Pioneer

The Nemesis of Nations. A REVIEW OF THE PASSING OF CIVILISA-I I TION. WALLHEAD AT MAESTEG. On Monday, January 8th, under the auspices of the I.L.P., at the Co-operative Lecture Hall, Mr. R. O. W allead, delivered a lecture on "The Nemises of Nations to a good audience. Com- rade A. E. Jones presided in the unavoidable ab- sence of Comrade J. Evans, D.C. The Chairman in his introduction of the speaker said that Wallhead needed no intilo-I ducing to the majority present as he was well- known in the district, having been here several times and on the last occasion he spoke two nights in succession, Monday In Maes teg and Tuesday in Caerau, with the result that at Oaerou they had established a branch of the I.L.P., chiefly as the outcome of Wallhead's ad- dress, but for the benefit of anyone present he wished to say that in the speaker for the even- ing we had one of the best and most effective speakers in the Labour Movement, one who was solid in the principles he advocated and who bad the courage of his conviction and would say what he believed whatever the consequences. He then called upon the speaker to deliver his lecture. On rising, Mr. Wallhead had a fine reception. He said that he was going to make a change in his subject to-night from that which he was spea-king upon night after night when going round the country, speaking on the topic that was uppermost in the minds of the people, at any rate, the thinking people. He wished to carry the audience back in history. He thought the change was good, at least, it was good to him. He thought there was nothing better than the study of history, he did not mean the history that was taught in our schools, that kind of his- tory was not of much account, he would like to see the history taught in the schools made more cathoiic, and if this was done it would bring about a gpeat change, a spring forward. The education given to-day, he said, was a good means of inculcating ignorance. Our school chil- dren could tell us the date, on which certain kings were crowned or the date on which they cfid this that or the other, or on which a certain -battle was fought and things like that, but not. that on which sosrie great invention was made. V thJ7 taught that- the rising of Wat Tyler was a good thing for the people instead of that he was a wicked c"Lw and scoundrel it wodld be more like history than the exploits of Richaxd Il. and 4oie ot tne oucnaneeruag rulers WHO canea themselves kings in the past. First of all, he said, he wished to carry them on in imagination to a happier time in the dim future and imagine a man standing on the ruins of London of the Twentieth Century and suppose that from docu- ments he finds the enormous power of produc- tion of man, ovqa- that of ofrmer times and that from documents he could find the miserable pover- ty-stricken, filthy state in which the people of the present time live, in London or Glasgow, and what would the men of that time think of us as a people? The Imperialists and Jingo's caimot conceive of the passing of empires, and the British Jingoes would laugh you to scorn if you dared suggest anything of the kind to them, as did the Im- perialists of past empires in their time. Yet his- tory is strewn with accounts of past empires as powerful as our own, Babylon, Greece and Rome —empires as powerful, as rich, and as magnifi- cent from every point of view as our own had passed into the dust of the ages. Taking his audience back in imagination to Babylon in the year 5,000 B.C., he said that the historians declared that the valley of tke Euphrates was so fertile in those days that wheat grew as broad as a man's three fingers, and historical records showed that cattle fat- tened in the valleys bad to be sent periodically to tarser pasturages in the higher hill ranges to counteract the richness of the valley pastures. The river would be lively with the many coloured sails of the world's shipping, for Babylon was the great maritime power of her tkne. She was great from the point of view of her maritime commerce, and al&o from the point of view of her supreme and war-like navy. Her ships sailed down the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, and round Ceylon to the ports of India. She had a tremendous seaborne traffic. They traded from India in tne East to the Valley of the Danube—Germany and the Southern States of Russia-in the West; from right down Africa in the South to the Urals of the North. They were a marvellous nation, and their development was of an exceedingly com- plex character. This civilisation had been 111 ex- istence thousands of years before the visit, and lasted for over another 4,500 years after this date, for it was in 586 