Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - Socialism To-day (1909).djvu/14

it would elect us in such strength that we would be no mere balancing power to begin with. We would be the Opposition.

"Our friends can be as heroic as they like on the platform and in the Press, but there is a good deal of the footlights about it—and also a good deal of vain imagining regarding Parliamentary conditions. If there were 70 of us in Parliament, and the difference between the other Parties were ten, hardly an appreciable percentage of our explanations of what independence means would apply to such circumstances. Nothing shows more clearly the total lack of preparation for such a state than the fact that probably not more than a score—if even that—of our active men saw during the election of 1906 that it would be better for us if the majority of the Liberal Government was so great as to make it independent of us. The mistake that so many of our political tacticians, like Mr. Burgess, make, is that in drawing up their plans of battle they put the enemy in a nice comfortable position for us to maul him. They give the enemy his tactics, his alliances, his guns, and his shot. They then open the battle, and they walk over him! This is nursery politics. Nothing has happened like it since the Hanoverian generals of decayed and ludicrous memory planned nicely on paper how their soldiers could thrust the Highlanders on the right side. The Highlandman, however, would have no such trick played upon him, and cut his opponent to the brisket.

"I want the I.L.P. to declare for no policy. That will have to be settled when the conditions arise. Our action will then be determined by our numbers, our relative strength, the state of public opinion, the character of the question before the country. But I do appeal to it to take into account all the facts and circumstances, and not, for the sake of satisfying its soul and sentiment, go gaily on listening to the enunciation of policies and cheering phrases which obviously do not take into account some of the most important and a the same time most difficult problems which representation in Parliament presents to it."