Evening Post. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1940. INCITEMENTS TO CHOOSE BARABBAS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 36, 12 February 1940, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1940. INCITEMENTS TO CHOOSE BARABBAS

In the report, which is well worth careful study, of Mr. Savage's address last evening, something will be found to touch all sections of the population. First, there is the volunteer soldier, "compelled to serve only by his own conscience"; the conscience-compelled volunteer soldier is the highest fruit of i democracy, of whom only one quesjtion will be asked: "Is there enough of such to provide our share in democracy's defence, and is the soldier-burden his alone?" Secondly, there is the non-soldier democrat who is genuinely out to win the war, and who is asking himself (or should be) "what is my duty?" Thirdly, by implication, there is the conscience-compelled man who refuses to bear arms, or who for some reason or other is cold to the war; j since Mr. Savage emphasised con-j science in the volunteer soldier, hei evidently does not ignore it in the so-called conscientious objector. Fourthly, there is a horse of another colour altogether—the man who exploits other people's conscientious objections and scruples, and who trades on the confused thinking of thousands of individuals, for the express purpose (concealed or unconcealed) of wrecking democracy. In any free democracy—but not under a dictator—this conscienceless wrecker, to whom the conscientious scruples he plays with have no value except as political dynamite, is the villain of the piece, and can bring in his wake ruin.

The person who trades on conscientious feelings and on social-

economic grievances not from sympathy with either, but in order to stop the war and destroy the State, is to be marked apart as a political wrecker, and he can easily be recognised as included in Mr. Savage's "would-be saboteurs." He is always a centre of infection, and sometimes an organiser of sabotage and violence. Of his vis-a-vis (the thoughtful democrat who gives sound advice), Mr. Savage says: One resolute man of good will can keep sweet for democracy a whole shop, offlce, factory, street, or district; and in doing so render high service to the morale of the people. And this is true. Unfortunately, the converse, is also true; the seditious spirit is infectious, and one man whose hobby is political destruction "can keep a whole shop, office, factory, street, or district"—or, through public halls, if let, can keep a whole population—in a condition not of sweetness but of social sourness. Mr, Savage knows this well, for he points out that democratic thinkers are liable to underrate the poison gas warfare of political saboteurs. Democracy's friends have too often let its loud-voiced opponents have it all their own way.! Let us not make the same mistake here, j If more and more people clamour foi* Barabbas, Barabbas they will get. No system of government is more open to the attack of the sentimentexploiting saboteur: Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government to work successfully. It doesn't function automatically, and it isn't foolproof, it cannot be successfully worked by a people nf low mentality. It thrives only in an atmosphere of responsibility Apathy and indifference, if widespread, are fatal to it. Mr. Savage thus makes out a perfect case against the purely political adventurer, who, in a democracy that is by no means foolproof, pulls the strings of disorder.

And, out of this, the urgent question arises: "What is Mr. Savage going to do about it?" Evidently he is going to do something, for the report of the speech states lhat "it [the Government] was not only going to employ, it was now actually employing, the machinery of justice according to law in order to defeat all

would-be saboteurs, with what thoroughness the public would soon be able to judge for itself." This is a promise, and it appears side by side with such sentences as:

I have no love for methods of repression or coercion in Government. But I have still less love for anarch,".. If any person or body of persons defies the law, either directly by openly breaking it, or indirectly by refusing to carry out bargains made under it, a self-respecting Government has only one course open to it —to enforce the law.

There are certain things that a Government expects a free people to supply—fofcr example, patriotism — but there are also certain things that patriotism looks to a democratic Government to supply; and one of these things is decisive action against persons who exploit grievances, with which they have no sympathy, for ulterior, anti-democratic ends. "A people that looks to Government for everything," says Mr. Savage, "is not a democracy at all." It is equally true that a Government that looks _o the people for everything is not a Government at all. It is a democratic Government's duty to see lhat democracy's freedom and liberties are not subverted and twisted to their own destruction, and not to shrink from applying to political white ants an appropriate insecticide.