Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1933. DIE-HARDS AND DICTATORS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 144, 15 December 1933, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1933. DIE-HARDS AND DICTATORS

In his "Nineteenth Century" article on "Party Conferences," to which we paid some attention on Wednesday, Mr. Austin Hopkinson, M.P., avows both his firm faith in Liberal principles and his unmitigated contempt for the Liberal Party. He suggests that everybody must share this conlempt for "a party which has abandoned every one of ils principles in a vain hunt for voles." He even describes it as "dead, foully murdered by its leaders," and he. calls upon the Conservative Party to preserve the Constitution by improving the personnel of Parliament and by improving its own education in Liberal principles with which, under the tuition of Mr. Baldwin, it has made so promising a start. In other words, gays Mr. Hopkinson, it must pick up the valuable baggage which tho Liberal Party abandoned in its flight into the desert. To combine the practical common sense of Liberalism wtih Conservative- idealism, and thus to preserve the democratic Constitution now in being, is a task which, apparently, can be achieved only by Mr. Baldwin. It is certainly a magnificent compliment to Mr. Baldwin that this caustic Independent should sec in his loyalty, his disinterestedness, and his essential Liberalism the best hope for the Conservative Parly and for the nation. . Mr. Hopkinson is, of course, fully alive to the difficulties of Mr. Baldwin's position. It would indeed have been a marvel if, with the record of the Birmingham Conference . before him, so keen-sighted arid shrewd an observer had failed to note them. It is true that the die-hards had been defeated by a majority of two to one in their attack on the Indian policy of the Government—an attack which, if successful, wou|d have wrecked the Conservative Party, the National Government, and possibly the Empire also. But it was significant that Mr. Neville Chamberlain had deemed it advisable to make the question one of confidence in the Government, and that, even so, as the result of abstentions, the majority was a hundred short of what it had been in June. The die-hards are still a menace, and Mr. Hopkinson diagnoses their genesis with irresistible humour. There was evidence at Birmingham, he says, that "some members of the party who for one reason or another no longer occupy positions of prominence are ready to split it rather than to remain in obscurity." But does he blame them on this account? Certainly not, since it is well known "that in many cases the reaction to a lack of appreciation by others is a hyper-appreciation of themselves." This inferiority complex, writes Mr. Hopkinson, is particularly prevalent among men and women in public life, but becomes pathological only in extreme instances. When, for example, all three parties in the State successively have witnessed, manifestly without regret, the secession from their ranks of a rising. politician, Ms inferiority complex may become so acute as to ulcerate in the form of a personal bodyguard,and a fury of self-advertise-ment. •'■ ■ But to be distinguished from these pathological cases there is a milder type of infection, to which "oscillations between two parties," when too freely practised, "particularly in the absence of a portfolio," predispose the patient. "The constant terror that the Empire is being betrayed by .whatever Ministers are in office when he is not" is one of the symptoms of this condition. So insistent is this hallucination, Mr. Hopkinson continues, that, in the process of saving the country by disrupting the party to which he happens to belong at any given moment, he is prepared to expose the nation to the irreparable disaster of another Socialist Administration. Phrases such as "Imperial heritage" or "British supremacy" become as common in his speeches as in the prospectuses of fraudulent company promoters. Proconsular residence in sub-tropical climates is apt to give rise to similar symptoms. The victim of this milder kind of inferiority complex is represented by Mr. Hopkinson as desperately endeavouring to suppress the doubt of his own merit constantly percolating from, the unconscious into the conscious, and the result is a frantic desire to occupy positions commonly regarded as important. It is for th's reason unjust, he says, to condemn pushfulness, self-advertise-ment, and personal ambition, however disastrous to the commonwealth they may be. For they are but the Outward signs of an innate diffidence and modesty, so deeply rooted in the subconscious mind as to be entirely invisible until psycho-analysis has brought them to light. Lord Lloyd and Sir S. Cripps should, therefore, utilise the period before the next party conferences in making a real effort to cultivate self-confidence. If they do not succeed in doing so, they will almost certainly try to become dictators, and may thus cause much discomfort not only to themselves but to other people also; and that would be a pity. If there is more humour than politics in this, it is certainly humour

of a very high quality; and one may hope that both Lord Lloyd and Sir Stafford Cripps have humour enough themselves to appreciate the grave advice that they should strive hard to cultivate self-confidence' as the only safeguard against the aspirations after a dictatorship which might have uncomfortable results. It is indeed no mere negative advantage . that Mr. Hopkinson promises these fighting men if they will follow his prescription and eradicate their inferiority complex. When liberated from this obsession they will regain a sense of perspective enabling them to appreciate the respective magnitudes of themselves and of the men. Though Mr. Hopkinson congratulates the Labour Party on having triumphantly carried at their Hastings Conference a resolution "to the effect that, in their Utopia, incompetence is to be no bar to the highest administrative positions," he regards the in-ferioi-ity complex of Sir S. Cripps as the chief feature of this conference. Such enormous dimensions had it assumed there as to cause him "to demand the abolition of all authority except his own, and the surrender to him of all bank balances and capital resources now in private ownership." But the trade union leaders showed no real enthusiasm in - the matter, evidently having learned, as Mr. Hopkinson suggests, from their study of Continental affairs to doubt whether "Socialism in our time" can ever mean anything more than "Fascism, in our time." These doubts are fully shared by Mr. Hopkinson. He declares Socialism to be "invariably the prelude to the jungle," and points out that there are people in England with "sharper teeth and longer claws than those possessed by Sir S. Cripps and Mr. Wise." In the Socialist Utopia that man rules who is quickest with his gun, and anyone who does not wish to be a slave would do well to practise shooting through the hip-pocket, if we are to have Socialism in our time. But some consolation may be found in the thought that this generation, if British politics follow the same course of evolution as those of most Continental nations, may yet enjoy the spectacle of Sir S. Cripps, Mr. Churchill, Sir 0. Mosley, Lord Lloyd, and other candidates for dictatorship stalking one another among the trees of Kensington Gardens. I