youngster, sharp with the nose of the Gogol legend which pierces and dilates. That fleshy mouth, those clear eyes, the carefully brushed hair! That gleaming collar with high cravat, almost as dashing as a whole shawl would have been, that dandified frock coat, almost that of an impertinent person, 'the smoky color of Navarin with flame,' those smooth, soft pumps-such was his entrance into the world that was to be conquered.

St. Petersburg gave him a dull reception. In place of 'a radiant chamber facing toward the Neva,' ridiculous difficulties and, soon, misery beyond words kept him in a back court with walls and impenetrable mists. The man of destiny - he judged himself that beat as a suppliant at the gates of salons and administrative offices. Under the cruel snow, he was compelled to wear his thin summer overcoat and while the frozen flakes whirled around him, he saw fall one by one his provincial illusions.

Oh, the simple joy of having a good coat in winter! Above all, the joy of not being the poverty-stricken wretch whom stupid people and prosperous people despise! Later, he was to tell those pleasures in that humble yet marvelous story of Akaki Akakievitch, who lived to know them, and who died from lacking them. This story of The Coat, finished abroad in 1840, marks the discovery of a literary genre and it marks, more than that, a great manifestation of the Russian soul compassionate, never content, always in revolt.

amuse 'clever people') was to die and return as a phantom to torment His Excellency.

Gogol, in his misery, had made a new discovery. The literary method of 1830, essentially romantic, is the study of national characteristics and customs. Gogol discovered Little Russia. He was to make what is to-day known as litérature régionaliste. Observe that it is a double discovery, for it reveals to him his own genius, his true vocation. He writes his delicious, facetious, idyllic, and satiric Evenings at the Farm of Dikannka and, to begin with, The Sorotchintsky Fair, of which I have already quoted the first page - the opening, it may be well to add. This Fair and the Watch of Saint Jean, and the Night of May, and Stolen Documents constituted his first volume (1831). Gogol, yesterday unknown, was greeted by Pushkin in all his glory, as his heir.

If the style of Pushkin makes one think of that of Voltaire, the style of Gogol presents analogies to that of Flaubert. It is a gigantic link between two contemporaries. There are not, I dare say, more than two impeccable prose stylists in all the finer Russian literature; and those two are certainly Pushkin and Gogol.

But the grand style is no more than an instrument by which a profound sensitiveness and strong thought immortalize themselves. Gogol after he became master of his art, wrote his comedy The Inspector and his novel, or, as he insisted, his poem, Dead Souls. The circumstances make it necessary

'Your Excellency,' replies his lackey, 'he is some sort of petty official.'

'In that case, he can wait,' replies His Excellency.

But the little official, the innocent Akaki Akakievitch (a name made to

become a famous citizen. Gogol is going to live and die with the tragic evolution of his thought intimately associated with the religious, political, and social destinies of his country. He is going to make of himself an accuser and a prophet.

THE collapse of the Triple Alliance strike-threat was followed by a big revulsion of feeling in the Labor world. It was recognized that Labor's big gun had failed to go off at the critical moment; and this caused Trades Unionists to think more seriously than before about the basis of their organizations and the methods of working necessitated by the growing magnitude of the modern Trades-Union movement.

Great hopes had, indeed, been built in some quarters upon the apparently imposing strength of the Triple Alliance. But from the first there were many who discounted this apparent strength, and knew full well that the conditions which had from the first been regarded as necessary in order to make the Alliance an effective instrument of industrial action had never been fulfilled. The idea of the Alliance arose naturally in the minds of the leaders of the three groups concerned, as a result of their experience in the years before the war. They found, in 1911, that a succession of transport strikes repeatedly threw the miners out of employment, and they found in 1912, and in South Wales in 1911 also, that a mining strike produced a similar reaction upon railwaymen and transport workers. This being so, it was natural that the idea should arise in their minds of

forming a single body for coöperative action, embracing all three groups. If, it was urged, they could so arrange as to make their various agreements lapse at the same moment, they would be able to make one strike grow where three grew before, and very probably, with the added strength which united action would bring, to obviate the necessity for any strike at all. Thus, their central idea was that all three bodies should take action together, but that each should take action for the remedying of its own particular grievances. The idea was not primarily that when one body became involved in a dispute, the other bodies should call out their members in sympathy with it.

