The Lost Leader by
Vigilant
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribband to stick in his coat'
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote
What reflections the above few lines of Robert
Browning’s awake in the minds of Labor’s sons to-day. How
often have we pinned our trust to men who could and did withstand hard
knocks and blows, abuse, slander, malicious falsehood, victimisations,
and the hundred slings and arrows that fell to the lot of labor’s
champions, and yet, before the mild breezes of prosperity faded utterly.
Look over the long list of apostates from the Labor cause, and one or
two points in common stand out against all others. Most prominent is the
attitude of the Press. Before their apostasy no vulgar terms of vituperation
are too damning to apply to them. After, what a change! These men are
the very elect of the nation. The columns of the dailies are open and
eager for their defence. Always, too, we hear that it is not these men
who left Labor, but Labor that left them. If the Labor Party had only
maintained its original purity, disinterestedness, etc., these things
would never have been; and endless twaddle in similar strain. In fact,
one would imagine that it would only be necessary to turn back some ten
years in the files of the journal to discover articles fervidly in support
of Labor. But do we? The facts are quite to the contrary. The new party
at its birth was subjected to an unmitigated and unscrupulous campaign
of slander and falsehood. Its principles were distorted, its champions
libelled and held up to public ridicule as disloyalists, traitors, dynamiters,
cut-throats, blackmailers, associates of criminals, advocates of free-lust,
atheists, drunkards and birds of passage. To Press ridicule was added
social and business boycott, and even public insult in the open street.
Such was the genesis of Labor. Such was the stormy environment through
which the lion-hearts of the worker’s cause battled, first, to toleration,
and later, to success. And with the latter came the temptation to desert
the cause. Time and again an individual, or a little group, “ratted,”
and with every secession the Press raised its paean of joy – Lo,
this monster is dying.
But, strange to say, it never died. In fact,
its greatest successes have always followed on the apostacy of the weak
and corrupt elements. Each apostate in turn has prophesied the debacle
of the movement. Each in turn, no sooner had he changed his coat, adopted
even to details the methods, manners, and phrases of his erstwhile enemies.
Thus Fowler, M.H.R., one-time enthusiastic distributor of Blatchford’s
“Merry England,” refers slightly to his old associates as
“Socialists.” Truly, a damning charge! And another, formerly
so marked in her Australian Nationalism as to be regarded as a “cut-the-painter.”
Advocate, now shrieks “disloyalist,” “traitor,”
to Laborites shrewd enough to smell a rat in the Hughes-Irvine conscription
conspiracy.
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All these reflections, of course, are but idle without
some topical application, for which, however, we need not go far. The
section of the Federal Labor Party which, under Hughes, left the organisation,
is a case in point. No sooner were their backs turned upon the door of
the party meeting room, than a most grating, but not unfamiliar chorus
broke from their lips: “Traitor,” “disloyalist,”
“criminal,” “receiver of German gold,” “blackmailer,”
“liar,” “I.W.W.-er,” “Caucus,” “junta,”
“coercion,” mingled in minor keys with “Freedom,”
“Empire,” “Throne,” “religion,” and
reinforced with vociferations of “Men without God or Country,”
“ferocity of the Bengal tiger,” are among the clamorous screams
of the Big Secession. But despite the volume of noise, its high pitched
key betrays it. It does not terrify, it hardly interests, so threadbare
is its burden, so familiar its turn and phrases. It is the squeak of a
rat.
And the big secession, like all the little secession
that went before it, gets up on its hind legs, swells out its chest and
says, “I am a reformation,” “I am the real thing,”
“I’m not a shadow,” “I’m not like Kidston
and Daglish and - ?
But it’s no good. Its big voice rings
hollow. It fails to convince even itself. We grant it a short period of
artificial respiration at the hands of the Press, but so soon as that
old lady finds out that this, her latest foundling, has somewhat missed
the ‘bus – well, there’ll be an advt. For a “kind
person” to adopt it, and – whoof! – out goes Billy Hughes
like a blown-out candle!
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more triumph for devils and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Labor may suffer a set-back, will certainly be obliged
to go back painfully over old ground. Old tasks, which, perhaps, were
scamped, must be taken up and done over again. Hard work is before the
toilers in the cause, hard sacrifices will be demanded, and the old-time
boycotts will be revived. Labor must meet them unflinchingly, fortified
with the remembrance of the soul-stirring struggles of the past, and inspired
by the glorious mission to be accompanied. Little need we fear or regret
those who have left us, for to return again to Browning:-
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was
for us,
Burns, Shelley were with us – they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves. |
