FABIAN NOTES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15920, 4 May 1912, Page 3

FABIAN NOTES.

(By MRS OUNNINGTON.)

One would really think that everything that can be said or written about Socialism—l mean Christian Socialism, scientific Socialism, revolutionary, Socialism—has been said and written. And said and written really well, too, by all kind of wise and clever people. Yes, and respectable folk, too. The other day 1 beard a learned professor raving against Socialism till my hair stood on end with amazed horror.

The gccd man said Socialists were brigands, robbers: that they wanted to have mixed State nurseries: that the marriage tie for them meant nothing, and a lot more dreadful things. He said that Bernard" Shaw only “fools.”

Imagine not seeing that Shaw con veys to the world profound verities under his “fooling."' 1 It was all quite too funny.

But do you know it set me thinking. Is it possible, I pondered, that there are any persons living now who really believe ail these tilings about Socialism? If so, I must be sure and not leave oft writing Fabian Notes for a long time. One must peg away, repeating the same things over and over again.

lii brief, please keep on repeating these words: “Socialists would substitute collective ownership for all that constitutes capital, of all the sources and instruments of production and distribution, by the State or community, in the equal interest of all, with an equal obligation, upon all of co-opera-tive labour, and an equal claim by all upon the produce of labour, accordin'* to the value of the labour and the need of each.”

Learn the words by heart, and nest time you bear these horrid oldtime charges against our beloved Faith, just bombard the speaker with these splendid words. And when he looks a bit crushed squeeze him flat by adding Dr Gore,'Bishop of Oxford; says this. THE SOCIAL WITNESS OF THE BISHOPS.

In tho March “ Commonwealth ” ol this year appears an article under the above title.

Tlie writer has, to my own particular delight, trotted out quite a bevy of Bishops and on© Archbishop, quoting their words to show that even these tip-top clericals are becoming enlightened and generous-minded on social questions.

“One Bishop after another'has spoken trumpet-tongued. The Bishop of Oxford, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester have'' all been at it- And they have spoken with amazing directness and courage and force, without qualifying ‘ buts 1 or uncomfortable ‘iis ’ or any doubtful hedgings.” ... Here are words from the Bishop of Oxford, si>eaking of the Socialists in our midst: “ The things will get altered if you, instead of being the apathetic, sluggish kind of persons that our great bodies of communicants are, were full of active indignation and intense determination. Their do you suppose things would be what they are iu London, Birmingham, or anywhere else?. No! There would be great changes. People would say : ‘ These things have got to be altered quickly. Postpone them? Oil, dear, no. We are going to have them done now . . . and you could soon have decent cities, air s housing-—ail these things—if only you were determined.” Xow for the Archbishop of Canterbury. “ I must not stray into a discussion, which could only be superficial, of industrial and -economic questions. But 1 am prepared quite deliberately to express my own belief that, given a little time, say a couple of generations, for bringing about the change, real poverty cf the extreme soft, crushing and degrading poverty ought to be practically abolished altogether in our land. -y'

“I do not believe that anything short of that will satisfy, even ’elementhe conditions of Christian brotherhood. We do not reach suchr ends by short cuts. But that there is a road, and a Christian road, I .am sure.”

Well, we ordinary folk must keep on hammering into the heads and hearts of our fellows the we believe in. All privileges must be “ jettisoned.” 'Overboard, they must and shall go. Nothing but the best.of everything is good enough for all men. There still festers in the minds of men the vile idea that some people are on a li higher class/' or upper class, or leisure class, or some other superior sort of class, and that the good things of life must be flung at their feet and denied to the " masses.”

Did that thought rankle insidiously. almost unconsciously, in the minds of those on board the Titanic. Wo read: All the children of the first and second classes we re saved. Can it be true that only a few of the little ones belonging to its third class were saved.

Surely this cannot be true. • How one hates the thought of those

floating hotels.”

Luxury and waste in the first-ela-ss, women with necklaces valued at £30,000: each—and then to read thr' cablegram from some shipping ofacia; declaring that the “ firemen live in damp, dark, dirty quarters.”

I>o we want a revolution to change all this? Certainly not. A revolution is too slow: it brings with it the inevitable ‘•"back-wash.” the return swing of the political pendulum, the wearisome “ reaction.”

We hare no time to spare on reactions: we cannot afford to risk the back-wash. We must march steadily on step by step, up the steep lull of pro. gress till we reach the crowning plateau of our hope's desires—Human on one level of equal opportunities and equal chances, bound by one tie, Brotherhood.

Is it a dream P Yes. a dream, but one that we can all help to realise. The dream of one ape is the hope of the next and the possession of the agf 1 yet to come.”