the order of the world is confounded with the capitalist.  Before the war the popular so-called socialist press reeked with the cant of rebellion, the cant of any sort of rebellion.  “I’m a rebel,” was the silly boast of the young disciple.  “Spoil something, set fire to something,” was held to be the proper text for any girl or lad of spirit.  And this blind discontent carried on into the war.  While on the one hand a great rush of men poured into the army saying, “Thank God! we can serve our country at last instead of some beastly profiteer,” a sourer remnant, blind to the greater issues of the war, clung to the reasonless proposition, “the state is only for the Capitalist.  This war is got up by Capitalists.  Whatever has to be done—­we are rebels.”

Such a typical paper as the British Labour Leader, for example, may be read in vain, number after number, for any sound and sincere constructive proposal.  It is a prolonged scream of extreme individualism, a monotonous repetition of incoherent discontent with authority, with direction, with union, with the European effort.  It wants to do nothing.  It just wants effort to stop—­even at the price of German victory.  If the whole fabric of society in western Europe were to be handed over to those pseudo-socialists to-morrow, to be administered for the common good, they would fly the task in terror.  They would make excuses and refuse the undertaking.  They do not want the world to go right.  The very idea of the world going right does not exist in their minds.  They are embodied discontent and hatred, making trouble, and that is all they are.  They want to be “rebels”—­to be admired as “rebels”.

That is the true psychology of the Resentful Employee.  He is a de-socialised man.  His sense of the State has been destroyed.

The Resentful Employees are the outcome of our social injustices.  They are the failures of our social ad educational systems.  We may regret their pitiful degradation, we may exonerate them from blame; none the less they are a pitiful crew.  I have seen the hardship of the trenches, the gay and gallant wounded.  I do a little understand what our soldiers, officers and men alike, have endured and done.  And though I know I ought to allow for all that I have stated, I cannot regard these conscientious objectors with anything but contempt.  Into my house there pours a dismal literature rehearsing the hardships of these men who set themselves up to be martyrs for liberty; So and So, brave hero, has been sworn at—­positively sworn at by a corporal; a nasty rough man came into the cell of So and So and dropped several h’s; So and So, refusing to undress and wash, has been undressed and washed, and soap was rubbed into his eyes—­perhaps purposely; the food and accommodation are not of the best class; the doctors in attendance seem hasty; So and So was put into a damp bed and has got a nasty cold.  Then I recall a jolly vanload of wounded men I saw out there....