Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

into the box was surely all too little for the services which the Guardians had rendered them. And the hope of favours to come is always a stimulant to generosity. Alas! we have now dropped from poetry into prose; an inquiry has been made; and counsel have given an opinion that "proof of the above matters would justify a charge against those Guardians of having committed the indictable misdemeanour of conspiracy knowingly to make illegal payments out of public funds administered by them." And they all belong to the Labour Party, whose members alone are worth protecting abroad, and who at home are declared incapable of wrongdoing.

The experience of Chesterle-Street does not give us confidence. The British Empire has taken upon itself many responsibilities, and we have done our best by decreeing universal suffrage, male and female, to ensure its collapse. How can we expect it to survive when we hand it over, body and soul, to a set of men who are moved only by greed and class hatred, who think that nothing is of importance so long as they can get high wages for short hours, and so long as they gratify the feelings of envy and anger that fill their breasts? During the past year we have heard much talk of revolution. The performances of Lenin, who once said that he cared not if he killed 90,000,000 of his fellow

In

countrymen, and who, in fact, established such a Terror as has never been known in the history of the world, have been held up to the working-classes as worthy of imitation. the General Strike we witnessed an actual attempt to subvert the Government of the country. We have had our warning, which it would be criminal to neglect. One thing only is said to comfort us. We may believe, we are told, in the sound sense of the British workingman. Vain and dangerous words! They have been spoken, no doubt, by those who have learned the value of propaganda. They are designed to lull to sleep those who are determined not to surrender their lives, their property, and their happiness to the ready servants of Moscow. How shall we trust the sound sense of the dupes of Mr Cook, who followed that agitator about in pitiful confidence, and who hung upon his words, as though they were anything better than the utterances of a demagogue incapable alike of understanding or argument ? And revolution, let it be remembered, is always the work of small minorities. If we be not prepared for it, it may come upon us in the night, and be carried out by half a hundred rascals, who do not shrink from bloodshed and torture, and who have at their tongue's end the phrases which mislead and corrupt. In Russia Lenin and his friends succeeded, by swift action, in destroying the bourgeoisie and

in establishing a tyranny of and a single false step may blood. Why should not the reduce us to sudden irretrievRussian example, acclaimed by able ruin. Yet our politicians, our leaders of Labour as the too busy with the game to herald of a new day, be fol- reflect, and being naturally lowed in our own country? sanguine so long as they are At any rate, we shall be wise in office, make no attempt to if we do not rely, in a sanguine check the growing evil. optimism, upon the sound sense of the British working-man. We shall do better to keep our faith in the staunch loyalty of the upper and middle-classes, and prove once more, as we proved in the General Strike, that we can take care of ourselves, and perform, without difficulty, the tasks of the working-classes.

Thus England is brought to the very edge of peril. We rejoice (or we shall soon rejoice) in universal suffrage. The more voters we can get, the merrier we shall be. At least, that appears to be the prevailing argument. It is not suggested that a wider franchise will give security to the State. The State and its security are not considered. No word is said to justify the dangerous policy. The word "democracy," which made even Radicals tremble fifty years ago, is generally accepted to-day as a word of hope and glory. The irresistible dialectics of Robert Lowe are long since forgotten, and with a flabby acquiescence we pretend that the mere invitation to one and all to pack the polling-booth will increase, immeasurably and instantly, the common stock of knowledge. And this acquiescence involves the greater risk, because we have a great Empire to control,

Nor have the politicians, even those who are well disposed, any good advice to give us. They are content to repeat the old advice," Educate your masters." They do not tell us how we shall educate them, where we shall educate them, what we shall educate them in. They do not explain why, if these lack every sort of education, they have wantonly made them masters over us. Now, education is not a matter of a speech delivered from the safe eminence of a soap-box. You cannot educate the omnipotent masses by going into the park and pitting your lungs against the leathern lungs of those who have a firm faith in nothing save noise. If the desire to educate the only voters who count, the men and women of the working-classes-all other classes are disfranchised-were sincere, the business of education, always arduous, should begin early and be continued late. If the vote is anything better than a game of pitch and toss, they who exercise it should have a knowledge of history; they should know something of their own country and of others. They should not be permitted to decide what policy shall be followed in China, for instance, when

they are ignorant of its whereabouts, its size, or the character of its people. They should not be obeyed patiently when they pronounce a solemn verdict upon questions of economy and finance. Yet they are listened to with awe by aspiring candidates, and the chief education they get is the education of flattery.

Plainly, the kind of education which might be of some service is out of the question. It might be given in schools, if the schools were not handed over to the parrot teaching of blasphemous and treasonable songs. It might be given in the factories and workshops, had not the syndicalists and shopstewards won and kept the ear of the working-man. There remain the street and the park, where the zealous educator essays an impossible task. In the first place, they who would tell some few rudimentary truths to the people must first fight the agitator, and they will find the contest always unequal. They will find themselves opposed to rascals who are ready to promise wealth and happiness to their obedient dupes. If the leaders of Labour, Messrs MacDonald and Thomas, are ready to change their opinions at the wanton bidding of their own Party, and are willing to follow a course of action which they confess presently they knew to be wrong, what are we to expect of the agitating rank and file? If we are wise we shall expect nothing. We shall

VOL. CCXXI.-NO. MCCCXXXVIII.

recognise that no system of education can refute the policy of make-believe and wholesale bribery.

