THE NEW WAIT AND SEE

New Zealand Tablet, 26 August 1920, Page 9

THE NEW WAIT AND SEE

« : ♦ 1 ' (By G. K. Chesterton, in the New Witness.) Mr. Lloyd George has produced a new verbal version of "Wait and See." He did not, like Mr. Asquith, apply it to some detail of Parliamentary debate to which, for all we know or care, it may really have applied. He applied it to those fundamentals of human society, of the will of the people and the authority of the ruler, to which we must all return in the void and devastation of these days. For to-day we are all revolutionists, especially the reactionaries. We are all, in the most literal t and logical sense of the word, radicals. That is, we are all tending or hastening rapidly to a radical change of some kind; and whatever we do we are tearing up the roots of some part of our past. We must return to first principles; and a return to first principles is a revolution. We are either revolutionary socialists destroying private property in land, or revolutionary servilists destroying collective barganing in labor, or revolutionary distributists destroying the concentration 'of wealth, or revolutionary guildsmen destroying the system of wages, or trusts destroying trades unions, or trades unions destroying trusts, or sad-eyed Semitic adventurers destroying everything. An earthquake has laid bare the roots of the mountains.

In this situation Mr. Lloyd George told the deputation interviewing him about Irish Labor, that if working men disapproved of his policy they would not have long to wait; as a Parliament only lasts five years. In short, he told them to wait as long as they might have to wait, and see whatever they might happen -to see. These gleams of ghastly unreality are allowed to light up the dull materialism of most official statements. In this case it is particularly ghastly because it is in such sharp contrast with the rest of the speech ; which was, at least, for good or evil, full of the sense of the rapidity of current change. It was the whole point of the speech, if it had any point, that a house was on fire, that a tiger was loose, that a ship was going on the rocks, .that a man was drowning in the sea; or in short, that in a day, or an hour, or a moment, it may be too late. And at the same time the speaker has the solemn impudence to tell those who think they are being conquered and enslaved that they have only to wait five years. The ludicrous breach of logic can be immediately seen if we simply reverse their complaint,' and suppose they are deploring the leniency of government and the licence of anarchy. When the policeman is shot because he has not got his revolver, would it be sufficient to tell him to wait five pears for his revolver? And if it be no answer to the policeman who anticipates bein<* barbarously shot by a peasant, how can it be an answerto a peasant who anticipates being brutally bludgeoned by a policeman? Anarchy-may come rapidly and yet irrevocably. Slavery also may come rapidly and vet irrevocably A day may decide whether men save the last remnants of law; a day may decide whether they save the last remnants of liberty. Whatever pottering and tinkering may go on in the parliamentary world there is no doubt about what is going on in the practical world, not only of business but, of bureaucrat

and even in the world of police as distinct from politics. - It. is - something of the nature of war; a series of. rapid and decisive manoeuvres which fix the fate of centuries in a few days. It is possible to be a parliamentarian and be on the servile side, in that war; it is also possible to be a man and say so* But it is absurd to expect one army to wait and see, while you tell the other , army to go in and win. -

It must be understood that the absurd part of the speech was the democratic part, not the despotic part. If the speaker had admitted that our government is not a democracy at all, he could still have made a case against its failing to be a government at all. It is a reasonable position that rulers must rule, whether they are chosen by lot in the old Athenian manner, or by lineage in the old feudal manner, or by purchase and bribery in the modern manner. And when Mr. George says, for instance, that a government must give arms to its servants to guard them against criminals if it can, of course he is talking perfectly good common sense. We may say something in a moment abouti why it generally can, and how it happens that in this case it cannot. But most certainly it is true that such crime is the sort of thing that must be punished by a government de facto, even if it were not the sort of thing to be condemned by any government de jure, or by any normal morality of mankind. A Sinn Fein government would put down crime; and what is perhaps not irrelevant, a Sinn Fein government could put down crime. It could do it for the reason which is the root of the whole business; one of those roots which we are now driven to deracinate. For this fundamental reason it will probably be found necessary, sooner or later, to call the Sinn Fein leaders into our own councils, as we called Parnell into our own councils. For this fundamental reason we hope against hope that it may not be done later, and therefore too late.

Nobody believes in the democracy on which our parliaments claim to depend. But there is a democracy which even parliaments seldom manage to destroy. In a very special and real sense government does rest upon consent, and may truly be called government by consent. It is not the consent of the voter to vote, but the consent of the ploughman to plough and the fisherman to fish, of the scavenger to scavenge or the market-gardener to market-garden. It is the consent of ordinary men to do ordinary things. Now in all states except avowed slave states (which ours has only partially become) the consent really has to be consent. Even in slave states it has, in many of the most important cases, to be consent. There is no machinery for making any gentleman become a surgeon, so that potentially all the patients might die in agony or bleed to death. In those countries where the working classes are still supposed to be free, their work also is a form of consent, and the government rests on that consent. When that consent has gone, the government has fallen. Men need not wait five years to vote, for they have already voted. It is all one whether we say that a government is bankrupt, because it is too poor to hire labor, or that government is unpopular, because it is so much hated as to be boycotted by humanity, _ or that government is smitten by God, because there is a term to tyranny and folly and the denial of self-evident things. The end has come.

This is the truth about the collapse of capitalism everywhere; it is the truth about the great strikes in England and about the threat of what is called Direct Action. As we have often pointed out, it is entirely false to call such strikes unconstitutional methods, and to contrast them with constitutional methods Direct tutioTal 18 TW Ctly - le?al T d almost P eda «tica!ly constitutional. There is no law to prevent men going on strike because they do not like Mr. George’? policy • simply because there is no law to prevent them*going hat strike because the + d not like Mr. George’s new hat. It is not illegal to refuse to carry revolvers to

the . police; it is not illegal to refuse to carry Gorgon* zola cheese to anyone named Robinson. - We have never, found it necessary - to compel men by law to do these things, because we never anticipated any government being so dfetested and despised as to be unable to get anybody ,to do them, i But capitalism is subject to a contempt such as was never suffered by any social domination before; and one of the thousand effects of its discredit is simply that men will no longer work for *t. ■ The Irish strike against carrying arms to the police is almost exactly like the seamen’s strike against carrying Pacifists to Petrograd. , Servile capitalists may have inconsistently defended the first; international Bolshevists may inconsistently defend the second. But the obvious note of both is nationalism and liberty. Mr George may reasonably say he is saving, the lives of the police by sending them arms; and Mr. MacDonald might reasonably say that he was saving the lives of the people by bringing them peace. Nor does it follow that the Irish railwayman approves of what is done by the rebels, any more than that the English seaman approved of all - that was done by the English Government, or disapproved of all that was done by the Bolshevist government. The motive of such a man "is much _ too simple for politicians to understand. A plain patriotic man will not play a very conspicuous part, or perform a very public function, in which he is serving the enemies of his country. When once however, by the folly of rulers, there runs across a continent or a country a line that is a battle line, he will feel forced to be on one side of that line or the other; and he will not be under the banners of the stranger. By the folly of our rulers, there is now in Ireland something much more than civil war. There is international war. England and Ireland are fighting each o her as much as they did at the "battle Asfnnn- E ° yne ° r the sie S e of Limerick. Astonishing as it may seem, it is very doubtful whether we can get the camp followers of Sarsfield to curry muskets to Schomburg. And it is equally doubtful whether either of those commanders, on the morning before the battle, would have been induced to retreat by the reminder that a Parliament only lasts five years. y