country Mr. Bottomly jumped up. [Laughter.] For France, M. Caillaux was going to do it. He lasted about a day. And who is going to do it for us? Is it Mr. Winston Churchill ? [Laughter.] Seeing the danger, we are the people who will really have to take the matter in hand. We will have to get control of finance and the income of the country and control its distribution. But we want above everything a solid technique of government, and we have to make our technique. That is what I want to tell you is really the big job before us. Fortunately, I think, we have got good intentions. But that is not enough. We must also not run after great men. Socialism did produce a great man in Karl Marx. Many of us would say that Karl Marx produced socialism. Well, I have read Karl Marx, and I can find nothing in him about socialism. [Laughter.] But he did the greatest literary feat a man can do. Marx changed the mind of the world. He found the world full of the optimism of Macaulay's history. This apparently is the latest work Mr. Winston Churchill has read. [Laughter.]

Marx, I say it again, changed the mind of the world; and whereas capital was proud and confident, splendidly progressive as it still is in America, I am sorry to say-everybody was then ashamed of capitalism.

Mr. Keynes tells us that laissez faire-the great principle of capitalism-is dead, and he says it with an intense contempt and moral loathing of capitalism; and says it is only to be tolerated because we are not ready for anything else. We will get ready for something better. That is really the thing we have got to do.

Karl Marx made a man of me. [Applause.] Socialism made a man of me. Otherwise I should be like so many of my literary colleagues who have just as much literary ability as I have. Socialism made a man of Mr. Wells, and he has done something. But look at the rest of the literary people and you will understand why I am inordinately proud of being a Socialist. I don't give you that [Mr. Shaw snapped his fingers] for my literary eminence.

When I had read Karl Marx and had my mind changed I knew nothing of the technique of government. Marx was a

foreigner living in this country. There was only one person to whom he paid wages. That was his housekeeper, and he never had the wages to pay her. What did she get for being his housekeeper? Not even wages. She got the honor of having her name inscribed on his tombstone.

You cannot read the works of Marx without thinking that at least he never spoke to a workman in his life. But at least he did his work. You saw what happened in Russia when Lenin and Trotsky started under the impression that they could govern a great State in a certain manner. They found out their mistake very soon and they did something that no government in this country would ever think of doing: they owned up to it and told everybody the kind of mistake they had made, with the evident intention of saving their people.

I belong to the literary period. My bolt is shot; my time is past. [Cries of No! No!] Oh, yes. I know all about that. I know all about my wonderful youth. I wish you could know what my arm feels like when I lift it up like this. I have done a great deal of writing and talking. I have done a certain amount in the way of arranging ideas, and we are all more or less doing the same kind of work. And we have all found out quite definitely what we are driving at. We have had a turn of government. We were given that turn in order to show that we could not govern.

Now, we didn't say at that time to Mr. Churchill or his friends: "We can govern." We made no such boast. They have not the slightest doubt that they have got the technique and the right idea for the job. Well, we didn't say we could do it. What we did say was: "At any rate, we can do it as well as you can❞—and I believe that no person can say otherwise.

The by-elections in the country have shown the country that, whereas, when my friend the chairman was Prime Minister the country really had a comparatively easy time and was not afraid of some horrible mistakes being made abroad, it has been different ever since. Well, with the help of Mr. Zinoviev, or Mr. Zinoviev's reputation, Mr. Baldwin and his friends got rid of Mr. MacDonald and took the floor themselves. They

have been upon it ever since. They have been going from one blunder to another, and God only knows what they will be doing to-morrow.

The feeling that after the war we had really come to peace at last has been exchanged for a feeling that the country is getting near war at last. I hope that the next general election, in spite of the suppression of broadcasting, will have the effect of making me very much jollier than I have been in the political sense in the whole of my seventy years. I am rather impatient that we should get into harness again. Some of us I know lag superfluous. You have to get rid of your old men. I don't mind telling you that. That at least will save me the trouble of refusing quite a number of jobs.

I think we are keeping it in our minds because our business is to take care of the distribution of wealth in the world; and I tell you, as I have told you before, that I don't think there are two men, or perhaps one man, in our 47,000,000 who approves of the existing distribution of wealth. I will go even further and say that you will not find a single person in the whole of the civilized world who agrees with the existing system of the distribution of wealth. It has been reduced to a blank absurdity. You can prove that by asking any intelligent middle-class man if he thinks it right that he should go begging for a civil list pension while a baby in its cradle is being fought over in the law courts because it has only got six millions to be brought up on.

The first problem of distribution is distribution to the baby. It must have a food income and a better income than anybody else's income if the new generation is to be a first-class generation. Yet a baby has no morals, no character, no industry, and it hasn't even common decency. [Laughter.] And it is to that abandoned person that the first duty of the Government is due. That is a telling example of this question of distribution. It reaches our question, which really is a question which is going to carry us to triumph.

I think the day will come when we will be able to make the distinction between us and the capitalists. We must get certain leading ideas before the people. We should announce that we are not going in for what was the old-fashioned idea of re

distribution, but the redistribution of income. Let it always be a question of income.

Now, I have been talking for quite a long time, yet I don't mind, for I know in the first place that you like it, and that you always like to hear the old story told in the old way. I have been very happy here to-night. I entirely understand the distinction made by our chairman to-night when he said you hold me in social esteem and a certain amount of personal affection. I am not a sentimental man, but I am not insensible to all that. I know the value of all that, and it gives me, now that I have come to the age of seventy (it will not occur again and I am saying it for the last time), a great feeling of pleasure that I can say what a good many people can't say.

I know now that when I was a young man and took the turning that led me into the Labor Party, I took the right turning in every sense.

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

THE ARMY AND NAVY

Speech of General William T. Sherman at the first annual dinner of the New England Society in the city of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The president, Benjamin D. Silliman, on announcing the toast, "The Army and Navy-great and imperishable names and deeds have illustrated their history," said: "In response to this toast, I have the privilege of calling on the great Captain who commands the armies of the Republic; of whom it has been said, that he combines the skill and valor of the soldier, with the wisdom of the statesman, and whose name will ever live in the history of the nation. We shall have the great satisfaction of listening to General Sherman."

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:-While in Washington I was somewhat embarrassed by receiving invitations from two different New England Societies to dine with them on different days in commemoration of the same event. I hoped, under cover of that mistake, to escape one or the other, but I find that each claims its day to be the genuine anniversary of the landing of their Fathers on Plymouth Rock. I must leave some of you to settle this controversy, for I don't know whether it was the 21st or 22d; you here in Brooklyn say the 21st; they in New York say it was the 22d. Laboring under this serious doubt, when I came on the stand and found my name enrolled among the orators and statesmen present, and saw that I was booked to make a speech, I appealed to a learned and most eloquent attorney to represent me on this occasion. I even tried to bribe him with an office which I could not give; but he said that he belonged to that army sometimes described as “invincible in peace, invisible in war." [Laughter.] He would not respond for me. Therefore I find myself upon the stand at this moment compelled to respond, after wars have been abolished