Laying the Blame on Labour

., LAYING THE BLAME ON LABOUR There is a capacity of exertion and self-denial in the masses of mankind whick ~s ..never known but on the rare occ'asions on which it i.s appealed to ·in the name of some great idea 01" elevated sentiment.~J. S. J.VhLL. MARSHAL Petain said, in the broadcast (of unknown authorship)· which he addressed to his countrymen on the night of France's capi-tulation, that it was a moral break-down that had led her to her doom; Probably it was. But for some at least of those most convinced that the break-down was moral, Marshal Petain's account of the decay was the very inverse of the truth. To him, moral declension meant revolt against disciplio ~; it meant insurgence by those bent on free thought, free speech, free con.duct. For recovery, he prescribed a new mood, whose :first expression should be an oath of allegiance to himself in that new office-unknown to the French Republic-which h~ assumed, by his own appointment, "Chief of S~ate.." A glance at some leading organs of British Conservative opinion w~ll show a like effort there to charge the national difficulties, if not the whole world chaos, against insurgent Labour. What the French Right sets forth in arraignment oJ Leon Blum, its British counterpart ~dvances against the memory of Ramsay MacDonald. What force is there in either reproach as an account of the downfall of France and the difficulties of Great Britain-not to mention the desperate travail of all Europe? I Leon Blum and Ramsay MacDonald, according to this theory, were demagogues ·who played upon the proletarian impulse of insubordination, and bribed the people with a promise of immediate "better times" into sacrifice of national safety. Thus the Entente became 'fatally disarmed, and other powers, not foolish enough to indulge such dissolute "democracy," took advantage of the right moment to strike. Hitler and Mussolini had the chance to decide at what stage the weakening of the victims had reached its extreme point, beyond which there would be a frantic effort at recovery. Alike in Paris and in London-so runs the theory-the voice of discerning patriotism was silenced by the spokesmen of working-class greed. Once again the demand, as in classical Roman times, wa~ for panem et circenses. Once again, as Plato reflected, democracy had its problem in government like that of a confectioner prosecuted by a doctor before a jury of children. Unfortunately for this account, it was not the Socialist leaders, either British or French, who determined the military preparations at the time when they were becoming so inadequate as to tempt aggression. In France, at least, there was no such "short-sighted economy" by whjch the national 333 ,/ . I . 334 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUART~RLY \ defence budget was starved. . Whatever else may be said against the scheme of the Maginot Line, on wnich the safety of France was staked, no one can reproach the Cha~ber of Deputies with parsimony in appropriation of funds for it. The astronomical figures for the expenditure on that futile prpject were accepted with no serious murmur from the Left, and the story that "what should have beeri spent on munitions was diverted to proletarian junketing" is one of those plausible guesses which a glance at the record will disprove. The national defence appropriation under. Blum's Government was not lower, but higher, than it had been under the Government which preceded. Moreover, the Blum Government did not come into power until the summer of 1936; and even if we grant that its indulgent mood to Labour stimulated those strikes in munition factories which kep·t back the national defence. effort, the collapse of 1940 cannot be thus explained . By no sheer exertion, however strenuous, at that time, could the handicap that lay ·on French defence have been overcome. It was no question of industry, but a question of method. The only method with the least hope was one which the pontiffs of the French War Office still refused to apply. They were still thinking in terms of the warfare in which they had themselves risen to fame...