The Syndicalists have been citing the philosophy of Bergson in support of their views, and it is most interesting to see how skilfully at times sayings of Bergson are quoted by them as authoritative, as justification for their actions, in a spirit akin to that of the devout man who quotes scripture texts as a guide to conduct.

In this country, Syndicalism has not been popular, and when it did show its head the government promptly prosecuted the editor and printers of its organ, The Syndicalist, and suppressed the paper owing to its aggressive anti-militarism. [Footnote:  Imprisonment of Mr. Tom Mann] English Syndicalism has few supporters and it is a rather diluted form of French Syndicalism.  To understand the movement, we must turn to its history in France or in America.  Its history in Russia will be an object of research in the future, when more material and more news are available from that “distressful country.”  In France local unions or syndicats were legalized as early as 1884 but 1895 is the important landmark, being the date of the foundation with which Syndicalism is associated to-day, the Confederation Generale du Travail, popularly known as the “C.G.T.,” the central trade-union organization in France.  In the main, Syndicalism is an urban product, and has not many adherents among the agricultural population.  In America a “Federation of Labour” was formed in 1886, but the Syndicalist organization there is the body known as “The Industrial Workers of the World.”  In its declaration of policy, it looks forward to a union which is to embrace the whole working class and to adopt towards the capitalist class an unending warfare, until the latter is expropriated.  “The working class and the employing class,” says the declaration, “have nothing in common.  Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the industrial field and take and hold that which they produce by their labour.”  Among the leaders of Syndicalist thought on the Continent may be mentioned the names of three prominent Frenchmen, Berth, Lagardelle, and Sorel, together with that of the young Italian professor Labriola, who is leading the increasingly active party in his own country.

In France, Italy, and America alike, Syndicalism stands for the class-war.  Its central feature is the idea of a General Strike.  It manifests a hatred of the State, which makes it bitterly opposed to State Socialism, which it regards as centralized and tyrannical, or to a Labour-party of any kind in Parliament. [Footnote:  Attempts at carrying out a General Strike, in France, Sweden, Italy, and Spain have failed.  The greatest Strikes have been:  Railwaymen in Italy, in 1907; Postal Workers in France, in 1909.  Miners in New South Wales, in 1909, and in Sweden, 1909; Miners and Railwaymen in England; Textile Workers in Massachusetts, 1912; Railwaymen in England, 1919, in France, 1920.] It regards the State as fixed, rigid, and intellectual,