BOOKS OF THE DAY
Security (R. C. K. Ensor) .
860 Workmen's Compensation (Dingle Foot, M.P.) ... 862 Guide to Modern Wickedness (Dr. W. R. Inge) 862 Eyewitness in Czecho-Slovakia (Shiela Grant Duff) .. 864 Mr. Spender and Others (Desmond Hawkins) ... 866 Borstal Lives (D. B. Kittermaster) 868 The Lovely Quaker (Christopher Hobhouse) 870 Eastern Visas (W. V. Emanuel) ... 872 The Objective Approach (Andrew Sharf) 874 Sailing on the South Coast ... 874 Fiction (Forrest Reid) 876 Current Literature 878
CAN DEMOCRACY DEFEND ITSELF?
By R. C. K. ENSOR EVENTS run so fast nowadays, pawns and even larger pieces are removed from the international chess-board with such rapid and ruthless dexterity, that to body forth at any given moment a critique of the game as a whole has become a task no less risky than arduous. Whoever essays it must take his pen and write quickly indeed ; and even so history may cutstrip him. Sir Arthur Salter has been comparatively fortunate. The zero hour for his book fell on April 20th. Since then there have come about the halo-German alliance and the Anglo-Turkish alliance. But neither of these changed the stream of tendency.
Inscribed here nn a motto-page before the preface is a question by Abraham Lincoln: "Must a Government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its people, or too weak to maintain its own existence? " Lincoln's own war was thought to have given the answer in favour of democracy ; so was the War of 1914-18. But were the tests conclusive? Both were long wars ; and the latter, at all events, furnished a presumption, perhaps a proof, that, when democracies have got their second wind, the spirit of their free peoples can sustain the ordeal of exhaustion better than that of peoples despotically governed. But will wars always be long? Will the chance to get a second wind again be vouchsafed? There was no such chance for the beaten side in 1866, and none, effectively, in 1870-71 ; nor would there have been in 1914, had the battle of the Marne gone otherwise. It is obvious that for a Blitzkrieg, a knock-out blow such as modern mechanical invention has made more feasible than it was even twenty-five years ago, an aggressive dictatorship, able to plan and spend without check and to time its stroke when it likes, has some very distinct advantages. Can British democracy counter them, and how?
In trying to answer the question Sir Arthur Salter is able, in a very unusual degree, to draw on personal experiences— as a civil servant, an international official, a student of politics, and, lastly, an M.P. Is he urging the storage of food and raw materials against the shipping risks of war-time? He fought those very risks as Director of Ship Requisitioning during the last War. He saw the Ministry of Munitions at close quarters. For two years he was Secretary of the Repara- tions Committee. During nearly ten other years he was one of the highest League officials. For two years he has watched Members personally from his seat as an Independent Member of the House of Commons. He was one of the founders of the Air Raid Defence League. The degree of expert authority with which these different vantage-points entitle him to speak varies, of course, from one topic to another. But he is the kind of man to whom dictators in their own countries are careful to listen ; and there are some subjects, e.g., the storage of imports for reserve, on which the weight of his opinion is unsurpassed.
The crux is that ever since the threat of the dictatorships developed, following Herr Hitler's accession to power in Germany, there has been continual contradiction between the policies followed by the Government and those advocated by well-informed opinion outside it. Such a cleavage may not be unusual ; but what is unusual is that at virtually all the many points where events have been able to pronounce a subsequent erdict, the verdict has been against the Government. Ministers seem to have foreseen nothing, prepared nothing, gained no ground, parried no menace, save by way of tardy and reluctant concession (too often so belated as to be useless) to criticism which was right where they had been wrong. Seeing the advantage which a Government ordinarily enjoys over its critics in respect of secret official information, such a Security. By Sir Arthur Salter, K.C.B., M.P. (Macmillan. 8s. 6d.) state of things must be, as indeed it has been, distinctly abnormal. Why has it occurred now? Why instead of Ministers leading the House of Commons has the House con- stantly been leading Ministers?
Forget for a moment the record of foreign policy—a sphere in which even angels might err—and consider only that of defence preparations—a sphere in which often little more was needed than alertness and good business intellience. Here is Sir Arthur Salter's account of a regularly recurring rhythm :
In one after another of the defensive preparations the Govern- ment have first shown what the House has gradually realised to be inexcusable inertia. Then there has been a growing movement of indignation, to which the Government have first responded by saying, "Never, never." The protest has continued, and a few months later the Government have replied, "Not yet." In yet another few months they have admitted the demand of their critics in principle and taken some of the action demanded, though much too little and much too late. This was our experience with evacuation, with the reform of the Air Ministry, with the provi- sion of interceptors, with the purchase of food reserves, with the demand for a Ministry of Civilian Defence.
It is difficult to see how that can be gainsaid, for the files
of Hansard would support it in each case. When the book was set in type, the question of a Ministry of Supply had reached the "Not yet" stage. Just in time for inclusion in a footnote it in turn reached the further stage, where the principle was admitted and action grudgingly taken upon a
too narrow scale.
What are the causes? Sir Arthur Salter considers them to be mainly personal. In a chapter of striking character-sketches he singles out Lord Baldwin as having, when in office and power, set an example of procrastination and head-in-the-sand. Starting from him, it infected the colleagues whom he chose, and finally showed itself in the Government at large as "a corporate mind which was more than the sum of varying indi- vidual minds, and a corporate judgement which influenced rather than reflected individual judgements." One wonders how far this diagnosis is true. To the present reviewer the explanation of Ministerial torpors since 1932 has long seemed to be the absence of any alternative Ministry. That clear divergence from the practical working of the British system is perhaps a likelier root-cause than "original sin" in Mr. Baldwin or anybody else. The previous Ministry most in a similar position was Lord North's.
Mr. Chamberlain does not figure in the chapter of character- sketches. He has a chapter to himself. It is a vivid and not unsympathetic presentation. Account is taken of his strong and his attractive sides no less than of his weaker and less pleasing ones. Sir Arthur says many striking, and some un- expected, things in his favour. But he closes—as who must not?—on a question mark. There are things in the Prime Minister's record that make it very difficult for him to be accepted as leader of a united nation ; and though he might yet cancel them by set-offs, will he?
It would be an injustice to this book to represent it as concerned solely with the problem of Government leadership —or lack of leadership—in defence preparation. It starts by expounding the situation created by England's loss of her island immunity, and the similar, though remoter, threat developing for America. It reviews the geography, the economics, the strength, the strategy and the groupings of the present Powers. It devotes 87 pages to studying collective security—why it failed and how we could get back to it. It attempts (most difficult of all) to shape the foundations for a new peace, including a " draft manifesto of British policy." Each of these sections is valuable, and embodies personal knowledge. Yet it remains true that the chapters on defence needs and the Government's backwardness are the strongest part of the book. And it is to them, above all, that the presence of Lincoln's question on the motto-page is relevant.
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