The Dominion THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1918. A MENACE TO DEMOCRACY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 126, 14 February 1918, Page 4

The Dominion THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1918. A MENACE TO DEMOCRACY

Russia to-day affords an appalling example of what happens' to a country in which order, and discipline are cast aside, to be replaced by anarchy, but it is not only in Russia that the forces of auarchy are operating. It is an extraordinary fact, and one to occasion not a little ooncern for the future, that at a time when a great part of the civilised world is fighting to establish freedom and democracy on a sound foundation, more or less successful efforts are being made in many countries to stir up popular disorders_ which directly oppose this mighty movement of liberation and redemption. It is both natural _ and desirable that the victims of autocracy should rise against their tyrants, as they did last year in Russia, though the methods subsequently pursued cannot be defended. It is not surprising that somo similar upheaval should perhaps be within measureable distance in Germany and Aus-tria-Hungary. But that a spirit of irrational _ unrest and revolt against established order should infect even a .section of the population in countries which long ago attained the status of free democracies admits of no reasonable explanation, except in the sense that mental and bodily disorders and maladies admit of such an explanation. The fact nevertheless stands that forces which can'only be regarded as anarchial are i operating to-day in many countries in and outside Europe which are free from the blight of autocracy; and that countries which are least open to the charge of harbouring social injustice or oppression are not immune. The latest addition to evidence under this head appears in recent cablegrams reporting serious syndicalist rioting in Denmark, and an attempt by Socialist and,

other bodies in Switzerland to foment a revolution on Bolshevik lines. It is stated that the riots in Copenhagen were caused by unemployment arising out of the war, but it is evident that they were quite irrational. Germany, and not ihe Danish Government, is responsible for the privations and sufferings the war has imposed on the people of Denmark, and mob violence certainly offers no remedy, Danish people have- as litth to hope from strikes and rioting .-is ham the people of Switzerland from listening to a distempered revolutionary propaganda plainly trending totho goal of anarchy. Both countries are model democracies in which national policy has long been shaped and directed with a'i eye to the greatest good of the greatest number,, and that they should luivc become a prey even in a minor degree to revolutionary di-orders affords disquieting proof of the spread of an insidious s.Dd poisonous propaganda which has brought E.US3IB to ruinous collapse, and -w"ill work dire harm elsewhere unless it is checked and defeated in good time.

The syndicalists and agitators or similar type who are responsible for Russia's plight, and are working to produce similar results in other countries, have no aims that will bear examination. Most ol them profess some sort of vague internationalism, but in the aggregate they are a party of aimless destruction. Their agitation is so wholly destructive in tendency that in any Allied country where it has taken shape they are tools and instruments ready to Germany's hand. No clear line has been drawn or is ever likely to be drawn between the activities of German agents in Russia and those of syndicalists and anarchists who laboured on their own account and without German prompting, to destroy the foundations of social order. The vital point, however, is that the agitation of the wreckers and , fanatics who may for convenience be called syndicalists, though they masquerade under many names, is nowhere measured by the degree of social injustice which demands remedy, but is proportioned always to the degree of toleration they are accorded. It is because the earlier Provisional Governments which followed the overthrow of autocracy in Russia were amazingly tolerant of the most poisonous agitation and propaganda that Russia is to-day in a condition to excite the pity of the whole world. There were weeks, perhaps months, in which a strong Government might have launched free Russia upon a new career of prosperity, but the weakness which gave free play to even the most malign influences was fatal. Happily no established democracy is in the same degree exposed to infection with the poisonous doctrines of syndicalism and anarchy as was Russia with its vast illiterate population and with its national institutions in the melting-pot. But every democracy, by reason of the wide toleration of opinion and its expression which goes hand in hand with free institutions, is more or less exposed to the danger that the- less intelligent sections of its population may succumb to a propaganda which makes for anarchy, and if it attained its ultimate object would destroy all oivilised States. Evidence of the reality of the danger appears in the disorders reported in democratic Denmark and Switzerland, hut evidence is to-be found also nearer Rome. We have is this country a class of agitators,, mostly imported, and happily not in the aggregate very numerous, who have much in common with the syndicalist wreckers who have ruined free Russia, and are attempting to destroy other European democracies. Our local agitators of the syndicalist persuasion assume an attitude of revolt against the existing social order and habitually employ language and catch-cries which may once _ have had some reference to realities in the Old World, but are wildly absurd as applied to a country like New Zealand, in which the people have a free hand to order their affairs as they have a, mind. Tho absurdity of their attitude does not, however, palliate their attempt to undermine the national stability and welfare of a democracy which offers to all conditions of life and freedom unsurpassed in the world. Prior to the war our syndicalist agitators gave positivo expression to their wrecking tendencies chiefly in stirring up industrial disorders. During the war period many of them nave used the language and verged as closely as they dared upon the tactics of active disloyalty. It is our democratic way to extend liberal toleration to excesses of this charaeter, and to hope that education and the spread of enlightenment will in time entirely eradicate such noxious growths. But it should materially influence our attitude in the matter that just such doctrines as arc retailed locally by syndicalist agitators have brought colossal disaster to one great European country, and in their total effect go some way towards imperilling the otherwise fair prospect that the settlement of the war may usher in a new and brilliant era of democratic progress.