myself," she continued loftily. "Suppose we make investigations. Lots of old Anglo-Indians have settled there, and there's golf, and it's so easy to get into London-"

"I went to see the Crofts one day early this summer," said Mrs. Fleetwood, a little less mournfully. "They have settled at Norbledon. The roads looked very pretty with trees all along them, and lilac and laburnum in the gardens. I remember thinking I shouldn't so much mind living there. The Crofts had such a nice kitchen and larder, and they said the shops were excellent. But Mary Croft was rather cross because she said it seemed to depend so much on where you lived whether people took any notice of you."

Mr. Fleetwood sputtered with indignation. "A lot of snobs!" he said. "Look here, Emily, let's go down to Norbledon to-morrow. Fanny, you come too, and we'll house hunt. If we find anything to suit us we'll take it and be damned to the situation. What we want is room, not locality or people. The girls have their own friends in London, so have we."

"Now, John dear, don't be cross," said Mrs. Fleetwood. "I was only repeating what Mrs. Croft said, and you know what she is. She likes to be first everywhere."

"Well, let her." Then John Fleetwood went into the question of pounds, shillings, and pence with his wife and Mrs. Bullen, displaying an unexpected grasp of what money could and could not do domestically, listening to details of housekeeping which he had never known to exist till this moment. He considered trifles, made estimates, till rent and wages, food and washing, coal and lighting, sundries and etceteras were all entered under separate headings, reduced or expanded, with margins for emergencies and the unexpected, till the budget

was scheduled like an official estimate and tucked away into Mr. Fleetwood's pocketbook for reference on the exploratory expedition arranged for the following day.

It was felt, tacitly, by all three to be just as well that Marion and Isabel were away from home for a few days at this juncture. "I wonder how they'll take it?" said their mother, feeling rather like a conspirator.

"They will see the sense of itthey're no fools," was their father's opinion. "We will put things before them without reserve when they come home."

"I should, certainly," said Mrs. Bullen. "It would be only fair."

Mrs. Bullen rose with a feeling of comfortable satisfaction in her heart. "Now I must be off to the Stores," she said, in a matter-of-fact voice. "Are you coming too, Emily?"

Mrs. Fleetwood glanced tentatively at her husband. "No, I don't think I will-this morning. I don't want anything."

Her eyes turned furtively towards the door. Fanny understood-Emily wanted to be left alone with John! She put on her gloves, useful dog-skin gloves (bought at the Stores before she went out to India last time) and took her departure briskly. She wondered, as she waited in the street for an omnibus, what was passing between her old friends. Could she have spied upon them she would have seen nothing very much-only Emily got up and John got up, and they kissed each other with all the love and confidence that could exist between two people who were sound in heart and morals, and had lived together without a serious cloud on their affection for thirty years.

Even during the trying day they spent with Fanny Bullen on the morrow house-hunting at Norbledon, they did not wrangle or snap at each other

as really might have been natural under the circumstances. The houseagent, they all felt, was a provoking person. He had fat cheeks, a snub nose, pig's eyes, and a harsh, prominent moustache that gave him the appearance of a walrus. The moment he discovered that his clients were AngloIndians he offered them a house called "The Howdah" which nearly had the effect of driving Mr. Fleetwood from the office without another word. He only retained his self-control because the next house on the list was named The Times.

"Combe Down." It struck him as being so ludicrously appropriate!

"Combe Down, Emily," he said, and laughed with real amusement, "that's the house we ought to take. It exactly describes our position."

"If the house suited us we could change the name?" Mrs. Fleetwood suggested. Her sense of humor was not very strong.

"Certainly not!" replied her husband, his blue eyes twinkling. "It would make up for a lot!"

The trade in modern naval armaments is a peculiar trade. War, and the fear of war, which are other trades' poison, are its meat. It has in its nature something governmental: its customers are governments, and governments are sometimes its partners. (The Hungarian Government, for instance, is just going into partnership with the Krupp firm in a new gun manufactory.) Its sales are matters of international importance. It never works except to order, but sometimes a customer is not so solvent or so warlike at the time of delivery as at the time of order, and the firm may find itself with its goods upon its hands. In such a case a limited company with two or three Dreadnoughts to sell may play, for dividends, a great part in diplomacy. In our modern wars a managing director may be a new Warwick, a veritable Kingmaker-Athens and Constantinople may compete for the smile of a "Board" (or on sad occasions of a "Receiver").

