DEMOCRACY AND WAR

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 11 December 1914, Page 5

DEMOCRACY AND WAR

"The governmental section of the realm has difficulty in expressing its admiration of our soldiers," says Mr Arnold Bennett in the Daily News. "I'M charmed the other day to see Gilbert Chesterton making the point that those who praise the Army are praising the people—for the spirit of the rank and file must necessarily be the spirit of the people—the same people towards whom the governmental section is so mean and so mistrustful. "Democracy in the present hour is splendidly justifying itself. Autocracy (however diguised) is fighting its last fight. The defeat of militarist Germany will,be a great stride in civilisation. The defeat of the institution of autocracy will be a second and a | greater. Sagacious persons, with eyes |to see beyond their noses, will. -soon perceive upon the horizon the vague forms of the consequences of autocracy's defeat; and those who descry most accurately will come off best. I recommend this saying to the Liberal Party.

LABOR AND THE WAR

"In whatever manner this war ends there will be very great democratic doings at the end ol it. The Labor Party has not so far distinguished it-, self in the House of Commons, and even to-day it seems not yet to have started to comprehend the yasij \utirnsle meaning or1 the wkr. And. few persons outside the Labor Party have started to comprehend that meaning either. Certainly the Government, as such, have-not glimpsed it. If they had they would already have 6hown themselves less, basely mean towards the true martyrs of the war. They would have dropped the ancient theory (and practice) that the common people are a prey, to be- exploited in the last resort and at the gravest crisis. They would have met democracy within the gate, and been generous. They would have resisted reaction in high places, and, amongst other things, would liave prevented the more fantastic and pernicious pranks of the censorship, which has embittered journalists throughout America and the colonies, worked a great deal of positive harm, deeply disappointed the Army, and caused London to envy the freedom of Petrograd. "The Government has a magnificent cause —no British Government since the Spanish Armada ever had one as good—and on the military and naval and large fiscal sides its work is worthy of its cause. But it has shown little faith" so far in the principle of democracy (by which alone it lives), and no evident perception of what the future is to be. . -

"It will be necessary soon to consider the relations of democracy to the war. The war is a war of nationalities, but it was not made by peoples. Its begetter was a comparatively small band of unscrupulous, blind, and conceited persons who were clever and persistent enough to demoralise a whole people. In so far as they permitted themselves to be demoralised the people were to blame, but the chief blame lies on the 6mall band. Europe is laid waste, hundreds of thousands of men murdered, and practically every human being in the occidental hemisphere made to suffer, not for the amelioration of a race, but in order to satisfy the idiotic ambitions of a handful.

"Let not. this fact be forgotten. Democracy will- not forget it. And foreign policy in the future will not be left in the hands of any autocracy, by whatever specious name the autocracy may call itself. Ruling classes have always said that masses were incapable of understanding foreign policy. The masses understand it now. They understand that in spite of very earnest efforts in various Cabinets, the ruling classes have failed to avert the most terrible disaster in history. HOW TO END WAR^ "The masses will 6ay to themselves: 'At any rate we couldn't have done worse than that.' The masses know that if the war decision had been openly submitted to a representative German -ahamber, instead' of being taken in concealment and amid disgusting chicane, no war would have occurred. It is absolutely certain that the triumph of democracy, and nothing else, will end war as an institution. War will be ended wrhen the Foreign Offices are subjected to popular control., That popular control is coming."