Harold J. Laski

I do not, of course, mean that a citizen in wartime should be free to communicate secret military plans to the enemy; I do mean that if a man feels, like Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, that British policy in South Africa is “methods of…

Obviously critical activity of this kind will be unpopular, and a government which helps in the making of its unpopularity will find the task of suppression easy.

But it will pay a heavy price for suppression.

The winged words of criticism scatter, only too often, the seeds of peace.

Wartime unity of outlook, in a word, is never worth the cost of prohibitions.

If the policy of a state which decides upon war does not command the general assent of citizens, it has no right to make war.

If the number of those hostile is considerable, the policy is, at the least, a dubious one.

The only way, in fact, to attain the right is by free discussion; and a period of crisis, when the perception of right is difficult, only makes the emphasis upon freedom more fundamental.

No one now believes the wartime lie that Germany was solely responsible for the war; her responsibility may be greater than that of some others, but it is agreed that the burden of Russia is at least as heavy and that war, in any case, was…

But, in the interest of national unity, it was regarded as essential to represent Germany as the sole conspirator against European peace.

Her virtues were denied, her achievements belittled, until what Mr Lippmann terms a “stereotype” of her was built up for public use which made her appear to the average man a criminal who could not be too severely punished.

The statesmen who constructed this stereotype knew that it was untrue; but they hoped, doubtless, to escape its consequences, when the victory had been won.

They had so successfully repressed all effort at reasonable delineation, that the atmosphere of hate was unconquerable.

They had no alternative to a Carthaginian peace because that seemed, to the masses they had deceived, the only possible course for justice to take.

The world, in this context, has paid the price for the suppression of truth; and another phase of the suppression should also be remembered.

It is usually agreed that some of the worst elements in the Peace of Versailles were the result of the Secret Treaties by which the Allies, exclusive of America, bound themselves to each other before the entrance of America into the war.

Nowhere among the associated powers was the desire for a just peace more widespread than in America; nowhere, also, was the discussion of war-aims more rigorously curtailed as a hindrance to the full prosecution of the war.

Had discussion of the peace been full and effective in those critical years, the liberal instincts of President Wilson might, when reinforced by the weight of informed opinion, have compelled at least a considerable mitigation of the…

They had been published in the American Press after their issue by the Bolsheviks in 1917; full discussion would have revealed their inadequacies, and enabled the President to counteract what there was of evil in their substance.

Here, in fact, as elsewhere, uncontrolled power acted like a miasma to blot out the only atmosphere in which truth could be made manifest.

No government was compelled to do its duty, because the means were wanting to inform it of what its duty was.

The powers had forgotten, or had chosen to forget, that they could not hope for a just peace save by freeing the minds of men and women who cared for justice.

The individual, in fact, does not stand alone; he joins hands with others of like mind to persuade, sometimes to compel, society to the adoption of the view they share.

That a man must be free to combine with his fellows for joint-action in some realm in which they have a kindred interest is, I take it, of the essence of liberty.

The point it is important to examine is the degree of control, if any, that the state is entitled to exercise over voluntary associations.