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England at present faces a crisis, a greater crisis, perhaps than is faced by any other capitalist country, and England’s crisis—to a very great extent—means a crisis for four continents and at least the beginning of a crisis for the fifth, at present the most powerful continent, America. But the political development of England presents remarkable peculiarities, the result of all its past history, which now lie directly in the way of its future growth. Without burdening our exposition with figures and details which the reader may easily find in works of reference and in special studies of the economic policy of England, we have undertaken to isolate and describe those historical factors and circumstances which must determine the history of England in the present epoch. We speak of England only, not of the British Empire; of the mother country, not of the colonies and dominions. The latter have their own paths of development, diverging more and more from those of the home country.

Our exposition, for the most part, will be critical and polemical in character. History is made by men; the evaluation of the living forces producing the history of the present cannot be otherwise than active. In order to learn what are the classes, parties, and party leaders engaged in the struggle, and what the morrow will bring for them, we must work our way through a mass of political complications, lies, hypocrisies, of an all-pervading parliamentary “cant”. Under these circumstances, the polemical method is the necessary method of political analysis. The question we ask ourselves, and to which we attempt to give an answer, is quite objective: “Whither England?”