The question of Social Reform has been very fully discussed in the public papers during the last few months, and one of the writers on this subject has happily explained it as meaning "securing for the slum-dwellers good air, good housing, good food, good clothes, and good education." The conditions amid which millions of our people are living appear to me to make it natural that they should not care a straw under what rule they may be called upon to dwell, and I can quite understand their want of patriotic feeling.
Again, by Social Reform I mean a reform which includes essential changes in our primary schools. No other civilized nation leaves its young boys and girls to shift for themselves, as we leave ours when they are thirteen or fourteen years of age. Nor is the education they receive an education calculated to make them lovers of their country. They are never told anything of its history, or taught to be proud of their country and its past. They are not given any idea of what their duty is to their country or what they owe to it. In some schools, indeed, it is even forbidden to hoist the Union Jack. Much of the teaching has no bearing upon actual life, and it comes to an end at the very age at which boys are most receptive of tuition, be it good or evil, and most require to be under some kind of control. Our oversea Dominions are wiser in this respect than we are. By means of Cadet Corps the boys are looked after until they reach the age of manhood, and the ground is thus prepared for the formation of a reliable Citizen Army.
The same excellent results are obtained to some small extent in this country by training-ships, homes such as the Gordon Boys' Home, schools like the Duke of York's and the Royal Hibernian Military Schools, and societies like the Church Lads' and Boys' Brigades. Why are the failures in after-life amongst the lads brought up in these institutions so remarkably few? It is simply owing to the habits of order, obedience, and discipline they have been taught in their youth. And the Scout movement has already produced remarkable results. But such organizations are too limited in scope and too few in number, and, with the exception of the two Royal schools, they depend almost entirely upon private enterprise, and to a serious Government or a serious nation they are only signposts to the true policy. They should be an integral part of our national education.
Social Reform is a preliminary to any thorough system of national defence. "My country right or wrong; and right or wrong my country!" is the sentiment most treasured in the breast of anyone worthy of the name of man. Nevertheless, with how much more confidence should we be able to appeal to the young men of this nation and the Empire to do their duty as citizen soldiers if we had the certainty that they regarded England, not as a harsh stepmother, but as a true motherland, sedulously nurturing its youth, and not indifferent to their welfare in manhood or in age, and if we could further appeal to them to defend the nation and the Empire, because within its bounds they can live nobler and fuller lives than on any other spot on earth! Yet recent unimpeachable evidence makes it clear that, to tens of thousands of Englishmen engaged in daily toil, the call to "sacrifice" themselves for their country must seem an insult to their reason; for those conditions amid which they live make their lives already an unending sacrifice.
Will the Unionist party realize the gravity of this state of affairs? The Liberal party, by the Act for Payment of Members, has fulfilled to the letter the trust committed to it by the rising democracies of the 'forties. That Act, the last of the five points of the Charter, ends an epoch of which I can remember the beginnings more than sixty years ago. But the Radical-Liberal party has no longer a policy of construction; it seems only to have given the democracy enfranchisement in order to lead it to the disintegration of a time-honoured Constitution and the gradual dismemberment of a great Empire.
Is it too late to hope that the Unionist party will come forward to lead the millions that wait for a leader?
No party can long continue in power which relies for its prestige solely upon fomenting class hatreds—that is, by dividing the State against itself. But before a great national sacrifice to patriotism can fitly be demanded, a great act of national justice must be performed. The Unionist party missed its opportunity with respect to granting old-age pensions on a contributory basis. Now in 1911 it is confronted by larger issues; by problems affecting the industrial life of the entire nation, and touching, so to speak, the very fountain-head of the Empire's life.
Is it too late?
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
ROBERTS, F.M.