It is, however, certain that
Socialism starts well equipped. She has her poets and her painters, her
art lecturers and her cunning designers, her powerful orators and her
clever writers. If she fails it will not be for lack of expression. If
she succeeds her triumph will not be a triumph of mere brute force. The
first thing that strikes one, as one looks over the list of contributors
to Mr. Edward Carpenter's Chants of Labour, is the curious variety of
their several occupations, the wide differences of social position that
exist between them, and the strange medley of men whom a common passion
has for the moment united. The editor is a 'Science lecturer'; he is
followed by a draper and a porter; then we have two late Eton masters and
then two bootmakers; and these are, in their turn, succeeded by an ex-
Lord Mayor of Dublin, a bookbinder, a photographer, a steel-worker and an
authoress. On one page we have a journalist, a draughtsman and a music-
teacher: and on another a Civil servant, a machine fitter, a medical
student, a cabinet-maker and a minister of the Church of Scotland.
Certainly, it is no ordinary movement that can bind together in close
brotherhood men of such dissimilar pursuits, and when we mention that Mr.
William Morris is one of the singers, and that Mr. Walter Crane has
designed the cover and frontispiece of the book, we cannot but feel that,
as we pointed out before, Socialism starts well equipped.

As for the songs themselves, some of them, to quote from the editor's
preface, are 'purely revolutionary, others are Christian in tone; there
are some that might be called merely material in their tendency, while
many are of a highly ideal and visionary character.' This is, on the
whole, very promising. It shows that Socialism is not going to allow
herself to be trammelled by any hard and fast creed or to be stereotyped
into an iron formula. She welcomes many and multiform natures. She
rejects none and has room for all. She has the attraction of a wonderful
personality and touches the heart of one and the brain of another, and
draws this man by his hatred of injustice, and his neighbour by his faith
in the future, and a third, it may be, by his love of art or by his wild
worship of a lost and buried past. And all of this is well. For, to
make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great
thing.

They are not of any very high literary value, these poems that have been
so dexterously set to music. They are meant to be sung, not to be read.
They are rough, direct and vigorous, and the tunes are stirring and
familiar. Indeed, almost any mob could warble them with ease. The
transpositions that have been made are rather amusing. 'Twas in
Trafalgar Square is set to the tune of 'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay; Up, Ye
People! a very revolutionary song by Mr.