PUBLIC OPINION IN WAR TIME

...There can be no doubt that Mr...

...There is of course a great deal to be said for this thesis, nearly everything indeed which is usually invoked on behalf of autocracy as a better instrument of government than democracy...

...It is not...

...Horatio Bottomley or Mr...

...Thus wrote Dr...

...If the expression of minority views had been permitted or encouraged so as to have provoked fuller and completer discussion of war aims and peace terms, the military as well as the political situation today would be better than it is...

...The matter is almost always regarded as a conflict of rights between the majority and the minority, or between the individual and society...

...one even of intellectual speculation on its fundamental issues, anything which could be interpreted as pacifism, internationalist Socialism, religious nonresistance, has, to a large part of the newspaper mind of America, become merely treason...

...Holland Rose—two and a half years ago...

...that public opinion, to put it at its lowest, failed to check governmental errors in those respects...

...They might well be in a crisis—they may have been in certain of the English Cabinet crises—the determinant factor...

...It lias only meant the prohibition of liberal contribution to that discussion...

...That view indeed had, very early In the war, high governmental encouragement...

...Being impossible of application as a whole and impartially, the rule of "no discussion of peace terms" has been applied with disastrous one-sidedness...

...Says Country is Going Through Experience of England and France Two Years Ago (From The New Republic) AT THE RECENT MEETING of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy in Minneapolis, Mr...

...In the press discussions of this matter both here and in Europe the problem is envisaged mainly as one of minority right Protest against the prevailing attitude, so far as It Is made at all...

...It is true of course that the country is merely going through—with rather more of what may be called violent-mtndedness—a phase duplicated in the experience of England and France during the last three years...

...Discussion of peace terms was to be avoided, as such might have an enemy origin...

...But the real reason for preserving minority criticism is the need for it on the part of the community, of the majority...

...Such results have obviously a military, and not a purely political bearing...

...It is now a very familiar editorial text that controversial matter with reference to war aims, to the conditions of peace, or the time at which it should be made, can serve none but a German purpose by tending to reveal differences of opinion, to weaken that unity of intellectual front which will, it is hoped, duly impress the enemy, to alienate certain Allies, to distract attention from the war itself, upon which all moral and material forces should now be concentrated...

...Have we any reason to believe that they have suddenly grown in political wisdom...

...French and English opinion would have shown greater sympathy for and understanding of the Russian revolution and made it easier for the revolutionary government to deal with its own extremists...

...For without it the majority is bound, sooner or later, to go wrong, to show defective judgment, to adopt and execute disastrous policies...

...The rule means in practice that all advocacy of a negotiated conciliatory peace shall cease, but not the advocacy of punitive settlements or unconditional surrender...

...They are fussing over unimportant matters which are the necessary incidents of successful warfare...

...If the reader doubts the need of such check or balance, let him consider the significance of certain phenomena of recent public opinion in England, much less subject to violent oscillations than the United States...

...Any attitude of criticism on the question of the war...

...If that opinion has never fo used fundamental questions like those just suggested its decisions will depend upon the mere hazard of newspaper or party stampede, the chance hobby of some influential newspaper proprietor, the move of some political leader, or the still more fortuitous hazards of sheer mob hypnotism...

...We find early in 1910, for instance, an eminent Cambridge historian protesting against the "folly of discussing terms of peace," the wickedness of those who "air their views about the future peace while peace is not yet in sight," and who "do not seem to be aware that in warfare the side which begins to talk about peace is held to be the weaker and thereby places itself at a disadvantage...

...indeed very few would dispute the purely military advantage of autocratic government in many respects, and most free peoples are ready to subscribe to the proposition that as soon as a democracy goes to war it should, In the interest ot military effectiveness, drop many of its peacetime principles, to resume them as soon as its military job is finished...

...And it is humanly impossible for such judgment to be well balanced when virtually all expression of political opinion during long periods is left to one party, and that the party of extreme and often passionate feeling...