B.C. that the Babylonian troops destroyed Jerusalem, and carried the Jews into captivity. We talked about the British m- pire, yet our Empire was as only a single night compared with this older civilisation and empire. Now all this was gone, all that was left was a few green mounds, and if he was to be asked why Babylon fell, he would probably find the fall in the economic state of Babylon. History recorded many things from the rise and fall of nations, but generally speaking the most potent factor was the method adopted by the na tion in producing wealth. Babylonian civilisa- tion was basect on the slave market. The Babylonians ravaged all the countries round about for slaves. Babylon was a city of bricks, and every trowel full of mortar, every brick in the making and laying represented the unpaid labour of a man who was divorced from the wealth he created. Babylon seethed in the misery of its wealth creators. The rich were proud and satiated with the wealth of the world, but the creators of that wealth were divoreed from the wealth they had created; the conquest and might and majesty and riches for Babylon meant nothing to them. History told that the labour system in vogue in Babylon was so intense that the average life of a slave was only 2" years and of the peculiar diseases that the, slaves de- veloped, particularly nervous diseases. It also told of the severity of the Babylonian slave sys-I tem, under which the legs of runaway s laves were in some instances broken, and the feet turned so that the heel was in the place of the toes, in which position the bones were set; and of the terrible steel hoop which was placed found the forehead with its inner spikes of steel, which forced off the top of the head, and the slave died in awful paroxysms of pain. The wealth that the, toiler created passed out of h: keeping into that of the master class, and wh\" Babylon feft it fell not as the result of a military conquest, but by the treachery of one of these slaves, who opened the gate and let in the besieger whilst the populace were at one of the great gatherings in the city. One could in imagination realise the splendours of Babylon and the misery and tribu- lation that went to make those splendours. Back- ing the master class was always the theocracy of the priesthood, who, in face of the awful suffer- ings and all that Babylon meant, bowed them- selves before the exploiter and said, It is well, it is well! And that was true of to-day, in essenee the same forces were at work, the same principle was in operation behind the exploita- tion and rigours of the capitalist system; there was the theocracy of the priesthoods from the Pope in Rome, through the Archbishop of Can- terbury and the Free Church Councils to General Booth of the Salvation Army, who still main- tained the sanctity of the system, and said, It is well, it is well! Dealing with the City State of Athens, as the most typjcal of tne Greek City States, Mr. Wall- head said that in ;590 B.U. the condition of Athens was had; it had passeu from the simple grandeur of the Homeric period, and had come under an aristocratic government. There had developed what developed in every aristocratic goverrtment-tbe, social distase to which the Greeks themselves gave the name of "statis," and this social disease exhibited itself by the ag- gregation of wealth at one end of the t social scale, and poverty at the other end. With the development of aristocratic government had! come changes in the condition of men, the land was passing out of the hands of the farmer into the hands and control of the aristocracy, who passed the Draconia-n Law, under which it was posrible for the debtor to claim the body of the creditor, and he could sell that body into slavery in Greece itself, or could compel him to work the land, taking as a wage a sixthef the pro- duce of his labour. Under this Act the slave could purchase his liberty if he could pay off his debt, but this was an impossibility, since ne never received more than was barely sufficient- to subsist upon. The system had developed to such an extent that it was apparent that the State was break- ing up, when Solon came into power in Atlieiifi. He saw that the only way to save the State was to give econamic independence to the worker ltN deereed a law that in one night all debt should be wiped out. Economically that was not a drastic thing to do, because debt does not consist of a thing, it is the expression of something that has been eonsumed; it is fictitious, and only gives the holder of the debt control over wealth pro- duction, and all you do if you wipe it eut is to decree that the man who has levied tribute shall set out and work for himself. If