Ordeal by Battle

by Frederick Scott Oliver

The second was the problem of the Constitution: How could we best develop, to what extent must we remake or remould, our ancient institutions, so as to fit them for those duties and responsibilities which new conditions required that they should be able to perform? Under this head we were faced with projects, not merely of local self-government, of 'Home Rule,' and of 'Federalism'; not merely with the working of the Parliament Act, with the composition, functions, and powers of the Second Chamber, with the Referendum, the Franchise, and such like; but also with that vast and even more perplexing question—what were to be the future relations between the Mother Country and the self-governing Dominions on the one hand, and between these five democratic nations and the Indian Empire and the Dependencies upon the other?

For the third set of problems no concise title has yet been found. Social Reform does not cover it, though perhaps it comes nearer doing so than any other. The matters involved here were so multifarious and, apparently at least, so detached one from another—they presented themselves to different minds at so many different angles and under such different aspects—that no single word or phrase was altogether satisfactory. But briefly, what all men were engaged in searching after—the Labour party, no more and no less than the Radicals and the Tories—was how we could raise the character and material conditions of our people; how by better organisation we could root out needless misery of mind and body; how we could improve the health and the intelligence, stimulate the sense of duty and fellowship, the efficiency and the patriotism of the whole community.

Of these three sets of problems with which the British race has recently been occupying itself, this, the third, is intrinsically by far the most important.

IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL REFORM

It is the most important because it is an end in itself whereas the other two are only the means for achieving this end. Security against foreign attack is a desirable and worthy object only in order to enable us to approach this goal. A strong and flexible constitution is an advantage only because we believe it will enable us to achieve our objects, better and more quickly, than if we are compelled to go on working under a system which has become at once rigid and rickety. But while we were bound to realise the superior nature of the third set of problems, we should have been careful at the same time to distinguish between two things which are very apt to be confused in political discussions—ultimate importance and immediate urgency.

We ought to have taken into our reckoning both the present state of the world and the permanent nature of man—all the stuff that dreams and wars are made on. We desired peace. We needed peace. Peace was a matter of life and death to all our hopes. If defeat should once break into the ring of our commonwealth—scattered as it is all over the world, kept together only by the finest and most delicate attachments—it must be broken irreparably. Our most immediate interest was therefore to keep defeat, and if possible, war, from bursting into our sphere—as Dutchmen by centuries of laborious vigilance have kept back the sea with dikes.

The numbers of our people in themselves were no security; nor our riches; nor even the fact that we entertained no aggressive designs. For as it was said long ago, 'it never troubles a wolf how many the sheep be.' They find no salvation in their heavy fleeces and their fat haunches; nor even in the meekness of their hearts, and in their innocence of all evil intentions.

The characteristic of this period may be summed up in one short sentence; the vast majority of the British people were bent and determined—as they had never been bent and determined before—upon leaving their country better than they had found it.

To some this statement will seem a paradox. "Was there ever a time," they may ask, "when there had been so many evidences of popular unrest, discontent, bitterness and anger; or when there had ever appeared to be so great an inclination, on the one hand to apathy and cynicism, on the other hand to despair?"