THE OTHER SIDE.
IV.-THE PERILS OF THE LABOUR PARTY. THE moment any Party enters the path of power its perils begin. In Opposition all is easy, more especially when, as now, the older Parties in a State begin to dissolve and a period of decadence sets in. And the peculiar danger of the Labour Party is a moral one. In the nature of things, and through the special need of the workman for a better and fuller physical life, it exposes itself to Flaubert's acute criticism that a Socialist policy puts the satisfaction of the material wants of men before their moral and intellectual requirements, and therefore that it tends to despise culture and to disregard the call for variety and richness of experience. I hold that the society of workmen holds within it a moral principle finer and deeper than that which keeps a Capi- talist State together. But it is, of course, unequipped for the more subtle arts of government and unused to its more complicated processes. Therefore, when it suddenly assumes power by an act of force, as in Bolshevist Russia, it becomes even more dependent on trained middle-class minds than the aristocratic society—in itself a helpless one—which it destroys. The result is that the vision of a sentimental paradise quickly gives place to a hard, mechanical tyranny.
Now, this danger is fully foreseen by the progressive Socialists. In this country, above all, superior minds like Lord Milner's or Lord Haldane's, convinced that the Liberal Party is played out, have at once concentrated on the idea of an educated democracy. The same may be said of German Socialism, which at this moment stands for the more humane and moderate conception of German and European polity as compared with the anarchic violence of French and German Nationalists. Above all, the claim of culture and the rejection of the idea of pure class government are implied in the decision of the Labour Party to enlarge its borders and build up, not a glorified trade unionism, but a free union of the workers with hand and brain. It follows' that the first "Labour Cabinet "will, in truth, be a mixed body, like all its predecessors. There might be fewer lawyers than usual, and that would be a blessing, for the static lawyer's mind has had much to do with the misgovernment of England. But when the fullness of time has come, it will be seen that the true idea of aristocracy—not the false and played-out one—will have its place in the new order as in the old, and that the displacement of mere wealth, of pride of birth and" business " pushfulness, will bring in new, large, and even brilliant qualities to the service of the State.. Doubtless it will bring adventurers too. But—teste Disraeli and Lloyd George—they have never been wanting. All that one can say is that their mixed curse and blessing is an incident of human nature.
There are other rocks ahead. Ca' canny is one of- them. It is, in fact, every sort of danger, a post-War danger, a danger of the capitalist system and a danger of an easy-going Socialist State. " Ca' canny has nearly ruined us ; see that it does not ruin you," said Lenin to Mr. Lansbury. Lenin's remedy was the conscription of Labour, and it failed, if it can be said to have been seriously tried. As it will never be tried here, the stronger will be the inducement for the leaders of the Labour Party, charged with the moral future of indus- trialism, to stamp on ea' canny so far as it is a path to the destruction of the workman's character. Certainly there is no need to use up men (and children) as quickly and cruelly as they were used up in the early days of capitalism. No need, either, for the flaunting luxury of our grand after-war dissipation. And no need (and very great danger in it) to fling out a mass of trivial, tasteless, perishable stuff from our whirring looms and lathes and presses and only too fertile laboratories. A regulated production the world calls out for. A reform of taste, a simplification of needs, and some direction for the light appetites that in the seeming bounty of the capitalist system have swarmed into life without realizing what life means, we must have or we perish. But the leaders of the Labour Party may, I think, be trusted to resist a return to poverty or to the spade-culture of Adam and Eve. They are men of their age, if a little in front of it, and must realize that the things that men desire—the best as well as the worst—are bought with work, and even with overwork. It cannot be denied that their call to the workmen- to keep up production is here and there disobeyed. But these are young days. Broadly speak- ing, the proposition of Socialism is to throw a larger measure of hope into the social machine. That is its moral justification. It is also its economic stimulant.
There is, in a word, a ease for the reform of the industrial system, just as there is no case or only a bad one for a revolution by force, or an unmixed Socialist State, for the one ends in militarism and the other asks of man less liberty and a weaker incentive to toil than he is disposed to accept, or might be good for him if he were. There is a powerful Party pledged to the first issue and able, with good will, to secure it. Part of its work may be accom- plished by its pressure on the more conservative forces of the State. The rest lies on the knees of the gods. The finer social syntheses that men seek may, in Flaubert's phrase, escape like a wave from the enfolding hand. But the search for it is, I submit, the only political effort that in the existing scene can be called a way of salvation.
IL W. MAssixcirAisi.
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