Part 15

This motion will receive the full support of every member of the Labour party. A few men outside the Socialist party who have acquainted themselves with the publications of that party were quite prepared for this demand of a complete change in the organisation of society. And as they saw that party grow with startling rapidity they knew we should not have long to wait before these subversive ideas would be formulated in the House of Commons. Still, even for the students of Socialist literature, the actual tabling of the resolution on behalf of the second largest party in the State came as a surprise and a shock. Too much credit was given to the restraining influence of the trade union section of the party. Sir Lynden Macassey, in his informing book on "Labour Policy, False and True," points out that it was in 1885 that the avowed advocates of this proposal for the abolition of private property and for the nationalisation of all the means of production and distribution first stood for Parliament. There were only two candidates standing on this platform, and they polled 32 and 29 votes respectively. Last election the aggregate Socialist poll reached the imposing figure of 4,251,011 votes. The party that secured a majority of members in the House of Commons only polled 5,457,871 votes. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald states categorically that he knows that the Independent Liberal members--exclusive of their leaders--favour nationalisation and the capital levy. If that be an accurate statement of the views of the majority of these gentlemen, and of those who elect them, nearly one-half the British electorate are already prepared to assent to Socialism by easy stages--which is the purport of Mr. Philip Snowden's motion.

On that assumption we are on the eve of greater and more fundamental changes affecting the lives of every class and condition of men and women than have yet been seen in this country. Hence the new sense of struggle with which the political atmosphere is palpitating. Capitalism is to be arraigned before the Supreme Court of the Nation, condemned, sentenced, and executed by instalments--Chinese fashion. The composition of that court is not to-day favourable to the prosecution. But who will be the judge after the next general election? It is customary in political controversy to state that the election which is for the moment impending will be the most epoch-making in history. Without exaggeration, the next British election may well turn out to be so. The British people, with their inherited political instinct, are beginning to realise that grave decisions must then be taken. Hence the greater keenness shown by the voters at by-elections--hence the new interest taken by the public in the proceedings of Parliament. There is still a good deal of apathy and indifference. The average comfortable citizen is still inclined to think these Socialist schemes so crazy as to be impossible. They cannot believe that 21,000,000 of sane people can possibly contemplate giving their sanction to such fantasies.

There are two cardinal facts which are constantly overlooked by the complacent. The men and women who have no property for the State to seize constitute an overwhelming majority of the electors of the country. The second fact to note is the great preponderance of the industrial population over the steadier and more stolid agricultural population. America, in spite of its gigantic manufacturing and distributing industries, still retains 60 per cent. of its population on the land. The same proportion of the French and Italian populations is agrarian. Barely 10 per cent. of the British workers are engaged in cultivating the soil. Most of our workers breathe and have their being in the crowded and excitable atmosphere of factories, workshops, and mines. The air is filled with germs of all kinds, and isolation in these thronging areas is impossible. Hence the rapidity with which the fever has spread.

Can it be arrested? Nothing will be done until the danger is visible to every eye. To vary the metaphor, no one will believe in the flood until it is upon us. Trained weather prophets who forecast its coming will be laughed at or told they have a personal or party interest in ark building. It is an old tale--as old as the dawn of history. "As in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking and knew not until the flood came and took them all away."

The trouble can only be averted in two ways. One is the systematic inculcation of sound doctrines of economic truth into the minds of the working people of this country. The second, and the more important, is the rooting out of the social evils which furnish the revolutionary with striking and indisputable object-lessons of the failure of the capitalistic system as an agent of human happiness. Without the latter the former effort will be futile. Arguments in favour of the existing order will be refuted by glaring and painful facts. Meanwhile, let the champions of that order take note of the efforts put forth by the Socialists to advertise their eagerness to redress the wrongs of the ex-service men and to soften the asperities of discipline for the soldier. The Socialist leaders have shrewdly taken note of the causes that produced the overthrow of their Italian brethren, and they mean to take such steps as will ensure that if Fascism comes in Britain it will be an ally, and not a foe.

_London, April 16th, 1923._

XXVI

SHOULD WE MAKE PEACE WITH RUSSIA?

