TOPICS OF THE DAY.
GRAVITY NOT TRAGEDY.
' Dana la poliaque it foul fee preadre riga an tragique, et tool au NEVER has it been more important than it is now to remember that in politics everything must bo taken seriously but nothing tragically. At the moment the mood of the 'public is a dangerous and explosive mixture of levity and tragedy from which true seriousness is altogether banished. Half the world is so overjoyed to think that the war is over that it will take nothing seriously, but cherishes the belief that everything will always conic out right in the end ; while the other half, tired of exulting in the giant's strength, has begun to tremble at the giant, and finds, not merely earthquake and eclipse, but the seeds of actual tragedy, in every phase of public life, at home and abroad. This is a mood which the British public must shake off. If they do not, the things which am serious will soon indeed turn into real tragedy. Through their own fears they will bring about the very calamities they dread.
Let us take the home situation first. Here foolish people are going about with blanched faces, talking of revolution and ruin and disaster, and of the growth of Bolshevism and the impossibility of dealing with it effectually, whereas in reality there never was a time when the outlook for true and reasonable democracy was brighter, or when the actual power of moderate men, sound men, and reasonable men was more overwhelming than it is now. If the men of moderation and good sense will only use the powers they have, use them of course wisely and well, the minority of a minority—i.e., the minority in the labour Organizations of the country--will be powerless for evil. The British Democracy spoke with no uncertain voice when it elected the present Parliament. We, as our readers will remember, were doubtful as to the wisdom of holding the Election before Christmas, because we believed that the conditions were not favourable to a reasonable and moderate verdict, and that accident might put too-much power into the hands of the extreme Labour men. Yet in spite of the fact that Irresponsible Labour seemed at its strongest and the other elements in the Democracy at their weakest, the country gave an un- hesitating verdict in favour of keeping the ship on a safe course. The notion then that the present Parliament can allow any external body to say to it that it is they, not the House of Commons, who represent the People --i.e., the Will of the Majority—is preposterous. If the new democratic. Home of Commons is worth its salt, it will not tolerate for an instant the pretensions of this or that band of upstart leaders in some minor industry to dictate to the nation merely because they have the power to cause great inconvenience to certain classes. The House will say with the utmost firmness to the leaders of Labour : We will yield everything to Labour if it speaks with the voice of the majority of the People : it shall never constrain IN when it is merely the voice of a minority. Our duty is to carry out the behests of the majority of the People, not to let ourselves be coerced by sectional interests, however important.." All this sounds obvious and elementary, and yet it is just these simple things that men are apt to forget. Therefore we make no apology when we ask the new Parliament to remember that it is their right as well as their duty to say to Labour : " It is to us, and not to you, that the country has given its mandate."
There is another matter of which we should like to remind the Members of the new Parliament, and it is this. Revo- lutions are never made from below but always from above. The mass of the People seem to understand instinctively that it is they who suffer most, and are bound to suffer most, when the great social deeps are broken up. The agitator may talk about revolution, but revolutions in the last resort conic, not from his oratory, or even from his plots, but from the weakness, perversity, and, above all, want of self-confidence of the Central Governments. We
one• we Morley In Ids Resiztoemtn Attributes this saying to M. we cannot help thinking that its origin is very much older. Perhaps am° of our readers wUl be able to enlighten 13 as 410 bact the honour of the Scot say, have seen the truth of this illustrated in what happened in Russia, in the German Empire, indeed in all the German kingdoms. They fell because they wero rotten, impotent, playedout ; because they had not the courage which comes from self-confidence and self-possession. They did not believe in themselves. The Central Governments iu these countries were not thrown from the saddle, but tumbled voluntarily from it, leaving the noble horse of the State riderless—an open invitation to the first man of audacity and enterprise to vault into the saddle and ride hint at will to death or the devil. It was the same with the French Revolution. And here comes in the strength of Demo- cracy. A true Democratic Government is not, or at any rate ought never to be, ashamed of itself or afraid of itself, granted of course that it has been fairly and properly chosen. Unless the representatives of the People betray their trust, they have a talisman of power that will crush any attempt at revolt. Therefore we may, and ought to, thank Providence that the difficulties of the hour are met .by a Parliament which speaks with the voice of the majority and not of a minority of the People. With such a Parliament the bare thought of revolution is ridiculous, unless there is some clear breach of trust, or some weakening of the moral fibre in the representatives of the People of a kind for which we have no precedent in our history. No doubt if, instead of showing moderation, seriousness, and good sense, the present Parliament were to tolerate in the Government of its choice corruption, cowardice, or a willingness to pay blackmail to the assailants of social order, such a Parliament would be bound to fall, and the People of this country might indeed have to face evil times. But if, as we feel sure will be the ease, Parliameut confronts the situation with seriousness and not with panic (on trag;que), though we shall continue to fmd the path of reconstruction difficult, we shall emerge as a nation not weaker but stronger from the agony of the war. If the need for taking all things seriously and nothing tragically is great at