Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-09-08

Wide World Photo.
to supplement our fighting effort by a
sustained campaign of cooperation with
the insurgent liberal forces of the world.
This has been the traditional policy
of Great Britain since the great days of
Palmerston and Canning. Great Britain
forgot its quarrel with the United States
to support the Monroe Doctrine and in
tervene between America and the holy
alliance. 1t sustained Garibaldi, MaZzini
and every movement of liberation in
Europe. 1t destroyed the slave trade.
Marx and Lenin worked in the British
museum. 1t has been our proudest boast
that we stood, not for domination. but
for freedom and the common rights Of
man.
But We discover, after year of war,
of muddle-headed generalShip and Of
utter defeat in the campaign of propa-
ganda, that some strange perversion has
crept into our Foreign Office and into
our War Office, and that both these
bodies have to re-learn, and that they
continue. obstinately and diSloyally, to
resist re-learning. the lessons of history.
am divided in my own mind whether
the campaign against everything dis
tinctively British, against our honor and
our success in the war. which is embodied
in the Swinton Committee. is due only
to gross prejudice and stupidity, or
whether it is a deliberate treachery to
the British peoples in this supreme phase
of their war effort.
Diplomacy OutmOded.
1t is a difficult lesson for British
people to realize, because use and wont
for more than three centuries have
made their acceptance of our Foreign
Office and our expensive and unneces-
sary diplomatic service habitual, that
all this apparatus is clumsy and out of
date and subjected to all those ossifca-
tons and corruptions inevitable in any
human machinery that has gone I'M
questioned so long.
The British democracy has never had
any real control of British foreign poll
icy; its. excellent instincts have been
openly flouted from the betrayal of the
liberal republic in Spain down to the
bitter humiliation of the Burmese Road
surrender and by our persistent incivility
to Russia.
Underlying all our present troubles,
says "Scipio' in lucid and able little
book "A Hundred Million Allies If We
Choose" is that downward class war,
that attempt to keep up an illusory and
vanishing distinction between the gentle
man and the common fellow, between
the officer class and the rankers Evil
IDENTIFY I agree with him.
We have been playing overlong and
beyond the danger point in this country
with a mere Illustration of democracy.
We have to make democracy a reality.
We have to put an end to the advantages
and respect our people have accorded so
heedlessly and good humoredly to titles,
precedences and privileges.
All on Equal Footing.
Every boy who goes into the army or
navy should be potential marshal or
admiral. Our country is our country
and every man in it should be a king
If we do not insist upon this we shall
certainly be sold or given away. We
have found out our ruling class and we
have found our people. And now we
have to get on with that.
These people with whom we are at
issue are not Quislings, but their class
prejudices blind them to the develop
ments of the present situation Under
stress they betray slight tendency to
react in a Quisling manner-and that
tendency may grow upon them.
If they manage to lose this war for
Britain, or if they try, in the interests
Of class advantage, the city and so
forth, to sneak out of the struggle in
some half-hearted way before it is fairly
and squarely won, then God help them,
for the country is rising to this war like
an awakening giant, and not all the
piety of Halifax and Gort and all their
ruling-class assurance and charm and
prestige can save them if, following in
the footsteps of the Vichy suicides, they
tumble this war to disaster and chal-
lenge our people to day of reckoning.
(Copyright, 1900