TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ROAD TO DEMORALIZATION. EVERY one who lamented the orgies of mental disorder- liness, indecency, and reckless mud-slinging which were indulged in during the trial of Mr. Billing must have hoped that it would be possible to leave the subject alone. Unfortunately the reverberations of such a scandal have the power not only to continue but to throw out their own echoes ; and people who would like nothing better than to be able to forget what they never desired to hear find themselves com- pelled to consider seriously whether a pedantic silence would not be the worst of the many evils among which Englishmen, zealous for the fame of their country, are obliged to choose. One's first instinct is to dismiss with contempt what is indeed contemptible. But is this wise policy after all ? "The silence of contempt" is a proverbial phrase, and though it has the wisdom of all proverbs, it is also open to the objection that deceit lies in generalizations. All proverbs are necessarily generalizations. Possibly all the .whispers, the gossip, the doubts, and the suspicions which are a result of the Billing trial might be safely disregarded in ordinary times. But these are not ordinary times, and on the whole we do not think that it is right to dismiss without another word what might grow into a danger, and what at all events contains for us all a grave warning.
Sir Charles Darling has remarked in Court, since the Billing trial, that people seem to be subject just now to some kind of nervous hysteria. It is not to be wondered at that in such a time of upheaval as this many people should lose their mental balance, but this is a sound reason for guarding ourselves against a danger of which we have already seen the premoni- tory symptoms. To allow fantastic but most injurious charges against our public men, and against the character of our whole political and social life, to pass as true merely because there is great difficulty in finding formal means of rebutting them would be a cardinal error. We live in days when the breath of suspicion has more than a hundred times its usual force. Any careful reader of history will recall that some of the greatest events in the world have been precipitated by, and throughout their course have been associated with, what might in the beginning have seemed to be preposterous rumours and gossip. The French Revolution was born in a perfect cloud of suspicions. The French people were suspicious of Marie Antoinette, and having fallen into the vein of suspicion they applied the habit of suspicion to every event of the day. The people of Paris, for example, long before they had framed in their minds such a definite thing as the idea of revolution, were expecting the arrival in Paris of bands of dangerous marauders. By a rapid yet obscure transition of thought, they transferred their sus- picious alarm to the Bastille, which suddenly became for them the symbol of tyranny. The guns of the Bastille were few and obsolete, and the commander of the prison was an amiable and far from tyrannical officer. The mob stormed the Bas- tille without better reasor than one would have to-day for storming the Tower of London. Every one knows how the very name of the Bastille gradually became a synonym for the Bourbon tyranny, yet there is no French historian to-day who believes that the attack upon the Bastille was actuated by the motives subsequently attributed to it. Suspicion got to work and furnished the place with all kinds of imaginary tyrannical significance. Similarly the recent Russian Revo- lution began with suspicions about the ways of the Court, and these suspicions particularly fed themselves on stories about the unprincipled monk Rasputin. In this case suspicion was only too well founded ; but the point is that suspicion is the sure road to upheaval. Just suspicions may lead to wholesome changes, but false suspicions, widely believed and acted on, must lead to demoralization.
One might go on indefinitely recalling the spread of sus- picion which was ludicrous in itself, yet which was ener- vating or cruel or fatal. Leas than five years ago the Jew Beiliss was acquitted at Kieff on the charge of" ritual murder." For centuries it had been believed in Russia that Jews made a practice of murdering Christian children in order to mix the children's blood with Passover cakes. There was no founda- tion for the charge, and never had been, as the trial proved ; and yet one wonders if even now the old belief about J? roved; murder" does not persist in Russia. The credulity of men knows no limit. How otherwise can one account for the amazing though beautiful belief about the existence of Pre,ster John, that strange, mystical Christian figure who was sup- posed to be waited upon by Kings thout5h he himself bore the lowly title of Presbyter, and whose kingdom was placed sometimes in Abyssinia and sometimes in "India? He was believed in without question though he never really existed. Or how without intense credulity could there have been that great delusion about the atheistical writing De Tribus Imposi- toribus ? This book was alleged to have disposed of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed ; men were tried on the charge of having written it, and men were convicted of its authorship and executed. Yet the book never existed.
At the present moment the eyes of the whole world are upon Great Britain, and the United Kingdom is peopled not only by its ordinary population but by men of many nationali- ties and by thousands of most welcome visitors from the British Dominions. For entirely false suspicions to pass unchecked among such a various assembly and in such an electrical atmosphere as there is now would be a disastrous thing. That there is a great deal of very unfair but none the less very real suspicion seems to us to be undoubted. Of course all persons who know laugh at the ridiculous assertions brought against publio men and the" governing class " generally, but when the laughter has subsided a measure of doubt, quite uncritical yet dangerous and widespread, remains. "Could there be all this smoke without fire ? Isn't there something in it " And then the accusations of vice are reproduced, and are linked up with stories about venality and pro-German sympa- thies—manifested, if in no worse manner, by a culpably lethargic conduct of the war--and so on, till the whole col- lection of wild surmises and suspicions is once more in active circulation. The alleged German book in which the names of thousands of English men and women, corrupt in their habits or their politics, arc supposed to be mentioned, of course plays a leading part in all these speculations. Even the exist- ence of the book was not proved ; and if it exists the mention of any one's name in it would not necessarily imply any discredit. Every well-organized nation has its Secret Service, and it is one duty of that Secret Service to inform itself about prominent persons in other countries. We should have a very poor opinion of our own Secret Service if we did not believe that it had dossiers of the leading men in political, financial, and commercial life in Germany. Suppose a particular Englishman to be described by the German Secret Service. His name may be introduced only for the purpose of warning German diplomatist& and secret agents that he is an incor- ruptible person who would consent to the collapse of his busi- ness and the ruin of his family rather than lend himself to any shady financial or political adventure. Such a man would be marked down as one not worth wasting time upon—from the German point of view. Neverthless his name would be "in the book," and he- would be a target for the infamous darts of any reckless dispenser of innuendo. It may amuse our readers to be told how carefully such dossiers were kept by secret agents as far back as the English Revolution of 1688. After the Act of Settlement had made the Electress Sophia, heir to the English throne, that prudent Princess desired to acquaint herself with the personal character- istics and the political opinions of Englishmen of position. Accordingly she applied to one John Macky, a secret agent whose curious Memoirs were gpiven to the world in 1726. He supplied her with a "book.' The Duke of Marlborough appeared in this book, and his dossier is striking enough ; but let us quote from the dossier of Matthew Prior :— "Matthew Prior, ex-Commissioner of Trade was taken from the Bar of a Tavern by my Lord Dorset and sent to the University of Cambridge ; was contemporary with Montague Lord Halifax, and joined with him in writing that fine satire against Mr. Dryden called the Hind and the Panther, transferred to the story of the City Mouse and Country Mouse. At the Revolution he was brought to Court and sent to Holland as Secretary to my Lord Dursley ; and after the Lord's being recalled, was continued Secretary for the English nation to the States General for some years. . . . On the Queen's accession to the throne he was continued in his office, is very well at Court with the Ministry, and is an entire Creature of my Lord Jersey's whom he supports by his advice. Is one of the best poets in England, but very factious in conversation ; a thin hollow-looked man turned of forty years old."