An historian might trace analogies with the condottieri of Italy or the stout Swiss mercenaries of Francis or Charles, or even with the worthy Hes

sians duly invoiced by their sovereign to George III. for service in America; but in the modern world this power of the armament tradesman is a new growth. The armored ship, the big gun, and the torpedo first made naval equipment dependent on the possession of iron and coal and engineering skill, and raised for us problems which the generation that fought at Waterloo had not to face. How are we to face these problems?

Mr. Angell's arguments cannot help us; the trade in armaments is the one trade to which he must appeal in vain. Civilized nations may be incapable, in modern conditions, of gaining material advantage for themselves by war with their fellows: but armament firms and companies live and prosper by war and the fear of war. For them the diversion of national wealth to the appliances for destruction is pure gain. For them peace and the spread of the pacific spirit is the danger. For them the centenary of the peace of Ghent is an occasion for a day of commercial humiliation and the Great Lakes void of warships represent a deplorable waste of good material. But to impute

moral obliquity would be wholly unjust. The trade has only gradually reached its present importance, and at its origin no one could foresee future developments. A shareholder in the business of armaments has drifted unconsciously into that position into which a Court of Equity never lets a trustee put himself-a position in which his duty conflicts with his interest. It is our business, the business of the society that has allowed the shareholder to get into this position, to cure the evil, and let us do it with as little fuss as possible. And since the imme e cessation of preparation for war is not practical politics, we can cure the evil in one way only-namely, by buying out the shareholder, and making the provision of armaments a monopoly of the State.

the

On April 18th last, Dr. Liebknecht, the Socialist deputy in the German Reichstag for Potsdam and Spandau, made a speech on this subject which has had a European echo. He made certain specific charges, and he barbed them with a constantly recurring taunt of the "unnational character," Vaterlandslosigkeit of capital. The taunt, perhaps, seems at first sight to be a mere retort ad homines to those w.ho denounce Socialism as unpatriotic. But it embodies an obvious truth in the modern world of business. Capital, as a whole, tends more and more to be international. Foreign investments grow apace. International syndicates exploit backward countries. All this is normal development. But to simple souls the capital employed in armaments might have seemed to demand to be excepted from this process of internationalization. Can a patriot make a profit out of arming his enemies? Alas! there is no such excep tion. A German or French or British capitalist in the armament trade will borrow money in the cheapest market even that of an hereditary enemy;

and sell a Dreadnought in the dearest -even that of tomorrow's invader. Our own British armament firms have their subsidiary establishments abroad, and the Italian fleet, now reckoned by our anti-Germans as a possible enemy, is in large part the product of British capital and engineering skill.

Dr. Liebknecht gave instances of the abuses to which the system of private profit-making in armaments gives rise. He alleges that the Dillingen works (the proprietors of which are connected with the ultra-jingo journal, Die Post, were owned largely by French capitalists, SO much SO that at the general meetings of the company the French language was to the fore. He accused the patriotic armament company known as the Deutsche Munitions und Waffen Fabrik of causing, or attempting to cause, a false report to be inserted in a French newspaper (the Figaro was the intended channel) to the effect that the French Government had decided to expedite and double their orders for machine guns, and actually read out to the Reichstag a letter which he alleged' to have been sent by the company to an agent in Paris containing instructions for the insertion of the necessary paragraph. He charged the firm of Krupp with bribing officials to betray military secrets which it might be to the advantage of the firm to know, and he passed on to the Jingo articles in the Post, the organ of the armament interests, articles which made a violent attack on the Kaiser for his peace-loving tendencies. His speech concluded with a ringing challenge to the whole system: "It is not only on grounds of financial decency and honesty that we press for a fundamental alteration of the system. The nationalization of the whole industry of armaments must be carried into effect, and that speedily,

1 It is now stated that the letter, though written, was never sent.

cost what it may; because this is the only way to extirpate a class of interests whose existence constitutes a standing danger of war for the whole world, and to destroy one root of the infatuation for armaments, one root of the discord of the peoples." Not since Burke, some 150 years ago, denounced those vulture-like German princes who hired out their soldiers to George III. for service in the American colonies— "they snuffed," said Burke, "the cadaverous taint of lucrative war"-has the world heard a denunciation so vehement of those who, in Liebknecht's words, "coin national discord into gold."