I am frankly delighted that negotiations between Lord Curzon and the Soviet government seem to indicate a genuine desire on the part of both parties to establish a more satisfactory understanding between this country and Russia. The Bolshevist episode, like all revolutionary terrors, has been at times a shrieking nightmare which has made the world shudder. It did render one supreme service to civilisation--it terrified democracy back into sanity just at the time when the nervous excitability that followed the war was bordering on mental instability. In our attitude towards the Soviet government we must, however, constantly bear in mind one consideration. What matters to us is not so much the Russian government as the people of Russia, and for the moment the Bolshevist administration represents the only medium for dealing with that mighty nation. As long as it remains the only constituted authority in Russia, every act of hostility against it injures Russia. As we discovered in 1919, you cannot wage war against the government for the time being of a country without devastating the land and alienating its people. You cannot refuse to trade with it now without depriving its people of commodities--and especially of equipments--essential to their well-being. It is the people, therefore, who would suffer, and it is the people who would ultimately resent that suffering. Governments come and go, but the nation goes on for ever.

The Russian people deserve--especially at the hands of all the Allied nations--every sympathetic consideration we can extend to them. Not only because they have to endure the sway of a tyrannical oligarchy imposing its will by ruthless violence, but even more for the reasons that led to the establishment of that tyranny. If the fruit is bitter we must bear in mind how the tree came to be planted in the soil. It may sound like quoting ancient history to revert to the events of eight or nine years ago, but no one can understand Russia, or do justice to its unhappy people, without recalling the incidents that led to the great catastrophe.

Those who denounce any dealings with the existing order seem to have persuaded themselves that pre-revolutionary Russia was governed by a gentle and beneficent despotism which conferred the blessings of a tolerant and kindly fatherland upon a well-ruled household. In no particular is this a true picture of the _ancien régime_. The fortress of Peter and Paul was not erected, nor its dungeons dug, by the Bolshevists. Siberia was not set up as a penal settlement for political offenders for the first time--if at all--by the Bolshevists. In 1906 alone 45,000 political offenders were deported to endure the severities of Siberia. Persecution of suspected religious leaders was not started by the Soviets. To them does not belong the discredit of initiating the methods of Pogromism. Under the "paternal" reign of the Tsars dissent from the Orthodox faith was proscribed and persecuted, and the Jews were hunted like vermin.

Let us not forget also that beyond all these circumstances the revolution was rendered inevitable by the ineptitude and corruption of the old system, and especially by the terrible suffering and humiliation which that state of things inflicted on Russia in the Great War.

Any one who has read the _Memoirs of an Ambassador_, by M. Paléologue, will find a complete explanation in its pages of the savage hatred with which the Russian revolutionaries view all those who were associated in any degree with the old order. He tells the story of how the gallant army found itself at the critical hour without ammunition, rifles, transport, and often without food. No braver or more devoted men ever fought for their country than the young peasants who made up the Russian armies of 1914-15-16. With little and often no artillery support, they faced without faltering the best-equipped heavy artillery in the world. They were mown down by shell fire and machine guns by the million. Their aggregate casualties up to September, 1916, even according to the reluctant admissions of the Tsarist generals of the day, were five millions. In reality they were much heavier. Often they went into action with sticks, as the Russian War Office had no rifles with which to arm them. They picked up as they advanced rifles dropped by fallen comrades. There is nothing in the war comparable to the trustful heroism of these poor peasants. We know now why there were no rifles, or shells, or wagons. The wholesale corruption of the _régime_ has been exposed to the world by irrefutable documentary evidence.

Here are a few extracts from M. Paléologue's interesting book. One extract from his diary reads:--

"The lack of ammunition means that the rôle of the artillery in battle is necessarily insignificant. The whole burden of the fighting falls on the infantry and the result is a ghastly expenditure of human life. A day or two ago one of the Grand Duke Sergius's collaborators, Colonel Englehardt, said to Major Wehrlin, my second military attaché: 'We're paying for the crimes of our administration with the blood of our men.'"

About the same date talking about the deplorable state of things, the Grand Duke Sergius, who was Inspector-General of Artillery, said to the French ambassador, "When I think that this exhibition of impotence is all that our aristocratic system has to show, it makes me want to be a Republican."

When a Grand Duke talked like that early in 1915, what must a peasant soldier have thought by the spring of 1917, after many more millions of his comrades had been slaughtered as a result of the same "exhibition of impotence."

It is no use pointing to the fact that our army was also short of ammunition at that date. The British army was a small army organised on the basis of a maximum expeditionary force of six divisions. The Russian army was a great conscript force organised on the basis of a hundred divisions in the field.