...Their influence has increased simply because the creed which they preach is, in reality, the only one allowed free expression and because the temper of violence which they voice belongs naturally to the war time, while the proper drag upon it in the shape of the advocacy of more considered judgments has been withdrawn...

...Sir Edward Carson, for instance, who spoke so vigorously just recently on the undesirability of the discussion of terms, warmly supported the Paris Economic Conference, which was a discussion of terms in a way that has proved immeasurably mischievous to the Allied cause...

...Is made on behalf of the "right" to free speech...

...accustomed to balance considerations—to discussions, that is—or to act by its first passion...

...This question touches the fundamental Issue of that policy of suppressing political non-conformity which America seems now to be so ruthlessly adopting...

...that both France and England failed to realize the sig-nificance of the Russian revolution...

...If it should appear, for inFiance, that the administration had decided that from the point of view of making the future safe for democracy, It would be better to save the Russian Revolution by an early peace and sacrifice the winning back of Alsace for France, you would get au explosion of opinion to which it could not be indifferent...

...The one thing needed is "to clinch the teeth, say nothing and fight on . . . it is a time for quiet and determined action to encourage our brave boys at the front by the exhibition of that silent and uncomplaining endurance which alone can bring a speedy peace...

...For this onesided suppression of popular discussion of war aims or peace terms has not insured any of the European governments immunity from sudden gales of popular criticism...

...And it is a significant reflection upon the extent of any real understanding of the principle of democracy, that this one reason, which overrides all others in importance, is the reason practically never invoked by either party to the discussion...

...And from another quarter there would come a bombardment just as severe if it should appear that America, for the purposes of its policy had decided upon a naval alliance with Great Britain.- The decision on such questions as these decisions upon which the future of the world will depend—w 11 bo made by public opinion in one form or another...

...German and Austrian liberalism would be stronger than it is, and autocracy in the two countries correspondingly weaker...

...Before the war the average Englishman would have regarded the suggestion that he be guided by the pol-itical judgment of men like Mr...

...Need For Views Such a claim places the matter upon a wholly misleading and unsound foundation...

...Had such discussion gone on, it is unlikely that public opinion in England would have sanctioned the gross error of the Paris Economic Conference, which has done so much to help the enemy governments, to maintain the morale of their peoples and to secure popular support for their policies...

...Of most importance is its effect upon our own capacity to keep our political judgment sound and discerning...

...13 presented a resolution passed by the Chamber of Commerse of Phoenix, Ariz.' "urging upon the Arizona delegation in Congress the need of a census of labor and recommend that an industrial drafting service be devised to be in operation during the war...

...It has only meant that criticism, since the policy of withholding information on essential points has been pushed very far, must have been in large part very ill informed...

...for if we cannot do that the peace is bound to be a bad one at the last, whatever our military situation...

...If it were true that respect for freedom of speech could invoke no greater reason than the right of certain individuals to enjoy intellectual exercise unhampered by the needs of the community for common action, such a "right" should not survive a state of war for a single day...

...Press Gives Aid To that end the most conservative and constitutional press of the country is acquiescing in the most doubtful stretching of the law to secure the suppression of Socialist or...

...radical publications, searches or the houses of prominent radicals, the use of state troops to disperse duly authorized meetings, or their breaking up by "Vigilantes" of one kind or another, and oven, apparently, the shooting of political dissenters (one day gives us a total of four killed in one way or another...

...But the change of attitude which has since taken place, both in France and in England, a change which political events in those countries are daily emphasizing, ought not to be lost upon Americans who desire to keep their heads, and who regard the accomplishment of their reasoned political purpose of more importance than the satisfaction of instincts and tempers, however natural and human such may be...

...Yet this did not save him, in 1010, from the fury of those selfsame journalists, who, then with equal violence, insisted that any defense of his statesmanship was proof positive of pro-Germanism...

...The American people are now in process of applying that rule, more particularly with regard to one detail: freedom of discussion...

