George A. Taylor

“ I foresee, in this war, with its daily expense of three million pounds, and the additional waste, a general bankruptcy of the world, the downfall of classes, of wealth, the wrecking of privilege. I foresee, when peace is declared, the fruitless return of millions of men to jobs that have vanished, and to employers shorn of all power to employ them. Mark me! The world to-day is on the verge of a mighty cataclysm far greater than the present awful clash of armies. Wise are the man and country that are preparing. ”

“ We stand at the close of a century of dazzling achievement; a century that gave the world railways, steam navigation, electric telegraphs, telephones, gas and electric light, photography, the phonograph, the X-ray, spectrum analysis, anæsthetics, antiseptics, radium, the cinematograph, the automobile, wireless telegraphy, the submarine and the aeroplane!
Yet as that brilliant century closed, the world crashed into a war to preserve that high level of human development from being dragged back to barbarism. ”

“ Do any of you wish to have broken that national independent spirit that made our brothers bravely hold the Gate at Liege?
"To-day this German-made Humanist creed has gripped Germany, England, France and Austria. It stands for the levelling of the human being. None can rise above the common level. They call it the gospel of the Common Good, but there is nothing good in anything that clips the wings of those who would dare to excel; that baulks the aspirations of those who would use the brains their God has given them that they may rise. ”

“ It is a creed akin to the German ideal of the man-animal that dragged a bloody trail across our country.
"I tell you, the creed must fail that cannot recognise any degrees of mental capacity; that cannot understand that man has a soul that cannot be confined within any man-drawn boundaries. This German-creed sweeps the earth with all the bombast of a war-mad Kaiser. It is going to fail, but not till men who think will rise and fight for recognition of their immortality. It will be the War of the Ages!
"And in the fight Belgium will stand firm once again as the Buffer State of Civilisation. ”

“ Some clear-visioned people in high office saw the portents in the sky and feared the toppling of the thrones, so threw this war into the ring to give the toilers opportunity for their heated passions, but this war will be like blood to a tiger, it will quicken up the fighting spirit of the animal, and on those who forced this war it will recoil with awful effect. They saw the labor storm approach and put off the evil day. It was like neglecting to physic the human body—the longer deferred, the worse the disease. ”

“ A Socialist? Well, no, I'm not—that is so far as Socialists have gone. I describe myself as a 'Humanist.' Socialism as we had it before the war was synonymous with revolution. Its creed, 'Revolution before evolution,' spelt destruction and anarchy. ”

“ It is a creed that calls for State control of all production; a creed that cuts out all private enterprise and initiative; a creed that forces men to shut down upon their self-development and independence and to rely upon employment by the State. ”

“ Instead of inviting workers to put in a little extra vim in time of stress; in fact, to be a bit more generous in their output, the labor leaders urged the workers to be more militant, to grip bad times as a fitting occasion to demand more wages and less hours. So the employers sat entrenched behind their desks, watching the political moves of the workers, as the Allies peered at the Germans across the trench edges of the Aisne—sat there till the soldiers came home and found no work to do. ”

“ They had forgotten that the times called for the best in every man and woman; that the first duty of those who could not go to the fighting line of Europe was to get in the fighting line of business at home; that full speed at home was absolutely necessary not only to keep a level of prosperity that would, at the end of the war, find the country well prepared to meet the inevitable heavy taxation, but to keep business at full strength so that when our soldiers returned they would have found places ready to be filled. ”

“ That selfishness on the part of the workers is but the fear of having their wages cut and becoming unemployed with the advent of further competition. Remove that fear and keep the unemployed from cutting wages and the selfishness will disappear. The Humanist creed recognises all men as sparks of Divinity. There will be no 'scabs,' 'pimps,' 'blacklegs,' or other vile, cruel epithets. The men and women who work will combine with those unemployed. The result will be such a world's combination of labor that all sources of profit-winning will be in the hands of the men who toil. ”

