The Canadian Forum/Editorial/1921-03

The Canadian Forum/Editorial 1921-03 written by [[|]]

The Problem of the Commonwealth

Parliament has been in session at Ottawa for several dreary weeks. Time was when the press and public of Canada were keenly concerned about the proceedings of the House of Commons and followed the debates with expectancy. To-day the daily press hardly notices the speeches. The public, too, is cynical or apathetic. The trouble is not that Canadians have ceased to take an interest in their country's destiny. They have lost faith in the sincerity of their representatives. Something of the attitude of Mr. J. H. Burnham is needed to restore that faith. Mr. Burnham was elected first as a Conservative, and then in 1917 as a supporter of the Union Government. He took the election statements made by responsible unionists seriously. When the war was won, when demobilization was complete, when the name as well as the purpose of the Union Government had ceased to exist, Mr. Burnham decided that he could not properly hold his seat. He resigned, as a protest against the continuance of the government without a mandate. Running as an independent candidate he was opposed by candidates selected by all four of the groups which have risen from the ashes of our two-party system. He conducted a remarkable campaign. He had no organization and held no meetings, simply giving the people the opportunity of expressing their choice free from influence so far as he was concerned. With a modesty infrequent, if not unique, among the public men of to-day, he refused even to vote for himself. He failed of re-election, though polling a good vote. It is quite possible that under a system of transferable voting, the only fair system in such a field, Mr. Burnham's courageous conduct might have been endorsed. At any rate he can walk the streets of Peterborough conscious that he has done something to vindicate the spirit of representative government.

Farmers in Ontario have set their minds on the extension of facilities for rural credit. Criticism is being offered by the banks and the position is taken that on the one hand the present financial institutions afford the capable farmer the credit he needs and on the other hand the state should hesitate to pledge its credit for the financing of any industry. The farmers employ three main arguments in supporting their claim. They point to the inconvenience and uncertainty connected with the renewal of notes at the end of the regular three months' term. Their view is that the farmer who needs credit for seasonal operations of from six to twelve months is not regarded as favourably by the banks, who are required to keep their assets liquid, as are merchants and others who can conduct their business on 60-day to 90-day paper. Again it is contended that the manager of the branch bank, generally urban in outlook and frequently changing his place, is less likely to appreciate the claims of a farmer than would a committee consisting largely of his neighbours, who would be the arbiters under a system of state-aided rural credit societies. As a result of these conditions the banks are not being freely used by farmers needing credit, and the loans made to farmers by the banks form a mere fraction of the deposits made by farmers in the banks. Thus in effect, it is held, the banks are employing rural capital to build up urban industry. The third claim is that the cost of money when borrowed is excessive, that a spread of from three to five per cent. between the deposit rate and the loan rate is unjustifiable. The question raised by the bills before the Ontario Legislature would appear to be whether amendments to the Bank Act would meet the case, and whether a spontaneous and unaided co-operation system has not advantages over one which asks for state aid and may prove a charge on the public purse.

The University of Toronto Library has recently been the recipient of a most interesting and public-spirited gift. Professor John Squair, who lately retired after many years of service from the chair of French language and literature in the University of Toronto has given to the Library a Dominion War Bond, the proceeds of which are to be [p. 164] used to build up a special collection in the Library of French-Canadian literature. It is hoped by Professor Squair that his gift will, on the one hand, bring English-speaking Canadians to realize more fully the many excellent qualities which French-Canadian literature possesses, and, on the other hand, persuade French-speaking Canadians that the Province of Quebec is not so ignored and neglected in other parts of Canada as they are, perhaps, inclined to think. With similar collections already in process at the Toronto Public Library and at Victoria College we may expect to hear less in future of the patois legend. Indeed it would seem that already the light has begun to penetrate the orange-tinted mists which rise from the marshes of Toronto Bay. A few months ago the parents of children attending one of its public schools petitioned the School Board to have French introduced as a subject of study in their school. More recently the Hon. A. David accepted a dinner invitation from the School Men's Club of Toronto and upheld the Educational System of the Province of Quebec before a keen and enthusiastic audience of some two hundred teachers. The quiet efforts of men like Professor Squair, aided by the inevitable revulsion from bigotry, are beginning to have effect.

