FACES CRITICISM

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 112, 8 November 1930, Page 11

FACES CRITICISM

PARLIAMENT TO-DAY EXAMINING THE MACHINE SPATE OF TEOUBLE ..In the schools of the United States every boy, every girl, is taught to recite the address delivered by Abraham Lincoln on the field of Gettysburg. According to that immortal and challenging declaration, government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from earth, writes P. W., Wilson in the "New York Times." Three revolutions—in the Argentine, Bolivia, and Peru—have, demonstrated the failure of the constitutional method; and,, worst of all, we have George Bernard Shaw reiterating with accomplishing exactitude his early Edwardian iibes at an impervious House of Commons. It js said that even Congress is sometimes criticised. In order to make the world sate ±or democracy there was fought a war that, one way or another, cost a score, of million" lives and drove Europe into bankruptcy. -■■■••■ , But what is happening to this government of the people, by the people, and for the people? Every day the news suggests that it, is perishing from a good many places from this earth. Here is Germany, supposed to be a Republic, yet running a General Election in which the Fascists to the right and the Communists to the left record immense gains over steady, citizenship of .the centra parties on which tho'Republic depends. . • ■ •■-■-■■ THE OTHERS. Here is an Italian Parliament obliterated by Mussolini. Here is the" Constitution of Spain in abeyance. Here is a Parliamentary China rent by civil war. Here, is a Parliamentary India secluding Gandhi. Here is a Republic in Russia transformed into a Communist Tsardom./ Hero is an Ottoman Republie summed up in the absolutism of KemaL Here.is the Parliament.of a reunited Poland '.. played pianissimo by a Padcrewskj. $a a,^prelude,to a dictatorship by Pils'udskj, Indeed, even in Nicaragua the candidates during an election have to/be protected from the voters and each other by the United States Marines. The ballot js no.substitute for thebullet. ' \ . Truth to-day is dug from the. soil with a spade and we may apply, perhaps, a little .well-meaning archaeology to this curious phenomenon—the malaise that has come "over democracy. .'. ln .the dark ages of Queen Victoria .there really .were foi'waid-lobking persons.who, calling themselves Liberals, preached. a ; gospel/ They were liberals in" economics who held that Free Trade is 'as obvious as the'proposition in arithmetic that twice two are four. They were,liberals in religion who believed that churches should be independent of States and equal to ofte another. They were liberals in education who c demanded schools for all children and colleges without ecclesiastical tests. They: wore liberals in society who ridiculed the peerages that they accepted. Theywer'e liberals in history who looked with disdain on eras loss enlightened than their own. They )vero liberals in diplomacy, advocating peace, denouncing armaments, and pleading the cause of small .nationsj rightly struggling to be free. . ■ ".' /. '::,.: THEIR FAITH., ;:' ■ But above all ' they ■ "were liberals in polities.- ,The iCavours and the Kossuths, in©- Victor Hugos, the Mazzinis, the Brights and tho Cobdens; the Germans of 1848 and the Irish at any time, insisted on Parliaments'; To their minds it: was obvious' that a Parliament, elected by the people,,must be superior in every way to' a prince who is onlya'so'n; of his father:..;.To, over-come--the Holy .Alliance and similar anachronisms and to start as many Parliaments as revolutions permitted, this was the programme. . , And it caught- on. ."■ A country was not. in* the fashion unless it exhibited what Indians in Oklahoma call a reservation, where the Burkes and the Borahs and the' Baldwins could utter their ideas on human\ destiny.. Indeed, a..cynical* old /statesman, like Palnierston, had he lived to be as.old as that veteran prohibitionistjZaro Agha, now inspecting a juvenile " Ameviea , would have been amazed by the apparent prevalence of the Parliamentary Vogue. "Pam" knew the House, of Commons. He had heard, possibly, of Congress. He would have been reconciled/then, to- Legislatures in the Dominions, similar to Westminster, but Federal like Washington. ' He would have been genially tolerant.of a Reichstag in Germany, "a; Chaniber of Deputies in France,-a Sobranyc in-Bulgaria, and a Narbdna Skupshtina in Yugo-Slavia. IXCREDIBLE. But if any lunatic had been so foolish as to tell Palmerston that, in a few years after hie death, Russia would elect a Duma, that the Ottomans would substitute a, National.Assembly for an Islamic Sultan, that a king of Egypt would imitate the Queen of England, and read "a speech from the Throne," and most incredible of all, that women of Burma and Madras would vote for a Parliament at Delhi and their provincial Legislatures—any such idea would have been received by Pam with an insouciant smile over the mentality of the prophet. The epithet for the East was "unchanging," A Parliament in China? A Budget in Japan? Unthinkable.. ■'■■■■ To the Liberals, Parliaments wore not merely what a silk hat is to a Turk—a shining signal to all the world of an emancipation that encircles, without invading, the intellect. A Parliament was an organisation that teemed with a mystical, if not very precise, significance. True, its sphere of influence was limited. But within its sphere, a Parliament was supreme. For every ill of which the citizen, as citizen, had ft right to complain, the Legislature provided a panacea. Parliament could remove grievances, could adjust taxation, could improve law, could reform abuses, could safeguard the, right of individuals. If hitherto a medieval mankind had lacked a new heaven and, what was more immediately important, a new earth, the reason was simply that there had been no Congresses to read these admirable measures of reconstruction a first, second and third time, with committee and report stages included, according to the standing orders; no Senates, in due course, to sustain the- veto .of wisdom, a power attributed by the Constitution to one-third of that body; no Supreme Court to sweep away- the wel,fare of -the celestial regions, by flv© votes to four, as an infringement of State's rights. WOULD GO ON. Hence, it was, to the Liberal, a kind of breach of privilege to suggest that any Legislature, once b set going like a motor-car, could suffer a punctured tire or any other interruption of unlimited speed on tho high road of- history. Despotisms might rise and fall like the tide that caresses a certain tea-ridden terrace on tho Thames, but a Parliament, like Tennyson ?s brook with its ''chatter chatter '' and other advantages over a iriute inglorious mankind, would be bound to "go oil forever." What is lit, then, that has gone wrong with organised freedom? Why aro we worried with all this static in the broadcast of democracy? In- Britain,

