to pass by those who elected it. The Franchise Bill and the Bill which admits women into Parliament are betrayals and nothing else. As far as we know they were not demanded by the country. No election had justified their passage. A House kept in being to fight Germany has used the trust reposed in it to upset our decent Constitution. We believe that a majority in the House was opposed to the Franchise Bill. We know that a majority of the House, had it been left free to record its own opinion, would have voted against the admission of women to Parliament. But it was not left to itself. By a sort of blackmail it was forced to support a Coalition, which was determined to force through such measures as the most of the members of Parliament deplored. And it has come to this, that a majority of the House thought one way and voted another, and thus has forfeited its right to the title of "honourable " carelessly flung across the House.

It is gradually dawning upon our politicians that they are not respected. They need not pretend surprise. A man who solemnly records an opinion, which in his heart he does not hold, does not deserve and rarely obtains honour or respect. When opportunism is the prevailing doctrine, you can look for nothing better than an organised cunning. To take one example: the new Franchise Bill, passed by an obedient, unconvinced House, gave the vote to a vast mob of

women. When the women were agitating for the vote by means which should have excluded them for ever from meddling with the government of the country, they proclaimed aloud that the vote would satisfy them. They had no desire to sit in Parliament, oh dear, no! The vote was the thing, and they asked no other privilege. Before they had ever confronted a ballot-box, they demanded the right to sit in the House, and the tame members, fearing that if they did not acquiesce they might lose some votes at the next election, gave an eager and silent assent. Everything, then, is possible. The Coalition proposes this or that measure independently of the House or of the country, and finds an instant support from the well-drilled mob which is supposed to represent the free and independent electors. The Coalition has transformed our Constitution without any scruple of conscience, without a "mandate," and without asking the poor silly sheep of an elector what he thought about it. The Coalition, moreover, absorbing into itself all members of the House who do not belong to the Labour Party, will henceforth do whatever it likes. Even Mr Asquith, that veteran leader of the lower middle-class, professes now to be the ardent supporter of Mr Lloyd George. Thus he submits to the necessity of the moment, and we need not take his profession very seriously. There is soarcely a single opinion which he has not held and dropped since the

changed for England, and Mr Asquith knows it not. He believes, with a touching simplicity, that we are still busied with the problems which before the war aroused his welldrilled audiences to enthusiasm, and that he has only to mention Free Trade Trade or the House of Lords to evoke an immediate response. Poor man! We are almost disposed to be sorry for him. If he wastes too much time in the thankless task of flogging dead horses he will be too late for the poll.

At last he begins to fear for his own position. Messrs McKenna and Runciman may be staunch in loyalty, or they may not be. In any case, they are not enough to make & party. And Mr Samuel-is he a tower of strength in a British Parliament ? Mr Asquith, then, having spoken with the old familiar voice at Glasgow, suddenly made the astounding confession that he was in complete agreement with Mr Lloyd George. Is he, we wonder? Mr Lloyd George, a chameleon, has been able to assume all the colours. Mr Asquith is not so easy a reflector as Mr Lloyd George, and when he tells us that "he could add nothing nor withdraw anything from the Prime Minister's speech," you perceive clearly enough what a juggle is politics, and you are persuaded that it matters very little what Mr Asquith thinks or does not think.

Mr Lloyd George's cast-iron Coalition has but one opponent -the Labour Party. The

VOL, CCIV.-NO. MCCXXXVIII.

Mr

single merit of the Coalition is that it will hold the Labour Party in check, and if that Party be not held in check it is all over with the Empire. The last meeting of the Party proves how dangerous a combination is malice and ignorance. Many of the Labour men are malicious; all are ignorant. And their capacity for evil is enormously increased by the support given to them by Messrs Webb and Shaw. These two gentlemen, members, both of them, of the hated bourgeoisie, are wreckers and no more. The fact that Mr Henderson accepts them as his colleagues shows that Mr Henderson lacks sincerity. Shaw was kind enough to tell the Party that he was a much cleverer man than Mr Henderson. He may be, or he may not be. About this delicate question we hold no opinion. We do know that Mr Shaw, boasting that he pays supertax upon his income, has no sort of right to belong to the Labour Party. But he had simple men to deal with, and he was right, no doubt, when he thought that his damp squibs in that kind of company would appear like real fireworks. However, his namesake, Mr Shaw, of the Textile Workers, a far saner, better man than he, said the last word of the braggart writer of plays. "If Mr Bernard Shaw," said he,

being that Mr Barnes is a blackleg.

Messrs Webb and B. Shaw are dangerous men. Perhaps they are less dangerous within the Labour Party than they might be without it. They arouse evil suspicions and they darken counsel. When all was said and done, the upshot of the Labour Conference was that their sacred members, who are said to engross the wisdom of all the ages, refuse to have anything to do with the government of the British Empire. Their elegant reply to the Coalition is that there is "nothing doing." On the other hand, they demand to be represented at the Peace Conference. And they are so stupid that they cannot see the anomaly. If they refuse to their members the right of belonging to the British Cabinet, how shall they claim for themselves the right of interfering with the terms of peace? Of course the inference which they would have us draw is that they alone are fit to cure the evils of Europe. And the truth is that they could not be trusted to keep a Board of Guardians in order.

And many of them are Bolshevists, pure and simple. The

fate of Russia teaches them nothing. They still dream of murder. One orator pleaded for howitzers; another declared that the Bolshevists in Russis had put up a finer fight for Labour than had ever been put up in any ocuntry in the world. Mr Ramsay Macdonald bleated after his wont, and Mr Henderson, who is reputed to be less clever than the mountebank Mr Shaw, was good enough to say that "the world must be reconstructed on the basis of human brotherhood." How little understanding he has of politics or of history. "Why should we not plead," he asked, "for s defeated enemy? We must think with an international mind." An international mind is no mind at all, and if Mr Henderson pleaded successfully for a defeated Germany, Germany would never know the pains of defeat. The truth is, the Labour Party consists chiefly of fluent, half-baked, foolish persons, who are ready, from mere vanity, to destroy the world. And their ignorance and volubility are the best argument in support of he Coalition, which will certainly be tyrannical, but which may save us from the terrors of Bolshevism.