ENGLAND TO-MORROW.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15862, 27 February 1912, Page 10

ENGLAND TO-MORROW.

Mr Geoi-go Peel’s “The Future of England” is (says “The Express”) an interesting and valuable contribution to the discussion, always topical and always interesting, wither wo are tending Mr Peel writes with striking detachment and fairness. He is a patriot, but In? can see other people’s points of view. He is an optimist, but ho realises danger. ‘He suggests, and with justice, that the progress of doctrinaire Socialism is being hindered by the popularisation of Mr Tom Mann’s “ syndicalism,” which both hero and in France easily develops into pure anarchy. Mr Peel, however, does not appear to realise that the strength of Tom Mannism is the revolt of the workers against the Puritanism of the Labour party and the “super-inspection which is characteristic of the social legislation initiated' by the Radical Government and benevolently supported by Mr Ramsay Macdonald. The desire, for liberty is a real human want. Most men of all classes regard equality as impossible and fraternity as an-ideal curiously unaffected by legislation. Mr Peel has A OOMPRKHF.NfUVK DEFINITION OF LIRERTY : “ Liberty is that spirit which, in politics, repudiates absolution, respects the minority and weighs the protest ot a single conscience with care; which in jurisprudence, favours the common, limits the cuiion, and rejects the civil, law, suspecting those iron maxims to be the weapons of Imperial wrong; that spirit which, in the judgment seat, assumes innocency, and gives tho benefit of the do'ubt; which in social life sides 'with weakness against strength, with the outcast, against the oppressor; and which, in all conflicts ot authority against reason, inclines to follow the inner guide.” No man of good mind can possibly admit that tho industrial system as we have it at present is satisfactory. The Socialist demands that tho State shall dispossess the capitalist. This means the tyranny of the official and the death of the initiative. The • syndicalist ” demands that tho workers in every industry shall down the wealth-making machines which their labour sets in motion. They are on the right tack, but without the direction of the captain of industry, chaos and ruin must ensue. What may perhaps be called “ semi-syndicalism ” or co-operation is the way out. “ The only final cure for the war of labour and capital should own some actual share in its own industries. A Lancashire authority, writing in 1887, foretold tho day when the operatives in the cotton industry would possess a great portion of their mills, and already the better paid of them have large sums so invested. “ Similarly with our land. Here, too, and elsewhere, the best hope is that the savings of the people should be directed to investment in their own little businesses. We should hear little in those days of the nationalisation by the Stato of industries which will be partly owned or controlled b.r tho people themselves. , The State is the name for everyone else under an alias. 'Rather than vest their industries in the State, our artisans will prefer to vest their industries in themselves as shareholders.”

UNIVERSAL PROFIT-SHARING and a State-aided system of peasant ' proprietorship will kill Socialism stone dead. The industrious artisan and the skill ul agricultural labourer .(and few workers tire more skilful) are dissatisfied, and properly dissatisfied, but they do not yearn for tho oppression of State officials, nor do they desire to share the results of their labour with wastrels and loafers. The ideal country is that in which every citizeii is a capitalist or a landowner, and it is towards that ideal that a wise statesmanship will aim. Of Great Britain as • a nation among nations, Mr Peel has much,to sav that is wise and important: “ Michelet called us pride incarnate. Bismarck said that the policy of England has constantly been to sow dissension between the Continental Powers for her own interests. And from Froissart downwards any number of Continental writers have remarked upon the quarrelsome proclivities of the English people. In fact, these charges reveal an old, deep-seated, and' widespread seiiso of irritation against us as a Power which will not answer the hell for any one in Europe, and as n most troublous neighbour with whom to sit at meat.” “ Gey ill to live with.” That is our reputation among the European nations, and it is the reputation which we earned by our love for “ r.plendid isolation,” which meant in effect the possibility of taking advantage of any and every one’s difficulties and troubles. Our ententes with France and Russia are, in their essence. the declaration that We recognise that we arc members of the European' family, and far from accenting the hostility to other nations they are the evidence of our desire to he good Europeans. AVe have old hostilities with both our friends. ' Racial tics -and ancic-nt alliances lead us to Germany. As M r Peel say's: “ The truth . is . that neither in ancient, nor in modern, times have the European nations entertained fixed animosities against each other, and this we can see best in our own cn.se.” Mr. Peel, indeed, repeats Mr Hilaire Boiioc’s aspiration for a patriotism that shn.il ’be comprehensively European : “ For if, as already <hmvi!. our interests are increasingly concerned and involved' in Europe; if, further, our pessimism of the nineteenth century in regard to the Continent may give way to a hope, however modest, that tho tangled skein of Continental policy is not ’a mare noose ib hang any intruder; if. therefore, wo may enter where our interests call us so imperativelv, without sheer foolhardiness or wanton folly—then forward, in the name of prudence itself, and in abandonment of the splendid isolation of old days. AVe must he Europeans, the future designs it. How?” We have begun with the ententes, Mid the ententes have made internecine war between Franco and Germany impossible., at least for the moment. * AA'o must go on. AA’itli Germain- the fourth in a greater entente the peace' of England and of Christendom is assured. And inside perils and extra-European dangers make this peace essential Mo Great Britain and to all Europe. w