THREE KINDS OF LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 50, 27 February 1918, Page 6

THREE KINDS OF LABOUR

Russia, Germany, and the United States at present offer a most interesting comparison when considered from the standpoint of the proletariat. Germany presents the spectacle of a working class, docile and disciplined, firmly upholding an autocratic regime. In Russia is seen a violent (and yet impotent) proletariat bent on pulling down not only the autocrats but the middle classes, and apparently more resentful against the latter than the former. And in the United States is found a working population both anti-autocratic and anti-aris-tocratic, and yet sanely resolved to keep its national fabric firmly knit along the lines of democratic compromise, and also determinad to wse its nationhood in order to i'*leu»s the Gsrm»ji maasco from their

autocrats and to save the Russian masses from themselves. We do not think that any sane thinker can doubt on which side the balance of good, humanly speaking, is to be found. Neither German subservience nor Russian anarchy can be placed on any moral plane with American reasonableness. To say that is not to say that the American people are satisfied with the' present poise of their economic and social situation. They do not lack, any more than other progressive peoples, the habit of divine discontent. But they are sufficiently elear-headeel to see that the freedom of the English-speak-ing races, even if.not always "efficient," is a long way ahead of Prussianism. And that is why neither Prussianism nor Bolshevism has any controlling power in America, or in any other democracy possessed of education and experience. We have lately pointed out how fate has played with the Bolsheviks, and led them like a blind man in a maze. Their intentions and their results have never coincided; badly as they have planned, they have builded even worse. To the German Vorwaerts—on.ee Socialistic, and still endowed with Socialistic pretensions—the spectacle is depressing. The Bolsheviks, like all extremists, have weakened their own cause and have fortified that of their enemies; they "have strengthened German imperialism and have made an effective fight against it most difficult." Lenin and Trotsky figured it out that they would oppose Prussian autocracy by setting an example to German democracy. But the German democrat, national and patriotic and no Utopian, is, according to the Vorwaerts, impressed quite otherwise:— " One shudders at the thought of how lightly the Bolsheviks surrendered Russian territory. The German democrats could never do likewise." To the German democrat the stalwart Gompers may be understandable; Trotsky, never. From the standpoint of freedom it is fortunate that there is a Western democracy which is neither subservient nor anarchic, and a Western Xabour Party that is clear-headed and clear-sighted and prepared to do its duty. Considering that in the British Isles there are doubtful sections, it is good to hear from Samuel Gompers the assurance that " America would gladly attend the Allied Labour Conference for the purpose of speeding up the war." Everything now depends on the Englishspeaking peoples' pursuing a straight course, nncorrupted by either anarchy or aggressive militarism. It is of the utmost importance to give no encouragement to Bolshevism, wherever it is found and whatever the name it masquerades under.