THE POSITION OF THE GOVERNMENT. T HE Government are discovering a
fact which few men, and still fewer Governments, can be induced to believe, but which nevertheless is one of almost universal experience. In danger or difficulty a bold policy, if sin- cerely entered upon, always pays. By " sincerely " we mean that it is useless to be bold merely for a selfish purpose. Such perfunctory boldness is sure to end in failure. An analogous case is that dealt with by Arch- bishop Whately, who declared that though "honesty was no doubt the best policy, he was not an honest man who was honest for this reason." If, however, Governments or men see their duty clearly, and do not refrain from doing it because they are threatened with the obstacle of "fierce opposition," but grasp the nettle, they are sure of their reward. Honest and dutiful boldness of this kind not only deserves, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred commands success. Consider what has happened. The majority of the Cabinet realized that they could not do their duty to the country without introducing some form of compulsion. On the merits they were convinced. But before them rose a host of threatening shadows. They were told that they would break up the unity of the Government and lose some of its ablest and most influential members. In the Liberal Party things would be even worse. The "Old Guard" of that party would feel that their leaders had deserted them, and would never forgive the conversion of the Prime Minister and the Liberal half of the Cabinet to conscription. Worse even than this break-up of the unity of the Cabinet and of the Liberal Party would be the breaking of the unity of the nation. Instead of fighting the Germans, we should be fighting each other. Class would be set against class, the Trade Unions would become sullen and suspicious, strikes would paralyse the railways and the munition factories, and the whole nation would be set on edge. So argued "greatly espected " Members of Parliament, and of such nature were the panic protests of Radical and Labour leaders, from Sir John Simon to Mr. Thomas. Happily the Government faced, instead of flying from, these threatening phantoms. And what has been the result ? So far from breaking up, they have united the nation. They trusted the working Jnen of England, and they have not been disappointed. Sir John Simon, undoubtedly one of the ablest brains in the country and the Administration, has left them. But instead, as was prophesied, of dragging the Cabinet down with him, he has himself disappeared and left hardly a ripple to mark the place where he sank The Irish Nationalists, believing that the Labour Party were stronger than the Government, or at any rate that they represented the great forces of democracy, joined with them in attempting to defeat the Bill. In spite of their action being open to the obvious comment : If you claim that Ireland shall be exempt from the Compulsion Bill because she is opposed to it, you cannot insist that England and Scotland shall not have it either although they want it," they went into the " No " Lobby. Now, however, the Nationalists find that the ship they deserted was not sinking after all. Accordingly they have ignominiously returned to its decks with the naive assurance that they now recognize that what they thought was an irresistible inrush of salt water was only a slight leak in a soft-water pipe. Like the man in the play, "Ursula, there is danger. I leave thee ! "was their first thought. "Ursula, the danger was much less than I imagined. I fly once more with ardour to thine arms ! " is the second. That is Mr. Redmond's amazing speech of Tuesday in a nutshell. The Government must be allowed credit, for it certainly does increase their credit, in that they honestly believed that they were going to get into great difficulties over com- pulsion. They adopted it, not because they thought they could do it safely, but because, though they imagined it was a course full of peril, they considered themselves bound as patriotic men to take the risk. Yet, curiously enough, if they had been a little more skilful in political diagnosis, or if they had understood their countrymen better, they would have seen from the beginning that there was no trouble in store for them. In the first place, the Merthyr Tydvil election showed clearly what was the true feeling of the working classes in regard to compulsory service, at any rate during war time. South Wales is not a place, as the recruiting figures show, where the population is particularly alive to the imperious needs of the war. Again, it is a place where Socialists of the anti-Imperialist kind are to be found in considerable strength. . It is also a place where Liberal Nonconformity of what we may call the Star and Daily News variety is potent and efficient. Moreover, it is a place where rigid Trade Unionism flourishes, and where Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and other lights of the Independent Labour Party have many adherents. If, then, the battle of compulsion was to be fought out, here was a ground of combat specially favourable to the oppo- ments of National Service. Mr. Stanton, a man who declared that if necessary he would be a conscriptionist "twice over," stood against an anti-conscriptionist Trade Unionist who not only had at his back the whole Trade Union machinery, but also the whole of the Liberal and Radical official organization, and who further had the support of the representative of Labour in the Cabinet, Mr. Henderson, and of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, the representative of the Labour extremists. Finally, owing to the Coalition compact, the Conservative and Unionist organizations had to remain neutral. What happened in the circumstances just stated ? Mr. Stanton