MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON THE causes and effects of the dock-strike will, in their social, economic and political aspects, be subjected to many autopsies and form the theme of varied interpretations. I trust that some sociologist will apply his trained attention to the psychological aspects, and will analyse for us the perplexing states of mind which this controversy has revealed. To the ordinary lay- man such as I am, the attitudes adopted by the several interests concerned are not to be explained by any of the simple formulas with which we have been provided. I do not believe that the authorities, at a moment of economic crisis, would have refused to use troops to unload the two Canadian ships or have imposed what could be interpreted as a lock-out, merely because they wished to maintain the letter of the regulations or to save the face of Mr. Deakin. I do not believe that an incidental dispute between two Canadian unions need have paralysed the docks of London and have stirred sympathetic tremors in the distant harbours of France and Italy. I do not believe that thousands of British work- men would have exposed their union leaders to humiliation and their countrymen to misfortune, solely at the dictates of paid agitators working in the interests and under the orders of the Communist Party. I quite see that regulations must be observed, that trade union discipline must be maintained and that the ultimate authority of the State must remain unchallenged. I quite see that the solidarity of the workers is an article of faith and that the dread of seeming to abandon one's comrades is an emotion which can easily be exploited. And I am fully aware that the Communist Party desire to prevent the recovery of Western Europe and to manifest on such occasions the underground power which they possess. But I just do not believe, either that the authorities would permit a situation of danger to develop upon points of punctilio, or that many thousands of dockers would really be induced by agitators to injure their own and their country's interests in respect of a dispute which has arisen three thousand miles away. I know that I am inexpert in such matters and I may be stupid: but to my untutored, but still critical, mind the explanations furnished do not begin to make sense.
* * * * • "Knowledge comes," wrote Tennyson, " but wisdom lingers." We are fully aware today that wisdom lingers ; what worries us is
that knowledge also seems to be losing the authority which it once possessed. It is a disquieting thought that ignorance—massive and unmanageable—seems to be acquiring such gigantic strength. An ignorant giant is always an unwieldy monster, but he becomes dangerous once he acquires blind confidence in his own power. Our optimistic faith in the good sense of the British worker has been shaken by this episode, and we are beginning to wonder even whether the ordinary Englishman is as impervious to propaganda as we once were pleased to suppose. The distressing thought begins to wind in and out of our minds that, whereas it is difficult to inspire the masses with confidence, it is very easy to inspire them with distrust. The tremendous expectations, the undefined but potent hopes, aroused by the coming of Social Democracy have, in spite of the solid achievements of the present Government, created a mood of disillusion. Gratitude, as we know, is an unstable emotion, being less an appreciation of past or present benefits than a lively sense of further favours to come. That sense is frequently sc very lively that .it creates impatience and even resentment. It is easy to exploit such a mood.
* * * * There arc those, of course, whose political passions are so intense and concentrated that they acquire what amounts to certainties of thought. Yet most reasonable people are incapable of seeing only one side of a question, and their sympathies, whether they be to the right or to the left, are diffused. Such people, in our modern age, suffer from acute uncertainty, which at times amounts to actual bewilderment. We were accustomed to comfort ourselves with the thought that, although one can readily contradict Socrates, it is not possible to contradict the truth. We imagined, in our old, happy, liberal manner, that truth was an absolute which, however it might momentarily be obscured, would in the end emerge from the clouds which veiled it in all the majesty of its eternal calm. We have an uneasy dread today that truth may die. In all this relativity of thought we look back with envy upon the confident certitudes of our grandfathers. They believed in the "one increasing purpose," in the " far-off divine event," in the gradual evolution of an order which, in so far as their personal responsibility was concerned, appeared ordained, progressive and pregnant with prosperity and justice. I am aware that we tend to exaggerate the complacency of our forefathers and that we underestimate the atrocious anxieties with which they also were assailed. Not only were they constantly afraid of revolution, but they were distressed by problems which no longer worry us and would lie awake at nights tortured by perplexities regarding the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the dis- quieting theories of Bishop Colenso. Yet on the whole they were confident that the fundamental principles of Christianity would extend in ever widening circles over the earth's surface and that in the end would come universal peace and justice, and with it " the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." There was great solace in such certitudes. * * *
What is so distressing for men of my generation is that within our own lifetime the old absolutes have been taken from us. Moral standards have been undermined, not merely by the decay of religious faith, but by the fact that we have witnessed and been obliged to condone a return to barbarism. A greater number of people have been butchered in the last twenty years than in any known period of human history ; torture and arbitrary arrest have been reintroduced ; the State lies which are propagated arc many and no longer magnificent. The sanctity of the individual, the authority of knowledge, which appeared to us to haie been the supreme achievements of civilisation, are now called in question. Our own influence in the world has diminished, and power has passed to the mechanical West and East, the one virtuous but ignorant, the other cunning and destructive. Our Commonwealth and Empire, which but a few years ago we regarded as a new and creative experiment in human association and guidance, is being subjected to increasing internal strains and stresses. The structure of our economic life, the very basis of our existence, is now realised to have been a serious miscalculation on the part of those who made or inherited the Industrial Revolution. The very medium of
exchange, now that it has become concentrated in the hands of a country which will not buy, has become a cause of ruin. We are left bewildered, frightened by our own inventivenbss and conscious that, unless some new wisdom comes to save us, we shall " mar utterly the fair garderi we might win." * * * *
Jeremiah, I suppose, was also well over sixty. I wonder whether he derived from association with young people the same encourage- ment as I derive myself. When Diotima, in her more sullen moods, suggests to me these gloomy prognostications, I seek for Lysis or Charmides and my confidence is refreshed. I alsobcan recall how amused I was when young by the regrets and grumblings of the aged. They told me that I belonged to a doomed generation, and yet in my span of life I have enjoyed much cakes and ale. When Lysis tells me that I should regard the present as intensely "interest- ing " I am grateful to him for so refreshing a remark. When Charmides, fresh from the Academy, assures me that our misfortunes are transitional, I am prepared, for a while, to suspend my disbelief. It is they, not I, who will have to bear the responsibility and it is pleasurable to find them ardent and unafraid. It may be, as they assert, that after much pain we shall achieve the balanced State. It may be that " Social Democracy" is something more than a mere peroration phrase. It may be even—although this I persist in doubting—that the dock-strike will serve to "clear the air."
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