LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
THE SOCIALISM OF MR. TOM ANDERSON, [To znz EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] note the non-success of my effort to draw Mr. Tom Anderson on the subject of Socialism and marriage. The editor of the Red Dawn either does not know or he is afraid to tell what the intentions of his party are with respect to this crucial item. By hie failure to toe the line here Mr. Anderson has somewhat discredited his pretensions as the all-sufficient oracle of the Socialist movement, and he has likewise pretty well for- feited his right to indulge in a favourite pastime. The favourite pastime is that of bursting into print in the columns of the Scotsman, the Spectator, or some other preserve of middle-elass sentiment, and terrorizing the stricken readers with tidings of the swift destruction decreed in the high places of Socialism upon all the cherished appointments of the capitalist order. Mr. Anderson is advised to omit these demonstrations. A prophet of the new era who can only funk and sing dumb before a simple test question has seriously lost caste, and should for a while cultivate the virtues of silence and self- effacement. These extravagances of Mr. Anderson, so " pagan, selfish, and incoherent," would be negligible did they not embody the views and principles of that section of extremists who now rule the roast in the Socialist camp. The success of these wreckers in reducing Russia to a helpless blotch of crime and misery entitles their operations in the home field to be viewed with alarm. The fears of patriots are not allayed by the peddling pusillanimity of the Coalition Government in front of plain anarchy and sedition. How far wanting to the public weal our rulers can be is illustrated by the •facts of the railway strike of last September. In juster eras the authors of that crime against society would find their guilty necks within measurable distance of a rope. In this Lloyd George era a day could not be allowed for the bare discussion of the matter in Parliament. But amid the alarms and excursions of the times one steadying thought may be entertained. What- ever be the case with Russia, our British constitution and British social order are not things that deserve to perish, and probably, therefore, they shall be suffered to survive. Mr. J. H. Thomas, the Labour leader, writing in the current issue of Pearson's Magazine, utters this dictum : " The old England (meaning the England of to-day) stands condemned." This is the unintelligent snort of a man talking in his sleep. For centuries certain beneficent factors have been at work shaping our national constitution and character, and when these came to fruition in the spacious times of great Victoria the result was a union" of liberty and order hitherto unknown in the record of states. Our island home has been, and still is, the haunt of fair-mindedness, toleration, liberality of sentiment and act to a degree unparalleled in the history of peoples. Wise foreigners, struggling at home with the dregs of mediaevelism, are aware of this happy pre-eminence of Britain; and if blinking partizans in our midst are unconscious of their inherited happiness, they should anoint their eyes with an eye salve that they may see. Grievances and blots on the landscape we of course have in fair abundance, but the pathway of redress is the beaten road of constitutional agitation, not the line of mad galloping dislocation which creates new evils without remedying old ones. To sever a man's head to cure his toothache, to fire a hayrick to light one's pipe, to scuttle the ship in mid-ocean and force the crew and passengers to tempt destiny on a raft—these similitudes fairly connote the mingled lunacy and wickedness of much present- day. Socialist scheming and dreaming. Patriotism is a deep- seated feeling; the Christian sentiment is still deeper. Both are flouted and outraged by the policy of the Red Dawn. A reckoning day will doubtless come in due time, and with it a new Puritan revolt—a revolt it is likely will too severely try the mettle of the vaulting Star Chamber of tyranny which Mr. Tom Anderson and his Socialist coadjutors are insanely erecting in our midst.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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