TOPICS OF THE DAY.
BEFORE ACTION.
UNLESS something both fortunate and unforeseen happens between the publication of this article and our next issue, the nation will be face to face with one of the greatest crises in its history. Civil war will be upon us. It is true that to begin with it will not be a war with bombs and revolvers, machine guns and bayonets, tanks and armoured . cars ; but for all that it will in spirit be war, and civil war. The minority will have defied the majority, will be attempting to usurp the majority's powers, and will be using action to produce a revolution.
The enemy will be of our own race, our own kith and kin, our own flesh and blood. It will not be a class war. Every class in the 'United Kingdom will be represented on both • sides. It will not be a local war, for though some districts may be more fiercely engaged than others, the miners' strike, supported, as it probably will be, by strikes covering the greater part of the industrial world, or else by the ceasing of production, owing to the impossi- bility of getting coal, will enter into and affect every part of the kingdom. It will not be in truth, though it may be in name, a war between Capital and Labour. 'Vast amounts of capital will be wielded and controlled by the strikers. On the other hand, the majority of Labour will certainly be opposed to the Trade Union extremists. Thus there will be all the true marks of civil war. The dreadful poison will enter into every corner of the land—into every town, every village and every family.
There will be another proof of civil war. There will be present the intervention of foreign influence, foreign power and foreign money, not because of the merits or supposed merits of the case, but for the very same reasons that kings, rulers and ministers inter- ve:fed in old days duRng civil tumult, that is, in order to humble, weaken or destroy a neighbour- ing or rival State. Just as Catherine II. intervened with men and money in Poland in order to ruin the se-called republic at Warsaw, so now Lenin will intervene to help one party in an internal British quarrel. He will act, however, not because in truth he loves one party more, but because he realizes that a strong and united Britain is by land and sea an obstacle to his vast ambitions, his terrific determination to overflow all Europe with Com- munist anarchy. Bolshevism cannot be crowned with • the imperial crown of world dominion as long as we stand strong and united. If our strength can be sapped by tumult, by " heavy civil war," by bloody revolution, Lenin and Trotsky and the sinister men behind them can have their will. Therefore, from their own point of -view, they would be missing their best chance if they did not subsidize revolutionary movements here as they have already tried to subsidize a part of our Press. They would indeed be fools if they did not put every penny of their still huge, though diminished, gold reserve upon Mr. Smillie and his revolutionary and pro-Russian friends and supporters. So splendid an opportunity has never been offered before, and perhaps never will be offered again to the architects of anarchy, and they will use it for all they are worth. If they fail they will be none the worse off. If they succeed, as they think it quite possible they may, they have gained that which will give them the Empire of the World.
As a matter of fact they will not succeed, as they count success, though they may weaken us and pile misery up. on misery. They do not know the true nature of the English people. They do not even know the nature of the troubled and fanatical minority that they have hood- winked, cajoled and subsidized. They think our Smillies, our Lansburys, our Thomases, our Cramps, our Williamses and our Bromleys a host of inferior extremists who can be bought and will " stay bought." They do not realize that, though deluded and fanatical, these men are neither cowards, hypocrites, nor slaves; nor in any sense the kind of tool acceptable to, and favoured by, the Hebrew Commissaries of Moscow. No doubt the men we have named hold wild and fantastic views and push them very hard, but they are not accustomed to obey masters, however cruel and savage, or to be ruled by threats, by blackmail or by terrorism. Above all, they are not to be governed, controlled or stimulated, like so large a number of the Russian Bolsheviks, by the baits of lust and blood.
At present there is a political honeymoon between our extremists and their Moscow masters, employers and potential paymasters. The first time, however, that there is a quarrel between the Englishmen and the Russian Jews, the first time, that is, that the Soviet Emperor at Moscow slashes our men in the face and cries to all the crowd, " Hounds, you mutiny, you shall die for this," they will find the difference. The Englishman, even though he has intoxicated himself with the venomous verbosity of Marx and the rest of the poisonous rhetoric of Jewish anarchy, will not bear this kind of thing. He will damn the consequences, defy the Tyrant to his face and hit back. He is not the kind of person who, paralyzed by the threat of power, creeps into some hole to die or to obey. He will teach his alleged lords and masters a lesson. He will tell them in plain terms : " I've still got to settle those damned capitalists, but if you don't know how to behave yourselves, by God, I'll settle you first ! You can have it whenever you ask for it." However, this is a prophecy, though as we believe a true prophecy, and we leave it till the wheel has come to its full circle.
The dearest interests not only of the nation as a whole but of the workingmen, whether communists, individualists, or anarchists by social and political creed, are at stake in the crisis before us. If the strike comes at the end of next week we shall be struggling at the edge of a precipice over which; though only one combatant fall, and that the smaller and weaker, the other combatant will be left exhausted and weary. For a generation the nation will be clouded with a, terrible bitterness of soul. The industrial position of the country must be greatly lowered by the struggle whichever way it goes. We shall be poorer, and, what is worse, Labour will be disillusioned. It will have lost faith in that system of self-organization and self-help which, with all its faults, extravagances and follies, has up till now done so much to improve and, what is quite as important, to dignify the position of the manual worker and to raise his social and political status. A general strike fought to a finish to the accompaniment of bloodshed, famine and a huge destruction of property will leave the manual worker angry, sick at heart and to a large extent helpless. Instead of doing what in the circumstances would be the sensible thing, rebuilding Trade Unionism on a sounder, safer and therefore more potent foundation, we fear that there will be a fierce revulsion which will make men say : " We will no longer put up with Trade Unionism and its restrictions. Look what a mess they have got us into I Look at their folly I Look at the money and energy they have thrown away, and the ground they have lost ! " Remember, too, that though the women of England will outwardly be loud in the defence of their men and wholly self-sacrificing, they will in secret be saying, " Didn't I tell you so ? I knew what would come of all the nonsense the Shop Stewards talked to you. The miners and agitators wanted a Russian revolution. Well, they've had two months of it, and if they hadn't failed we should have had it for ever."
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