"PESTS AND PARASITES."

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 40, 16 August 1921, Page 2

"PESTS AND PARASITES."

The Dean of St. Paul's, at; Goldsmith's Hall, on " The Road to Ruin and the Way Out": " The road to ruin is the road along which we are travelling. The way out is more difficult to find and to follow. But it is useless to utter mere jeremiads ; it takes a great deal to destroy a powerful nation. Very few politicians and Socialists allow nearly enough for the swing of the pendulum. The flow of the tide is called progress; the opposite direction reaction. History should have taught us bet'Fer. It is almost, a commonplace that the young firebrands of a revolutionary age, men like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sputhey, Cariyle, and Rusldn even, end as uncompromising Tories. We have not done with monarchy in Europe by any~means. Human nature remains the same. The mofit ruinous feature of modem society is the strike. Everyone knows the just grievances of, the wage earner at tkis time, and it is generally admitted that ifie trade unions gave him u the only prospect "of escape, but by degrees the unions ceased to be defensive organisations and became aggressive, and now they have acquired the power of throwing the whole mechanism of civilised life out of gear, and of blockading the nation.^ Strikes have changed their character and become acts of civil war. The Labour leader has.become a wealthy and powerful person, and no one knows howgreat , his unavowed and unavowable sources of emolument may be." He' negotiates on more than equal terms with the 'Prime Minister; he probably receives tempting offers from unfriendly foreign Powers; and his power is conditional on his continuing to make mischief. One might suppose that they would hasten to use tlleir immense coercive power to become producers, freezing out the old companies, but notoriously they will not look at any such schemes without civil war, blackmail, and indemnities levied on the Exchequer. .This seems to be the most ominous, feature in_,the,situation. It is not merely a new social class obtaining power to force their fellow-citizens', but it is the • case of a- large class which seoms to be coming consciously anti-social. When the majority of the population claim to be parasitic on the minority, the end is not far off. I will not venture to say that we ought to have kept out ;of the' Great War—perhaps we had no choice—but it has ruined the class that was the backhone of the country, and, though we have won, we are obviously • afraid to disarm, fqV though our enemies are done, we have"still some dear Allies! The effect of class. war ought to:' be brought home to everybody..' The British workman is not at all a bad'fellow. He fought splendidly; he is not a revolutionist ; and he is not a fool. The Labour leader, the professional politician, the academical Socialist are pests and parasites of the_\vorst kind. The genuine working man's fondness^ foi asking for more is a.motive not unknown even in. tbe'learned profession. We are always abusing -ourselves for being behind the times. That, is the British lion's little way. He is always lashing himself with his tail; calling himself a fool and a, slacker until foreign nations come to believe him, and- when they find .that he is by no means such a 1 fool as he looks they complain that he is very"unfair." / .