Democracy and Revolution.
Democracy was begotten of revolution. Our own Republic and democracy are no exceptions to this rule. Revolution is justified in self-defence for which the necessity arises when every other means has failed. In revolution, as in war, self-defence is morally permissible. Revolution is permissible when as during the World War-administrative and political chaos threaten; and it is justified if it brings reform and improvement. But democracy does not mean perpetual revolution. The war, and the upheavals it brought on, stimulated revolutionary fancies. But war fever and the excitement of revolution die down. Men are compelled to resume steady and peaceful work; and, for some of them, it is not easy. Political and social Utopianism, such as the notion that the State is omniscient and all powerful, has swollen the demands upon it so inordinately that disillusionment has entailed dejection and weariness; and, as usual, men are apt to blame others, not themselves, for failure. We shall have to overcome the revolutionary spirit as we overcame militarism. Bloodshed is an evil inheritance of the past. We desire a State, a Europe and a mankind without war and without revolution. In a true democracy, war and revolution will be obsolete and inadequate, for democracy is a system of life. Life means work and a system of work; and work, unostentatious work, is peace. Work, bodily and mental, will get the better both of the aristocratic and the revolutionary spirit. Even Marx and Engels had to revise the view of revolution which they put forward in 1848, to recognize that machinery, invention, technical progress, applied science and work are the surest and most efficient means of social revolution, and to declare themselves in favour of Parliamentarism.
Democracy, say its opponents contemptuously, consists of perpetual compromise. Its partisans admit the impeachment, and take it as a compliment. Compromise, not of principles but of practice, is necessary in political life as in all fields of human activity. Even the extremest extremists as, for example, Lenin when in power, make compromises. The policy of cultured and conscientious statesmen and parties is not, however, to reach a compromise between opposites but to carry out a programme based on knowledge and on the understanding of history and of the situation of their State and nation in Europe and in the world. This means, once again, a world policy. The object is deliberately to pursue a clear aim, not