“ If workers get hurt too much or sick too much, the insurance syndicate begins to lose money; hence safety devices are considered and sanitoria built to prevent illness; and this German social insurance speeds individual initiative to top speed. It makes the German worker a splendid animal—and there is the danger.
"You know it's human nature to complain—progress is built upon discomfort, contentment means stagnation. I could see the workers fixed in their contented groove under the studied philanthropy of his employers and ending as in the dumb-driven-cattle age of the Feudal Barons." ”

“ She has not that spirit of initiative that the Britisher has in attacking the various vicissitudes that every pioneer meets with in the development of a new land. That is why she let her colonies be snapped up by Australia without a pang; that is why as you say, she let her people hand over Rabaul and New Guinea to your Colonel Holmes without a battle. She fancies that when she wins this war as she has convinced herself she will, it will be a simple matter to step into the occupation of ready made colonies of such wonderful wealth and development. ”

“ It was well for Australia that the capitalists considered the individual, and that it was just as good business to have efficient machinists as well as efficient machines.
It was well for Australia that the capitalists knew the value of human flesh and nurtured it. And Australia understood. In the stress of the German War it had sobered up. It had dropped the Utopian dreams of the impracticable and used its head. It saw an analogy in the system of the "Syndicate," "Organisation and Co-operation," to a similar system that had led them to victory on the battlefields of Europe. ”

“ It went out at Liege, and the Mars of old, with his blood-dripping sword, had to stand aside as Modern Science stepped out of the Krupp factory with the great 42 centimeter gun. It took thirty horses to drag the first of these monsters out of that nest of the Prussian war eagle, and soldiers had to give way for that great weapon as it was drawn into place, accompanied by its retinue of mechanics and engineers, who set it up, armed, and fired it. ”

“ Our road passed along the cliff tops of the Rhine. There was little traffic on the river and no sign of war. Everything seemed peaceful. The war, in draining the men and youths from the countryside, had placed a mantle of calm upon life in the villages of the Rhine Valley. Even across the river a long length of railway line lay as a long road of emptiness. Not a train, not a truck, not any sign of life was upon the long stretch of metal.
"And yet," said Brother Wilbrid, "that is the main line from Bonn to Coblenz. All railwaymen, stock, and traffic are confined to the Theatres of War." ”

“ And, perhaps, you are not aware that Australia is a land where Nature is so generous that in its short history it has reached the highest level in the world's wheat and wool production. Yet in that land, twenty times the size of your Germany and with one-thirteenth of your population, the workers discourage immigration of people of their own British race, because they foolishly fancy the newcomers would create competition in their high-priced work; and that is in a wonderful land crying out for development and only having an average population of one person to the square mile. ”

“ It was the old story of "New Australia": the story that taught the world that ideal socialism is impossible whilst human nature is as it is. And yet Australia had forgotten it! It is strange that people rarely profit from past failures. Countries as well as peoples usually insist on buying their own experience, and the history of the socialistic experiment in Australia between 1910 and 1917 was simply a repetition of the great failure of William Lane's ideal. ”

“ Only a few days before had the authorities at Berlin announced to the Socialists that ultimate success was certain, and bade the people be of good cheer. Now, like a crash, came the news of defeat with the additional disgrace of being brought by retreating soldiers of the Empire!
Then the revolution crashed on Germany. It was a riot that rolled round the earth.
I remember it was a week after our arrival at Liege that the armies of the Allies began their march to the Rhine. They had not yet reached German soil, and the Peace terms would not be disclosed till the Allies were in Germany. ”

“ Around Liege troops were moving in a wonderful mass, not unlike the mixed crowd that one sees in a city street after a procession has passed along, but with the crowd increased a thousandfold.
Yet it was not a disorderly crowd. It seemed a crowd of good fellowship. The German soldiers in the west had fought against the British and found them brave enemies. The revulsion of feeling made them friends. The tension of hate snapped.
It has ever been thus. With a quarrel over, the greatest haters become the warmest friends.
For two days the armies at the Meuse fraternised. ”

“ Australia, therefore, joined in a trade treaty with Eastern Asia, but Western Europe refused.
It considered that the flooding of its markets with cheap-made Asiatic goods would mean serious opposition to home factories, which were being run under high wages.
Belgium alone stood for freedom of trade exchange with Asia. This single nation in Western Europe that had stood against Socialism was now a nation of great manufacturing capacity, a country of wealthy people, a haven for the thoughtful and the ambitious who were forced out of Humanist nations. Belgium was the centre of European invention. ”

