Since the last words of this book were written the political temper
of the nation has been tested by the General Election and has been
revealed by the mighty majority of the Conservatives, the dismissal of
the first Labour Government, and the all but mortal blow to the Liberal
Party.
It would be a bad thing for the British people if that sweeping change
were the sign of reaction to wooden-headed principles of autocratic
rule and class legislation. It would be a worse thing for the world.
But the new Conservative Government will have no support from the
majority of those who voted for it if it interprets its power as a
mandate for militarism, jingoism, or anti-democratic acts. The verdict
of the ballot box was, certainly, not in favour of any black reaction,
but in condemnation of certain foreign, revolutionary, and subversive
influences with which the Labour Party were believed, fairly or
unfairly, to be associated.
It is true that the Labour Ministers had denounced Communism, and
during their tenure of office had revealed in many ways a high quality
of statesmanship and patriotism. But all this good work was spoilt in
the minds of many people of liberal thought, anxious to be fair to
Labour, by the uneasy suspicion that behind the Labour Party, and in
it, there were sinister influences foreign in origin, anti-British in
character, revolutionary in purpose. Up and down the country some of
its supporters indulged in loose-lipped talk about Social revolution,
preached a class war, paraded under the Red Flag. Political incidents
not quite clear in their origin, not fully explained, intensified
this national uneasiness, developed into something like a scare, in
minds not naturally hostile to Labour ideas. They made allowance for
exaggeration, political lies and slanders, but when all allowance had
been made suspicion remained that if “Labour” were given a new lease
of power it might play into the hands of a crowd fooling with the
idea of revolution, not as honest as some of the Labour Ministers,
not as moderate as the first Labour Government. It was a risk which
the people of Great Britain refused to take. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald
and his colleagues failed to prove their independence from their own
extremists, and Liberal opinion entered into temporary alliance with
Conservative thought to turn them out.
To men like myself, standing politically in “The Middle of the Road”
between the extremists, the downfall of the historic Liberal Party is
a tragedy and a menace. It brings the possibility of class conflict
nearer by the elimination of a central balancing party of moderate
opinion. That possibility will become a certainty if Mr. Baldwin’s
big majority drifts into reaction, or into lazy disregard of urgent
national distress. But I am inclined to believe that the new Government
will be more Liberal than is pleasing to some of its reactionary
supporters as Mr. MacDonald’s Government was more moderate than the
wild crowd who tried to force the pace. The nation as a whole will
not tolerate black reaction any more than red revolution, and England
stands steady to its old traditions of caution and commonsense. Those
qualities will be needed in times of trouble not far ahead.