home, it is perhaps even greater abroad. Though our own instincts arc never pessimistic, but the reverse, we are bound to say that we find not a little cause for anxiety, nay, alarm, in the agitation of the public mind in regard to the temper of Germany, the reconstruction of the map of Europe, and the League of Nations. We are quite prepared to admit that our Government made a great mistake in not insisting, no matter who opposed the plan, that we must first make Peace, and then when Peace was made tackle the question of the League of Nations. It is idle to say that in that case the League of Nations would never have been formed. We and the Americans were quite sincere in the desire to form it., and the rest of the nations—even assuming them hostile to the idea, which we only assume for the purposes of argument—would have been compelled to come in. Otherwise they would have found themselves face to face with the mightiest alliance which the world has ever seen, an alliance of the English-speaking races formed to act as the constable of the world-parish. The fact, however, that we have taken the Peace stick by the wrong end must not be regarded too tragically. Still less must we take tragically the ridiculous idea that President Wilson's attitude is so imperative and so difficult that it imperils the whole situation in Paris, and may lead to what we recognize would be the greatest possible of human disasters, a breach of good feeling between the two branches of the English-speaking race. For ourselves, we believe that there is nothing but hysteria in these tragic prognostica- tions. President Wilson, like all good Americans, is a very close and a very efficient bargainer. What is more, be enjoys the work of bargaining. But though he pushes and presses every point as far as it can possibly be pushed, and has a right so to do, he is at the same time a perfectly sane and reasonable man. Though he may often seem to be using the threat of rising front the table and playing no more, there is not the slightest fear of his actually doing so. In the last resort, his sense of responsibility is much too great, and he realizes much too strongly the need for modera- tion and compromise in dealing with the rest of the Allied Powers, to do anything of the kind. But beyond this, President Wilson is also aware of the need for these qualities in getting the assent of the whole AmericanPeople,required by the Constitution to the Treaty which will conclude the Peace and lay the foundation of the League of Nations. In fine, the British Government, the British people, and still more the British newspapers, must not take President Wilson an tragique ; they must not be afraid of him, or assume that opposition to his view must necessarily lead to a break-up of the Conference or to the shipwreck of the scheme for a League of Nations. No doubt our negotiators will often have to give in to the American view, or, let us say, to President Wilson's special view--they are not of course by any means always the same thing— but no one knows better than the President that he must often let the will of others be preferred to his own will. He understands perfectly that if the League of Nations is established, as we devoutly hope it will be, no one will be able to say of it : " Alone I did it ! "
In regard to the League of Nations, we must say once more that all depends upon not attempting too much at the beginning. Every argument used concerning the League of Nations and every difficulty that arises convinces us more and more that the essential thing, the thing upon which we can all be agreed, is to make the League, at any rate to begin with, an organism for enforcing the Sanctity of Treaties. If a Treaty is made, as long as that Treaty lasts it shall be held sacred. Any man or any nation who dares to treat it as " a scrap of paper," who dares to defy the law of nations, will have no mercy shown to him or it. The breach of a standing Treaty shall internationally be the unforgivable sin. That is a policy which all are agreed upon, a policy which does not involve such tremendous difficulties and perils as the limitation of armaments or compulsory arbitration, or involve interference with the internal sovereignty of this or that nation. It does, however, provide a solid foundation upon which later such desirable ideals as disarmament and the substitution of arbitration for war can be built.
We have written so far what many of our readers will take to be commonplaces. No doubt they are, but they arc the kind of commonplaces that make or mar human en- deavour. Once again, all really depends upon the new Parliament. If, as we have said, that Parliament will take itself seriously and prove itself worthy of its oppor- tunity, we have no fear whatever. If, on the contrary, Parliament is timid about itself and its right to rule, or if it does anything so miserably supine as to act on the principle that it was only elected to endorse everything said or done by Mr. Lloyd George, to be, in fact, nothing more than a registration office for his decrees, then indeed the nation will have good cause to let the sense of serious- ness pass into that of tragedy. As to the mandate to sup- port Mr. Lloyd George there need be no sort of question. The great majority of the Members of the present Parlia- ment are no more committed to him than the. Members of other Parliaments have been committed to their leaders. They are only committed to him, that is, as long as he is ruling wisely and well. The only people who appear to us to have promised anything beyond this are perhaps the so-called Coalition Liberals. They, it may be argued, made a sort of bargain with Mr. Lloyd George that if be negotiated Unionist support for them, and secured the with- drawal of Unionist candidates, they would agree to support him. But here again any sound moralist, and certainly any sound Constitutionalist, must hold that this obligation only exists subject to the higher obligation of the Prime Minister's good conduct. The idea of a representative of the People acting in servitude to any particular individual is unthinkable ; nay, more, it is probably an actual offence at Common Law. The contract to support a particular Minister, whatever he does, is no more binding than a contract which binds A to be B's slave.
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