MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THE WORLD

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 38, 15 February 1919, Page 16

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THE WORLD

The virus of the Bolsheviks seems to have infected the proletariat of the ■world,1 and this fact is arousing consider*M* HjipMheneiftn in that afcr onghoM of c«»OT&ti»», the .Uwtet? JS.ut^_lota o.

Great Britain and Ireland. The conservative and aristocratic element there are. looking forward with mixed feelings to the period of social reconstruction that must inevitably follow after the war. This subject is treated with great frankness by England's foremost woman philosopher, Miss Maude D. Petre, in her book on " Democracy of the Cross Roads," where she assures the workers that too much money, leisure, and power would not be good for them. "The 'world must be made safe'for democracy," says President Wilson. " Yes," replies Miss Petre, " but must we riot also insist that democracy must be made safe for the world ?" Miss Petre, who, oddly enough, is a Radical, argues :

. Tho seat of power mifflit be shifted -prjtliout- any one. of its vices being eliminated, and we might have new rulers with all the faults and ambitions minus the training and experience of tlie old ones.

"After the-war we are going to have a working man's world," said one of Miss Petre's soldier patients in the Red Cross hospital in which the lady philosopher is working during the war, and this remark was the genesis of her book. Commenting on her patient's remark, Miss Petre says: • • .

To his uneducated mind the proper return to the people for the hardships they have endured would be a world in which they could make everything good for themselves at the expense of others. If such a spirit were to prevail, then the world might become safe for democracy, but democracy would certainly not-be safe for the world.

A democratic country is not ■in itself more disinterested than an aristocratic cr even an autocratic form of political life. Can anyone honestly maintain that the working classes or the people in general are at present manifesting more disinterestedness than the privileged classes against whom they are tilting? More money, less work —that is a good programme, but it is not a programme of human love and fellowship, nor is it necessarily a programme of moral betterment.

The writer maintains that in these times we have fallen'under the fetishism of mere words, arid we are apt to believe that there is some magical saving grace in the mere word " Democracy " :

Democracy is, in itself, neither' the ruin nor the salvation of a land; it is a means, not an end. It abolishes selfish privilege, it diffuses the; goods of life among all, it fashions a wider and fuller society; but then tlie further task begins of leading men on to a nobler use of the advantages they have obtained. If the autocratic system of government, which is so largely responsible for the present world-tragedy, has been tried and found wanting to the call of humanity, we must not deceive ourselves with the notion that democracy can be trusted without training or probation. It is the system of values that must be changed, and not the method of their distribution.

It is not a question of how much money each man should have, but of what part money should fulfil in human society. If this should be the last great war, there is yet a task before society as mighty and as important as the abolition of militarism, and that is the abolition of unbridled commercialism.

She remarks that reformers and dreamers seem to think that the poor as such are essentially noble,.and assures us that this is a fallacy :

Human nature is not in itself the noblest creation imaginable. The poor are no whit better than the rich, for material poverty has no essential connection with the poverty of spirit. . ."Two things must' be wished for the rising democracy. First, a sense of responsibility; secondly, a power of self-criticism. Let the leaders of Labour have done with the faults of others and begin seriously on their own. Let them realise that it is now up to them to make the world and their own country as safe in the arms of democracy as democracy is to be safe in the coming world.