SPURIOUS DEMOCRACY

DEMOCRACY, which to-day means civilization, is threatened with invasion by its enemies. They assail its principles of liberty and progress with a gospel of autocracy for the few and slavery for the multitude. But, democracy has dangers within as well as without; and it is the internal weakness which makes the external danger formidable. It has adopted undemocratic ideas, and it tends to throw down its arms and bulwarks. And, in ignorance of the real nature of the movement that beats against its gates, it seems inclined to draw the bolts. Did Englishmen but know what that bitter, destructive enthusiasm called Bolshevism really is, in its deeds and fruits, not one of them who is not a degenerate could think of it with anything but loathing. But they do not know; and, meanwhile, principles fatal to democratic health undermine the power of resistance.

Genuine "democracy " is profoundly true to humanity. It works through freedom, but not without discipline, for the general good. But, a false humanitarianism, which reverses human values and menaces the common welfare, has been largely adopted behind its walls. It is under this spirit that revolutions are begun. They spring from a pity which is incapable of satisfying itself or giving satisfaction; which, as its failure grows upon it, gives the reins more and more to envy, hatred and destruction, and, in the end, works with diabolic cruelty.

As it starts on its career it appeals, often from most unchristian lips, to the Christian duty to "bear the infirmities of the weak." But, it is too often forgotten, by those who hasten to respond, that this Christian duty cannot be carried out in a society where no one is to be encouraged to be strong and where weakness is accorded a privileged position-a society which, setting out to bear the infirmities of the weak, puts itself under the weak and lets them govern it.

Such a policy is profoundly unwise and inhumane; and,

though it may be welcomed by a bastard "Christian " sentimentality, it is inconsistent with a living and authentic Christianity, which stands always for the higher vitality and is misrepresented or perverted when it is set in opposition to human welfare.

The humanitarian movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which made the beginnings of modern democracy, was inspired by a thoroughly healthy sympathy with the sufferings of the poor. And the Religious Revival, led by Wesley and Whitefield, had a great deal to do with it. It was more than consistent with Christianity-it was Christian-to work for the removal of privileges which imposed unfair burdens and disabilities on large masses of the people and gave rewards to the accident of birth without regard for merit. And, releasing as it did great numbers of people from oppression, this movement added to our strength as a nation, and, as reform followed reform, tended, with occasional set-backs, to enhance our efficiency. The humane desire to give liberty to the prisoners of circumstance -to accord something like equality of opportunity to allwas the constructive impulse which, joined with the principle of seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number, constituted the basis of true democratic policy.

Democracy to-day is out of health-dangerously sobecause these principles of liberty and community are less popular than they formerly were. The most energetic forces making for change are striving to restrict liberty and to create a new privileged class-a class which shall receive pre-eminent consideration not because it represents some sort of inherited power, but because it excites our pity as the "under dog." The old democracy sought to give the under dog his chance; the new and undemocratic democracy aims at taking away the chances of other people by not permitting them to do anything better than the under dog may be able or disposed to do it. Accordingly, it has become not a liberating but an enslaving movement. It sets the weak and unworthy in a position of mastery over the community. It works for the satisfaction of a backward minority against the interests of the greatest

happiness of the greatest number; and, absorbing all democratic principle in an overgrown sense of pity, it goes beyond the giving comfort to the less capable (which is what we all want to do): it sets him in authority and does its best to secure that he shall not suffer from unsatisfied envy. He sets the standard for the community; he is the aristocrat of Unworth.

We seem to be ignoring the fact that the community must suffer if it fails to reward efficiency and sets its mark of approbation where Nature handicaps or excludes from running at all. We must allow our judgment to govern some of our emotions. We view with sympathy the incapacity of the horse, and the yet greater incapacity of the donkey, to compete with the power of petrol. That is legitimate in the region of feeling. But, the state of our great thoroughfares, where the slowest vehicle-pushed by hand, it may be-governs the situation, is a symbol of a folly which is to be found not in our streets alone. It is not good, if you be moving about to any useful purpose, that you should receive more consideration when you desert your motor for an old "four-wheeler " ; that you should find yourself free to cut corners (on the wrong side) at your leisure and be master of the road, till the donkeyman chooses to get in your way. From the point of view of the community, the old cab ought not to control the taxi nor the donkey-cart the cab.

