THE RIGHT OF THE COMMUNITY TO EXIST.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
have read with very much interest your article on " The Right of the Community to Exist" in the Spectator of August 30th, and regret that I had not seen the recent letter from Lord Wrenbury to which you refer. It is quite true that all decent-minded and patriotic members of the community should band themselves together, as you suggest, to put a stop to the so-called Direct Action strikes and threats that we read of and see daily around us. As you say, let members of any trade "down tools" and cease work if they a're not satisfied with existing conditions, pay, &c., but let them understand that the country will not allow the majority to suffer, and suffer enormously, for the crass folly of the minority. In every district, whether manufacturing, mining, agricultural, or engineering. there are thousands—professional men, clergy, bankers, clerks, shopkeepers, and working men—who would do anything in their power to keep the machinery going to allow us all the right to exist, and to act as the Citizens' Com- mittee of One Thousand acted in the recent strike in Winnipeg. A large national body of citizens should be formed in every centre, and one great object-lesson would be to show in time that this wicked tyranny cannot be allowed, and if fully realized it might be a deterrent to any universal strike action in the future. We could all help in many capacities—railway, telephones, postal service, waterworks, street cleansing, Fire Brigade, special constables, and in many other ways, if properly organized'. But law and order must at all costs stand, and Bolshevism as seen in other countries with all its folly and bloodshed must never come to the front in England. I sincerely hope that from your able " leader " something may be evolved to prove to the majority of right-minded people that England has in 1919, as in the last fire years, blood, and not water, in her veins!—I am, Sir, (le.,
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