In their contempt for the State Socialists, the present writers are just as earnest as Mr. Cole, and express themselves still more vigorously: "Is it any wonder," they ask (page 16), "that politics now stink in the workman's nostrils and that he has turned firmly to 'direct action'? Had a living Socialist Party found itself in Parliament, instead of the present inert Labour Party, led by charlatans and supported by Tadpoles and Tapers, the energies of Labour might possibly for a slightly longer period have been fruitfully employed in the political sphere." And on page 20 we find that "the Independent Labour Party exemplifies these good and bad qualities. . . . Not an idea of the slightest vitality has sprung from it, its literature is the most appalling nonsense, its members live on Dead Sea fruit. The joyous fellowship which was its early stock-in-trade has long since been dissipated; the party is now being bled to death by internal bickerings, dissensions and jealousies. It is the happy hunting-ground of cheap and nasty party hacks and organizers, who have contrived to make it, not an instrument for the triumph of Socialism, but a vested interest to procure a political career for voluble inefficients."
Such is the spirit in which the Guild cham-
