TOPICS OF THE DAY.
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THE RAILWAY STRIKE. THERE is little to be said about the strike except to urge the country and the Government to hold firm. The country, and by the country we mean the majority of the people, does not, we are well aware, need any admonition on this point. Its temper is excellent—firm without panic, indignant, but without vindictiveness. As for the Government, they seem to have done their part in the matter of preparation exceedingly well. Instead of being caught napping, as apparently the railway agitators thought they would be, they had everything ready to meet the particular emergency that has arisen. Also the attitude of Ministers has so far been admirably firm. Long may it remain so ! To be frank, what we are afraid of is of the Government being content with a half-victory, and agreeing to terms which will be a temporary armistice and not a real peace. The small group of men who engineered the strike belong to the party of extremists who now run so many of the Unions, and run them not in the interests of the members, or even of the working men as a whole, but as instruments in carrying out an abstract revolutionary policy. These men did not merely declare war. Like all makers of war—and for this we do not blame them, but only for their attitude on the main issue—they chose the moment when they were likely to cause the maximum of public inconvenience. They chose, that is, the time when the ports were congested with foodstuffs and raw materials owing to a railway service already inadequate, a time when people were returning from their holidays, a time when owing to the improvement in the general condition of the country the great demand and the great need of commerce was the development of transport conditions. That being so, the Government must carry the fight to a finish, and make it clear to the revolutionaries and to all believers in the direct action of Labour that they shall not usurp the name of the people. Though any and every policy must be carried out upon which the will of the people is legally and thus properly expressed, nothing must be yielded to the blackmailing threats of a minority.
-The leaders of the minority and of political blackmailers must be taught a lesson. We have no desire to be vindictive towards the dupes of the revolutionary agitators, but unfortunately they are bound to suffer in learning that they have got, like the rest of us, to abide by the will of the majority, and not to control it or even to anticipate it. To make the world safe for true democracy the capitalists, the intellectuals, the soldier and the sailor, and the labourer have all got to be made to realize that if they are to have their will it must be obtained by converting the body of the people=i.e., through the will of the majority. No one in this country shall be allowed to use the rifle or any form of physical force, whether openly or under the alias of direct action, in order to coerce the majority. In the vote the men and women of this country have the true, proper, and peaceful instrument for making their wills effective. When they make use of that instrument they can have, and must have, all they want. The fact that the Labour agitators are unwilling to abide by the vote is a sign that they are themselves aware that they do not command the assent of the majority.
We are in fact face to face with an attempt to establish a tyranny worse than that of any King or Emperor, sacerdotal hierarchy or aristocratic junto, and we have got to teach this new set of tyrants what our forefathers taught the old. We must do so no doubt with the minimum of harshness and without vindictiveness, but we must do the work thoroughly. We must teach the new oligarchs that there is one thing which they must and shall obey—namely, the will of the majority. The right to strike—i.e., to withhold labour—is in our opinion, as it is in the opinion of all moderate men, an essential right. It must not, however,. be made an instrument for revolutionary conspirators to force the country to do something which it does not want to do—i.e., to lodge the sovereignty in the hands of an oligarchy and not of the people themselves. Therefore at the present moment it is the-duty of all good citizens, of all men who desire the welfare and the interests of the nation as a whole, and especially of the workers, to concentrate their thoughts upon the main issue and to support the Government throughout. We are, as a matter of fact, convinced that on the merits of the present struggle, considered in detail, the Government are in the right ; but the issue is no longer whether some small body of men on this or that line are going to suffer a little or gain a little by the standardizing of wages. What we have got to consider now is whether we are going to be ruled by the will of the majority or by the voice of a faction ; whether the final instrument of government is to be terrorism and the fear of famine, or the voice of the nation heard through its representatives.
And here let us never forget the great lesson that revolutions have never improved the material condition of the people and rever given them greater freedom. The French people no doubt suffered under the old regime, but their sufferings were a thousand times greater when in an evil hour they let themselves be ruled by a usurping minority of conspirators. It was the same story in Russia. We have nothing to say in defence of the regime of the Tsar and his bureaucrats. It was often corrupt, inefficient, and oppressive. But the condition of Russia under the old regime was a positive paradise to what it is now under the tyranny of Lenin, Trotsky, and the Soviets. Curiously enough, liberty for the workers and the right to dispose of their own labour seem to be almost the first things abolished in Revolutions.
The National Assembly in France passed a savage Act against the formation of Unions, and passed it, incredible as it seems, without a single word of protest from extremists like Robespierre. What is more, when Robespierre was in power he made full use of the law against organized Labour. As a proof that this was no accident we may point to the admitted fact that Trade Unions are now regarded by the Russian Government as criminal associations. No labourer is allowed to strike. If he does so he is shot, or drowned, or buried alive as rapidly as if he were a noble or an officer. Under a revolutionary regime tie lot of the worker is slavery as well as starvation. In such circumstances is it any consolation to him to know that the miseries of the well-to-do equal his own ? Socialism or Syndicalism carried out by peaceful means—i.e., by the vote—may conceivably bring us a better State, but the one thing that is certain is that this better State will never be achieved by violence and by coercing rather than persuading the majority.
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