GOVERNMENT OR "SELF"?

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 50, 28 August 1922, Page 6

GOVERNMENT OR "SELF"?

Taking Ireland as his text, Mr. Bernard Shaw points out that selfgovernment may : easily become self-extermination. This fact is rediscovered1 periodically in history, whenever liberty degenerates into -license. Constitutional Go-* vernmeht and its Law are really an insurance against terrorism by cliques or toy individuals; and the outbreak*, of terrorism, particularly in forms of violence", is noticeable not only in Ireland. Wherever selfgovernment is interpreted to be the right of a person or clique to secure , ita ends by force, the phrase loses

the bigger half of itself and becomes reduced to " self " alone. It is only " self-government " when there is a Government operating through constitutional and legal forms; and the only, force that may safely be used, with some regard for the principle of "the greater good for the greater number," is the force exercisable by a Constitutional Government that is compelled periodically to ' submit its fate to the popular will as expressed (however imperfectly) through the ballot-box. Self-gov-ernment is partly self-expression but mostly self-repression. The performances of Ireland's violent minority are merely, self-indulg-ence, disguised under high-sound-ing names. " Ireland," says Mr. Shaw, " ig suffering from an 'epidemic of homicidal mania under the guise-of patriotism." "

The assassination of German Republican leaders by reactionaries, the quasi-legal murder of Kussian Social Revolutionary leaders by Moscow Communists, the Herrin massacre, and many other political or semi-political crimes' well warrant the Pope's reminder to the world that' " violence will not secure the triumph of any cause." If murder enters into the economic sphere as it does into the political arena, society will presently find itself faced with a war on a n«w front, in which there will be no safety for either property op-life until the violentists are put down. We do not place the racecourse within the economic sphere, but it is relevant to mention that gamboling gains are already becoming the subject of organised robbery with violence, the alternative being blackmail. In the eyes of certain people bookmakers' money may be tainted, and bookmakers may be considered fair game, but-the state of crime evidenced in a London cablegram published on Saturday, concerning some -of the English racecourses, cannot' be viewed without alarm. If blackmail gangs may with, impunity extort money from bookmakers,' and if they are such a terror that successful backers are afraid either to use the railway trains or to seek police protection, a precedent will be laid down tlhat will soon spread beyond racecourses and gambling dens. Anarchy, of course, will work its own cure, even in Ireland; And the cure will be the restoration, against all opposition, of the strong 'hand of Government and Law.