II
Naturally a living society will require a living fellowship in the ordering of its public affairs; and it is true that the arrest and corruption of democracy—wheresoever those ills have befallen it—are due more to the ignorance and the indifference of the mass of the people in respect of their common affairs than to any other single cause. This is ever the opportunity of the demagogue and the spoilsman. Where there is no vision, said the ancient scribe, the people perish; but the people perish no less certainly where there is no common thought. The mental indolence and inertia of the public and the incompetency of public criticism is the danger of the statesman, and the very life of the carpet-bagging politician. The extent of this ignorance and apathy—beyond the narrow limits where our pockets are concerned—is appalling. Especially in regard to the external relationships of their respective states, the common people have lived in the past in great darkness, and as the war has shown, in the shadow of death. If the masses of the European peoples had been in 1914, as well-informed concerning their neighbours as they are to-day (and this does not say very much), the war might well have never happened; and it is well that we should remember that the democratic control of foreign policy, of which we justly hope much, will prove a vain thing without systematic education of the people in the matters which are gathered up in the expression “foreign policy.”
And, indeed, the main root of indifference is ignorance; for we are vitally interested in nothing of which we do not know something. It is to education that we must look for our main remedy. Some gleams of light have indeed already begun to pierce our darkness. We have commenced to educate school children in the rudiments of civic obligation; and there is no reason why history and geography should not be taught, not as at present to stimulate national pride or commercial efficiency, but to generate a sympathetic and comprehensive outlook upon human relationships. To this subject we shall need to turn in more detail presently; here all we need is to premise that the stimulation and mobilisation of common thought requires an education which shall equip the citizen with a system of knowledge and ideas which will enable him to respond to the challenge of the problems of common life and approach them with intelligence and sympathy. No one who is familiar with the proceedings of parliaments and congresses will require proof of the existence of this need.
But this is no more than a beginning. To education must be added the opportunity of free and unfettered discussion. Every manner of embargo or restraint on thought must be removed. When a Cambridge don once said that morning chapel should be compulsory on the ground that if there were no compulsory religion there would be no religion at all, Thirlwall, afterwards Bishop of St. David’s, replied that the distinction was too subtle for his apprehension. No less does restraint upon thought lead to the destruction of thought. Yet thought, just because it is free, requires some method of test and correction; and this is supplied by discussion. In this region especially is fellowship the necessary co-efficient of freedom. At present the comparative paucity of opportunities of systematic discussion, outside small circles and coteries, has led to that lack of mental independence to which the modern press owes its ordinate power. The pathetic, not to say tragic, readiness of the multitude to follow any demagogue in the press who shouts loudly enough is a manifest sign of dangerous mental incompetency. The Northcliffes and the Hearsts owe their influence to the incapacity of the multitude to think for itself; and no multitude will ever be able to think which does not acquire the habit of thinking together.
It is impossible to estimate the value of the New England Town Meeting as an organ of discipline in common thought; and some such focus of public discussion there should be in every community. Nowadays the community elects a board or a council and relegates the function of discussion to this body, and so far as its local affairs are concerned goes to sleep until the next election, except perhaps for a small minority chiefly composed of hostile critics. This elected body rarely reaches a plane of initiative and leadership in thought even within the narrow province committed to its care. Its discussions chiefly gather around minor points of administration; rarely do they reveal any degree of constructive originality. Yet the public spirit which is the life of a community needs continual stimulus; and this stimulus is dependent on discussion. It is a frequent, almost a constant complaint against municipal bodies that they are composed of persons who have axes of their own to grind, or who, though they are not personally corrupt, are promoting the advantage of particular interests. There is no way out of this difficulty save by the creation of community centres for regular and free public discussion. Those who are charged with the conduct of public affairs—whether local or national—should be open to continuous and reasoned popular criticism for which an election allows no opportunity.
The rapid extension of the public Forum in America takes to some extent the place once filled by the Town Meeting; but its outlook is too general and its constitution too casual to enable it to discharge the functions of the latter. Yet it has a very important office to fill; and in many respects it is the most promising object in the outlook for democracy in America. As yet it is too dependent upon the platform; and questions do not form an adequate alternative to reasoned discussion. These are, however, defects which will be remedied as the movement develops. It is not at all improbable that the churches may find a way of recovering their social usefulness by the promotion of the Forum method. Dr. Kirsopp Lake has a theory that just as the sacramental stage of religion has passed, so now the “sermon” stage is passing, and we are entering upon the “discussion” stage. It may be so. Certainly no human concern so stands in need of vigorous and radical discussion as does religion; and now that it becomes increasingly evident that the day is wholly gone when religion could be cultivated as an isolated interest unrelated to the secular concerns of life, it will be of untold advantage to the church and to society, in the interests of truth and right thinking, that the free discussion of religion and public affairs in the closest possible relation to one another should be seriously fostered. Neither religion nor any view of the world which does not touch life at every point is likely to survive in an age which is slowly learning the unity of all life. In modern England, the Trade Union branches have in many cases proved to be educational centres of the utmost value; but even more than the Trade Unions has the Socialist propaganda, with its challenge to discussion, proved a fruitful organ of common thought on public affairs.
