TOPICS OF THE DAY.
" BROKEN PLEDGES " THERE have been many bad things, reckless things, and irresponsible things done in the course of the war, but in our opinion nothing has been so bad as the action taken of late by a section of the Press in regard to the grievances of the married men who must soon be called up under the Derby scheme. A more dangerous, a more unpatriotic movement than that to encourage, nay, to incite the married men to believe themselves unjustly treated, and to suggest to them that the Govern- ment in general, and Lord Derby in particular, have broken their solemn pledges, cannot be imagined. That the married men have grounds for complaint we do not deny, nor are we going to be too hard in blaming them for a certain amount of grumbling for what has happened in connexion with the Government's " panicky " policy in regard to the exempted trades. The Government, or rather certain Departments of the Government, have undoubtedly been up till now far too anxious about the depletion of civil labour, and have given opportunities to shirkers which they ought never to have given. These mistakes, however, will be corrected as soon as possible. To suggest, because of them, to men who are called upon to make great sacrifices that they have been unjustly dealt with is to do both the married men and the country a monstrous wrong. Between promising to perform a most serious and burdensome duty in the future, and the actual per- formance of that duty, involving as it may the supreme sacrifice, there is bound to be a period of indecision and weakness—a time when all a man's courage and hardihood are required to prevent him from catching at straws and finding excuses for escaping from the consequences of his promise. What are we to say of those exponents of public opinion who, in order to curry favour with their readers, or to render unpopular a Government or indi- viduals in a Government whom they dislike, seize upon this period of indecision, this hour of agony, when men are face to face with the greatest crisis in their lives, to insinuate an unmanning, a will-clouding suggestion ? For by talking about broken pledges they suggest that, after all, the attested married men may escape, or at any rate - postpone, the fulfilment of the duty which they solemnly undertook.
Let us assume, though it is far from the truth, that the married men have a sound case against the Government, and that the Government have not merely blundered, but have been grossly careless in the fulfilment of their pledges. Even if we do make this assumption, it does not and cannot free the married men from the promise to serve their country in arms which they gave when they attested. A breach of duty by one man can never be an excuse for a breach of duty by another. Still less can it excuse those public writers who, themselves free from personal temptations and anxieties, incite the attested men to what are legally and morally acts of bad citizenship, if not indeed breaches of military duty. It will be alleged, no doubt, that we are begging the question, that the married men who attested under the group system only did so conditionally, and that, the conditions not having been fulfilled, they are free 'to protest against being asked " at present " to carry out the military obligation they undertook. We do not want to argue the matter on lawyer-like lines, or to make fine verbal distinctions. We must, however, protest with our utmost power against the ignoble spirit in which the matter is being dealt with by a section of the Press. The essential and operative part of the pledge to the married men was that compulsion should be used in the case of the single men—unless it could be shown that the un- married men had voluntarily come forward in such large numbers that those who remained over were a negligible quantity. But the unmarried men did not voluntarily come forward in sufficient numbers. Therefore the Government's pledge to introduce compulsion had to be made good. Accordingly a Bill enacting compulsion was introduced and passed into law, and is now being apphecl.. Its passage made operative the attestation of the married groups. In our opinion, the Government when introducing compulsion, moved by fears that recruiting might very seriously deplete the workers in certain trades, allowed far too many exemptions. Theoretically, no doubt, after all that has happened with respect to munitions, it would have been madness to do anything which would have left any munition factories derelict. Again, since coal is an essential for the Navy, for the making of munitions, and for Government work of all kinds, adequate provision must be made for winning coal. It would be useless to try to win the war in Flanders if we had already lost it in the mines. Furthermore, there was a natural anxiety to keep the land well cultivated and our oversell ships running. Experience, however, has shown that the Government let themselves be much too greatly affected by these anxieties, and that the various Departments, and especially the Board of Agriculture, clutched far too eagerly at the unmarried workers. But even assuming all this, the assumption does not point to anything in the nature of a broken pledge. The very most it does, or can do, is to give ground for soreness and grumbling to men in the married groups. When the Government pledges were framed it was common talk that in certain trades heavy exemptions would have to be given to unmarried men lest the essential and war work of the nation should be interfered with or even suspended. The whole matter, therefore, is one of degree—of how many or how few men ought to be exempted. Compvlsion was the vital thing, the essence of the contract, and no man suggested that by giving a pledge to employ compulsion the Govern- ment bound themselves to enlist so many hundred thousand men before they called up the married groups. Again, the Government always had, and still have, the right—and it is a right that we, for our part, very much wish they would exercise—of applying compulsion all round—but here, of course, also with certain occupations exempted, for that is a condition from which complete escape is impossible. Therefore the only absolute ground of grievance that the attested married men have is that conceivably they have been called up more quickly than they would have been if the Government—while applying compulsion as they have applied it—had not been so lavish in their exemptions. As a matter of fact, even if the Government had not exempted any of the unmarried men working in munition factories, in the coal mines, in ships, or on the land, the need for calling up the attested married men would have been as great as it is now, for the very good reason that we want, not any definite number of men, but literally every single man whom we can possibly obtain to put into the line. That is the plain truth. The need for men is urgent, and it is good economy, for only through men can we end the war. We go far beyond the narrow view of those who are haggling over the words used by this or that representative of the Government in the period before the passage of the Compulsion Bill. We demand that all the men who can possibly be spared from munition factories, mines, and the land should be compelled to serve, not in order to satisfy the married men, but to satisfy the imperative military needs of the hour. We want them brought forward to fight our battles, and not merely to satisfy the pettifoggers and grievance-mongers of the Press. Before we leave the humiliating and disastrous agitation to inspire married men in the groups with a sense that they have been deceived, we cannot but give expression to our indignation at the personal attacks on Lord Derby. Lord Derby accepted with his eyes open a burden in the public interest such as few men have been found to shoulder. When he first undertook to try to squeeze another million men out of the voluntary system, and if he failed to proceed to the necessarily exceedingly unpopular task of introducing compulsion—that was, in effect, the job to which he put his hand—he knew very well what he was doing. For not flinching from a task so dangerous, so difficult, and so liable to failure he deserves the deepest gratitude of the whole country. When the shrill scoldings and interested invectives of the present hour have dis- appeared, as disappear they will, and the nation is able to judge justly, it will be recognized that no man has played a more honourable, a more high-minded, a more courageous, and a more patriotic part than Lord Derby. Again and again, had he been a popularity-hunter, or had he been inspired by the ordinary politician's instinct for avoiding personal responsibility, and for hedging so that unpleasant consequences should fall not upon him but upon somebody else, he could have found opportunities for playing a skulking part. Instead he boldly took the straight and manly course. The nation was in sore need and he did not hesitate. He stuck to his guns like the gallant man he is.
And now for one specific point. It is specially alleged against Lord Derby that, speaking on October 19th, he led the married men who were then being pressed to attest to believe that very many months, or even the whole war, might pass before " the older men are called out." Well, what if he did ? At the very worst he made a mistake, like plenty of other men, as to the numbers of men that he would obtain under his scheme. Presumably, for we are not in his confidence, he did not realize how very large would be the number of medical rejections, and he certainly did not realize how fiercely the exempting Departments would struggle to keep back unmarried men—how, in a word, they would play the part of the selfish men in a tent who try to grab the chief share of the blankets for themselves. To seize upon half-a-dozen optimistic words, to isolate them, and then to found on them an allegation, for such it is, of broken faith, is an act of injustice so gross that one might have imagined it would have revolted those who were tempted to use it.
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