The Hyde Park Demonstrators Lord Trenchard and the London pc
ice authorities are heartily to be congratulated upon the peaceful issue of the Fascist and Communist demonstrations in Hyde Park last Sunday. Their management was skilful and well-planned • throughout ; but, of course, the essential factor in restraining violence was the overwhelming num- ber of police employed, which left no would-be rioters a chance. There are times, and this was one, when it is incomparably wiser to warn off disorder by a display of force than to let it develop against initial weakness and then call in force to suppress it bloodily. The sneers at Lord Trenchard's action in certain London papers are no less unjust than ungenerous. Such critics would have been the first to pillory him as a bungler if the threatened catastrophe had come off. But it is intolerable that all this mobilization should be necessary because Sir Oswald Mosley thinks London's principal park a suitable place to review his army and his opponents decide to demonstrate simultaneously. The proceedings as a whole indicated that the Fascist movement is on the wane and that the . Communists' principal accomplishment is booing.
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