the National Debt created by the war was wiped out, it would not mean the destruction of anything of a real character. This war was being carried on out of the wealth that the workers are for ever creat- ing, and they were producing it now, out of their labours to-day, to-morrow, next week, but be- cause of our method of debt and loan, the shell bliac him worker makes to-morrow and is blamed away the' day afk. is going toexaet a tribute from your sons and your sons' sons from now on. (Applause.) The present method of financing war is a senseless one. Solon could have taught ws a lot. (Laughter.) teolon gave the peopfe ot Atnens political power as well as economic .freedom, since he re- cognised that the latter was useless without the former. And the result was that 120 years from the time that Solon was called in, Athens was becoming the most splendid, the moist beautiful, the most cultured, the most civilised and the wealthiest nation the werld had ever yet seen. That was wnder complete Democracy, and Democracy had not moved straight for- ward, it had zig-zagged, because it had its Free Trade party, its Tariff Reform party, and its other parties, each promising it the world, but it had ever gone forward, until there CMlae a time when poverty for the freeman of Athens did not exist. No people ever end, or have ever since done, what the Greeks did during this Golden Age. This little community of not more than 25,000 male adults produced more great men than any other nation in the world has ever produced before or since. In the drama, in philosophy, in architecture, in sta- tuary, in literature, the Green wu perfect. George Bernard Shaw had said that he thought he could write plays, but when he had read the tragedies of Euripedes., he admitted that tie had much to learn, and Sir Henry Maine had de- clared that there is nothing moves, there is nothing lives tnat is not Greek in its origin." There was a wonderful intellectual and moral development, and under the Greek system of democratic development no law became law un- til it had been approved by the citzens in public meeting assembled, and every citizen of Athene became administrator by turn, being chosen by lot. This. was curIOuS, but it worked. Every- thing was done by the popular will; yet all this was gone now. There was nothing left but a few ruins. And again we would find the source of the decay of Greece in its economic foundations. It was exactly what had happened in Babylon- Athens was founded on chattel slavery. The lash of the whip and the shriek of the slave were heterd as the slave laboured to produce wealth that was net for him. And he believed that the Greek culture and Greek civilisation would have been impossible but for the slave. He was one of those who believed that we should always have slavery. He did not think that we could earry on in this country a great and high civilisation without some form of slavery. In Babylon and Greece it was the flesh and blood slave, but the slave of the future has got to be, an inanimate slave. He has to be a slave of steel who would not be dominated by the whip of the overseer, but directed by steam and electricity, and when these slaves should have become the tools and the property of th* community, we also should hav.G abolished poverty. (Applause.) And when poverty was swept away the low things of culture would vanish with it, and genius would be left to ex- pand, as it had expanded in the little city State of Athens, which with a population of not more than 25,000 adult males had produced the great- est minds the world had ever known. (Cheers.) Mr. Wallhead corrected the anti-Socialist as- sertion that it was Socialism arising from the free distribution of all bread and wine that ruined Rome. The truth was that the slave had been brought into competition with the free Roman workman, and the free Roman workman was reduced to a condition of beggary. In the legions of Rome the slave did not fight, it was the free Roman citizen who built up that mili- tary state which had given rise to the great lim- pire, and when he was broken by the comijeti- tion (0)£ the chattel slave, he was still of use; h. was still wanted to serve with the Roma-n Army, though he was of no account as a wealth pro- ducer, and Rome fed him and gave him fo6* gladiatorial .showsoecause of that use. All. again it wa.s slavery and the cheapness of huinall life that broke up a mighty and splendid civili- sation. The Chairman made an appeal on behaM of the 41 as also did the speaker, which resulted in an increase of orders for the future and every copy sold out, more could have bepB sold but were not at hand. Thus ended one of the best lectures heard is Moesteg.

