Democracy—false or true? : $b A prologue and a dream

"Democracy—false or true?" by Sir W. B. Richmond is a political and philosophical treatise written in the early 20th century. It probes whether modern democracy can be genuine when severed from spiritual principle, honest workmanship, and a living rural culture. Blending myth, biblical parable, history, and post-war reflection, it argues against materialism and coercive industrial unionism while urging a humane, educated, duty-based commonwealth rooted in agriculture and craft.

The opening of the treatise finds the author “playing the prophet” as he affirms free will, the endurance of the soul, and the shaping power of noble desire. He treats myths and scripture—Genesis, Plato’s soul-chariot, Apollo and Persephone, the rainbow—not as literal science but as poetic truths that elevate conduct, contrasting them with dogma and raw materialism. From Egypt’s reverent craftsmanship and Britain’s Stonehenge to Greek and Christian symbols, he praises civilizations where labor served a high ideal. He then condemns Germany’s wartime materialism and the wrecking of art, turns to England to laud the old honesty of her craftsmen, and attacks union coercion, the illusion of equality, shoddy work for high pay, and strikes that imperil the nation. Throughout he calls for education, disciplined leisure, fraternity over license, and a revival of agriculture and craft against the poisons of industrialism, closing this section by setting out for a northern manufacturing city and sketching a smoke-blighted, cinder-laden landscape as prelude to his “Dream.” (This is an automatically generated summary.)