own creation than are those two opportunists of the class - hatred which ten years ago they called into being. ereed but of class. No longer of his "Politics," said a statesman who knew the truth of his statement, "is a dirty trade." And it is proposed to do away with the one piece of goodfellowship which in old days made politics bearable. When parties were divided by opinion and by faith, we did not vote according to our upbringing or our trade. You might find in any class those who believed in stability and tradition side by side with those who cried aloud about change and progress. A General Election then meant a conflict of temperaments and not a conflict of classes. It was rather an excuse for many pleasant approaches. Men were brought together by a similarity of oreed who otherwise might have found no meeting-ground. And now, because the Coalition has failed, because, in the words of Lord Birkenhead, who is pledged to support it, it is "invertebrate and undefined," we are asked with menaces to support Mr George or labour, to cling to the hatreds which the Radicals fomented, to admit that the only differences which exist in the country are differences of standing and employment. Rather than perpetuate this kind of civil war, we prefer to vote for neither, to insist that the old Tory Party, which was no party of snobs and found its loyal adherents in every class, should be reconstruoted, and that some semblance of principle should be restored to the political life of the country. And principle has no more chance of coming from labour than from the Coalition. The Coalition, formed as we know for no better reason than to keep a certain set of men in office, men who disagree naturally one with another, is a party, if indeed it deserves the name of party, which willingly sacrifices its convictions to office, and is perforce unprincipled. Labour also is unprincipled, and for another cause. It has shown itself always and in all things bitterly sectarian. It professes little or no interest in the affairs of Great Britain. It knows not the meaning of idealism or of sacrifice. Its outlook is limited to the workshop and the parish. Its one hope, its one policy are higher wages; its one method of obtaining what it wants is blackmail. If the railwaymen are asking something more for less work than heretofore, they care not a jot if their colleagues, the engineers, are asked to pay more for their food than they can afford. If the coal-miners insist successfully upon a rise in wages, it matters not to them that their rapacity causes thousands of honest men and women all the world over to shiver over an empty grate. So little do any of them know about economics that they have not yet grasped the simple facts that to do as little as they can is not the best way to increase production, and that higher wages than a trade allows send up the price of all commodities. But they are not diffident, and if only they can get a majority, the leaders of labour are ready and eager to become our lords of misrule. And they will rule for themselves, and themselves alone. They have no interest save in their own class; they will adopt no poliey, they will pass no laws which do not benefit that class definitely and effeotively. A new kind of corruption will hamper the State, larger and more dangerous than any we have yet known. The middle classes, which labour in imitation of the Soviets condemns as the bourgeoisie, will be penalised in pocket and esteem until they be driven out of existence. The only way in which salvation can come to us is by division in the ranks of labour. And let it be remembered that the Tory elements in labour are more savagely opposed to its Radical elements than are the older parties in the State one to another. There is a greater difference between Mr A. Henderson and Mr Stephen Walsh (let us say) than between Mr George and Mr Bonar Law. And Mr Churchill and Lord Birkenhead are doing the country a vast disservice by pretending that they alone can save us from a peril which is largely of their own contriving. They would form, if they could, a pleasant little private company, the board of which would be joined by Mr George after allotment; they would ensure a comfortable and permanent living for themselves, and have their portraits painted as the saviours of Great Britain. A pleasant little plot truly, which is happily foredoomed to failure. And they do not understand what harm they have done by throwing down 8 useless challenge te labour, and by trying to convert what might have remained a disunited rabble into a solid army. There is yet another objection to labour, which may not be overlooked or minimised. Behind the titular leaders of the working classes there lurks a band of "intellectuals" who have never done an hour's manual work in their lives, and who are determined to make use of their dupes to the uttermost. These "intellectuals," who mean to direct labour, if not to lead it, are socialists and internationalists to a man. They have neither interest nor pride in their own country. Not one of them has ever boasted, as he might, that he was a citizen of no mean State. Pretending to believe in the universal brotherhood of man, they are the bitter foes of those who should be nearest to them, Unceasingly they brag of their superiority to others. They smile a smile of no indulgence at the antiquated virtue of patriotism. Throughout the war they were pro- German and "defeatist." Their vanity prompted them to use long arguments which should prove that England was always in the wrong. They expressed an arrogant doubt if ever their German friends were charged with atrocities. They knew better than the poor devils who had suffered, better than the trained lawyers asked to investigate the evidence. They thought that a resolute scepticism proved them to be high above such poor viees as patriotism and anger. In their obscure journals, as in their acrid pamphlets, they cunningly pleaded the cause of Germany, and like other traitors, they brought comfort to the camp of those who were fighting against the country which gave them