Clerus Anglicanus Stupor Mundi. Fearful lest we may become complacent, in these piping days of peace, the Dean of St. Paul's has been at it again. He has been lecturing at Epsom on the doom of the white workingman and is quoted to the following effect: "The ratio of wages to output all over the East gives the native manufacturers an enormous advantage over American and European industry. Economically the Asiatic is greatly superior to the European. The coloured races will outwork and underlive and thus eventually exterminate the white." We can recall only one prominent pessimist who can fairly claim to have rivalled Dr. Inge. "Missus," shouted the fat boy to the old lady, "I wants to make your flesh creep!") There must be many who read not without amusement Dr. Inge's pronouncements: who have seen the "far more efficient labour" of the continent of Asia using tools as simple as the shovel with less effect than any western navvy. There must be many more who have watched the persistent and continued agitation of "native capitalists" in Asia, for protection against the competition of workers in Lancashire and elsewhere, whose wages are notoriously high. There must even be some who justify the labour legislation (such as it is) of Europe and America, on the ground of its "survival value." Clergymen, like cobblers, win respect by sticking to their trade. Bad political economy is not a substitute for the gospel; and that, we believe, the Dean of St. Paul's has really studied.

A recent report from England shows that we may expect a continuation of the traditional difference of opinion about Indian affairs. The difference is itself a product of habit and experience: one party is composed of the people who are accustomed to issue commands and secure obedience from subordinates; the other party has been trained in a democratic school of politics and naturally regards persuasion as a better instrument than force. India, during the last twenty years, has been the outstanding example of conflict between these two attitudes; what is progress and reform to one type can only be regarded by the other as loss of prestige and disintegration. General Dyer recently announced that the followers of Mr. Gandhi are "the personified forces of all evil," and concluded in the following manner: "With confidence I say that the time will come to India very shortly when the strong hand will be exerted against the malicious perverters of good order." To this every sensible man will give unqualified support; the important point is to decide who are the malicious perverters. If we may judge the tree by its fruits. General Dyer is not the person to decide the point; further, since General Dyer's importance is chiefly due to the fact that he is a type, we may conclude that the type in question is not what we require to help us to a correct decision.

It is true, as General Dyer says, that the agitators are few in number; the great mass of people knows nothing about political agitation. If so, General Dyer's action at Amritsar (his chief claim to public attention) was neither war nor politics. His tactics were directed wrongly and he succeeded in executing those whom he now acquits. At the same time he committed the fatal error of making martyrs. Any one who has read the report of the last Congress meeting will remember how the "Martyrs of Amritsar" figured even in the temperate speech of the President. In short, the British Raj, of which the General speaks, is at present hampered by two things more than all others — Amritsar and General Dyer. Apart from the masses, whom he discounts, and the agitators, whom he has not really touched, there is a third class whom the General is incapable of remembering — the loyal and remarkably statesmanlike group of native reformers to whom in the end we must look for salvation. They are the key to the situation because, not being foreigners, they are not regarded as natural enemies and, not being fanatics, they do not intend to sacrifice national prosperity for the sake of apparent revenge. Those who are the really important leaders can make little headway against passions fomented by the actions or the words of General Dyer. They cannot wholeheartedly defend as impartial and generous a Government which neither repents nor recompenses. A public repudia-[p. 165]tion of the acts, persons, and sentiments now destined to fester in the public mind as the "Amritsar tragedy" would enormously assist the British Government in India and satisfy the sentiments of British citizens everywhere: it would also strengthen the hands of those in India who understand and can still control the "agitators." Control there must be, and the leaders in Indian politics are willing to accept both control and direction, but the spirit of General Dyer's threats they cannot accept as the real spirit of British diplomacy; nor need they.