When we pass from the plane of local to that of national interests we find a state of things which provokes wonder that any shred of democracy has survived it. The system of political parties has its roots in human nature; and we are never likely to outlive it. The quip that we are all born either little Liberals or little Conservatives has beneath it the fact of a profound and perhaps permanent difference of temperament. There are those—and probably will always be—who take less kindly to change than others; and in this difference there will always be ample room and occasion for discussion and criticism. It is also well to remember that the conflict of sincerely held opinion is one of the most fruitful forms of co-operation in the search for truth. But there are few existing lines of party division which reflect a genuine cleavage of conviction. The present opposition of Republican and Democrat in America seems to have only a distant connection with that profound division of opinion in which the opposition first originated. In Great Britain, Liberal and Conservative have stood ideally for the two necessary principles of freedom and order, progress and stability; but the party conflict has raged chiefly in recent times around the question of power. It has been a duel of the “ins” and “outs.” There are, of course, Liberals like Lord Morley, and Conservatives like Lord Hugh Cecil, whose political attachments rest upon deep and reasoned conviction; but reasoned conviction is not the main subject of interest in the Whips’ offices. The final judgment upon the nature of the party struggle is to be sought in the practical business of electioneering. Direct corruption is on the whole rare in democratic countries; but the organisation of the party vote—whether in England or America—is a wholly scandalous and deplorable business. The practice of canvassing for votes, attended frequently with intimidation and generally with a good deal of insincere cajoling, the easily made and easily forgotten electioneering promises, the frantic shepherding of sluggish voters to the polling booth,—these things show how little substance of conviction and thought there is in the modern political game. Canvassing is sometimes defended as a method of political education; occasionally in competent hands it no doubt is so; but anyone who is acquainted with electioneering methods knows that the education is merely incidental to securing the promise of a vote. Canvassing would conceivably serve a useful purpose if the attempt to extract the promise of a vote were declared to be in fact what it is in spirit—a violation of the Ballot Act. It is questionable, however, how long the practice of canvassing would survive this curtailment. And in addition to this, all inducements to drag unwilling and indifferent citizens to the poll should be made illegal. Democracy is not necessarily government by the mob. It is rather government by the intelligent and the interested; and the remedy for popular apathy here, as elsewhere, is proper education.
The two-party system of Great Britain, and in the United States, may in time be replaced by the group system as it prevails on the continent of Europe.[[31]] The group system is subject to the evils and the disadvantages attending the two-party system; but it has the distinct advantage of making possible a larger range and variety of criticism. Nevertheless, whether under the two-party or group conditions, it is doubtful whether the present territorial arrangement of representation can ever secure a truly democratic government. The territorial arrangement is derived from a period which long antedates the railroad; and improved means of communication have created national groups with specialised but ultra-local interests, and for the purposes of democratic government the Labour Union (for instance) is as important a unit as the county. It is absurd that the only way in which the specific interests of organised labour can be represented in the House of Commons is by putting Labour candidates in competition with Liberals and Conservatives in mixed constituencies. Some alleviation of this anomaly may be found in the plan of proportional representation; but this does not fully provide for the necessity of securing direct and adequate representation of functional and cultural associations in the councils of the nation. It is an anachronism that to-day the mind of the nation should be gathered solely on a geographical basis, when the actual living mind of the nation increasingly resides in the various groups into which men form themselves on the basis of interests that are no longer determined by local considerations. The representation of non-territorial constituencies in the councils of the nation raises the question of the nature of the state which must be considered separately.
[31]. The results of the last General Election in England seem to bear out this anticipation.
