Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1926. SUPERIOR VIRTUE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 137, 7 December 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1926. SUPERIOR VIRTUE

The failure of our leading articles on the Baume case, and especially the last of them, to please the' Labour Party causes us neither surprise nor regret. As our article of Tuesday last was not meant to please that party, its failure so to do actually ministers to our complacency as cvi- 1 dence of its success. Nor is our complacency in any way diminished by the manner in which the Labour Party has sought to vent its displeasure at our expense. Mr. W. Nash, the secretary of the party, is a gentleman of excellent intentions and immense industry. But his weakness as a controversialist is an unmeasured prolixity which spreads his argument so thin and makes it .take^ so long to pass a given point that it,becomes very hard to follow. In the letter which appears in another column Mr. Nash's normal prolixity does not desert him, but jas the position which he is concerned to defend, is plainly indefensible there is a positive advantage in a cloud of words which threatens to obscure, the issue. He pays us the far too flattering compliment of treating our deplorable lack of both charity and common sense, our shameless inconsistency, and our vacillating accommodation to the variations of the popular cry.as the points of supreme concern. But we must decline" to be seduced by our tickled vanity.into imitating our critic's irrelevance. Whether we are really as black or as versatile as we are painted by the Secretary of the Labour Party is a matter of little, interest or concern to the public. The attitude of the Labour Party to the Baume case, which was the subject of the article attacked by our correspondent, is a much more interesting and important issue. What that attitude is Mr. Nash states, quite frankly in the opening paragraph of his letter:—

The Labour Party is concerned about the system of administering justice in the Dominion, but it •is just as much concerned not to enter into a hue aijd cry for the purpose of destroying the opportunity of recovering self-respect which is made available to those who have slipped off the track. It therefore took the road of charity and commonsense by waiting till the cries died down, and then urging that every possible avenue that-might lead to injustice or- preferential treatment should he examined.

In a subsequent passage the Labour Party's attitude to the matter is further elucidated as follows: —

There is, as you say, a time for speech and a time for silence, but surely the time for speech is not when, the pack ia in full cry. It may be that those'who released the captive did so too soon. It may be even that a distracted, parent has also forgotten that there ia a time for speech and a time for silence, but Burely you should not blame the Labour Party for not howling with the pack.

Referring to the party's previous statement on the subject, that it "does not in any way associate itself with the hue and cry which has been manufactured during the last few months," our comment was ? - —

The 'Labour Party took no hand either in the "manufacture" of this hue and cry or in resisting it, nor did it contribute in any way to the guidance of public opinion on an issue of supreme importance.

The answer to our charge is neither a denial nor a defence. It would be more accurately described as a plea of guilty coupled with an appeal for mitigation of sentence which really aggravates the offence.

The plea in justification of silence at such a time is certainly one of the most astonishing arguments ever advanced on behalf of a democratic party which recognises that it is in a minority, and that only by ceaseless agitation. can it transform itself into a majority. How has the Labour Party's faith in agitation stood the test of this case according to the explicit assertion of its secretary? Agitation was well defined by Peel—we cannot recall the'precise terms—as influencing the con-* science of a people to mould its laws, but our' Labour Party's agitation would be entirely innocuous if it was alw*ays confined to the lines which it has followed and justified in this case. The proposition which plainly underlies the official defence is that when the popular mind and conscience or the mind and conscience of a large and active., section of the people are dead set on anything is a time to keep silence. It is surely the most perplexing feature of this remarkable case that it should have driven a party which lives by agitation to take refuge in such a feather-bed theory of agitation as this. We are, of course, aware of the remark of a better man than Solomon that "the prudent man shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time." ' (Even an agitator is under no obligation to throw his life away for nothing, but there was no call for such valour on this occasion, and therefore no justification for silence. Whether the hue and cry was just or not, whether or not a large section of the people

were imagining a vain thing, there was a call for help and guidance to which everybody capable of influencing public opinion should have listened. The Labour Party ignored the call, but came along with its beautiful series of carefully balanced copy-book platitudes when the battle had been lost and won. without its help.

Another reason wh^y this. talk about the hue and cry as though it was all of one kind is absurd is that there were discordant voices in the. pack. It is a part of our offence that, while acquitting the Prisons Board of class bias arfd personal favouritism,'we were satisfied there was a case for inquiry and explanation. To discriminate in that fashion was to "vacillate with the cry of the hounds." There were, indeed, many hounds and many cries. There were the sectarian hounds wqo discovered a number of false scents ending in mares' nests. There were equally fierce "class-conscious" non-sec-tarians, who detected deliberate injustice at every turn. A majority were excited by the vague suspicions which are tine natural products of secrecy. But if neutrality is the worst disservice that can be rendered to a community in time of trouble Jthe dumb dogs who were silent till it was all over at any rate have no right to arrogate to themselves superior virtue;