by aristocratic and capitalist influences. We have no use for the Circumlocution Office. We want to see the Civil Service democratised. The Diplomatic Service, in particular, is an aristocratic preserve which offers no opportunity for a career to any man unless he possesses a private income of at least £400 a year, however well qualified he may otherwise be. The abolition of such a barrier is a democratic duty. In addition, we desire to bring the Foreign Office more directly under the control of Parliament, and to give the peoples' representatives larger powers of criticism in regard to foreign policy. So also with other Government Departments: we believe that their efficiency, energy, and enthusiasm for the public welfare will be greatly increased by an infusion of the spirit of democracy. Labour's aim is to establish democratic control over all the machinery of State. It can be done without a violent break with the past. Labour desires to make a swift and smooth transition to the new order, working along constitutional lines, not seeking to introduce innovations for the sake of novelty, but solely for the purpose of promoting political and social liberty and putting an end to oligarchical government and the domination of one class by another. To effect this transformation of the legislative and administrative machine it will not be necessary to spill blood. CHAPTER VIII FREEDOM It is a tragic paradox that in the great struggle for freedom and democracy the British people have been required to surrender many of their cherished liberties. The nation's willingness to submit to restrictions imposed by authority upon the right of democratic self-determination which has been its chief pride and boast for many centuries is a more convincing proof of its resolute intention to achieve victory than even the sacrificial service of the men in the field and the workers at home. It is questionable, indeed, whether many of the limitations upon freedom were necessary; but it is indisputable that only a people motived by the purest patriotism, and resolved to allow nothing to weaken the national will, would have accepted them. At any other time the State's encroachment upon the domain of private liberty would have been instantly challenged. It was not because the British people were convinced that the surrender of democratic rights was necessary that they yielded without a struggle, but be cause they realised they could not prosecute two wars simultaneously. Having resolved to defeat Prussianism abroad because it menaced the freedom of the whole world, they tolerated the curtailment of their liberties at home as a relatively smaller danger with which they could more conveniently deal when the bigger peril was removed. Reaction has made great strides during the war. The people know that they are in the grip of reaction. But it would be a disastrous error to conclude that democracy has been so firmly fettered that it will not be able to shake off its bonds when the hour comes for it to reckon with its domestic enemies. The very submission of the people, their acceptance of one outrageous restriction after another, may lead the reactionaries to think their policy has succeeded: when the greater preoccupation of the war is over they will perhaps see how completely it has failed. What are the reactionary encroachments upon liberty against which democracy may justly protest? We do not complain so much of the formal restrictions imposed upon the people of this country on the plea of national necessity, but of the subtler inroads upon both private and public liberty through a reactionary and oppressive interpretation of the long series of regulations introduced during the war. Take first the freedom of the press. An intelligent censorship which confined its activities to the suppression of news that might assist the military effort of the enemy would be regarded as performing a legitimate duty: but the military censorship has developed into a wonderful political engine which enables the authorities systematically to control the press. It enables the executive not merely to control opinion but to manufacture it. On the one hand it prevents free discussion of questions of public policy; on the other it guides the public mind by means of a steady stream of artful suggestion and official "information" manipulated and coloured in accordance with official views. The seizure of pamphlets, the suppression of newspapers, the attempt to bring under the survey of the censorship every leaflet, pamphlet, and printed sheet dealing however remotely with questions of war and peace, are only additional illustrations of this dangerous development by which truth is rationed, political opinion made to order in government factories, and an artificial unity created by the simple expedient of denying expression to dissident views. The practical denial of free speech and the right of public meeting, both by direct prohibition and by the far worse method of permitting meetings to be broken up by organised violence, is another development against which democracy is bound to protest. Still more sinister is the growth of espionage and police inquisition: the adoption of continental methods of surveillance represents an invasion of private life by the agents of authority which before the war one would have confidently declared this country would never tolerate. The right of asylum, under which many political refugees sought shelter from the harsh oppression of their own Governments, has been destroyed. The right of trial by jury and of public trial has been virtually superseded, and the detention of suspected persons without trial and without formal charge being made against them shows how far the executive has gone in defiance of the constitutional safeguards which protected the person and property of British citizens. New tribunals, unknown to the British legal system, and answerable only to the Government, have been set up for dealing with new offences, established principles of our juridical system, well attested rights of accused persons, have been arbitrarily set aside. Before the war the workers enjoyed a considerable measure of personal and collective freedom, as workers not simply as citizens: they were not bound to one employer or confined to one district, but might go where the highest wages invited and in the last resort could enforce their claims for improved conditions by ceasing to work. These rights have |