them into conflict with the authorities in the years preceding the war. But, as was to be expected, it did not survive the actual invasion of France.
The doctrines of Syndicalism may be illustrated by an article introducing it to English readers in the first number of the Syndicalist Railwayman, September 1911, from which the following is quoted:—
"All Syndicalism, Collectivism, Anarchism aims at abolishing the present economic status and existing private ownership of most things; but while Collectivism would substitute ownership by everybody and Anarchism ownership by nobody, Syndicalism aims at ownership by Organized labour. It is thus a purely Trade Union reading of the economic doctrine and the class war preached by Socialism. It vehemently repudiates parliamentary action on which Collectivism relies; and it is, in this respect, much more closely allied to Anarchism, from which, indeed, it differs in practice only in being more limited in range of action" (Times, August 24, 1911).
In truth, so thin is the partition between Syndicalism and Anarchism, that the newer and less familiar "ism" has been shrewdly defined as "Organized Anarchy." It has been created by the Trade Unions of France; but it is obviously an international plant whose roots have already found the soil of Britain most congenial to its growth and fructification.
Collectivist or Marxian Socialism would have us believe that it is distinctively a Labour Movement; but it is not so. Neither is Anarchism. The one is substantially bourgeois; the other aristocratic, plus an abundant output of book-learning, in either case. Syndicalism, on the contrary, is indubitably laborist in origin and aim, owing next to nothing to the "Classes," and, indeed, resolute to uproot them. The Times (October 13, 1910), which almost single-handed in the British Press has kept creditably abreast of Continental Syndicalism, thus clearly set forth the significance of the General Strike:—
"To understand what it means, we must remember that there is in France a powerful Labour Organization, which has for its open and avowed object a Revolution, in which not only the present order of Society but the State itself is to be swept away. This movement is called Syndicalism. It is not