From the first, it was evident that there would be very great difficulties in realizing the conditions which were regarded as essential to ensure the success of the Triple Alliance. It is not easy to arrange that agreements in a number of different industries shall lapse simultaneously, or that disputes shall arise only at the moment chosen by those organizations. A dispute may be precipitated from the other side; and, in fact, the strikes which have taken place in all three industries, since the conclusion of the Alliance, have occurred, not at moments of the Unions' choosing but when a dispute has been

precipitated either by some action of the Government or by the employers. Thus, it was no surprise to those who had followed with attention the development of the Alliance that at the critical moment, a few weeks ago, the great gun should fail to go off.

Indeed, the huge-scale organization to which the Labor movement has now attained, clearly raises up big new problems which will have to be settled. There is hardly an important industry or group of workers that has not been touched by the movement for closer combination during the last two or three years. The result has been that, although a very large number of small Unions still remain in existence, the policy of the whole Trades-Union movement is in practice now determined by a quite small number of very large societies of 100,000 members or more. The effective use of these new large-scale combinations clearly demands a different strategy from that which sufficed for the comparatively small and often localized Unions of a generation ago. Moreover, if large-scale combination has made big strides among the workers, it has made even greater strides among the employers. On the employers' side, there is hardly an industry now that is not closely integrated into an effective combination which takes common action on all matters affecting wages, conditions of employment, and labor policy generally. Thus, even a small local dispute, arising at a particular works, is far more likely than it used to be treated by either side as a matter of principle, and thus to lead on to a generalized dispute. The existence of large-scale representative organizations on the side of both employers and workers undoubtedly makes negotiation easier and prevents a great number of small disputes from occurring; but it has also the result that, when a dispute does occur, it is far more serious and far

more likely to bring the whole of the industry concerned to a standstill, even if it does not also necessarily involve other industries in which the employers and workers are not directly parties to it.

Thus, the big consolidation of forces which has taken place among both employers and workers, and the big influx of new members who were previously unorganized, into both the Trades Unions and the employers' associations, have had the effect, especially in face of the necessity for drastic readjustments in industry, following upon the conclusion of the war, of confronting two great mass organizations which have to an increasing extent divergent views concerning the proper method of conducting industry. This tends to make the patched-up local compromises of the last generation no longer possible.

There is no doubt that the experience of the last few years has given to the organized workers a much greater sense of their indispensability to Society and of the power which resides in their organizations. At the same time, the new doctrines which were already beginning to spread before the war, and still more the actual experiences of the workshops under war conditions, have stimulated a widespread, though still imperfectly formulated, demand for a more democratic form of industrial organization. The workers in most of the important industries are demanding what they call 'workers' control.' The claim assumes different forms according to the particular circumstances of each industry, and expresses itself sometimes, as in the case of the mines, in a demand for public ownership accompanied by the concession of a real share in administrative control to the workers, and sometimes, as in the engineering industry, in the demand for workshop control, which is widely associated with the shop-stewards' movement. The growth of these

new demands has undoubtedly alarmed the employers and made them, for the time being at least, less willing to grant concessions which they fear may lead to radical changes in the conduct of industry. Thus, the change in the state of mind and attitude towards the industrial system which has taken place among the workers also serves to increase the possibility of industrial conflict.

Meanwhile, the Labor movement has developed very greatly on the political side. The word 'Socialist' has, very largely lost its meaning. A so-called 'Socialist' leader, like Mr. Ramsay Macdonald or Mr. Philip Snowden, may be far more out of sympathy with 'left-wing' tendencies in the Labor movement than many Trades-Union leaders who do not call themselves 'Socialists.' The Independent Labor Party, which obtained a reputation for 'Left Wingism' as a result of its opposition to the war, cannot be fairly described in any sense as a 'left wing' within the Labor Party itself. The categories of Socialist and non-Socialist Labor have, in fact, lost their significance. What has happened is that practically the whole of the articulate sections of the organized working-class movement have swung definitely towards a more Socialistic conception of the future of Society; and the Trades Unions, in many cases, though they have not adopted the name 'Socialist,' have moved considerably to the left of the orthodox 'Socialist' leaders.