stormed and carried the constituency by a majority of over four thousand votes, and this though he had no machinery behind him, no money, and no powerful influences of any kind to help him. He fought a lone fight against "voluntaryism at any price" and won hands down. One would have thought that such writing on the wall was plain enough for any man to see. Yet, to judge from the recent comments of Radical newspapers, it conveyed no lesson whatever. Without the Welsh warning, however, any man who knew the nature of Englishmen, or rather, let us say, of the English-speaking race, during war, would have been able to foretell that an enactment to compel shirkers to do their duty would be certain of something like universal acceptance. The belief that English Trade Unionists "would never stand conscription" in the con- crete, because in the abstract they had again and again con- demned compulsory service of any sort or kind, was a capital error in democratic diagnosis. Our people is a brave people in deeds, if not in words. It is, however, the disconcerting way of Englishmen to be perfectly illogical at times of crisis. English working men, or perhaps we should say all Englishmen, appear to be able to keep their ideas in absolutely logic-proof compartments. For example, they feel not the slightest difficulty in telling you that they are dead against " conscription " and will never agree to it, but that they are quite determined to compel men by law to serve their country in arms if they show any signs of shirking their duty in that respect. It was the privilege of the present writer not many weeks ago to take part in a debate got up by the staff in a hospital of wounded soldiers. The subject under discussion was conscription. Man after man declared with the utmost vehemence of language that the country would never stand conscrip- tion, and that the people of England would go to gaol rather than endure it. They proceeded in the very next breath to say that what the country needed and what the country must have, and would have whatever the poli- ticians might say, was a law to compel shirkers to do their duty and come forward and fight. "Why should we and the other willing men have to do it, while these young unmarried fellows lounge about with their hands in their pockets ? Why haven't the Government long ago passed a law to make 'em do their bit ? I'd have no mercy on them. Shoot 'em if they won't, and no decent man'll care a curse. Never mind what the Labour leaders and the Trade Unions say. They've got to defend their country like the rest of us—the blighters." That was the sort of conclusion to every speech. Apparently no one felt the slightest intellectual embarrassment in holding or setting forth such diverse opinions; no one detected any discrepancy or any ambiguity, patent or latent, in the argument. No doubt the opinions thus expressed were not in reality quite so illogical as they sounde& but were in the last resort due to the inability of Englishmon to analyse, define, and discriminate—or shall we say take note of nice, or even obvious, distinctions ? What the soldiers in the debate to which we have referred meant by conscription was what more accurately thinking people would have called militarism. Conscription to them meant what of course no one here has ever proposed for a moment—not the Swiss system advo- cated by the National Service League, but the German military system with its three years in barracks its in- tolerable tyranny of officers and drill sergeants, and its deadening servitude, physical and mental. On the other hand, compulsion by law, which was greeted with such uni- versal approval, meant for them that universal obligation of service in arms to defend one's country which has always been the theoretical obligation of the common law of England, and has always been resorted to whenever the Anglo-Saxon race, either here or on the other side of the Atlantic, has gone forth to war. It was said at the time of the Tichborne trial that thousands of Englishmen all over the country might be heard declaring : "I don't care whether he is Tichborne or Orton, or who he is, but I won't see an Englishman, if I can help it, kept out of his rights." So now the Englishman is ready to say : "The Government have got no right to interfere with a man's liberty and turn him into a soldier against his will, but if he won't come forward and do his duty in fighting for his country, he has jolly well got to be made to do it by law. Shooting's too good for the swine that won't ! " Till a Bill has actually passed through Parliament no wise man ever prophesies as to its fate. We shall, however, be very much surprised, now that the opponents of the Bill are so clearly on the run, if the measure has not passed the Commons by the time that our next issue appears. In any case, it is now quite safe. If for any reason some form of Parliamentary obstruction were to materialize, the Government would only have to appeal to the electors to have the opponents of the measure literally swept out of political existence. They 'represent nothing but themselves. Perhaps the best way of under- standing the present situation is to look at the list of the people who followed Sir John Simon into the lobby against the Bill. To suggest for a moment that such a body of men represents the people of this country is sheer lunacy. They are the sort of adherents who spell disaster for any cause. And apparently even they are not steady in their panic-stricken and lachrymose allegiance. We hear, indeed, of some of them already imploring their outraged con- stituents with a piteous bleat of terror "not to forget that on the whole, and considering everything and all the difficulties and dangers, we acted for the best."
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