“ The barriers of trade that formerly existed between these nations seemed as absurd as a farmer dividing his farm into little plots and trying to cultivate all kinds of plants on each plot instead of putting only wheat in wheat land and corn in corn land.
As Owasi, the great Japanese statesman who brought about the coalition, put it, "Let Asia have the intelligence to utilise its lands to the best advantage. Let it develop each nation's products as the result of natural selection. We can grow rice in India, we can grow wheat in Russia. ”

“ I asked.
"I am going back—back to the monastery. I misread the world, I misread human nature. I was one of the fools who think they know all the statesmanship that controls the destinies of nations, who think their petty untrained minds can grasp the great problems of diplomacy.
"I have found you can only qualify for high administrative posts by unselfish study. You cannot create a statesman by the mere toss of a coin at a political meeting. Though people fitted to rule and lead men to build mighty nations are sometimes born in obscurity, they cannot develop there. ”

“ Though the Socialists may have hated England, the war proved that they were used as a cat's paw. So riots broke out in Berlin, Stuttgart and Hamburg.
In Berlin, down the Unter der Linden, a mighty mob of workers marched and stoned the Government offices. The military police dispersed them.
Fate helped the revolt.
At the surrender of the German armies, thousands of German soldiers, rather than surrender, had retreated along the roads leading into Germany, sullenly shouting the news of the defeat. ”

“ Where wealth is in the hands of the few, misery stalks among the many; and, where the masses are ill-fed and hopeless, moral and physical strength cannot exist."
Then he walked from the window to his desk and back again; his arms still behind him, flinging his phrases at us as he passed to and fro.
"Great things can only be achieved by combination," he went on. "The victory of the Allies is proof of that. We are going to combine all workers, and, in order to make our combination supreme, we will not only organise those at work, but, also, those out of work. ”

“ They 'cutely pointed out that by the system of State Socialism, the N.S.W. Government had gathered an immense army of laborers. It had built up an enormous civil service, and if men were thrown on the market consequent on the State's lack of funds, they would make it uncomfortable for the Government. That action would bring home to the workers the utter fallacy of State control of industries. They also whispered, with their tongues in their cheeks, that "private enterprise" would then become prosperous and the Labor movement would be thrown back for "years and years and years." ”

“ I remember Nap's disappointment that I was to go alone. He helped my machine out without a word. He may have had a premonition that I was not to return as I watched him silently fixing the compass and map-roller, testing the spring catch and guide of the bomb-dropper and packing into it its heavy load of "cough-drops." Then he stood like a dumb figure waiting for my starting signal.
"Buck up, Nap," I ventured, climbing into the seat. "One would think this was a funeral. I must get a hustle on as I've got to do 120 miles before I can get to business, so if everything's right, I'll swoop up." ”

“ We could see wonderful engines, put together by the hands of the workers in the factories, pushing out the useless laborer, pushing him out into the crowded avenues of unemployed. We could see this awful Frankenstein of machinery—a huge soulless metal monster, stalking through the world, bringing starvation, anarchy and destruction in its wake. ”

“ There was an excuse for us to be absolutely flabbergasted when the Kaiser's crowd rushed on to Paris. There may have been reason then for more than ordinary caution, but since the 'great check,' there has been no valid reason for people to still sit tight and wait. People with money to invest are holding up most of the former avenues of activity. 'Till the war is over' is the only excuse they can mumble. ”

“ The manufacturers saw a chance of influencing High Protection by the use of a new gag: "Don't buy German-made goods." They, of course, wanted people to buy only the Australian made, but they were cute.
They put it this way:
"Only trade with the Empire and its Allies. Every pound," it was said, "that is spent with Germany means another gun to our future menace." So the public were exhorted to confine business to the Empire and its Allies—with Britain, Africa, India, Canada, France, Belgium, Russia, Servia and Japan, and to cut the rest of the world. ”