It is a commonplace that public men are judged more harshly and suspiciously by their own countrymen than by foreign observers, for the simple reason that their own country- men are inclined to suspect what they fear to discover— opinions and actions detrimental to the national causes which patriotic men hold dear. This is the paradox of the present situation : that preposterous suspicions thrive upon what may be at its best a wholesome concern for the country's best interests. In these circumstances, where accusations are quite incapable of proof or disproof, denials by public men of weight and position are of the greatest possible service. Both Lord Selborne and Lord Curzon deserve hearty praise and gratitude for their words about the Billing trial. Speaking of the alleged German book, Lord Selborne said :— " Suppose it does exist, do you think you will find the truth about Englishmen and Englishwomen in a German Government com- pilation Do we not know from all our bitter experience of this war that the first weapon to which that Government goes is a weapon of falsehoods ? What names have been dragged before the world in connexion with this notorious trial. The nemes of some of our glorious dead. There was the son of Lord Rosebery, a man honoured by his fellow-countrymen ; the horrible story about that son's death in Palestine. But now the Colonel of the regiment, who saw that noble young officer killed, writes to say the whole story is a lie. Another ex-Prime Minister whose name was dragged into this trial was Mr. Asquith. I have for thirty years been a political opponent of Mr. Asquith, and I am an opponent of his to-day, but I speak for the whole of the political party to which I belong when I say that we repudiate as an abominable lie the suggestion that Mr. Asquith's private life is not clean and noble or that he is not a loyal and devoted servant of his King and country."
Lord Curzon spoke to the same effect in Oxford. Particularly welcome also was a recent speech by Mr. Clynes. Mr. Clynes pointed out that before many years passed there might be a Labour Government, and he asked what kind of political atmosphere that Labour Government would have to breathe and to struggle against if orgies of vilification were allowed without protest to poison our public life. He thought the present signs extremely dangerous, as he had convinced himself that a great many working men believed that the "ruling classes were depraved and dishonest. Mr. Clynes, however, courageously and candidly expressed his belief that the lives of our public men were as honourable and clean as those of any political community in the world.
Some of the newspapers which were most active in securing Mr. Billing's return to Parliament, in puffing his opinions about the Air Service, and in generally trying to make him a popular idol, have been most active in abusing him, since the trial. We would ask people most earnestly to consider whether, when opinion is made and unmade so easily and so rapidly, a noble conception of public life can really be held up before the nation. Are all the men who have been called to high and responsible office during the past two years men whom the majority of their countrymen regard as worthy of occupying their posi- tions ? Do all the methods and dodges for gaining publicity which have become familiar parts of our public life appeal to the nation as being in keeping with a great and dignified past ? It may be said that this is mere straining at gnats, since during the war we have had to fight with the instruments which came most readily to hand. We cannot agree. The choice of human material has always been. a wide one, and those who are at the head of great Departments have numberless opportunities of setting and controlling the public tone. In particular, we wish that the Prime Minister had used his great powers of speech to steady the tendencies of the moment. He could best have done so—could still best do so--by certifying the character of those men in public life who have been cruelly assailed. Generosity and truth would be satisfied at once. Let us beware lest it should become impossible to check our too easy descent to the lower levels.
In conclusion, we desire to make one practical proposal. If it be impossible for public men who have been grossly slandered in Court to get any redress owing to the rules which govern evidence in Court, there is always the House of Com- mons. We would suggest that a small Select Committee of the House should be appointed to inquire into the charges against, say, Mr. Asquith. Those charges were brought by another Member of Parliament—by Mr. Billing. The whole matter therefore intimately concerns the honour of Parliament. Mr. Billing should be asked by this Court of Honour to produce his evidence. If he refused to produce any evidence, the inquiry would go against him by default and in favour of Mr. Asquith. If he tried to substantiate the charges and was unable to do so, Mr. Asquith would still secure a judgment, though we imagine it is less desired by him personally—for he has shown no symptoms of fierce indignation—than it is required for the maintenance of the old standards of public life. Our suggestion is so obvious that it has probably been made already. Very likely some rules of Parliamentary procedure stand in the way. If that be se, we sincerely hope it may be possible for them to be suspended by resolution or through the discretion of the Speaker.
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