I recollect well our own military reports from the Russian fronts. They provided much distressing reading. They filled you with compassion for the millions of gallant men who were the victims of corruption and stupidity in high places. I recall one statement made to our general which betrays the callous indifference with which men in authority seemed to treat the appalling sacrifice of life amongst loyal soldiers who were facing death without a murmur, because the "Little Father" willed it. Whenever anxious inquiries were directed by our officer as to the gigantic losses in men which filled him with dismay as well as horror, the usual reply was, "Don't worry yourself. Thank God, of men at all events we have enough." An answer which sends a thrill of horror through you when you read it. That is why at the end of two and a half years the patient men in the field at last mutinied. That is why their parents and brothers in the fields supported them. The "Little Father" had failed them, and his minions had betrayed them. It is a sordid and horrid tale of peculation, maladministration, and cruel treachery. Millions of British and French money went in shameless and open bribery, whilst the soldiers in the field, for need of what the money could buy, were opposing bare breasts covering brave hearts to the most terrible artillery in the world. If the rest of the money had been well spent, what was left after providing for profuse graft would still have sufficed to save that gallant army from destruction. But unhappily no real interest was taken in anything beyond the amount and the payment of the pocket-money. That seemed to be the main purpose of the transaction. Nothing was well managed except the inevitable bribe. There were honourable and upright men who did their duty by their distracted and plundered country, but they were helpless in the torrent of corruption.

No wonder a great Russian industrialist engaged in the ministry of war, in dwelling on the sad failure of tsarism and its probable results in June, 1905, predicted a revolution with "ten years of the most frightful anarchy." "We shall," he added, "see the days of Pugatchef[11] again and perhaps worse"--a striking prophecy verified with appalling accuracy.

It is not pleasant to recall these dreadful episodes, which reveal the betrayal of a devotion faithful unto death. But this story is essential to the right appreciation of events. There is no savagery like that of a trustful people which finds that its trust was being imposed upon the whole time. Here the retribution has been hideous in all its aspects. But the provocation was also revolting from every point of view. To judge Russia fairly that must be taken into account.

I think the government are, therefore, taking the right view of their responsibilities when through their foreign secretary they open negotiations with the representative of the Soviet government in this country. You can easily evoke resounding cheers amongst the thoughtless by declaring melodramatically that you will never "shake hands with murder." In practice this policy has always been a failure. Mr. Pitt in a famous passage declined to assent to that doctrine when he was attacked for trying to open negotiations with the "assassins" of the French Revolution. He was driven out of this calm and rational attitude by the inflammable rhetoric of Burke, aided by the arrogance of the victorious revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the sequel proved he was right. French Bolshevism was not defeated by foreign armies, nor starved out by the British blockade. But it was driven into the arms of Napoleon, and Europe suffered bitterly for the folly of the hotheads on both sides. It would have been better for that generation had it listened to the wise counsel of William Pitt.

If you decline to treat with Russia as long as its present rulers remain in power, then you ought to place Turkey in the same category. The military junta that governed Turkey has been guilty of atrocities at least as vile as any committed by the Bolshevists. But at Lausanne we ostentatiously stretched the friendly hand of Britain to the authors of the Armenian massacres. And France, Italy--yes, and America also--tendered the same warm handshake. I am not criticising the offer of amity made as a condition of peace. We must make peace in the world, and you cannot do so if you put whole nations off your visiting list because of the misconduct of those who govern them. Once you begin you are not quite sure where it will end.

In these cases the innocent suffer the most. A refusal to trade with Russia would not deprive the Soviet commissaries of a single necessity or comfort of life. The Communists are quite strong enough to take care of themselves. But the peasants--who are not Communists--would continue to suffer, and their sufferings would increase as their reserves of clothing and other essentials became completely exhausted. And the people of this country who need the produce of Russia for their own use would also suffer to a certain extent. America can afford this exalted aloofness. She does not need the Russian grain and timber. She is an exporter of those commodities. But we cannot do as well without them, and we also sadly need Russian flax for our linen industries, which are languishing for the want of it. Last year there were quite considerable imports of Russian produce into this country. This year owing to the prospects of an improved harvest these imports will be much larger. They are greatly needed here for our own consumption, and they pay for exports of machinery and textiles which the Russian on his part urgently requires.

But beyond and above all these material considerations, the world needs peace. In the old days conveyancing attorneys in this country kept a property transaction going by interminable requisitions on the title of the other party. They exercised all their ingenuity and invoked the added ingenuity of trained counsel to probe for defects in the right of the vendor to deal. Those were leisurely days, and men could afford to dawdle. Even then these exercises often ended in ruinous litigation. To-day time presses and the atmosphere is dangerous for the plying of irritating interrogatories. It is time we made up our minds that the Soviets have come to stay, whether we like it or no, and that one or other of the formidable men who rule Russia to-day are likely to rule it for some time to come. The sooner we have the courage to recognise this fact, the sooner will real peace be established.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] Pugatchef was the Pretender who led a revolt of the peasants in the reign of Catherine and spread rapine and carnage through the provinces bordering the Volga and Ural.