The Beggar's Opera came to Canada, contrary to the expectations raised in one of our recent editorials. We understand that it is to be staged again in New York after a half-success at Greenwich Village earlier in the year. It will also tour in Australia and possibly be given — in French — in Paris. Meanwhile the Hammersmith performances have run without interruption into their fourth hundred, thus bidding fair to rival Mary Rose and — who knows? — Chu Chin Chow. During the week in Toronto the piece gained steadily in popularity and if it should return it would doubtless be heard once more by at least ninety per cent. of those who have already felt its gusto and by many others who missed the chance. Enjoyment of the piece was tempered here and there by a certain mental reservation in respect of Macheath's babies and the propriety of their appearance on the stage. For ourselves we thought they provided the one sobering spectacle of the evening, the only point of contact between a burst of high spirits and our own lugubrious civilization. We wish that the country might be inoculated with these high spirits so that the philosophy of cakes and ale which has kept ancient nations young might save us from hardened arteries in our early youth. For we are in grave danger of making our world altogether too unlike that of The Beggar's Opera, and the day may come when we shall take as our national emblem, not the beaver or the merry maple leaf, but the front elevation of a pre-occupied cow drinking water out of a trough.

After less than a century of uninterrupted publication The Athenaeum has now ceased to exist as an independent journal. It was until yesterday a standard weekly organ of literary opinion, academic but not reactionary. When the war came it carried on as a sociological monthly and then returned to its former traditions as a literary weekly under the editorship of Mr. Middleton Murry, who has come to the fore in London as a constructive critic of literature and art. Under his guidance The Athenaeum had a character entirely its own among London periodicals. It was up-to-date without being self-conscious, intellectual without being patronizing. Those who believe in aesthetic criticism as a civilizing force should turn up The Athenaeum's review of the now famous Reynard the Fox^[1] and survey from thence the ground upon which The Athenaeum stood. The Athenaeum now joins forces with The Nation as The Nation and The Athenaeum. We think the union an exceedingly propitious one, though we regret the partial disappearance of a historic journal of high traditions. There is a genuine affinity between these two papers which makes their union something more than a business deal. Given good fortune without which nothing can be counted on, they may produce between them an organ of opinion which will play a big part in the difficult years that are ahead of us. We wish them success and Canadian readers.

A correspondent writes: —

For some weeks occasional bulletins have been appearing in the English newspapers of the condition of Prince Kropotkin. He was said to be living near Moscow. News came a fortnight ago that he had died and obituary notices appeared also in the English newspapers. The report has now been contradicted although the extreme difficulty of obtaining reliable news from Russia renders certainty in the subject impossible at the present time. The figure of Prince Kropotkin must go down in history as one of the most pathetic figures of our time. He sacrificed for an idea not merely a great position but even the most ordinary comforts of life, and he maintained a singular purity of conduct and absolute single mindedness of purpose for more than forty years, living in exile and frequently, in spite of his industry, in the most frugal circumstances. He idealized the Russian people and imagined that the day of the Revolution would be the dawn of a new and great epoch for Russia. He lived to see these illusions dispelled, to see the forces of the Revolution mastered and controlled by a group for whom he entertained and could not but entertain the most profound aversion — a group which trampled beneath its feet the whole structure of Russian life, ruining not only the cultivated society of Russia but the peasantry and the proletariat, and destroying civilization after the manner of the Scythian hordes which swept over Eastern Europe in earlier ages. Kropotkin never contemplated the possibility of this thing. He was so great a believer in spontaneous organization and in mutual good will that he overlooked the possibility of a dictatorship of inferior minds and the holocaust of organized life.

While the main interest of Kropotkin's life was the problem of society, he gave promise of becoming one of the most original men of science of his time. He was, even in his youth, recognized as the author of a wholly new view of the orography of Asia. Later his knowledge of the natural sciences suggested the series of articles which he wrote for the Nineteenth Century under the general title of "Recent Science," while he made many important contributions to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His friend, Robertson Smith, did his best without success to induce Kropotkin to allow himself to be nominated for a new chair in Geography in the University of Cambridge which had been projected on his account. Alike for intellectual gifts of a very high order and for a moral elevation still higher, Kropotkin must be regarded as belonging to the first rank among men of genius of the past century.

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1. ↑ WIKINOTE: August 7, 1886, p.165-6. The review was to A. Douglas Ainslie’s English rendering of Goethe’s version.