DEMOCRACY AND THE PEACE.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 September 1919, Page 4

DEMOCRACY AND THE PEACE.

(By Sir Sidney Low, Author of “The Govei’nance of England.” Democracy has won the war,

On that point we are all agreed. The conflict has been accepted as a stfuggle—a fipal struggle—between the autocratic and the democratic principles. President Wilson gave official authority to this theory when he declared that America went into the war to make the world safe for democracy. The old imperialisms are down and out. There is no real despotic monarchy left in the world. Government of the people and by the people is—in form at least —established everywhere.

Now that King Demos has come to his throne, what will he do with his powers P Will he show himself as a ruler wiser, more humane, more capable, than the autocrats and oligarchies he has superseded ? That is the question of questions, for on its answer everything depends. We have made or hope we have made,'the world safe for democracy; but now, as a learned and clear-seeing professor has reminded us, the point is—Can we make democracy safe for the world ? Self-determination, government by the people, is on its trial, and the test will be severe in the years that lie immediately before us. It will decide whether the popular will has the strength, the steadiness, and the insight to direct the affairs aud promote the interests of great communities amid the unexampled complexities of modern industrial civilisation.

democracy’s obligation. Democracy is required to show the best features of the old class-ascend-ancy without the old class-egotism. Its duty is to govern and regulate in the interests of the community as a whole. Its basis is the individual human being, and the individual’s claim to live, thrive, be happy. It has to administer the State in such wise that equal opportunities to attain these ends will be given to all. In its ideal form it will abolish classconsciousness and substitute for it the nobler Biblical conception that we are all “ members of one another ” all brothers and partners working together for the common good. It will know nothing of social, political, or hereditary privilege, and render economic and personal inequality as little burdensome as nature and human nature will permit. Will democracy rise to to this level ? So far, the signs are not too favour* able. The advanced democratic champions in most countries are more intent on making their own order comfortable than on promoting the interests of the entire community. Aggressive trade union leaders and ui’gent young shop stewards write, speak, and agitate with an avowed and unblushing selfishness. It is their fellow-workmen with whom .they are concerned ; they want to get better wages; easier conditions, shorter hours for them at the expense of all the rest of as, including the members of other trades.

Within limits this seutiment of class is natural and not discreditable; but it does not lead us far on the road to the true democracy, the aim whereof is to make life better and worthier, not for one class or section but for all. In my reading of it there ought to be no such thing as class-consciousness ; I think, indeed, that when it is consummated the division of societies into classes will have become as obsolete as feudalism.

CRAFT, NOT CLASS, PRTDB. I do not recognise the permanent stratification of a people into “ upper” and “ lower ” and “ middle ” layers, but rather their co-ordination by pursuits and avocations. The managing director in his office and the I skilled mechanic at his lathe ought to look upon themselves not as capitalist i and workman but as fellow-soldiers [ in a great industrial army, for they are both members of the same profession, both engineers, both fighters under the same flag, though one happens to be a staff officer and the other a lance-corporal. Let them have the pride of craft, not that of class, tempered by the knowledge that no group can derive permanent

beuefit from anything which is disadvantageous to all the other groups. This is a kind of syndicalism which is thoroughly consistent with the democratic principle, a genuine communism in the true signification of the term.

It is not the kind which is in fashion. Our syndicalists and communists are not looking to the nation but to that part of it which they call the workers, as though the only work was that of the manual labourer. Instead of trying to mitigate classconsciousness . they encourage and exaggerate it; they accentuate the division between capital aud labour (as if no man who owned some property ever laboured, and as if no manual worker ever had some share of invested capital), and assume that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are antagonistic hosts, always in deadly conflict. They do not want democracy, with its constitutional machinery and electoral apparatus, because tj^at-would substitute the will of the people, in all its shades and grades, for the supremacy of “ organised labour,” meaning thereby the members of certain privileged and powerful trade unions.

This is virtually the creation of a new aristocracy or autocracy; the rule of a minority, instead of the harmonious co-operation of all. It is seen in its most exaggerated form in that strange and monsfrous tyranny the Soviet Government in Eastern and Central Europe. The Bolshevik leaders have never - made the least pretence of consulting any interests except those of the proletariat; they openly avow that their aim is to “ crush the bourgeois ”; and in Russia they have gone far to crush him by massacre, starvation, and ruthless enslavement. But they do not even represent the masses whose opinion they dare not test by a regular vote. They are a minority who have seized power aud keep it by force and terrorism.

There is nothing novel about the methods of Lenin and Trotsky. It is a very old story in the history of the world. The Turkish Sultans kept down large populations of alien race and religion by means of their janissaries, bands of paid professional soldiers and executioners. Lenin with his Jewish commissaries and his Lettish and Chinese butchers is following the ancient precedent. The Russian people are held down under the despotism of a group which rules by sheer physical violence. Nor would the system be any the less opposed to genuine popular government if it operated by strikes and boycotting instead of by armed Red Guards aud paid murderers. It is a revulsion from democracy to despotism, though it professes to have for its ultimate aim the sovereignty of the proletariat.

“DIRECT ACTION ” MEANS CHAOS.

But the two things cannot co-exist. If “direct action,” even in a much milder form than that practised by Russian and Hungarian Bolshevists and German Spartacists, prevails, there is an end of real popular government. Democracy must show, if it is to survive, that it can maintain government of, for, and by the. people against auy minority which is out to defy, or to coerce, the general will. Another test for democracy will be that of its practical capacity. Can it select the men who are best qualified by ability, character, and experience to conduct and control corporate affairs ? Will its Ministers, officials, administrators, naval, military, and industrial organisers be not merely equal to their predecessors but superior ? Will it rise above the favouritism, jobbery, superficial cleverness, and plausible incompetence which too often blemished and enfeebled the older regimes ?

With all their faults the aristocratic and middle-class oligarchies often produced great statesmen and leaders of men. Democracy will have to find them too and to provide not merely a “heaven-born” Prime Minister or commander-in-chief now and again, but also a continuous streani of competent and high-minded public servants. Success on the platform and in the committee-room is not always a proof of intellectual capacity and moral force. How is democracy to sift the grain from the chaff and to ensure that it shall bo guided by the men of action rather than the men of words ? Perhaps that is the hardest problem of all and the most serious thought should be bestowed upon it. For tho great experiment of democracy, with its noble promise for mankind, will go the way of other forms of Go/eminent if it fails to enlist and employ the highest talent and the sauest intelligence of the nation.