the historic Liberal Party which sent 400 members to the Parliament of 190G , has been reduced to a more remnant of 50. The Liberalism of Smuts m South Africa and of -Mackenzie King in Canada has sustained shocks onlyless severe. Nor is this all. The immunity from arrest, which the Commons wrung from a reluctant King Charles 1., is disregarded. If-a Mazzini were to arise in Italy, His homo would be exiles or a penal colony, while not a newspaper would print his words. In Russia, Tolstoy would be the guest oi the Cheka or the Ogpu. . If Mr. Edison's "Boys' Brigade wish to electrify an answor to this question, they should begin by recognising a general principle. In any diagnosis ot any difficulty anywhere in the world, the first thing to do is to look for the root of the trouble in Great Britain. In advocating Parliaments, it was Britain that' Liberals took as their text. If Britain could run a Parliament, so could Bulgaria—why not1 } CENTURIES OF WORK. But a3 usual there was a catch somei where. The. question was not whether a Bulgarian is as clever a politician as a Briton: enjoying the political opportunities of the Balkans, he is probably much cleverer, But there arises the question whether his margin of cleverness is so great that he can develop ail institution in twolve months which Britain has only been able, with the utmost difficulty, to develop in twelve centuries; LIMITING THE FUNCTION. With all their admiration for Legislatures, the Liberals had a very deunite idea of what these much-misunder-stood machines would and would not achieve. They were continually -careful to limit the Parliamentary function. Parliament could vote money. Payment could discuss a treaty. FarUament could admit dissenters to Oxford and Cambridge. Parliament could determine the size of the army. Alter fifty years devoted to a profound study or. Leviticus, Parliament might go so tar as to authorise a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. But according to the Manchester School, the attitude of Parliament toward industry, wages, hours of labour, insurance, housing, welfare in factories and, particularly, tho management of telephones was laissezfaire—"let it alone." No Liberal ot the old school supposed for a moment, that- any Parliament, even, a Parliament combining the vanity of supremen with the efficiency of robots, would be capable of assembling an automobile, inserting a new ribbon in a typewriter, or producing an ice cream soda. . If ever a programme has been tulfllled, it is this limited programme of Liberalism. Despite all tariffs, there has been developed an interchange ot commerceof which, in' their wildest enthusisam, the free traders did not dare, to dream. ' " : . .' . .'. .. ;... . ; WHAT NEXT? But the question has arisen whether a parliament ought to be merely the guardian of the individual in the exereise of his rights as a citizen. 'What is the use of: taking-that view when there are 2,000,000 unemployed^ m a country like Britainy a surplus of sugar in an island like Cuba, and- a shortage of '■ rain in;' a; State liko Ohio 1 A Legislature in these flays has to supply the organisation which no individual by himself or group of individuals can achieve, ana organisation means a concentration of executive - authority. ±t means one harid on the lever and one, will behind the harid. Hence, dictatorships; Henecy food controllers. ' Henco, demands that Congress and industry become partners in the promotion, oi prosperity. Hence, the Prince of Wales in Argentina and Mr: Hoover nagivatine the.floods.Qf the Mississippi. In Britain, happily, tho position causes no perplexity. If has; a dictator :and: Ireland^ a Dail Eireann, let -Bnglana, 1 as" the country of compromise, have MhS The Civil; Sorvice is Britain's 'autocracy, and tho House :.ot Commons is the thermometer which hit dicates how niueh of autocraey a_s.uffering people can put up with. When the limit is reached; the Government is changed, .and the Civil Service goes on as before. •.■.■■.■■-•■-■ . ;