TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE OTHER SIDE AND THE REFERENDUM.
WE publish elsewhere a very significant letter signed " Vindex." The writer does not wish his name to be published, but we may say that he is no novice in political life and has plenty of experience of how laws and Ministries are made. His letter is, we think, a good deal too alarmist. To begin with, it does not take into sufficient account the babble of the Political Auction. Room. That, however, is not the main issue.
Where we disagree with him is in his contention that in opening our columns to so able a political advocate as Mr. Massingham we are in effect purveying poison. That was the attitude of our ancestors in regard to trials for alleged crimes. They allowed counsel to prisoners charged with committing minor offences, but in the cases of treason and felony they refused, as they said, to allow excuses and explanations to be openly made in regard to the deeds of wicked men. It would corrupt the minds and morals of the hearers to listen to such sophistical vindications of infamy. We know better now. We know that to do justice, to prevent evil, and to find remedies, you must fully understand the evils, the claims to do evil that good may come, or to use dangerous and quack remedies. You must obtain full knowledge of all the facts, opinions and proposals involved before you can do "folk-right "- as the early English called Justice. You must, in a word, hear the other side before you come to a decision. You must not be afraid of such knowledge or think it dangerous. The danger is not in knowing but in not knowing. "Omne ignotum pro nzagnifico" is the best of proverbs. The Socialist views are far more attractive when left vague and hidden than when put forth, even by a pen so persuasive and so skilful as that of Mr. Massingham. Thv more freely they are stated, the more resistance they call up. Take the case of the Capital Levy, so well, so fairly, and so justly dealt with by Mr. Baldwin in his recent speech.
When the Capital Levy was first proposed, and was for the great part of the country a new idea, it found support even in the minds of such men as Mr. Bonar Law. As soon, however, as the Labour leaders and the Labour Press began to advocate it, to state the uses they meant to make of it, and generally to go into apologetical details, the vague sympathy with which it had been first received in a large section of the Unionist Party died away. The greater the discussion the greater the resistance raised. The net result has been that, though Labour may no doubt have gained some adherents to their scheme by its wide advertisement, they have by their fierce advocacy exemplified the law of reversed effort. On the balance far more harm than good has been done to their proposal. If the proposals of our opponents had been kept in the dark and treated as a kind of guilty secret, there would have been serious danger, if the Labour men had suddenly and accidentally come into power, of the Capital Levy being rushed through Parliament as a necessary, harmless and much misunderstood proposal. That is quite impossible now that the scheme has been so widely set forth and dis- cussed. So it will be with the other injurious items in the Labour programme. By understanding them we shall understand how to defeat them. Just in the same way the full hearing that has been given, in Parliament and in the reports of the Press, even to the most extreme men in the Labour Party, -has been notan embarrassment but of signal use to the Unionists and anti-Labour men generally. The British public, which is always extraordinarily fair and willing to think the best of causes which it does not understand, has heard the violent views of the Left Wing of the Left, and has not liked them. Again, a good deal of revolutionary gilt has come off the gingerbread figures of the extremist Labour leaders owing to the publicity accorded them. The Dantons, the Marats, the Robespierres and the St. Justs, of whom people used to speak with bated breath, are losing the glamour of romance. We are beginning to be able to distinguish quite clearly between the domesticated " cheetahs " like Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Mr. Snowden, Mr. Clynes and Mr. Henderson and the untamed variety of leopard and panther which haunt the banks of the Clyde or "wander wild in Academic groves."
In a word, we hold that " Vindex's " protest, and also the able and more moderate letter that we publish from Lord Sydenham, are an ample vindication of our desire to hear the other side, both out of fairness to our opponents and, as we have frankly stated, still more as a method of opposing and defeating the aims of Labour wherever they are injurious to the State, as we fully believe the great majority of them are. A full hearing of the other side is what a litigant who really believes in his own case and in his own counsel will always desire. His own counsel may make a slip and so put the Court against him ; but if the arguments on the other side are really as weak as he holds them to be they will make up for any unfortunate misunderstanding of this kind. There was never a more potent piece of forensic oratory than that shown by a counsel who, after having listened to the case of the plaintiff, arose and in one sentence demanded judgment in his favour "on the arguments just stated by my learned friend."
But if " Vindex's " letter is a conclusive vindication of our policy on this view of the case, it is even more satisfactory to us when judged by the remedy that he proposes. Most wisely, as we conceive, and as we have so often said in these columns, he realizes that the essential duty of the Unionist and Democratic Conservative Party at this moment is to introduce and pass legislation which will make it essential to refer all vital changes in our Political Institutions to the Electors as a whole, and so prevent that greatest danger of the hour, Minority Rule and the passing of legislation which is opposed by • the general will of the voters. And here we may note that, though we have been advocating the Referendum so strongly for nearly a quarter of a century, we do not remember ever having received the slightest help and encouragement, practical or theoretical, from " Vindex," though such help would have been most valuable. "Had it been timely it had been kind.". However, we shall not waste words in such regrets. We are delighted to see that " Vindex " has at last found salvation in the Poll of the People, and that we shall be able to count upon him as a supporter in the demand for the Referendum which it is our intention to launch as soon as the present Government is able to free itself from the dangers and difficulties of foreign affairs which now beset it. Quite apart from any other consideration, if hearing the other side brings men to the Referendum, as apparently Mr. Massingham's article has brought " Vindex " to that happy conclusion, we shall feel a double satisfaction in having let the other side be ventilated in our columns.
We need not repeat here the arguments which we have so often given in favour of the Referendum. Our readers know them well, and, we believe, for the most part now agree with them. All that we want to insist on at present is that the rise of the Labour Party and the triangular electoral duels between Liberals, Conservatives,. and Labour men put us in acute danger of Minority Rule in Parliament. A Minority Government a Labour Government must be, for Labour never polls, and never will poll, in our opinion, anything like a majority of the voters. Of course, if Labour does and can poll an absolute majority of the electorate, then Labour must rule till we can convert the country to saner views. We shall never oppose the Will of the Majority. What we shall oppose, in season and out of season, at all times and in all places, and by every possible legal and legitimate means, is Minority Rule and the senseless attitude of that section of the Unionist Party which refuses us the machinery that could prevent Minority Rule. And, remember, the sands are running but. Unless before this Parliament is dissolved it has passed an alteration in our Constitution which will make it possible to refer matters of great importance, such as the Capital Levy, to the voters as a whole, we shall be in imminent peril. In that event, much as we admire Mr. Baldwin, and strongly as we desire to support him and his Government, we cannot believe that it will be consistent with our duty to disguise from the country the fact that they will have been found wanting on a vital issue and so unworthy of confidence. However, we do not believe that in the case of a man so able and so strong a believer in Conservative Democracy as Mr. Baldwin there is any real danger of a lapse so great. To be frank, the only danger with him is that he may run into the fault so common to the average Englishman—the fault of running the thing a bit too fine ; of being too confident of his ability to catch the train, even if he only allows himself five minutes to do it in.
Under representative institutions, coupled with the group system, log-rolling and fanaticism, we are of all men most miserable unless we provide the machinery under which the voters can be frankly asked, "Do you or do you not want the Bill which has passed Parliament for the compulsory erection of Soviet Republics throughout the United Kingdom to become law as from the first of January next ? " The power to do that will always save us, even if it be at the very edge of the precipice. The Referendum is for the Labour Party the uncreative word. And they know it. That is why they are its fiercest, most persistent, and most anxious enemies. A Poll of the People frightens them out of their wits.
J. Sr. LOE STRACHEY.
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