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