General von Heeringen, the Minister for War, replied to Dr. Liebknecht's demand for the nationalization of the armaments industry. He made no attempt to meet the general case for the elimination of the motive of private profit from the tendencies that make for war, but put his argument on the lower grounds of administrative convenience and the interests of the workmen employed in the private workshops. "We cannot," he said, "lay down in peace as much stores of materials as we should want in case of war. Mobilization would mean an immense demand which the State factories could not supply. We have to call in private factories. Therefore, the military administration is interested in having a competent trade in private hands behind it. In peace we cannot give their factories orders enough to make them equal to the emergency demand on mobilization. Hence our private factories have to look abroad for orders. Who gets the advantage? Without doubt that class, whose representatives the Social Democrats claim to be -the working-men; for if the orders from abroad fell off, then factories that give them wages and bread could not exist at all."

In other words: (1) we cannot so or

ganize our military workshops as to bear the strain of war-a wonderful admission of incompetence, if true; and (2) the private trade in armaments benefits the working-man-an argument interesting chiefly as showing the prevalence in German governing circles of the old delusion that any abuse or luxury can be justified if thereby you "give employment." It is plain that so far as the German army is concerned the maintenance of the private trade in armaments is not demanded by any national necessity. Other nations-e. g., Bulgaria-contrive to carry on war with effect, although their warlike materials have to be ordered from abroad, and they have no great cannon factories-public or private. Cannot a Great Power, with its own factories, equal the achievement of a Balkan State?

The reasons usually given for our own refusal to nationalize our armaments industry are not unlike those of General von Heeringen, but others are sometimes added. First, we are met with the old individualist objection to State enterprise an objection which if valid at all should be extended to the total suppression of the dockyards. Next, it is suggested that it might not be inconvenient for us to have the power of adding to our fleet on the outbreak of war vessels just completed or nearing completion in British private yards for foreign neutral purchasers. To this it may be sufficient to reply: (1) the seizure against the will of the owner of a ship of war is an act of hostility which would probably add to the force of the enemy as much as it would increase our fleet; (2) the sale by the owner after the outbreak of war of a ship of war would be a violation of neutrality which no Power not already involved on our side (in which case their fleet would already be with us) would commit; (3) it is not for the dignity of the British nation or the se

curity of this country to rely on casual profits for the defence of the realm; (4) if the idea gets about that the British Government will seize ships when it wants them, British shipbuilders will not get orders. Lastly, we are told that we are setting up a new class of voter interested in war. But the tendency to vote for an exaggerated navy will not be any greater because a man is in a dockyard than because he is employed by a private firm. In either case, he has the same interest in shipbuilding.

As to the method and time of nationalization, it would no doubt be desirable that the step should be taken by all civilized nations in concert, if possible with the sanction of a resolution of the Hague Congress. The proposal of such a resolution would come with good grace from ourselves, who seem, perhaps more than any other nation, to have an advantage from existing conditions. But if the foregoing arguments are correct, in reality no nation gains any advantage by the present state of things, and nationalization in one country need not wait for the action of another. International movements sometimes need pioneers. the terms of nationalization it would be unwise to haggle; we need not make present shareholders suffer for what is in reality the consequence of the negligence of Society. To eliminate the element of private profit from the business of war is cheap at any reasonable price.

Over

And this elimination is, moreover, to be supported as a step in the natural development of international law. The Contemporary Review.

The nationalization of the armament trade would make the observance of the duties of a neutral far more easy; the neutral Government would itself own all yards and works from which an Alabama or a Shenandoah could be fitted out. It would stop, or at any rate greatly hamper, that part of the trade in contraband of war which everyone must hold to be undesirablenamely, the trade in actual rifles and munitions of war, a trade which is the fruitful source of ill-feeling. It would in substance extend to peace (that armed peace which is all that the modern world enjoys) the salutary prohibition against the equipment of warfare from neutral ground which at present obtains in war only. No Government would build ships for another Government. Ambassadors need not compete for "orders." Thus every international unit would have the charge and responsibility of the equipment of its own armaments, and clever salesmen would no longer deftly force on the younger civilizations articles which are only thought to be necessaries because they have been already bought by a neighbor. In fact, the business of the State would be under State control, and a nation would no more think of buying ships from abroad than we now think of buying soldiers or sailors. The world would live in a clearer and cleaner international atmosphere; and its wars and preparations for wars would at any rate be determined by what appeared to be national necessities without the intervention of the motives and the agencies of private advantage.

J. F. Williams.