ABSTRACT
This Paper consists of two passages (Chapters III and VI) from my little book “What Have We to Defend?” (now out of print), written during the war in “… an attempt to explain why a pacific international socialist feels it necessary to support the war.” During the course of my argument I contended that despite the obvious faults in the British social system it was “one of the finest that men had yet built for themselves and not the least important of its virtues lay in the fact that “. . it contains, more certainly than any other, the means for its own improvement”. The relevance of these passages to the subject of this book lies in these two propositions. An analysis of the roots of inequality and inefficiency in our pre-war society constitutes the main practical reason for seeking to change it—while the last step in the argument makes plain the inherence of political democracy in the British conception of socialism. Certain phrases I have used spring from the higher emotional tension of war-time and do not fit the pedestrian mood of a difficult peace, but I have thought it better to leave the text unchanged.
