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193

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE

The Papal Note with proposals for peace, as sent to the belligerent Governments, was published on August 14, 1917.

FROM The Times, SEPTEMBER 5, 1917.

On two successive days your columns have contained two opposite views of democracy; the one ideal, the other real. On August 30 the ideal view appeared in the reply of the President of the United States to the Pope's Note. The President, who appears from The Times of to-day to think that equal justice is the heart of democracy, virtually proposed in his reply to the Pope the democratization of Europe in the following passage:

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'We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war 'by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German 'Government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of 'the sovereignty of any people-rather in vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and of those that ' are strong.'

On August 31 the real view appeared in your summary of the Moscow Conference, as follows: 'The Army cannot fight without food and munitions. Wildcat agrarian schemes imperil the food supply. Can the 'Government repudiate them? Munitions are not produced while the demands of Labour amount to confiscation. Can · the Government restrain them?'

These two views, one favourable and the other unfavourable to democracy, are incompatible; or they can be reconciled only by supposing that the President of the United States is writing about the ideal sovereignty of the people as it ought to be, and as he would wish it to be propagated in Europe, whereas the Russians are enacting the real sovereignty of the people as it is in Russia, and may be expected to be in other European nations with all the extravagant demands made by Labour in the

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name of the people and the powerlessness of the Government to repudiate or even restrain them.

It will be objected that the President of the United States is not imagining an ideal, but proposing to transfer the actual and practical democratic institutions of America to Europe. But it is not so; nor is it possible in present circumstances. He is at the head of a republic, which is, in the first place, strictly limited by a written Constitution modelled on the mixed constitution of England in the reign of George III, in the second place rendered stable by the carefully designed Confederacy of the United States, and in the third place spread over a territory ample for its inhabitants and remote from the border wars and diplomatic complications of the crowded nations of Europe. Europe and America are so different that the American Constitution could hardly be transplanted to Europe. Rather, whereas what exists in the United States is the sovereignty of a single people limited by a scientific Constitution, what would most probably be produced in Europe would be a mob of sovereignties of multifarious peoples limited by nothing. In the frightful ferment caused by the war the probability is that the peoples of Europe would not submit to limited Constitutions like that of the United States, but would each adopt an unlimited sovereignty of the people, which would, as Aristotle said, tend to become a tyranny of the people, or even would fall into an anarchy, such as that which exists actually in Russia, and potentially wherever Labour tends to become more powerful than the State.

The reply of the President of the United States to the Pope's Note really contains two points, which are not necessarily connected. It is partly a discussion of the proposed terms of peace, about which I am not qualified to express an opinion. It is partly a propaganda in favour of extending demo

cracy over Europe; and this point is unnecessary, dangerous, and savours too much of the French Revolution of 1789. At that time the majority of Englishmen, under the influence of Pitt and Burke, was decidedly opposed to the democratic propagandism of the French in Europe; and, having succeeded in the war, England settled down in 1815 into a long peace of unprecedented prosperity and happiness. Why not follow so good an example? But the majority of their descendants, ignoring the lessons of the past century, seems now ready to accept what their forefathers rejected. It proposes to itself a triple plan, each step of which is a giant's stride; to succeed in an unparalleled struggle for victory; to propagate democracies over Europe; to create a new world'. This titanic effort to pile one mountain of difficulty on another, and a third on the top, is beyond the power of man. It has already produced one evil sufficient to condemn it: it has destroyed the feeling of security which sweetened men's lives for a century from the Battle of Waterloo until now, when at last nobody knows to-day what to expect to-morrow, or what he will soon have left to him. The war has already exhausted the energies both of individuals and of the State. The conduct of the war by the State does not encourage us to infer that State interference will be for the national good in peace; and historical experience is against it. Would it not be wiser, more modest, more human, to rest content with a victorious peace, and then leave as much as possible to human self-help and to Divine Providence?

Weymouth, September 3, 1917.

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196

THE COALITION

TAXPAYERS AND THEIR RIGHTS

Sir Ernest Wild was at this time Conservative Member of Parliament for the Upton Division of West Ham.

A letter had appeared in The Times' from Sir William JoynsonHicks, on December 16, stating that a large number of the Conservative Party were dissatisfied with the Coalition. He concluded thus: Unless there is, before long, a reconstruction of the Govern'ment bringing a closer alliance between Mr. Lloyd George and our Party, and a larger infusion of Tories-in fact a practical control of policy by them-the Coalition cannot last very many months.' Sir Ernest Wild's letter in The Times' of December 17 was in reply to the letter of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, and stated that the Conservatives could not vary the terms of the Coalition because those terms were based on a letter from Mr. Lloyd George to Mr. Bonar Law, dated November 2, 1918, and communicated by Mr. Bonar Law to the party and accepted by the party.

In spite of the discontent of Lord Salisbury, Sir William JoynsonHicks, and other Conservatives with the Coalition, there was no change until the autumn of 1922, when the Coalition fell in consequence of a meeting of the Conservative Party at the Carlton Club on October 19. At this meeting the Conservative Party declared itself in favour of political independence. When this resolution was reported to Mr. Lloyd George, he at once resigned. Mr. Bonar Law became Prime Minister of a Conservative Government.

FROM The Times, DECEMBER 20, 1920.

Sir Ernest Wild, M.P., in a few words of his letter of the 17th, reveals the historical fact that upon the letter of November 2, 1918, written by Mr. Lloyd George to Mr. Bonar Law and his party, the General Election was fought and won. Most of us', says he,' were well content then to call to our aid the popularity and the patriotic services of the present Prime Minister; we told our audiences that pre-war Party Politics were dead and buried; we promised a general allegiance to our present leaders." But there was one more all-important issue. He ought to have added: We acclaimed the advancement of the labouring classes without guarding against the consequent spoliation of lawful owners, shareholders,

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capitalists, men of business, taxpayers, and consumers in general.'

In this carnal world of ours nothing is more delightful to A than making B give to C with a profit to A, and nothing more depraved. This delightful depravity is what Sir Ernest Wild euphemistically calls the good work done by the Coalition Government in two years; for A invariably claims that he is the benevolent giver of what he is making B involuntarily give to C. This self-satisfied and pretentious depravity is further degraded when A is pretending to oppose C before the public, while he is all the time negotiating with him behind the scenes; and this is the duplicity of the Prime Minister's attitude to the leaders of the Labour Party. Lastly, as it costs nothing to A when he makes B give to C, he naturally, but immorally, pursues his disgraceful conduct without regard to economy; and this is the way in which the Coalition Government and Parliament have by their extravagance caused the impecuniosity of B, the insatiability of C, and the financial decline of the country.

Nor can the Coalitionists fall back upon the popularity and patriotic services of the Prime Minister'. His merits in the war were undoubted, and deserved their appropriate rewards. But a man who is good for war is not on that account good for peace, as we may see in the ancient example of Themistocles and in the modern example of the Duke of Wellington. Moreover, before the last election in 1918 the politicians had had plenty of evidence of the real nature of the peace policy of Mr. Lloyd George. He had achieved the Premiership in December 1916, and had in that month given offices to leaders of the Labour Party. When in January 1917 these very leaders at the Labour Party Conference had passed a revolutionary programme of nationalization, the Prime Minister in the follow

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