But we must first kill the idea of force and violence between
classes as well as nations. There will be no world peace if those
who preach the virtues of international brotherhood are at the same
time organising a class warfare in a spirit of intolerance that is
abominable. In many countries of the world—and the most civilised—at
this present date, the nations are being divided by a passionate
opposition between ideas roughly labelled as Capital and Labour,
Liberty and Tyranny, Bolshevism and Fasciscism. In England the Left
Wing of the Labour Party is using wild and whirling words which are a
disgrace to civilised men and women. They are advocating “an orgy of
blood” to overthrow the capitalist system and establish equality of
labour in all countries. At a meeting in the Memorial Hall, London,
last August, the Communists put forward a programme of violence which
was an outrageous defiance of the moderate counsels of Ramsay MacDonald
and his colleagues, and proposed a charter of labour “rights,”
including a thirty-hours working week, which would bring Great Britain
to the depths of ruin in a very short time. On the other side the
English “Die-hards” are organising a secret society of Fascisti on the
Italian lines, for the defence of property, national discipline, and
resistance to all liberal ideas. Intolerance, the spirit of violence,
are at work among the extremists on both sides, both narrow-minded and
ignorant, both asking for trouble, both believing in force rather than
in argument, arbitration, and law. In England, by the grace of God and
long tradition, there is between these two extremes a great body of
middle class, moderate, reasonable, and steady opinion which is the
safeguard of the nation against all violent revolution. The aristocracy
as a whole is liberal, kindly and self-sacrificing, and by no means
disposed to play into the hands of its own extremists represented
by the Duke of Northumberland and that remarkable lady, Mrs. Nesta
Webster. The Labour Party as long as it is led by its present chiefs
is contemptuous of Mr. Tom Mann and his loud-throated “comrades.”
Nevertheless the devil of intolerance is making disciples on both sides.
Not only in England. There are many little Mussolinis about the world
who are in favour of tyranny under the name of discipline and prefer
hammering their political opponents in a physical way rather than
converting them by arguments and beating them at the polls. There
are many little Lenins skulking about factory yards or drawing good
salaries as labour agitators who have an equal scorn for the old
traditions of Parliamentary Government and the Common Law of the land,
and advocate short cuts to the equality of men by “the Dictatorship of
the Proletariat”—which allows no equality to those who disagree with
their point of view—and by violent assault upon the lives and property
of the middle classes.