§ 40

In a northern county, I heard the following talk. A group of typical blue-eyed artizans were sitting under an oak, enjoying their smoke after a hearty midday meal. The day was glorious; this English climate was at its best. One of them, evidently rather a leader of the others, was recounting memories. He was a fair old man, with something of the Dane in appearance, the kind of strong-spirited sensible character that the North supplies, a type of the men that made England strong. He said, speaking with a broad, pleasant North Country accent which I will not attempt to imitate: “The strikers were foolish fellows. I was a boy at the time. My father was dead against them. We had good wages, but we wasted them in selfish pleasures. We thought more about amusing ourselves than doing our duty, that is true. We had leisure, which we used badly. If we had chosen to do so, we could have got on quite well, but we were got hold of by unprincipled fellows a little more learned than we. They led us astray with promises to be rich without work. They turned our heads. It is true that food was dear by way of the rascal tradesmen—a lying lot they were. They hid behind their counters rabbits and such-like food because the Government was making them lower their prices when food got scarce.

“Now I see straight. Instead of striking we ought to have gone for the tradesmen. It was they who sent up the prices to profit by it while we were getting hungry. The lists of strikers the leaders published were all ‘bunkum,’ the majority did not want to strike. Now we have got rid of strike leaders, we see what they were—just men who wanted to get power to be in the House of Commons and play the gentleman at our expense. Now I know the difference between an honest master and the swaggering tyrants who pretended to be our friends. Give me for a master an educated gentleman, not a howling agitator, who out of our money built themselves fine houses. If we had known then what we know now, wild horses would not have made us ‘down tools.’ I see now, no capital, no labour. We had got into idle habits. Now we have changed, and see that honest work brings honest reward. Instead of dog-fighting, drinking, and low sports, in off times we do a bit of gardening, grow our own vegetables, and our missus and girls make their own frocks and weave the stuff on the old-fashioned looms I often heard my grandmother talk about. We are twice the men we were. A football match now and again is all very well, but making a business of games and gambling is ROT. And the best of it is that Parliament, where there was more talk than doing, didn’t work the change, we did it ourselves, setting to work like men, and gave up whimpering and grumbling like silly girls. I guess we took the wind out of the sails of the Germans and the rascally Bolsheviks. What the high up in authority were playing for was our votes, that’s all. We see straight through the politicians now, and don’t give them a vote, so the Talking House, I hear, is shut up, and a good thing too. We can keep some restraint over the chaps we have now at hand, and good ones they are. They pull the strings of the Commune effectually, where the tradesmen and suchlike folk out for themselves played what games they liked with us. There are good honest citizens on the Councils with no axes to grind, and they keep the axe-grinders straight. The Union leaders went too far for us when they threatened to starve England and tried to prevent milk from reaching our children. That was too much for us! We’ve got hearts and now we have got heads, and see through humbug like through a pane of glass. Since food is a reasonable price, we are satisfied with reasonable wages, and we have plenty of leisure, which we use profitably. Instead of only thinking of ourselves, we give a thought to the other chap, and that makes for union and fraternity.” These remarks, spoken with conviction, were received with applause. The man was the spokesman of the thought in the minds of his fellows. “That is Democracy.”

The English County Communes did well when they taxed the entrance of foreigners into local trades, and taxed all foreign goods (save Colonial) before permitting them to enter the country. Now there is plenty of work for all Britons, agricultural and industrial, and it will take a long time before the artificial liberty (so-called) has power again, because “The People” know their way about, and are no longer led by schemers and well paid “windbags.”

Before the change, which grew out of honest guiding, public opinion and education in its best sense was coming to a standstill. Parliament played with it in committee, the usual course when Ministers do not know what to do. New schemes for education wasted a lot of paper and ink, and cost the nation more than it could afford. Schemes which only played into the hands of the place-hunters came to little. Guidance is better than legislation, and immediate touch of class with class will do more to mend matters than a plethora of work of committees. The working class (inclusive) claimed a right to govern, and it is doing so now that it is learning to rule itself. All men, in whatever station, from the King to the humblest peasant, should be working men—anyway, the State demands that of them and rightly. The greatest crime to the State is indolence and idleness. The state has no need for them, or for those who, being so, are living on the earnings of their betters. Under the tyranny of commercial unrest every honest profession and trade was suffering (save the profiteers). The arts were suffering. A publisher had to think twice before he published a good book, a painter before he started a picture. The initial expenses had grown so large that under the best conditions only a very small margin of profit was left, scarce enough to keep body and soul together. Science was suffering because research can make no progress without capital. The expense of living to the most moderate consumer was becoming intolerable.

Ministers played cup and ball with legislation by first attempting to exercise control over prices, then withdrawing control, thereby leaving a new muddle to be dealt with. We all know Æsop’s satiric fable of blowing hot and cold with the same breath, but that is exactly what Government did. Who, putting two and two together, could, with the most kindly feeling, respect a weak policy which so well imitates the first Fable of Æsop, “The Man, the Boy, and the Ass”? wherein first the man was criticised for riding, then the boy for doing the same, then both for carrying the ass, which finally, was cast into a river and so disposed of. Compromise followed compromise, until the whole country lost confidence in their rulers, who, without a policy, were always watching which way the cat would jump. During the war we were better off than after it. After it was over the curtain had to be pulled up and the players to come forward, but no cheers for them. We saw the men who had made the muddle, which they were trying by every compromise to clear up. “The People,” seeing the paralysis of Government, took the matter into their hands and set to work to clear the situation by restoring industry, and they set to reform themselves by a sensible mode of living, not in sections only, but as a part of a great scheme in which everybody, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, was individually concerned. No amount of legislation made in the talking house, could reform a people unwilling for reform. “The People” saw their mistakes and set themselves to rectify them. The rich resolved to use their wealth for the public benefit; the leisurely their leisure to instruct, or, I like better the word, to guide the less cultivated minds; and young men on whose education large sums of money had been expended, instead of wasting energies on sport and a lazy club or society life, turned to make themselves factors of usefulness in a great national cause. Thus, the general tone of the nation rose rapidly from apathy to activity, from selfishness to altruism.