I Merthyr Tragedy. I I WOMAN'S AVERSION FOR MEDICAL < ATTENDANCE. I A chronic invalid's strange aversion to being r attended by a doctor was mentioned at a I[ thyr inquest on Monday. She was Alice Je Davies, aged 48 years, a, widow, of Park-lase) Merthyr, who died on Saturday morning. Her son, Ca-swallon Davies, said he put her to rest 011 Friday night on a couch in the sitting- room. He fell off to sleep himself, and waking up about three o'clock, went across to her in ease he could do something for her. He found hr deed. Two years ago 2h8 was treated am patient in the Merthyr Infirmary for f ouy months. Six months ago was the last time Shff II was seen by a medical man. Mr. R. J. Rhys (coroner) asked why a dêCiOf was act called in. If you had a doctor into the house you have done some tiling for her" he added. Witness said his mother did not wish to have a doetor. ?iss A Kent, a friend of the dead womaB? < said she had be,en looking after her. She com- f plained of giddiness and pains in her head. Dr. Itrennan, who saw the body, said it somewhat emaciated. When he called at the house after the death lie was told the wom had been suffering from mental depression a-B" had been worried about her BOM. (the first wit- ness, sisce discharged) going to the Army. i Caswallon Davies, recalled, said he did not know whether, as stated in the police inform tion, his mother suffered from Bright's disease- Core ner: Was there evidence of any specific disease ? Dr. Brennan: None whatever. Have you any doubt about it being a ease of natural death.—None. Death fpoiii natural causes was according" the verdict. —

Merthyr Blaze. I ELEiTRICAL DEPOT DAMAGE ESTIMATED I AT 12,000. 'I. 1 1 a-t I' A big blase resulting 11a damage estiiiiated occurred at Mertiiyr all lues1 morning. Shortly alter 4 o'clock a night-watclul1an at, the Merthyr Electric Traction Company's depot at i enydarren discovered that the battery sMf" age-hou-se in the buildings was afire. liie Ai.ert.kyr Fire Brigade was summoned and were on the scene of the fire almost iiiiniediatelf, under the direction of the Chief Constable (jlr- J. A. Wilson). The battery and the battery siorage-boase were in flames and the main engine-house wo in suave danger, as a high wind was causing thø hre to spread to the fitting shop and the stores, the roots of which were now alight. Fortunately there was a good supply of water at hand and after sonlewliat over two hours tbat ettorts of the brigade were successful. Tke battery in the storage-house in which tite j'ire originated was 500 horse-power, used to suf ply electricity to the town in case of a break' down. It was capable of givNtg a four or five- hours supply in the case of emergency The ordinary The or d inary e l ectri ca l supply of the however, will not GP afftcted. The cause of the fire is nót known. I

Merthyr Grievances I MARRIED WORKMEN AND HOUSE COAL I SUPPLIES. Two grievances on house coal supply were dis- cussed by the monthly meeting of the Merthyr miners on Saturday. The first related to a dis- pute regarding the provision of the house eoid to unmarried workmen at the Cyfarthfa Colliery- Complaint was mad? of delay in dealing with tbg matter and it was decided that unless action were taken within the next fortnight a special meeting of the miners would be called. Delay was also complained of in connection with the quality of house coal supplied to the workmen at the collieries of the Hills-Plymouth Company (Limited), and in this case also it was agreed to call a meeting of the miners eoB" cerned. Mr. B. J. Williams was elected district diair- I man for the ensuing year. The annual report showed that the membership of the district had 8[I increa.sed considerably durik,, the year, and that I the financial position was extremely gatisfactory.

"A Poor Excuse." I MERTHYR ALDERMAN AND SICK ) TENANTS. j A somewhat spirited discussion took place s.D the Merthyr Housing Committee on Tuesday, when Alderman William Lewis asked for an ex- planation of the arrears of rent on low-pente d houses. The eollector (Mr. Edwards) replied that sicknegs and consequent loss of work by tenants was why the rents had not been paid up. Alderman Lewis It is a poor excuse, sickness- (Dissent.) The Mayor (Alderman W. F. Hankey): That is not fair. You don't know the circumstanced- Mr. Edwards: I am quite prepared to get ri of these people if the committee wish. Alderman Lewis We don't want that. Thee" «re not high rents. Therefore, it is only right e should have a satisfactory explanation as tO iy and how the arrears occurred. He accepted collector's assurance, but the sickness exert-.s6 f tenants was an "old patch." The committee accepted the oollector's ex- planation as sufficient.

In a, trades Union parper under the beading of Letters from a Field Hospital," one letter ooJ1 eludes thus:—" May I, when all are thinking of Peace and Goodwill, give the following qulv tatien as a seasonable message to all, both ftØ and near: 'No war will bring Peace. Only love and mercy and virtues such as loving oB? enemy can bring that biMs?d 'thin& pew*