DEMOCRACY AND WAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 304, 22 December 1914, Page 4

DEMOCRACY AND WAR.

Mr, Arnold Bennett, in the London Daily News, expresses the view that in whatever manner this war ends there will be very great democratic doings in England at the end of it. He goes on to say: The Labor Party has not so far distinguished itself in the House of Commons, and even to-day it seems not yet to have started to comprehend the vast ultimate meaning of the war. And few persons outside the Labor Party have started to eomprohend' that meaning either. Certainly the Government, as such, have not glimpsed it. If they had they would already have shown themselves less basely moan towards the true martyrs of the war. They would hare dropped the ancient theory ''and practice) that the-com-mon people are a prey, to be exploited in the last resort and at the gravest crisis. They would have met democracy within the gate, and been generous. They would have resisted reaction in high places, and, amongst other tilings, would have prevented the more fantastic .and pernicious pranks of the censorship, which has embittered journalists throughout America and the Colonies, worked, a

great deal of positive harm, deeply disappointed the Army, and caused London to envy the freedom of Petrograd. In particular they would, in the matter of the censorship, have refrained from adding insult to injury by officially publishing vapid Harmsworthian sketches of camp life instead of military dispatches. The Cabinet that authorised this senseless proceeding could not more clearly have demonstrated its contempt for the public. The Government lias a magnificent cause—no British Gov. eminent since the Spanish Armada ever had one as gool—and on the military and naval and large fiscal sides its work is worthy of its cause. But it has shown little faith so far in the principle of democracy (by which alone it lives), and no evident perception of what the future is to be.