Out of the state of things in which this preference prevails we may come to a situation like that in the France of 1793, where the aristocrat and the bourgeois found it advantageous to appear ragged and unkempt. For, in fact, this spirit the spirit that gives power to the objects of its pity, and privileges, instead of liberating, the under dog, is the chief influence making for revolution. It is also a spirit which makes for racial decay.

Faced as we are with a revolutionary movement, the racial aspect of its influence may seem almost negligible: racial questions take years to work out, and revolution is an immediate menace calling for instant measures. But, grave though the moment is, we can best deal with it by

not forgetting aspects of the situation which will continue to be important when the present conspiracy against humanity has been defeated. If we neglect to do this, if we continue to privilege the racially C3 people, as we are doing to-day, we shall still suffer from a process of decay in the years when we may no longer be in danger of violent tyranny. We may lose in a generation all that we may seem to save to-day if the physical and moral quality of our people encourages the increase of inferior types and penalizes possessors of Al characteristics. We do, quite reasonably, a great deal for the C3 people. We do what we can to improve away the conditions which make it difficult for them to survive. But we should not wish to help them to multiply in their C3 character.

We have to recognize that we have suffered a loss of racial value, in the recent war, greater beyond all comparison than has been borne by any other nation. All wars have a tendency to produce racial damage, because they set a blood-tax on young manhood. And modern wars do not do much in the way of redressing the balance by bringing pestilence and starving to operate against those who are unfit to assist in the struggle. But, in the recent war all the factors tending to racial mischief were greatly increased in severity by our foolish dependence so long on the practice of voluntary enlistment. The effect of this was to reduce the moral as well as the physical value of our surviving national breed. And at the same time we gave encouragement to less valuable elements of our race by a domestic policy for pacifying the people who live thriftlessly and thoughtlessly by transferring to them a great part of the means which would have enabled the classes of citizens who are most thrifty in their habits and most civic in their mind to bear the cost of family life.

This was, from the point of view of race welfare as well as from that of justice, a very serious mistake. We gave encouragement where it was least wanted-where Nature, in fact, in many cases, would have applied discouragement. And we did a great deal to burden those whom Nature and sound civic discrimination would have sought to bless.

It should be remembered that all through Nature inferior types tend to reproduce themselves rapidly; but they are not reproduced for long survival. We in our human world, especially under the guidance of Christian ideas, protect those whom natural forces would destroy. Nature kills off the incapable; we preserve them. On moral and Christian grounds we help the weak; and the services rendered by strength to weakness under Christian inspiration are among the most beautiful passages of human experience. They need by no means be wasteful. They may stand justified in worth: "For the glory that redounds therefrom to humankind and what we are."

But, neither religion, nor morals, nor common sense requires to put the matter at its extremity of absurdity and mischief-that we should favour the propagation of feeble-minded and lunatic stocks, or the procreation of children by established criminal types, or by people whose bodies are saturated with the inevitably transmissible results of vice, or with tendencies to diseases against which science cannot offer immunity.

Social ameliorations, arresting the pressure of Nature on the unfit, must be accompanied by the application of eugenic principles which can serve as a moral substitute for natural selection, if we are to be guided by the rule of the greatest happiness of the greatest number and act justly and humanly towards all. Let us not forget that Progress is not an automatic or invariable thing; that many a race has died for no other fault than that it was weak; that the tendency of any particular species is, after a time, to extinction.

In our human world, intellect and character can interfere with and even arrest this tendency. But the interference must not take the line of encouraging the weaker elements at the expense of the more valuable. If that course be followed, Nature will, sooner or later, insist on the execution of her law, the operation of which can only be suspended by the wisdom, never by the folly of men.

It is a humane duty, as well as a social necessity, to limit the range of people who are unfit for unrestricted responsibility. There is no charity in encouraging them to