Zealand has demonstrated its impossibility in the absence of the moral support of all the parties interested; from the moment when it fails to obtain it, it stands condemned. Could it obtain such support in other countries? Those who say so, have the universal experience of mankind against them. Coercion implies submission and not consent; consent alone creates a moral obligation. This explains the superiority of contract as a motive for action to arrangements imposed by authority. Compulsory arbitration would be followed by the same consequences in other countries as in New Zealand, namely, contempt for the law on the part of those who realise the possibility of violating it with impunity and of declining to accept the decisions of the Courts, while claiming to exact respect for that law from their adversaries. They would make a unilateral law of it, placing precisely the same construction upon it as that which is put forward in regard to Article 1780 of the Civil Code in France. "I claim," says the author of this article, "that, without the constitution of the Tribunal of Arbitration, the workmen would have had a far larger share of the increased prosperity of the colony than they have in fact obtained.” CHAPTER XI CONCLUSIONS (1). In the eyes of the Labour leaders, the Labour Exchanges and the Confederation of Labour, strikes are not an instrument of an economic order, but a political instru ment. (2). The weakness of the Government and the magistracy in France has introduced violence as one of the factors which make for success in the conduct of strikes. Strike leaders consider themselves as above the law. (3). A strike is an act of a small group of individuals, tending to the obtaining by them of advantages at the expense of all their fellow-citizens. (4). Combinations and strikes of officials and of persons employed in services of a public nature apply all the powers held by them for the interest of the public service to the furthering of their particular interests. (5). This anarchical conception is bringing us back to the private wars of the Middle Ages; trade combinations will contend against one another at the general expense, with methods of violence and total contempt of the law. (6). The organisation of compulsory arbitration in New Zealand has detached the individual from the State and has made him a member of a Union, without preventing strikes. CHAPTER I THE PROGRAMME OF THE INTERNATIONAL Karl Marx' subtleties-Developments rather than reforms-Set-back to Internationalism-Hervé's logic --Socialists act contrary to their professions. HERR WERNER SOMBART1 says of the inaugural address of the International Association of Workmen, "It is a veritable masterpiece of ability, although its scheme is not very clear: but Marx is its author and his obscurity is intentional. Opposing tendencies had to be reconciled. There is something to satisfy everyone in the address. In its convincing portraiture it exhibits the wretchedness of the working classes under the capitalistic yoke. It celebrates the advantages of free co-operation, Proudhon, Buchez, the advocates of co-operative production subsidised by the State, Lassalle and Louis Blanc. It contains the common sentimental passages which Marx reluctantly let fall from his pen. Of the object of the Association there was little question." The Socialists continue to carry out this policy; what they desire is developments rather than reforms, and, while courting the mob, they aim, not at the true and the useful, but at the art of exploiting the passions and prejudices of the ignorant and the seekers after chimæras. The headquarters of the International Association was transferred to New York in 1872. It did not perish in consequence of Government measures taken to destroy it, but was dislocated by the quarrels of Karl Marx and Bakunin, which like those which rage between Guesde, Jaurès and Lagardelle, give us an idea of the harmony which will prevail in the Collectivist Paradise. Karl Marx concluded his Manifesto of 1847 with 1 Loc. cit. pp. 118-127, |