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Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 70, 24 March 1914, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY. MARCH 24, 1914. SOME PHASES OF CAESARISM

.<■> Within the last few months an appeal from the law to force has twice paraded itself within the British Empite. In South Africa, where a very large steamhammer was used to crush an egg-shell, the intemperate zeal — to use no stronger expression — was on the part of the Union Government, wliich placed itself above the law. In Ireland, the attack upon the Jaw comes not from above biit from below, and is launched by the socalled party of Union. In South Africa, no evidence has been adduced that, when martial law was declared, the state (if the country necessitated it; but iv Ulster there has been, for many months past, such evidence in abundance, and it is only at the eleventh hour that the Government has begun to move, its tioops into positions enabling them to defend the law from its avowed enemie 5 . Technically, the South Afiicau Government wus wrong, and the British Government is right ; and it is opportune at

this stage to enquire, within such limitations as space imposes, into the basic principles underlying a Government's use of armed force, and its power to suspend the ordinary law by the declaration of martial law (which paves the way for armed force). Hitherto, most caseß of the alleged abuse of martial law within the Empire have come from South Africa, particularly Natal. Dealing with that colony's action following on native disturbances in 1906, its Governor, Sir Matthew Nathan, wrote : — "] can still find none [no justification] for the maintenance of martial law for a peiiod of eight months in a country where there has been neither war nor rebellion." This sentence clearly assumes reliance on a widely-accepted assumption that either war with an external foe or armed rebellion is necessary before martial law can justly be declared. In Ulster thousands of men who declare thei' 1 readiness to rebel have arms in their hands. But in South Africa the conditions prior to the declaration of martial law did not meet either of the two requirements—war or rebellion — which the above principle lays down. , Hence the Union Government's action is admittedly a danger to the citizenship of the Empire. We have already expressed the opinion that the corrective for acts of Governmental Caesarism in a self-govern-ing Dominion must come from within rather than from without. If Lord Gladstone, holding the view that martial law was not warranted, had refused to sign the proclamation, disregarding the advice of the responsible Ministers of the South African Union ; if, later, he had refused to sign the Act of Indemnity; or if, when that Act comes before the British Parliament., it is disallowed — alf or any of these courses, even if technically correct, would be eßsentially wrong. We much, prefer the judgment from within that has been pa-ssed by the Transvaal voters in the Provincial Council elections, and which the Rand Daily Mail interprets as a public censure upon the Union Government's highhandedness. To sa.y this is not to surrender all fight on the part of the Kmjiire generally to influence one section of it against taking an objectionable course. Moral pressure may undoubtedly be applied, and is, in fact, more or Jess in operation all the time; but the use of the Imperial "Thou shalt not* towards an autonomous Dominion in a matter of vital policy is a course which, like tho employment of the Army in Ulster should only be taken in the last resort. Though the Union Government has erred in a too careless use of martial law and of deportation-without-trial, the British Government would equally err if it met error with a too ready application of the Imperial veto. A writer in Tho Nation contends that what has happened in South Africa is subversive of the moral and political unity of the Empire, and he adds : "If our Empire is to be anything more than an idle name, if it is to have any substance, it must agree in the adoption^ and application of some common principles of civilised government." Such agreement, if in the nature of an honourable understanding, seems desirable and even necessary,»but we cannot accept the view that the use of the Imperial \eto, as in the case of disallowing the South African Indemnity Act, is a practical means of enforcing the principles agreed upon. The Nation writer pictures the British Government as invoking the Imperial power "to maintain just principles of self-government." In practice, however, his suggestion would be far leas likely to improve the principles than to destroy the power itself. Martial law, banisnment-without-trial, even the right to shoot rebels, are not more dangerous and double-edged weapons than is the Imperial veto. All British subjects must cling to the hope that the Empire will never witness disallowance of an Indemnity Act or listen to the ring of rifle-bullets in Ulster ; and that the system of moral pressure and mutual good sense which has hitherto reconciled all factions within our farflung borders will continue to guide Ireland and South Africa and the whole Imperial fabric along the path of peace and progress. Caesarism is equally intolerable, whether it issue from Sir Edward Carson, the Botha Government, or an interfering Downing-street.