The Reaction of a Radical

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

I HAVE always classed myself as a radical. I have been ever mindful of the wise man’s advice to the student, to be radical while he was young, for then his chance of seeing the world grow up to him before he died would be good; whereas, if he was not radical in youth, he would spend the rest of his life seeing the world grow away from him. I have always felt confident that I was abreast of my time, possibly a step or two in advance, and I have looked with a certain gentle condescension upon those who have ignored wisdom and accepted their birthright of conservatism without struggle or protest. I have always belonged to radical organizations and contributed to radical causes. I have argued the beauties of socialism; I have been complaisant about anarchism, philosophically administered, the dynamite carefully left out; I have made scathing remarks about Capital; I have felt a warm distaste for the selfish rich who grind the faces of the poor. I have pointed morals, using as my text the possession of great country estates and many automobiles, always excepting the Ford. I have fought for the downtrodden servant-class; I have made ‘waiting on yourself ’ a tenet of my democracy; I have been with those who scorned palliatives, who would strike at the root of society’s ills, who would not hesitate to tear the world to pieces and build it anew. I envisaged this world we radicals could construct, the true Internationale, with race-hatreds obliterated, economic inequalities forever adjusted, love and peace assured to all mankind. It was a happy life of blithe denunciation, clear-cut theories, a pleasant sense of moral if not actual leadership, and no undue upheaval to upset my equilibrium.

And now what has happened? The new order is upon us, but where is my eager, welcoming spirit? I feel as if there were a pistol at my head and I were asked to stand and deliver. I fumble feverishly for my remembered treasures, but everywhere find only emptiness. The walls of my faith are falling in upon me, like a house built of cards.

Who am I that called himself a radical? Do I embrace Bolshevism? Not at all! My moral nature sees it as cruelty and selfishness, the old rule of force in new hands. My intelligence says that the scheme is too simple for the complexities of human nature. To take from him that hath and give to him that hath not may be all very well as far as it goes; but when you have done that, how much further along are you? I do not see, as in happier days I might, a new truth obscured by the present bloodshed and misery. I see only a great people led astray, the return to just living a path of tragic expiation.

When I turn from that picture of suffering to the easy assurance of the suffragettes of England, who are endeavoring to introduce a soviet form of government into their native land,

I have a feeling of consternation. I do not say it aloud, but I wonder whether a thing, just because it is new, is better than that which is old. If we could give the old a new name, it might help. Advertisers do it with breakfast foods and cigars, to the satisfaction of the consumer. He gets the novelty of a new expectation, with all the excellent qualities of the original article, and the world is happier thereby. Like a coward, I also wonder if it is necessary for all the changes to be made at once. Replacing old parts with new might be easier to bear than installing an entire new engine, especially when we are navigating through air which is full of holes.

I like to have the workingman receive as large wages as the industry can bear, but I am not so harsh in my judgment of Capital as I once was. During the war I saved what I could and bought bonds, Liberty and otherwise, and I find I do not regard the money-power entirely in the abstract as I once did. I cannot help wondering about my own little dividends, surely innocently enough acquired through long practice in self-denial, and hoping that they will not be jeopardized by all the labor upheaval. I even find myself thinking that violence and lawlessness are not the perquisites of Capital alone; that Labor is sometimes selfish and unreasonable; that sympathetic strikes are not necessarily altruism, but may sometimes be shocking breaches of faith; and — concession fatal to the spirit of the reformer — that there are two sides to every question. I have always believed in organized labor, as must the mildest of radicals, but I cannot quite reconcile myself to the police joining the national group. Of course, class loyalties are good and necessary, just as are family loyalties, but I wonder apologetically whether there are not impersonal loyalties which are of a still higher order. Our police are men of dignity and worth, but should we be justified in expecting that many human beings, in the presence of divided loyalties, could be like that Brutus of old who unfalteringly condemned his own son to death?

The idea of railroad ownership of the government (I started to write it the other way round, but perhaps this does fuller justice to the plan) I have applauded in my younger days. But now, baldly demanded, a threat attached to the proposal, no coating of idealism to sweeten the bolus, its very advocates hardly troubling to veil the crudity of its selfishness, the whole scheme leaves me cold. Not many years ago I should have said lightheartedly, ‘On with the great experiment; let joy be unconfined.’ But not now.

Is it age, or the weariness produced by the anxious years of the war? or is it that, when it comes to the real test, I am afraid of the new, of the untried? Am I, after all, only a conservator of the past, one of those obstructionists who are the despair of the young reformer? Am I a stand-patter — a creature who has always figured in my imagination as a donkey with his ears back and his feet firmly embedded in the earth?

It is a painful thought to me to contemplate changing sides and sitting on the benches of the opposition. There is cold comfort in being the tail of the kite, even though recognizing that the tail is as essential as the kite. I try to stiffen my faith in myself by saying that not every change is progress, and that restlessness is not necessarily aspiration. But why should I not frankly acknowledge that I am middle-aged, and that my reaction is a biological necessity? Youth is always for change for its own sake; and is not age, with diminishing vision, halting step, and blunted hearing, reluctant to stumble to its eternal rest in a world whose furniture has been hastily rearranged by restless youth? Or must I agree with the unfaltering extremist, — whom neither life nor experience changes, — that I was never anything but a parlor radical?