Applying that to ourselves, we remember that democracy was definitely installed upon its throne here by the statutes of 1867 and 1885. Yet when the South African War broke out in 1899, those who held the Benthamite view in question were almost unanimous in recording their opinion that our democracy, at this its crucial test, had been duped by the "Kaffir circus," that Park Lane had outwitted Parliament, and that Beit and Co. had pulled the strings, with England for their marionette. Thus they bastinadoed us. But, in saying all this, they cut away the best anticipations for democracy. For, if one side recognises it to be inveterately warlike, and the other admits it to be utterly gullible, the world stands a poor chance. Small hope if the serpent, capital, can so easily corrupt the morals of the dove, democracy.
But, thirdly, abstract arguments about democracy apart, it is said that war must be particularly abominable to the working classes who rule us now. For war, we are told, breeds the sultanised satrap and the plumed proconsul; and empire, according to James Mill, is "a vast system of outdoor relief for the upper classes." Glory is stated to be a dividend for everybody but the artisan, and the "lower races," whom we are to "foster," a euphemism for slave-labour. The new diplomacy is stigmatised as finance "in the know"; public opinion as Fleet Street; naval and military scares as merely the big armament firms on the prowl for orders. The masses, we are informed,
