Wanted, A Leader

( Originally Published 1920 )

SIR, Many of your readers must have read with more than usual interest the article of Dean Inge in yesterday's issue, and your leader thereon. There are few thoughtful men who have not shared the Dean's perplexities, and who have not again and yet again in the recent months as they looked around on the world chaos that meets the eye on all sides, asked the anxious question : " Whither do these things tend ? " It would seem as though the war had set in motion a social and political avalanche. A condition of equilibrium must ultimately be reached, but what then is to be the order under which we shall live ?

The Dean surveys a wide field. I shall content myself with that more immediately around us. The outlook there is dark enough, the indications at the moment warn us to prepare for something darker, but I believe that in spite of temporary or apparent set-backs, organised humanity in our day as in all others is surely, if slowly, painfully and tortuously, working its way to higher levels and better things. Human nature in the individual is pretty much what it has always been. A healthy infant, irrespective of its origin, becomes mainly what its environment makes it a more or less potent factor for good or evil. " Human nature inhuman nature," in the sense the Dean intends, are incipient in each one of us : and if there is any one quality in the individual or class which has to be reckoned with in holding the balance between it and the community, it is self-interest.

Each loves himself and his own best. It has always been so abnormalities apart ; it is a law of Nature, and as such must be reckoned with. When unregulated it leads to self-aggrandisement, unabashed. It was this primitive instinct which in past generations so frequently led to the remorseless grinding of the lower orders when as yet the arm of the law could afford them but inadequate protection. In our own day we are witnessing the opposite phase in the extortionate demands of sections of the labouring classes, who have come to a knowledge of their power of throwing the machine of State out of gear, and of thereby, as they hope, imposing their will on the community. The time seems ripe and the need urgent for a retelling of the apologue of Menenius Agrippa, for inculcating its wisdom till all sections of the community recognise the cardinal fact that no section can prey on the body politic without making themselves, as well as their country, the poorer for it. Nothing short of this will save us ; but from whom will our Plebs hear and learn such a lesson ? We need not be unduly surprised if to the working class such a principle does not commend itself. The wage-earners, by throwing down the gauntlet to their employers, have repeatedly gained better terms for themselves, terms which they may have felt should have been granted without a contest. From such trials of strength they come, suspicious of and hostile to capital, with hopes of greater victories. The need is urgent that the working classes should realise that in the path on which they have set out there comes a stage at which they are fighting their own interest, and that they cannot indefinitely pursue the policy of calling upon the State to stand and deliver without involving the country and themselves in a common disaster. Who is qualified to expound to them the fable of Agrippa ?

He fails to read the signs of the times who doubts that in the near future the Labour party must wield a great, perhaps a predominating, power in the State. If so, one of the most urgent political necessities of the moment is the need of a wise and great leader for that section of the community. Given a leader, clear-sighted and fearless, whose devotion to party has not prevented patriotism--a leader who (conscious of his followers' limitations and eager to amend them) does not fear to place the general good above class interest, to preach the doctrine of an honest day's work for a fair day's wage, and to inculcate the need of working for party ends by constitutional means given such a man, I believe he will rally all that is sanest and best in the party of Labour to his banner. For such a leader, if he can be found, a great and patriotic duty awaits.

W.J.C.