Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1923. "TAKE AWAY THAT BAUBLE"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 73, 24 September 1923, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1923. "TAKE AWAY THAT BAUBLE"

Mr. Lloyd George became Prime Minister of Great Britain because he was esteemed a man who vould substitute action for indecision in the prosecution of the war. He lost office because the. Coalition Government of which he was the head was popularly con-" demned as a Government of uncertain mind—or perhaps of two minds, and neither of them decisive. He should therefore be well acquainted with the whole range of difficulties and dangers of democratic rule. Yet i\, is doubtful if his examples of democratic weakness will prove wholly acceptable. "Pride's Purge" he quotes as giving the whole substance of Fascism. But when Colonel Pride purged the House of Commons there was civil war in England. King Charles was a captive. The House of Cornmon3, which possessed but a doubtful claim to be more representative than the Army whose Remonstrance it had refused to consider, had decided after three days and nights' debate- and by a majority of 129 to 83 that "His Majesty's concessions in the Treaty of Newport are a ground for settlement." On the morrow Colonel Rich's regiment of horse andi Colonel Prides-regiment of foot appeared in, Westminster Palace yard, and 41 members were refused permission to enter Parliament. They asked, \"By what law?" and were told, " By the lav of force." Carlyle's description proceeds:

The Commons on Wednesday did send out to demand "the members of this House" from Colonel Pride; but Pride made respectful evasive answer; —could not for the moment comply with the desires of the Honourable House. On the Thursday Lieutenant-General Cromwell is thanked; and Pride's Purge continues: new men of thai Majority are seized;. others scared away needing no seizing :—above a hundred in all; who are sent into their countries, sent into the Tower; sent out of our way and trouble, us no farther. The Minority has now become Majority; there is now clear course for it, clear resolution there has for some time hack been in it. _ What its resolution was, and its action that it did in pursuance thereof, "an action not done in a corner, but in sight of all the Nations," and of God who made the Nations, we know, and the whole world knows!

The clear resolution of the Minority appealed to Carlyle, and, in his sympathetic description, is made to justify the defiance of code law. But if Cromwell wae, as Lloyd George says, "the first modern Fascist," his Fascism must.be held to date, not from his purging of a Parliament which, lacked resolution in time of emergency, but from his dismissal of a Parliament jwhich failed to act progressively under more peaceful conditions. When he commanded to. "Take away that baublo" he expressed in a phrase-the contempt of the resolute man for the irresolution of men who lacked decision, and waited upon forms and ceremonies when action was necessary. To put Lenin in the same category suggests confusion of methods with motives. It may be admitted that Lenin used machinery which Cromwell devised and which was afterwards adapted to different uses by Mussolini;. but is it correct to say that Lenin's rise was a revolt against the ineptitude of democratic rule?

Kussia had only partially emerged, from the chaos following the rule of a Tsar who was benevolent but weak. Democracy was constituted only in name. It "had had no opportunity of preparing, much less perfecting, the machinery of government. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not wish to see that machinery perfected. They had no desire for a bourgeois government, even though that government might reflect the desires of the great mass of the people. Like the Spartacists- in Germany, they realised that the popular will was jiot ready for ..a proletarian dtOtatovship. So they veßOl-tod to force Jjo jvrest the pow.er shicla

they could obtain under no democratic method. The Spartacists made a similar attempt, but they were faced by a people whose wrfl was not so easily defied. Cromwell defied a Parliament which he believed to be paltering with the will of the people. Lenin resorted to revolt because he thought the people would choose, a form of government which in his opinion would not be best for them. Neither in Cromwell's England nor in Kerensky's Russia was modern machinery of representative government perfected. It is but an imperfect machine in most advanced countries even now; but it is capable of moving forward if the great body of people whose interests it serves will supply the power. They may supply the power" by choosing their own best men of honest resolution to work within the Constitution. If t,hey do not they withdraw the support which alone can strengthen, the edifice of democracy to withstand the shocks of extremism.