Freedom and fulness of discussion is the very breath of life to popular institutions, and wheresoever any problem or range of problems is withdrawn from public discussion, there is a virtual denial of the democratic principle. When, for instance, and in particular, foreign policy is conducted behind closed doors, a control over the destinies of the people is vested in individuals or in a class of individuals which is as real and as monstrous as that of an autocrat; and democracy is denied in its most sensitive and critical part. It is true that the practice of secret diplomacy has survived because nations have been too little concerned about their external affairs; and no plausible arguments about “delicate situations” and the like could resist for a moment the insistence of an intelligent democracy upon the management of its own affairs. If democracy is to survive at all, it must make up its mind speedily that the principle of its inner life shall not be denied in its outer. But if democracy is to have a mind at all, it must learn to use the mind it has; and the chief stimulus to this end would be the multiplication of centres of discussion. This would be materially helped if government departments were required to produce not only ponderous blue-books which only bewilder the common man, and official documents intelligible only to the expert, but popular accounts, published regularly, of their proceedings. The press should be used far more extensively for this purpose; and even the children of the public schools should be provided with appropriate graded summaries of the acts of the national government. Then on the basis of this material for discussion, the social debating society, the reading circle, the Forum and all such groups would become the living and increasing springs of democracy.
In speaking of education we are far too apt to confine the word to the education of children; but what may be done in the education of adults and at the same time in the stimulation of fellowship in thought, is well shown by the achievement of the Workers’ Educational Association in England. The education of the working class is an idea which dates back to the social and political ferment of the early nineteenth century—the earliest expression being the Mechanics’ Institute movement. This was followed by the Working Men’s College movement under Frederick Denison Maurice and his friends. Then came the educational experiments, first of the Rochdale Pioneers in 1840, and then of the Co-operative Societies, out of which grew ultimately the University Extension movement. The existing Worker’s Educational Association originated in an alliance of the educational activities of the Co-operative, Trade Union and University Extension movements. It was based upon “the vital principle that there could be no complete education of working people unless it was a result of the combination of working men and women and scholars, respectively experts in demand and supply.” It is certain—and the war has provided many instances of it—that this alliance of worker and scholar has done much to break down the partition wall of class prejudice; and the “tutorial class” has in particular been a very fruitful agent of fellowship and education. “The days of the W.E.A.” (as it is called) says Mr. Alfred Mansbridge, its devoted and able secretary, “have been few so far; but it has already demonstrated the soundness of its theories—to take one instance alone—by the development of the University Tutorial Class movement which conforms in method to that of Plato so far as question and answer developed in discussion are concerned. In England alone over eight thousand men and women have passed through these courses which are organised in connection with every University and University College. If it were not for the clear demonstration of experience, it would seem fatuous to expect that men and women who have undergone no educational training other than that provided in the few years of attendance at the elementary school would be willing to attend classes for three years, and in some cases for as many as seven or eight years. It must be remembered that the discipline of the class though self-imposed is severe. No absence is allowed for other than unavoidable causes. Moreover, their purpose is the acquisition of knowledge as assisting the fulfilment of an educational ideal which is conceived not in the interests of the individual but in the interests of citizenship. The level of intellectual achievement testified to by many eminent educationists is such as to warrant the Board of Education in making a regulation to the effect that ‘the instruction must aim at reaching within the limits of the subject covered, the standard of University work in honours.’”[[32]] While the emphasis in this account is laid chiefly upon the educational aspects of the movement those who are acquainted with its working lay much stress upon the part which the practice and realisation of fellowship play in it.[[33]] The sense of common quest is at once a source and a result of the movement: and it is not open to any question that the W.E.A. is one of the most powerful organs of the new democracy now existing. Alongside the W.E.A. in Great Britain is also the Adult School movement, which chiefly under the auspices of the Society of Friends is doing much similar, though not so severe work. It gathers together every Sunday morning in all parts of the country thousands of working men and women in its many hundred schools to study not only “the principles of the life and teaching of Jesus, but the manifold and perplexing problems of national and international life.” In such fruitful activities as these will the mind and the temper of the coming democracy be created. These men and women are learning the practice of freedom and fellowship in thought, which is the fundamental democratic method.
[32]. Contemporary Review, June, 1918.
[33]. An interesting sign of where the members of the W.E.A. themselves feel the essence of the movement to lie is seen in the inscription on a memorial cross erected in the Parish Church of Lambeth, London, in memory of three tutors of the W.E.A.:
“In memory of
Philip Anthony Brown, 1886-1915.
Alfred Edward Bland, 1881-1916.
Arthur Charleswood Turner, 1881-1918.
Tutors of the Workers’ Educational Association. They lived for Fellowship in England and died for it in France.”
The Challenge, July 19th, 1918.