XXVII

PALESTINE AND THE JEWS

"What's his reason? I am a Jew." _The Merchant of Venice._

Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in reason; it is not rooted in faith; it aspires to no ideal; it is just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow in the morass of racial hatred. How utterly devoid of reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost entirely confined to nations who worship Jewish prophets and apostles, revere the national literature of the Hebrews as the only inspired message delivered by the deity to mankind, and whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and promises of the great teachers of Judah. Yet in the sight of these fanatics the Jews of to-day can do nothing right. If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor they are vermin. If they are in favour of a war it is because they want to exploit the bloody feuds of the Gentiles to their own profit. If they are anxious for peace they are either instinctive cowards or traitors. If they give generously--and there are no more liberal givers than the Jews--they are doing it for some selfish purpose of their own. If they do not give--then what could one expect of a Jew but avarice? If labour is oppressed by great capital, the greed of the Jew is held responsible. If labour revolts against capital--as it did in Russia--the Jew is blamed for that also. If he lives in a strange land he must be persecuted and pogrommed out of it. If he wants to go back to his own he must be prevented. Through the centuries in every land, whatever he does, or intends, or fails to do, he has been pursued by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jerusalem against the greatest of all Jews--"Crucify Him!" No good has ever come of nations that crucified Jews. It is poor and pusillanimous sport, lacking all the true qualities of manliness, and those who indulge in it would be the first to run away were there any element of danger in it. Jew-baiters are generally of the type that found good reasons for evading military service when their own country was in danger.

The latest exhibition of this wretched indulgence is the agitation against settling poor Jews in the land their fathers made famous. Palestine under Jewish rule once maintained a population of 5,000,000. Under the blighting rule of the Turk it barely supported a population of 700,000. The land flowing with milk and honey is now largely a stony and unsightly desert. To quote one of the ablest and most far-sighted business men of to-day, "It is a land of immense possibilities, in spite of the terrible neglect of its resources resulting from Turkish misrule. It is a glorious estate let down by centuries of neglect. The Turks cut down the forests and never troubled to replant them. They slaughtered the cattle and never troubled to replace them." It is one of the peculiarities of the Jew-hunter that he adores the Turk.

If Palestine is to be restored to a condition even approximate to its ancient prosperity, it must be by settling Jews on its soil. The condition to which the land has been reduced by centuries of the most devastating oppression in the world is such that restoration is only possible by a race that is prepared for sentimental reasons to make and endure sacrifices for the purpose. What is the history of the Jewish settlement in Palestine? It did not begin with the Balfour Declaration. A century ago there were barely 10,000 Jews in the whole of Palestine. Before the war there were 100,000. The war considerably reduced these numbers, and immigration since 1918 has barely filled up the gaps. At the present timorous rate of progress it will be many years before it reaches 200,000. Jewish settlement started practically seventy years ago, with Sir Moses Montefiore's experiment in 1854--another war year. The Sultan had good reasons for propitiating the Jews in that year, as the Allies had in 1917. So the Jewish resettlement of Palestine began. From that day onward it has proceeded slowly but steadily. The land available was not of the best. Prejudices and fears had to be negotiated. Anything in the nature of wholesale expropriation of Arab cultivators, even for cash, had to be carefully avoided. The Jews were, therefore, often driven to settle on barren sand dunes and malarial swamps. The result can best be given by quoting from an article written by Mrs. Fawcett, the famous woman leader. She visited Palestine in 1921 and again in 1922, and this is her account of the Jewish settlements:

"So far from the colonies and the colonists draining the country of its resources they have created resources which were previously non-existent; they have planted and skilfully cultivated desert sands and converted them into fruitful vineyards and orange and lemon orchards; in other parts they have created valuable agricultural land out of what were previously dismal swamps producing nothing but malaria and other diseases. The colonists have not shrunk from the tremendous work and the heavy sacrifices required. Many of the early arrivals laid down their lives over their work; the survivors went on bravely, draining the swamps, planting eucalyptus trees by the hundred thousand so that at length the swamp became a fruitful garden, and the desert once more blossomed like the rose."