrote them then, because then, for the first time, I happened to see a volume from which previously I had seen some extracts only—a volume entitled Fabian Essays, in which the doctrines of contemporary English Socialism are set forth; and my aim was to apply the general arguments embodied in Labour and the Popular Welfare to the position of the Socialists, as definitely stated by themselves. One of the Fabian Essayists—Mr. Bernard Shaw—came forward in the Fortnightly Review to attach my arguments, with what success will be shown by the subjoined reply to him, which was originally published in the same Review, under the title of “A Socialist in a Corner.” A few paragraphs which would be here superfluous are omitted.
A SOCIALIST IN A CORNER
Fortnightly Review, May 1894
Magazine controversy on complicated and serious subjects, though it can never be exhaustive, may yet be of great use, if it calls the attention of the public to the main points at issue, if it helps men to judge for themselves of the character and weight of the arguments which are capable of being employed on one side and the other; and, above all, if by elucidating the points on which opponents agree, the area of actual dispute be narrowed down and defined. For this reason it seems to me not useless to examine briefly the answer which, on behalf of a body of Socialists, Mr. Shaw has made to the criticisms which, in this Review and elsewhere, I have recently directed against the entire Socialistic position—and particularly against that position as expounded by himself and his colleagues.
Not only Mr. Shaw, but the other Fabian writers, are persons, at all events, of sufficient intelligence, sufficient knowledge, and sufficient literary skill, to render the way in which they put the case for Socialism a valuable indication of what the strength of that case is. It was for this reason that I thought Fabian Essays worth criticising; and for this reason I think Mr. Shaw’s answer worth criticising also. It is an indication not only of how Mr. Shaw can argue as an individual, but of what arguments are available in defence of the position which he occupies; and Mr. Shaw has taken trouble himself to make this view still more plausible, by the hints he gives that in the composition of his answer he has sought the advice and counsel of his faithful colleagues; so that his pages represent the wisdom of many, though presumably the wit of one.
I propose, then, to show, in as few words as possible, that Mr. Shaw has not only proved himself incapable of shaking a single one of the various arguments advanced by me, but that whilst flattering himself that, in his own phrase, he has been taking his opponent’s scalp, the scalp which he holds, and has really taken, is his own. His criticism divides itself into two main parts. One is an admission of the truth of one of the fundamental propositions on which I insisted. The second is a complete evasion of another, and the substitution for it of an ineptitude which is entirely of Mr. Shaw’s invention, and which he finds it so easy and so exciting to demolish, that he sets it up as often as he knocks it down, for the pleasure of displaying his prowess over again.
Here, then, are three propositions to be dealt with: First, the primary proposition on which I insisted, and the truth of which Mr. Shaw admits; secondly, a proposition on which Mr. Shaw declares that I insisted, but which is really an invention of his own; and thirdly, a proposition on which I did insist actually, but which Mr. Shaw never even states, much less attempts to meet. This third proposition I shall briefly state once again when I have dealt with the two others, and show how Fabian philosophy—indeed the philosophy of all Socialism—completely fails to meet it.