The Enemy Within the Gate.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18550, 27 November 1925, Page 8

The Enemy Within the Gate.

The Communist trial in London raises two questions, one of which is very easily answered. Tlic first is, Is it tyrannical to prosecute citizens whose conduct is revolutionary?—and the answer is clearly No. Prosecution in such a case is merely self-defence, and that is as necessary as taking nourishment. We must of course draw a distinction between active and passive revolutionaries, and between the rebel who has and the rebel who has not, a remedy apart from violence. The attempt of the. Labour Party to shield these convicted Communists behind our ancient tradition of political hospitality and tolerance is not a sincere attempt, or if it is, is not.a very intelligent one. Britain has been a harbour of refuge for men who have fled from autocracies and tyrants, and her door in such a ease is. still open. But even Britain cannot afford to shelter men—and as a .matter of fact never has knowingly sheltered them — if they abuse her hospitality, and have the will and the power to abuse it to her own destruction. Britain is tolerant of opinion of all kinds; she is not, and cannot dare to be, tolerant of conduct of all kinds, and it is for their deeds and not for their opinions that her Communists are now in custody. But when we turn from the justice of such a prosecution to the expediency of it, the problem becomes a little more involved. Up to a point even revolution is better tolerated than punished. It is better tolerated as long as it is not gathering dangerous force, and is likely to run itself out; which means, of course, that the London prosecution was expedient only if the arrested men were making headway as rebels. Their defiant and insolent attitude in Court proves nothing but the folly of being sorry for them: the real question is how far they have been getting in practical defiance—how far, that is to say, they have really been the forces they would like to have been, and claim to have been, and perhaps suppose they have been. In other words, the question is whether the Government has acted on good information or on bad, and that is a question that cannot be answered here. Wo have seen enough of tho power of the Communist in the right set of circumstances to know that he can be a very real menace even in Australia and New Zealand. But Australia and New Zealand provide very little cover for rebels for any length of time, while Britain might easily become their underworld—and perhaps was becoming it when these arrests Averc ordered.