The old liberal principles of free speech, religious liberty, racial
equality before the law and obedience to the law itself until it is
altered by the will of the majority, is being attacked from both
wings on the Left and Right. The Swastika or “Hackenkreuz” societies
in Germany and Austria, becoming very powerful and aggressive, have
declared war against the Jews, and vengeance against France. In Hungary
the persecution of Jews is a passionate article of faith among those
who support the present dictatorship. In the United States of America
the Ku Klux Klan defies the very spirit of liberty and law which
inspired the American constitution and preaches Intolerance as its
creed—intolerance of Jews, intolerance of the Negro Race, intolerance
of Catholics, intolerance of political labour. It is a secret society
which seems to me in violent conflict with all the idealism stirring
in the soul of America. If it is not checked or killed by public
opinion it will certainly lead to social conflict in the United States
of very grave consequences. The argument of the Ku Klux Klansmen that
they stand for purity in politics, the old traditions of American
character menaced by the tyranny and corruption of Irish politicians,
Jewish financiers and Labour revolutionaries, seems to me no defence
of their methods or their principles. It is not by defiance of the law
that they will exact obedience to the law. It is not by setting up a
secret government that they will destroy Tammany which is also a secret
government. It is not by spreading a propaganda of hate against the
Jewish race—which has been greatly loyal to American ideals and by its
genius has brought great wealth in art, music and literature as well as
in dollars to the United States—that the gospel of Christianity will
be more faithfully observed. It is not by burning Catholic Churches
that Christ will be served. It is not by lynch law against negroes or
any other class of American citizens that the United States is going
to give a spiritual lead to the world or improve its own state of
civilisation. All that is a hark-back to barbarity and not a stride
forward to a more civilised world. It is the revival of cruelty which
we want to slay with other qualities of the beast in us. It is the
spirit of “Prussianism” against which we were supposed to be fighting
in the great war.
It is true of course that tolerance cannot be carried to extreme
limits. One cannot tolerate obscenity, incitements to murder, or to
“orgies of blood” in the cause of “liberty,” or revolutionary attacks
upon the ordinary rights of citizenship and the common law of the land.
There comes a point when tolerance must become intolerance unless it
makes an abject surrender to the forces of evil and anarchy. That
is the argument of those who justify Mussolini and his Fascisti, the
Ku Klux Klan, the Swastika societies in Germany, and the “Die-hards”
in England. It is a sound argument when that point of conscience is
reached. But the danger of intolerance is far greater than that of
tolerance, and it is apt to encourage and inflame the very evils which
it is opposing. Free speech is a great safety valve for overheated air
as the English people have found through centuries of history, and are
finding now. Revolution is most dangerous when it is driven underground
by autocracy and tyranny. Above all, religious and racial equality
before the law is the foundation of all civilised states. Without that
a state is not only uncivilised but its form of government is doomed to
destruction, as history has shewn a thousand times.