CHAPTER VII

REVOLUTION OR COMPROMISE?

It calls up a

REVOLUTION is a word of evil omen. vision of barricades in the streets and blood in the gutters. No responsible person, however determined he or she may be to effect a complete transformation of society, can contemplate such a possibility without horror. It is impossible to say what the future holds, but many of us believe that mankind is so weary of violence and bloodshed that if the coming social revolution necessarily involved armed insurrection it would find no general sanction. To the British people in particular the prospect of a period of convulsive effort of this character is wholly without appeal. Revolution in this sense is alien to the British character. Only in the last resort and as a final desperate expedient have the people of this country consented to employ force to attain their ends. There have been times, of course, when the active opposition or dead inertia of the ruling classes have not been overcome until the people have shown that they were bent on obtaining their

ends even at the cost of bloodshed. These occasions have not been numerous. They have been more in.the nature of spontaneous popular uprisings than of deliberately planned insurrections. The British people have no aptitude for conspiracy. They are capable of vigorous action, of persistent and steady agitation year in and year out, of stubborn and resolute pressure against which nothing can stand; they have their moods of anger which may find expression in sporadic revolts: but they do not organise revolutions or plot the seizure of power by a sudden coup d'êtat. The growth of political democracy among us has been marked by few violent crises. Successive extensions of the franchise have been won mainly by agitations of a peaceful kind, accompanied in only a few cases by rioting, and organised revolution in the continental sense, for political or social ends, has been exceedingly rare in our history.

It would be idle, however, to deny that the temper of democracy after the war will not be so placable as it has hitherto been. Whether we like it or fear it, we have to recognise that in the course of the last three and a half years people have become habituated to thoughts of violence. They have seen force employed on an unprecedented scale as an instru

ment of policy. Unless we are very careful these ideas will rule the thoughts of masses of the people in the post-war period of reconstruction. The idea that by forceful methods the organised democracy can find a short cut to the attainment of its aims Iwill have its attractions for men of unstable temperament, impatient of the inevitable set-backs which we are bound to encounter if we work along constitutional lines. Let that idea stand unchallenged by the leaders of democracy, and we shall be faced with graver perils than any that have confronted us in past times. Never before have we had such vast numbers of the population skilled in the use of arms, disciplined, inured to danger, accustomed to act together under orders. When the war ends this country and every other will be flooded with hardy veterans of the great campaigns. Among them will be thousands of men who have exercised authority over their fellows in actual warfare, and who will be capable of assuming leadership again if insurrectionary movements come into existence. We may be warned by a perception of these facts that if barricades are indeed likely to be erected in our streets they will be manned by men who have learned how to fight and not by ill-disciplined mobs unversed in the use of modern wea

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pons, likely to be easily overcome by trained troops. Revolution, if revolution is indeed to be forced upon democracy, will be veritable civil war.

The prospect of social convulsions on this scale is enough to appal the stoutest heart. Yet this is the alternative that unmistakably confronts us, if we turn aside from the path of ordered social change by constitutional methods. The natural bias of organised Labour lies in the direction of smooth, orderly progress. When a deadlock is reached, as often happens in industrial disputes, the first appeal is always to the weapons of conciliation and arbitration. Negotiations usually end in a compromise: but the compromise generally represents a step forward. Labour is sometimes pictured as a blind giant, but unlike Samson it has sufficient wisdom to realise that in pulling down the pillars of the temple it may be crushed beneath the ruins along with its enemies. When the leaders of democracy speak of Revolution-thereby causing much alarm to ladies like Mrs. Humphrey Ward-they do not therefore contemplate any act of blind violence comparable to the brave stupidity of the Philistines' captive: they intend simply to warn the dominant classes that any attempt to keep democracy fettered and subordinate is foredoomed to failure. By peaceable methods, or by direct assault, society is going to be

brought under democratic control. And the choice of method does not primarily rest with democracy: it lies rather with the classes who own the machinery of production and control the machinery of the State to decide whether necessary changes are to be peaceably introduced on the basis of willing cooperation, or resisted to the last ditch. Conflicts will inevitably arise between the privileged classes and the great mass of the people as to whether this or that specific reform is opportune or expedient at a given moment. All that I am concerned with for the moment is the temper in which these reforms are to be approached-whether with a disposition to agree after full and frank discussion of the interests involved and the purpose to be achieved, or in a mood of sullen resistance hardening into a stupid refusal to discuss the question of reform at all. The latter mood will be fatal to our hopes of effecting a great and beneficent reconstruction of society by political methods.

It must not be forgotten that before the war there was a visible tendency on the party of a section of the people to resent the slow working of the machinery of Parliament. The war has not entirely obliterated our memory of the feverish industrial unrest which was such a significant feature of the situation in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of