scheme will refuse to work, and the philosophers would be discredited.

War will follow close upon the heels of revolution and terror, as we can deduce from the French and Russian prototypes. The nations which are afraid of the example will attempt to stamp out what they will look upon as a dangerous disease, and no doubt they will fail to do so. But the Socialist State, drunk with the glamour of its own revolution, will not be able to resist the armed propagation of its ideas. All through the revolutionary years in France we find the clamorous desire to impose Rousseau upon Europe by force of arms, and the Bolsheviks have never disguised their intention, if they could, to overrun the world. Such procedure will be all the more necessary to the Socialist State, owing to the fact that their economic thesis will be unworkable if it is not universally applied. The State that stands out of the system will attract to itself all the wealth and trade of the world. Capital and brains will fly to its standards, and the danger of economic collapse and extreme poverty will force the Socialist State to overturn its capitalist rivals.

Liberalism is opposed to evolution by catastrophe; on the contrary, it believes that catastrophe is the ally of Conservative thought, and the foundation of reaction. The imperialism

of Lord Curzon, the militarism of Lord Fisher, and the revolution of Mr. Smillie are all based on Prussian ideas, imbibed from Charlemagne, from Frederick the Great, and from Karl Marx. To these we oppose the necessity of liberalizing the Empire by widening the measure of independence and self-government; the necessity of removing the menace of war by the establishment of the League of Nations; and the necessity of curbing the power of capital by methods that have a tendency towards liberty rather than towards bureaucracy.

CHAPTER VI

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND ACTION

THE

HE short years of recorded history on which alone we can build up our understanding of humanity have been occupied by the continual struggle of the majority to escape from the control of the minority. When on the 10th of December, 1520, Luther burnt at Wittenburg the book of the canon law, he created himself the founder of that Liberalism which has been the motive power of our modern age. Luther, pious, superstitious, utterly untouched by the Renaissance, was destined, almost against his will, to be the instrument that destroyed the work of Constantine, and set free Christianity from the control of the Conservative machine. It must never be forgotten that it was not the Catholic Church but the Papal Government that Luther attacked. The medieval Church was an international State, organized like a modern bureaucracy, and it was against the financial, industrial, and moral misgovernment of that international organization that

the missiles of the reformers were directed. It is curious to observe how little the men who promoted and led this campaign against the Papacy were aware of the vast revolution their actions were preparing for mankind. The monkish and narrow mind of Luther, full of anxiety for the primitive religious faith of Christianity, had no conception that he was the forerunner of freedom of thought, the man who was to make Voltaire possible in the world. Henry VIII, proudly determined to step into the shoes of the displaced Pope, contesting not for freedom but for power, had no vision of his actions leading direct to the extinction of divine right upon the blood-stained scaffold in Whitehall. The Reformation destroyed the Universal Church. That colossal fabric, built up around the simple fisherman from Galilee, for fifteen hundred years had dominated and, controlled the minds of men. First in alliance with the successors of Constantine on the throne of the Roman Empire, then in alliance with the successors of Charlemagne on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, she had realized the dual theocracy of Universal State and Church, which was the theory of the Mosaic law. Then she had destroyed the Universal State and reigned alone. Great are the names connected with her dominion; Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, and Hildebrand, the Conservative pillars

of her gigantic growth. Nor must we forget the gentler side of her intellectual power, Fra Angelico, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Sienna. But we must not, on the other hand, be blind to the fact that her efficient control, based on obedience and authority, was a complete negation of liberty in the individual. She was as Roman as she called herself, inheriting from the Romans ideas of State control over human thought and action. She destroyed the freedom of primitive Christianity and bound the Liberal ideas of Christ into the confined and regulated boundaries of her doctrine. The test of all State-systems is their treatment of the individual, and whether they will allow him to be free. The inclination of men who obtain the power to govern is to use that power for the purpose of controlling not only the actions but the thoughts of men. Moses had so used that power, and so had Lycurgus. The Roman Empire and the Roman Church had made that control the basis of their system, because they believed it to be the essence of all government. It is the strongest illusion of the Conservative mind. Even the Athenians, the only people before the Reformation who tolerated freedom of thought, found the conversation of Socrates almost as intolerable as Caiaphas found the teaching of Christ, or as Pope Paul V found the astronomical conclusions