One day in 1904 he entered the House, bowed to the Speaker, and turned his
back upon the Conservative benches. He sat down in the front row of the
Opposition, next to the Liberal David Lloyd George. Churchill joined the
Liberals because they were for free trade. Some Conservative leaders were
veering toward protective tariffs, an early surge of the 20th Century's
economic nationalism. In 1904 few foresaw that Conservatives, Socialists,
Communists, Fascists (and U.S. Republicans and Democrats) were to build higher
& higher national trade barriers, strangling commerce, living standards and
freedom.
Shifts & Stirrings. Outside of Britain, the block of years 1900-14
brought more important shifts and stirrings.
-- Wherever industrial machinery went it brought a new prosperity to the middle
class--and rebellion or unrest among the workers, even when it raised their
standard of living. The industrial proletariat of the great European cities
drifted away from Christianity. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII solemnly warned against
the unrestrained abuses of capitalism and against the Socialist remedy for
them. By & large, the abuses went uncorrected. By 1914 12,000,000
Socialists were affiliated with the Second International; in Germany the
Socialists were the largest party.
-- U.S. unrest took a less definite, more subtle form. The strong moral element
in the American character was brought to bear on the new social and economic
issues. S. S. McClure and his muckrakers exposed evil in politics and business.
William Jennings Bryan, declaiming against the money power of the Eastern
cities, found his most responsive audience in the rural churches. Theodore
Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, each in a very different
way, tried to deal with the restless discontent. They deflected currents which
were to flow more strongly another day.
-- In 1905, Japan, with the full approval of Teddy Roosevelt and progressive
men everywhere, humbled Russia. No one noticed that this broke a chain of
victories by Christians over non- Christian nations, stretching back to Lepanto
in 1571. No one foresaw that the real effects of Russia's defeats would be 1)
to tip the scale in the struggle between Japanese democrats and militarists in
favor of the latter and 2) to break the confidence in Russia's rulers and lead
to the revolution of 1905--the dress rehearsal for 1917. From the fall of Port
Arthur one line led straight to Pearl Harbor; another led straight to Lenin.
-- Dr. Sun Yat-sen hurried home from Denver to take charge of the revolt which
brought down China's Manchu dynasty in 1912. Western techniques and ways of
thought had torn the threads of the old society and the West looked upon the
fall of the Manchus as a forward step. It turned out, however, to be easier for
Western influence to destroy an alien society than to rebuild. Dr. Sun's fires
were caught by strong breezes; in 1950 they were still burning.