I do not believe that, if a General Election were held in the near future, there is the slightest chance that the Labor Party would come back with a majority. Still less do I believe that there is any possibility of a universal strike or of a catastrophic overthrow of the present forms of Government. Nor, I think, would most of the leaders of Labor, either of the right or the left

wing, be able to regard with unmixed satisfaction the prospect of an immediate assumption of power; for they realize that the muddles which the country has made, and is still making, both of its internal policy and of the fortunes of Europe and of the world, would prove a most embarrassing legacy for any Government particularly any constitutional Government that was called upon to assume power at the present time. But, even if Labor after the next election goes back not as a majority but as a much larger minority of Parliament, that proves very little either way. For the view of many of the leaders of Labor is that it is practically inevitable that, within a comparatively short period, Labor should be called upon to assume the authority of Government, if only because the policy which is at present being pursued by its political adversaries is bound, before long, to end in manifest break-down.

It may be possible for a few years more to cover up sufficiently the fact that we cannot really make our budgets balance or restore our industries to any sort of prosperity while we have the present burden of debt hanging round our necks; but there is a limit to the length of time for which plain facts like this can be ignored, and Governments which only succeed in making them worse as the years go by be maintained in power. It may well be that Labor will rise to power, as most Governments have risen in the past, on the strength less of its own positive appeal than of the utter weariness of the electors with the usual alternatives to it.

My fear, and the fear of a good many more in the Labor movement, is that, when Labor comes to power, far from being dominated by a 'left-wing' minority, which will desire to take drastic action, it will be unduly timid in facing the very difficult problems with which

it will have to deal. For the plain fact that we have to confront is that the whole system of European civilization is in jeopardy, and that, unless there is a fundamental departure from the policy which is being pursued, the dissolution of the existing system is likely to take place without the creation of any tolerable alternative to it. I believe that the new forces which are stirring in the world both politically and industrially are gradually formulating and making possible an alternative. The growing demand for democratic control in industry is laying the foundations of a new industrial order based on a willing coöperation in production of all those who are necessary to its successful conduct. The gradual growth of a political consciousness among the organized workers is preparing the way for a fundamental reconstruction of our po

litical system on a basis of more real democracy of popular control. The thwarting of these developments by the constantly more determined resistance to change of the parties and classes which now possess power and wealth in the community, so far from ensuring the stability of the present system, is only weakening that system without providing or allowing the provision of any alternative to it.

In no case can the transition be easy; but I believe that a possibility of any transition at all, or of any continuance of a civilized life for the greater part of Europe, depends absolutely on the extent to which the organized Labor movement is able to equip itself for the exercise of industrial and political power, and to master the problems which the growth of large-scale organization is every day presenting to it.

THERE is something about dogs. . . But I must begin by saying that I am spending a week-end with a friend of mine in the country. He is one of that increasing army of literary men for whom Sussex is a large county entirely surrounded by England, and he lives at the little village of Pinchinhoe (pronounced Pud-oo). I may say that he went there for quiet, for his health, and for literary work.

When one is within a mile of it the essential character of the village becomes plain. It is a dogs' village. Here and there in the charming coun

try-side there are traces, it is true, of the ancient industries of the place; thus by the wayside you may see a derelict plough, an abandoned hoe; in the field there is a rusty harrow rapidly disappearing in the rank neglected vegetation. In the wide marshes by the river there stands a forlorn and lonely bullock or two; on the Downs one may detect with a high-power glass a solitary sheep, nosing disconsolate the empty trough and heavily weighted with a surfeit of wool, which no man will remove. In their little gardens the cottagers and the gentry make gentle