birth. They are sorry band, plotting in secret and arming the militant leaders of labour with literary explosives. And if labour ever be asked to form a Government, it will have to deal with the gang of intellectual doctrinaires to whom it is profoundly indebted. The doctrinaires are as wily as they are dangerous, and they will not come out into the open unless they are driven thither by vanity, which, after a love of conspiracy, is their strongest passion. How will labour deal with them if it come into its kingdom? In those happy days, when Mr Henderson is Minister of Foreign Affairs, will he accept the advice of the intellectuals, who will haunt his back-stairs? If he do, then will the ruin of the Empire be made doubly sure. If he do not, he will have to fight a are secret opposition, which may show itself more formidable than the opposition which will be arrayed against him in the House of Commons. If the rank and file of the working men were ever permitted to look upon the vain, reckless, irresponsible, tea-drinking internationals, who aspire to direct their policy, they would know how to treat them. But the tea drinkers kept wisely in the background by the leaders; they work underground like the mole; and they will not show themselves to the workers of the land, until they are prepared, like the fanatics they are, to do the work of Lenin. They, perhaps, are the greatest danger in which the supremacy of labour would involve us. Meanwhile we would entreat the Coalition to cease comparing its own incompetence with the obvious incompetence of labour. The Franchise Bill, which com mands us to take whatever governors the unlettered mob sends us, was their creation, and it cannot yet be gainsaid. Nor shall we again discover Ministers who will govern the country in accord with honest principles, until we abolish the Coalition, and demand of our candidates that they shall state honourably in their election addresses what they themselves think and believe, and shall cease to repeat, like parrots, the name of the man whose poor ambition it is to remain a tenant for life of 10 Downing Street. It was pointed out by Bolingbroke many years ago that the art of government was the only art which demanded no apprenticeship of its practisers. And the reproach, just then, may more justly be levelled at the politicians of to-day. The peace, which at last has been signed in Europe, was made by those who have served no apprenticeship. We all remember how loudly Mr Wilson boasted that he and his colleagues were "plain" men who knew nothing of diplomacy, and yet spoke with confidence because they represented tens of millions of voters. They were "plain' indeed, as "plain as their own peace, which is weak where it should be streng, and strong where it should be weak. The danger to the peace of Europe has been, and still is, Prussia. and still is, Prussia. Napoleon knew this well, and would have made an end of Prussia, if only Alexander I. had permitted it. And our "plain" men, assembled in Paris, have treated Austria and Hungary, whose guilt was far less than Germany's, with a needless severity, and we have left it in Germany's power to recover much of her ancient strength and to take her revenge in due time upon France and upon England. Justice must be sternly administered in the affairs of nations as in the affairs of men. The one and only method of ensuring peace is to prove to the aggressor that his policy does not pay. Leagues of Nations are, we believe, useless. Germany, unchanged, if weakened, by the war, will remain of the same mind as heretofore, unless it be shown clearly to her that her dream of universal empire is impossible. If this truth cannot be borne in upon her mind, save by destruction, then she should have been destroyed. The economists will tell us that in destroying, or even in impairing, Germany, we shall lose a good customer for our wares. That may be; but we shall presently discover new markets, and, at least, we shall have done our best to ensure peace in the world. Other nations which aspired to universal dominion have fired their shot and failed, but the mundane movement has gone on comfortably and profitably for the rest. The battle of Salamis broke the power of Persia ; it did not bring ruin upon Greece. The senseless ambition of Charles XII. eventually reduced Sweden to the position of a second-rate power. But other powers arose to take its place, and civilisation will not founder because, after a brief fifty years of prosperity, united Germany has been driven upon the rocks. mio Council, perhaps he should not have hastened so speedily into print. But that is a point upon which he perforce came to a decision himself, and he must bear the full weight of responsibility. His sketches of the "plain" who settled the affairs of Europe are excellently done. Mr Keynes has a happy way with the branding-iron; and though we imagine that neither Mr George nor Mr Wilson will take much pleasure in his work, he will satisfy all those who are not natural worshippers of the politicians. And yet, in spite of himself, he has painted M. Clemenceau in the truest colours. What he meant for a bitter caricature seems to us a flattering portrait. His villain is our hero, and by this divergence alone the value of his argument stands or falls. In M. Clemenceau's policy he sees the policy of an old man who is not interested in humanity, who "neither expects nor hopes that we are on the threshold of a new age," of a statesman, disillusioned, and yet guided, by the past, who will not be led away into a false security by These and many other con- phrases or ideals. In thus siderations Mr J. M. Keynes refusing to be deceived or to omits from his 'Economic Con- deceive himself, M. Clemenceau sequences of the Peace.' Mr proved his right to dominate Keynes writes now as a man, the Conference. "He felt now 88 an economist, and about France," says Mr Keynes, we prefer him in his human "what Pericles felt about character. As he he himself Athens-unique value in her, sat upon the Supreme Econo- nothing else mattering; but 1 1 London: Macmillan & Co. |