or literary craft, who have led uneventful, irresponsible lives from their youth up, and never came at any point into relations of service to the state.  This latter class was more difficult to define than the former—­because it is more various within itself.  My French friends wanted to talk of the “Psychology of the Rentier.”  I was for such untranslatable phrases as the “Genteel Whig,” or the “Donnish Liberal.”  But I lit up an Italian—­he is a Milanese manufacturer—­with “these Florentine English who would keep Italy in a glass case.”  “I know,” he said.  Before I go on to expand this congenial theme, let me deal first with the Resentful Employee, who is a much more considerable, and to me a much more sympathetic, figure in European affairs.  I began life myself as a Resentful Employee.  By the extremest good luck I have got my mind and spirit out of the distortions of that cramping beginning, but I can still recall even the anger of those old days.

He becomes an employee between thirteen and fifteen; he is made to do work he does not like for no other purpose that he can see except the profit and glory of a fortunate person called his employer, behind whom stand church and state blessing and upholding the relationship.  He is not allowed to feel that he has any share whatever in the employer’s business, or that any end is served but the employer’s profit.  He cannot see that the employer acknowledges any duty to the state.  Neither church nor state seems to insist that the employer has any public function.  At no point does the employee come into a clear relationship of mutual obligation with the state.  There does not seem to be any way out for the employee from a life spent in this subordinate, toilsome relationship.  He feels put upon and cheated out of life.  He is without honour.  If he is a person of ability or stubborn temper he struggles out of his position; if he is a kindly and generous person he blames his “luck” and does his work and lives his life as cheerfully as possible—­and so live the bulk of our amazing European workers; if he is a being of great magnanimity he is content to serve for the ultimate good of the race; if he has imagination, he says, “Things will not always be like this,” and becomes a socialist or a guild socialist, and tries to educate the employer to a sense of reciprocal duty; but if he is too human for any of these things, then he begins to despise and hate the employer and the system that made him.  He wants to hurt them.  Upon that hate it is easy to trade.

A certain section of what is called the Socialist press and the Socialist literature in Europe is no doubt great-minded; it seeks to carve a better world out of the present.  But much of it is socialist only in name.  Its spirit is Anarchistic.  Its real burthen is not construction but grievance; it tells the bitter tale of the employee, it feeds and organises his malice, it schemes annoyance and injury for the hated employer.  The state and