...Speaking broadly, no one today denies that the Paris Economic Conference was a mistake...

...On the strength of this thesis the majority of American newspaper and those who write for and to them, seen to have determined, not merely to withdraw from such discussion but to establish an intellectual reign of terror which shall make impossible the existence of public man or minority attempting to raise the question of war alms or the time at which the war should end...

...Even if the minorities were altogether wrong, if there were nothing worth consideration in their point of view, their expression would still be necessary to check the momentum of certain movements of public feeling and opinion and political action resulting therefrom...

...The press of those countries of a couple of years back, it is much less the case today, shows the same kind of attempt to suppress fundamental discussion of war aims or peace conditions...

...Tho Lnglisii press in 1911 insisted that any critical discussion of Sir Edward Grey's statesmanship should bt...

...The implication is that the state should be prepared to take some risk in order to preserve a freedom so hardly won...

...For while it is true that public opinion will be perfectly ready to surrender such things as the adjustment of Balkan frontiers into the hands of the government the very parties who would now make criticism of the government an act of treason will absolutely refuse to leave it to the major decisions...

...No one suggests it...

...But reaction upon enemy morale and policy is not perhaps the most important result of the suppression or restraint of minority opinion...

...For there is now an almost frank admission that both the British and French governments have mishandled the Russian situation...

...Is it that kind of opinion which will rule at the time of the settlement, make and unmake' governments, dictate policies...

...however, any legal or governmental action, past or likely to occur, which is the important fact in this connection, but the effect of a prevailing attitude like that just indicated upon the political thinking of the average American...

...Leo Maxse as a preposterous joke...

...Though there be no real discussion, public opinion still rules, but it is of the wayward and fitful type, which always goes with an incapacity quietly to tolerate a contrary view, to hear a hostile argument...

...The question is whether the public opinion which will have the last word shall be an informed or a misinformed one...

...And, as we know, they "put it across...

...Frank P. Walsh is reported as saying: The People's Council crowd have gone wrong largely because of an inability to distinguish between a democracy at war and a democracy at peace...

...Most of these measures, governmental and extra-governimental, seem to have at least the acquiescence of the public, if the daily press is any indication...

...Democracy," as Lord Northcliffe reminded us the other day, "is a bad war maker...

...Such a conclusion can not be dismissed as a mere guess...

...In fact it dictated the governmental policy...

...At best we "tolerate" contrary opinion, the very word excluding the idea that such is necessary to the common welfare, that we cannot possibly manage society successfully with out it, and that it should be scrupulously preserved to that end...

...For Industrial Draft Senator Ashurst of Arizona on Aug...

...and that even more certainly in war than in peace...

...There has been in the Allied countries a plentiful discussion of terms by the very people who declared that they should not be discussed...

...Wisdom, in these matters at least, there cannot be without discussion, without that intellectual interest an inquiry which comes of being challenged in fundamental beliefs, it is the office of those minorities that we are now suppressing--of the internationalists, the Socialists, the pacifists—to furnish that challenge to keep the discussion alive...

...For any man or group of men to attempt to express America's war ends at this critical juncture is little short of treason...

...Walsh (whether correctly reported or not in this connection) expresses what seems to be now the all but universal view...

...Yet in two or three years the influence of those publicists has become enormous...

...Modern democracies no more believe this, of course, than Athens believed it when told it by Socrates, and would be just as angry at the suggestion that the fit punishment for the intellectual "gadfly" who stings the populace into reflection is not death —but maintenance in the Prytaneum...

...The rule has not secured the cessation of discussion, far from it...

...regarded as an act of treason, an encouragement to the Germans...

...There has been no restraint, either by authority or public opinion, of the kind of peace discussion carried on by the Morning Post, or the Daily Express, or Black-woods, or John Bull, and these papers have, thanks to the encouragement of the enemy governments, obtained very full circulation in Germany and Austria, to the advantage of pan-Germanism and the disadvantage of German liberalism...

...What led it so far astray...