To the October number of the nineteenth Century and After" Mr, St. Lee Strachey contributes an article under the title of the "Mechanism of Revolution." Premising that our world is oppressed cly the fear of revolution, he contends that the only safeguard against it is to understand how anarchic mutations in human affairs come about. First, those who desire to defeat revolution must educate themselves and their followers in the work of opposition. Secondly, it should be understood that the opportunity for, indeed the cause of, revolution is the failure of those who hold the reins of government to govern. This is an incitement to some ambitious minority to seize the being of power, and they, being the assailants, always have an advantage over the defenders, especially when the latter are incompetent. Then, when a minority gets into power, it is obliged by the force of circumstances to be a blood-stained tyrant.
Mr. Strachey defines what he means by governments ceasing to govern by instancing the refusal to take up at once the challenge of Sinn Fein, or the other challenge of "direct action" thrown down by the Labour extremists on directions from Moscow. Another example is to be found in the breakdown of the State's finances, High taxation always forms the seed ground of revolution, against which firm and sound finance is one of the best shields. Yet how seldom is low ta: tion the aim of democratic rulers. Mr. Strachey points out how dangerous is the plan of yielding to the demands of the revolutionaries, or of trying to sow dissension in their ranks by playing off the moderates against the extremists. A wise anti-revolutionary government must help the majority to find true expression for its desires; and in this connexion he declares that the two great parties in the State have been guilty of a capital error in not having provided us long ago with the machinery of the referendum in regard to essential, and especially constitutional legislation as opposed to merely administrative laws.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.