FANATIC OR PROPHET?

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1789, 7 November 1919, Page 11

FANATIC OR PROPHET?

ROBERT SMILLIE. * . EXTREMIST LEADER NEITHER HUMBUG NOR ASS. [The following character sketch of Mr Robert Smillie, who loomed large in th British strike, is written by Alexander M. Thompson, for many yearß prominent among English Socialists, and a correspondent more recently of the "Daily Mail."] Was Luther strictly fair, or Ignatius, or Cromwell, or Coriolanus, or Gladstone? I myself, in the advocacy of my views, sometimes said more than I meant.

The very worst way to study any opinion which is violently opposed to our own is to begin by suspecting our opponent's good faith. It may be good tactics in law, when doubtful of your own case, to vilify the .other scoundrel. But in serious and sincere controversy that way merely darkens counsel and does not conduce to discovery of the truth. > Besides, it is so cheap and easy, and so extremely ineffectual to brush aside an awkward question by pretending to believe that the man who poses it is either a humbug or an ass. Mr Smillie, clearly, is neither. His achievement of the last months proves him to be a forceful personality who, in the huge task of social reconstruction lying before us, must be recognised by intelligent observers as one- of the factors that count. He is one of the men of the time. He is a power. He is evidently not a fool. Hero to His Secretary. A man is not a hero, without cause, to his valet, nor to his secretary. Mr Hodges, the able young man who acts in the latter capacity to Mr Smillie, paid him a tribute of loving admiration at the Keswick conference, which was too fervent to be untrue; and he incidentally asserted that all classes of workers look on Mr Smillie as representing the spirit which inspires and animates them.

Another speaker, Mr Harry Twist, of the Lancashire miners, who is certainly not one of the extremists in the trend of industrial evolution, invidiously described as '' the movement,'' went on to declare, with unquestionable reason, that no Labour leader ■in this or any other country has so endeared himself to the hearts of the working classes. He added, what many readers may regard as amazingly absurd, that Mr Smillie has not in his nature one spark of enmity against the classes he is fighting, but quite fervently believes that the co-operation of manual workers with the managerial captains of industry, which he proposes to substitute for the actual class devision and strife, would conduce to the greater happiness and well-being qf the entire nation. The Duke of Northumberland very naturally finds this difficult to believe. But impartial spectators at the Coal Commission's examination of the coalowning magnates will agree that Mr Smillie showed no trace of personal ill-feeling in his treatment of them". His tone aud manner were dispassionately judicial. The Duke of Northumberland certainly showed more petulance and trueulence than he did. A Paternal Touch. Mr Smillie talked to him like a father. "Some of your brothers," lie seemed gently to suggest, "seem to be having a very hard time of it. They appear to think that you have secured a part of their birthright. Don't you think that we should be a happier family if we tried to pull together a bit more?" '

The Duke thinks the question was impertinent. I feel sure Mr Smillie did not mean it so. There was no note of spite in his inquiry. It was a wistful, almost pathetic appeal, rather than a rebuke or insult. The man simply, passionately, fanatically meant just what he said. The rasping asperities of the ducal cross-examinations were monopolised by anotheV member of the Commission. Smillie is essentially big-. I think he is a fanatic, obsessed by one idea, which burns in him like a smouldering fire and bursts occasionally into angry jets of flame, throwing all other considerations into lamp-black shadow. He has known the grinding torment of poverty and endured the hardships of the underground worker's life in its more cruel days, and nothing will ever purge his soul of the bitterness of his memories.

His deep-sunk eyes look out from under his shaggy eyebrows with the intensity that one has seen in old pictures of Sp::.'ish monks. His gaze is restless. He has the visionary's air of searching for something far away. Ho has the hollow cheek and furrowed brow of the earnest thinker; the lean and hungry look ' which' under tyrannies marks the conspirator, and, in democratic States, the agitator. Not Easy to Work With.

I understand that he is not always easy to work with. In one of his speeches at Keswick he was at some pains to emphasise the fact that the Miners' Federation is not a one-man show, and to represent himself as merely the humble instrument and servant of his masters —the miners. The delegates present were too loyal to the man who has done so much to advance their interest to smile audibly, but I imagine that there must have been a good- deal of secret and spiritual chuckling. One gathers from signs and tokens that the fond love expressed for Mr Smillie in the speeches of Mr Hodges and Mr Twist does not invariably assume the form of a blind and mad infatuation on the part of the .miners' members in Parliament. Their relationships do not always appear to be of the most cordial, and one surmises that the eternal conflict between the dreamer and the practical politician may occasionally assort itself, even in the bosom of the federation. Mr Smillie, one guesses, must be something of a thorn in the side of any authority. If ever the Labour Party comes into power one of the most awkward critics they will have to face will probably be Mr Smillie. Deep-rooted Sentimentalism.

His deep-rooted sentimentalism is the secret of his amazing attitude during the War. Ho is very indignant that the J">uke of Northumberland should accuse him of sedition, and I am quite sure that in intention he is utterly innocent of the charge. And if his speeches and acts have sometimes tended that way in effect, the reason is .simply his constitutional inability to see more than one thing at a time, and to distinguish between ideals and facts. Like most of us, like all the people I know, ho intensely hates war; but he differs from the majority of us in acting as if the desirability of a wish and hope must necessarily bring it about. Like many other democrats, ho dislikes our intervention in Russia; but, unlike other democrats, he is prepared to use the most undemocratic means to compel the democracy to his policy. Like many of us, he believes in the nationalisation of the mines; but, unlike those of us and of his own federation who are desperately anxious about

the country's industrial and financial situation, he is ready to take any risk for the achievement of his desire. Men like Mr Smillie are useful as prophets to point the way to distant and desirable ideals. But they are apt to prove dangerous guides through the bogs of such a road as that by which we have to travel towards the nation's reconstruction. It is a fine thing to hitch one's wagon to a star, but in some emergencies it is not useful. t