And, in the second place, even if the pious educator could confute the clamorous statements of those who tell the people what it wants to hear-and he cannot, because logic can seldom get the better of greed, he would still find it impossible to expel certain opinions which have long been lodged in the general mind. That England is always in the wrong, that England's enemies are always long-suffering and in the right-these are dogmas of universal acceptance. Why they are is not easy to explain. Probably they are a mere expression of vanity; they come from that humility which is the brother of pride. See what a fine fellow I am," says the illiterate voter, and cries aloud,

66

Hands off China," without knowing where China is. “I am impartial, I am. What do I care about patriotism? Only let me get my fist in the till at home, and China may do what she likes with the Englishmen who don't work with their hands." Labour is, indeed, simple in the confession of its folly. It thinks it right, or at any rate prudent, that it should conspire with the Guardians of Chester-le-Street, whom it will always remember" with patient gratitude, to take the ratepayers' money. It hisses the Minister who brought the scandal to light. There is no exploitation here,

66

Y

is there? It deems it a cardinal fluence may be counteracted.

sin to protect the English merchant who follows his honest trade in China. How, then, shall we educate those whose moral sense and political judgment are thus confined and debased?

Moreover, in the process of education, we are asked to refute not arguments but catchwords, and no method of education can do the impossible. The history of revolutions, the history of the populace and its acquisition of power, is the history of catch-words, and of nothing else. When intelligence attempts to combat ignorance of this kind, it is a conflict between an elephant and a whale. There is no common ground on which the two adversaries can meet. During the coal strike, the miners were deprived of all power of thought or argument by the thing that was known by the vile name of Mr Cook's "slogan "-not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day. To oppose those silly meaningless words by any sort of education was plainly impossible, nor do we believe could any previous training have persuaded the workingclasses to have turned a deaf ear to them. They have the same quality as the Red Flag, the song once sung by Messrs MacDonald and Thomas-they are deprived of sense, and are yet intoxicating. Though they carry no conviction with them, they might in time destroy our Empire, and there is no known method by which their in

And our statesmen talk of education! They might as wisely urge us to stay a torrent by throwing a feather into it as it swirls by. Sixty years ago Matthew Arnold defined this part of what he called the Populace, and explained clearly whither it tended. It gave "all its energies," said he, "to organising itself, through Trades Unions and other means, so as to constitute, first, a great working-class power, independent of the middle and aristocratic classes, and then, by dint of numbers, give the law to them and itself reign absolutely." He wrote in 1869, and there is still the Populace, as he saw it, which, raw and undeveloped, "has long lain halfhidden amidst its poverty and squalor, and is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, meeting where he likes, bawling what he likes, breaking what he likes." For fifty years the Populace which Matthew Arnold described has been educated, as the Act of Parliament directs, and it has learned nothing. It has come very near to "giving the law" to the middle and aristocratic classes. It bawls what it likes, it breaks what it likes, and we know no system by which it can be instructed. But with the franchise extended as far as it will go, this class will become omnipotent-it is very powerful now, -and it will be free to do what it likes either at Chester-le-Street

or in China.

Nor if it choose of Commons that few in the country knew of its passage, and it now threatens the peace and comfort of England.

to destroy our Empire is there any hindrance that can be set in its way.

The politicians have, indeed, followed their usual practice of putting the cart before the horse. They find this method of equipage the easier. Had they wanted an educated electorate they might have had it. There are more ways than one of ensuring that none shall vote who is wholly without knowledge and understanding. They did not ensure it. They made up their minds "to trust the people." Their resolution seemed to them, no doubt, simple and generous. The two Parties vied with one another in the desire to confer so profitable a boon upon the people; and at last, that neither should get the sole benefit of it, a Speaker's Conference took place -always a herald of destruction, and Mr Lloyd George's ruinous Coalition did the rest. By a stroke of irony, Mr Lloyd George entrusted the ungrateful task of endangering the country to two politicians who had hitherto been known as stout Conservatives, and the country faced destruction before it knew that it was threatened.

We

[merged small][ocr errors]

As there was no chatter of "the sacred principles " of democracy while the Franchise Bill was being passed, so very little pride in those principles has since been expressed. Now that the harm has been done, we have heard on all sides that democracy has failed, that as a gospel it has no finality, that if it does not do its work properly, it must be thrust ruthlessly aside. The tired world pines for authority. It cries aloud that it wants to be governed. Mussolini is hailed as a hero far beyond the boundaries of Italy. And at the very moment that democracy lies in discredit, there is talk in England of adding more voters to the electoral roll. The politicians look about them for fresh corners in which possible voters might be concealed. And they detect in many a sheltered home, in many a factory, in many an office, in every theatre, girls of twentyone who still are unenfranchised. Here is fine material to work upon. If diligence be exercised, some millions may be discovered willing to mark their voting-papers. The thing is as good as done. Only one question is asked, and that wholly irrelevant: if men have the vote at twenty-one, why should not women?

The argument for similarity of age and sex rests upon two gross assumptions. It assumes,

« AnteriorContinuar »