Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/253

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THE FREEDOM OF MEN
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the essential respect that they would cling to power and continue blindly to organise until brought down by a new revolution. So the wheels of History would revolve again with the same recurrent phases of disorder and tyranny, and future students would be taught to recognise one more 'Age' that of the Proletariat, following on the Ages of Ecclesiasticism, Militarism, and Capitalism. Become supreme, the Labour leaders of the future would no more hesitate to use machine-guns against the mob than any other panic-stricken riders of the whirlwind.

But if it be held that organisation based on local communities is essential to the stable and therefore peaceable life of Nations, then those local communities must have as complete and balanced a life of their own as is compatible with the life of the Nation itself. In no other way can you prevent a 'class and interest' organisation from crossing powerfully your locality organisation. As long as you allow a great metropolis to drain most of the best young brains from the local communities, to cite only one aspect of what goes on, so long must organisation centre unduly in the metropolis and become inevitably an organisation of nation-wide classes and interests. I believe that whether we