But Does Not Recant--Accusation of The London Times.
It is to be noted that while Mr. Macdonald has never withdrawn his
accusations of bad faith against the Government--while he allows them
still to be circulated as a broadsheet--he ventures to pose as having
abandoned them. Belgian neutrality was, he said in The Labour Leader,
and in effect in the House of Commons also, being used as an excuse--it
was "a pretty game of hypocrisy." But writing in The Leicester Daily
Post on Sept. 24 in vindication of his attitude he said:
On one point I wish to be quite clear.... We could not afford,
either from the point of view of honor or of interest, to see
Germany occupy Belgium. The war that comes nearest having a Divine
justification is the war in which a great and mighty State engages
to protect a small nation. From that position I have never receded.
In the controversies that have been raised I have doubted whether,
when our diplomacy is judged with the whole of the facts before the
judges, it will come well out of its trial on this point, but that
when the popular sentiment of the country is judged it will come
out clean and fine, so far as Belgium is concerned, I am quite
convinced.
This is the man who charges the Government with dragging the country
into war because it would not acquiesce in the German armies marching
through Belgium on the condition that the integrity and independence of
Belgium were respected!
And will it be believed that Mr. Macdonald, whose indictment of the
Government for deliberately dragging us into an unnecessary war is still
in circulation, has actually ventured to associate himself with the
recruiting movement?
In the House of Commons on Aug. 3 Mr. Macdonald predicted that Sir
Edward Grey's statement "would not persuade a large section of the
country." That prediction having been falsified, it has been necessary
for the prophet to hedge. So when a recruiting meeting was held in
Leicester on Sept. 11, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald wrote a letter to the Mayor
expressing his regret that he could not be present, and saying:
Victory must be ours. England is not played out. Her mission is not
accomplished. She can, if she would, take the place of esteemed
honor among the democracies of the world, and if peace is to come
with healing on her wings the democracies of Europe must be her
guardians. There should be no doubt about that.... History will in
due time apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of
the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of
victory. Let them do it in the spirit of the brave men who have
crowned our country with honor in the times that are gone....
Should, an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure
love of country ... I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need
be, I shall make it for myself. I want the serious men of the trade
union, the brotherhood, and similar movements to face their duty.
To such men it is enough to say "England has need of you."
Thus the man who is doing his best to enfeeble sympathy abroad for his
country's cause, by representing that cause as one based on hypocrisy,
is at the same time exhorting his fellow-countrymen to make the
hypocrisy victorious!
Clearly, when the officials of the Berlin news department described Mr.
Ramsay Macdonald as "Ramsay and Macdonald" they were not so ill-informed
as at first appeared.
Though Mr. Macdonald is not two persons, he has at least two voices.
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