THIS FAVOURED LAND
All that is true, and the recognition of it must temper sensibly whatever satisfaction we may feel on other counts. But the other counts deserve to be taken note of none the less. Comparisons are unconvincing in themselves. To be better than the bad is no supreme achievement. But we are entitled in some matters to measure ourselves by other States, and in particular by other Great Powers, of Europe. In Russia the week of Christmas is marked by celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the Cheka-Ogpu, the secret police that performs for the Soviet Union what the Okhrana performed for Tsarist Russia. It differs little in character from the Gestapo in Germany or the similar body that carries out the behests of the Fascist Government in Italy. In each case there is the same elaborate system of espionage, of chartered eaves- droppers, of bribed informers, of opened letters, of tapped telephones, the same silent and secret consign- ment to an Arctic settlement or a concentration-camp or confino in prison islands, the same secret tribunals in cases where the formality of arraignment before a tribunal is held necessary. In each country the Press is the apprehensive slave of the Administration, afraid to frame honest comment on political events, afraid to report a political development till official approval has been secured, compelled to print whatever statements or comments the agents of the Government may prescribe.
All that and much more is held to be an essential condition of the national safety—or to put it more accurately and honestly, the safety of the dominant regime. For two centuries and a half this land has followed other paths. For us the State exists for the citizen, not the citizen for the State. Its purpose is, by co-operative action controlled by the people as a whole, to secure for the individual all the freedom for his own development that he can exercise without curtailing the freedom of someone else. Any citizen may hold, and proclaim, whatever political views he chooses. Parties as funda- mentally antagonistic to the established system as Communists and Fascists can publish papers advocating destruction of the existing order and get themselves elected to Parliament if they can persuade the voters to send them there. Such tolerance can be condemned as quixotic. Actually it operates, perhaps more today than ever, as an effective safety-valve. Nine-tenths of the people are fully conscious of the contrast between the freedom they enjoy and the conditions either political
extreme would impose if it had the power. Even a virtue, it is true, can be carried too far. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and a tolerance that degenerates into lethargy is not freedom but the betrayal of freedom. But in fact we have deviated little as yet from the prudent middle course.
If from time to time comparisons with our neighbours (France might be cited in that- connexion in the matter of national finance) are opportune, so are comparisons between our present and our pait. For they show that whatever our condition may be, it is not static. Our legal system gives as much security of justice to the citizen as any in the world, but it can still be Criticised for certain defects, on which reforming minds are focussed. Justice is still too tardy and too dear, and such remedies as the recent increase in the number of divorce judges do not exhaust immediate needs. Serious crime is of small dimension and is not increasing. The prison system is being gradually, too gradually, humanised, and directed to reformative rather than repressive ends. The problem of dealing wisely with the juvenile delinquent and checking his propensities in time is under the perpetual study of psychologists and officials.
Most of us forget too readily what has beep achieved in all these fields in the space of a generation. Since the South African War ended in 1902, a path for the poor man's child to the secondary school 'and on to the university has been laid open, and thousands are treading part or all of it every year ; old age, pensions have been bestowed, health and unemployment insurance have been instituted, and 'developed till they cover Virtually the whole wage-earning population. -Maternity endowments, nursery-schools, health inspection and treatment throughout primary school life, and access to the larger social services from leaving-age onwards, may not indeed secure the industrial population comfort, but do at least shield its members from destitution from their earliest moment to their last. And though that provision must of necessity be embodied in cold and bloodless legal enactments, it does in fact represent a deep and genuine sense of social responsibility. The gap between the extremes of wealth and poverty is still too wide—though the intermediate class, representing a moderate competence, is growing larger daily—but few even of those who are heavily taxed already would rebel against a still heavier levy if poverty and disease, could be reduced thereby.
We are at the mercy of circumstance, in the sense that the danger of being involved, in war in spite of an almost passionate devotion to peace exists. Subject to that our task is clear—to press steadily along the course the nation has set for itself in the years. since the last War ended. If peace prevails and the deplorable, but temporarily inevitable, torrent of expenditure on armaments is stemmed, the resources needed will again be available. We shall „go forward with _accelerated pace along the path, not in all likelihood of Socialism, but of social amelioration, and not because poverty must be mitigated as a safeguard against revolution, but because a nation in which a conscience stirs will not consent to see men and women, as essentially part of its fibre and substance as the fortunate and rich, suffer rigours and restrictions which the nation is capable of reinoving. Conscience unfortunately does not always stir. Social reform too often devolved on the House of Commons as a matter of political expediency, and its cost concealed under rows of cyphers in a comprehensive Budget. Not thus can national unity be preserved, nor a national soul kept alive. We must visualise the goal and concern ourselves in the measures needed to attain it. A land is favoured in the possession of citizens conscious of their responsibilities to one another and determined to dis- charge them—in that and in that alone.
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