man. Her vote and presence in Parliament give her a practical voice in the destiny of the nation. But as a result of her changed position there are disturbing signs that she has lost something of that essential womanliness which is at once her glory and her power.

Oh, wasteful woman! . . .

How spoilt the bread and spilt the wine

Which else had made brutes men and men divine!

If she can but preserve the ideals of her sex unscathed, it lies in her power to exert her refining influence in the world within far wider boundaries than ever before.

HUGH CHESTERMAN.

POLITICS AND POLITICIANS TO-DAY

I. THE NEED OF THE AGE

'We want a new code of ethics that will affirm that social responsibility and unselfishness are the basis of a civilised society.' (MR. G. R. STIRLING TAYLOR, in 'A Platform for Statesmen,' The Nineteenth Century and After, December 1923, p. 803.)

THE throes of a General Election do not conduce to calm reflections which are to see the light of publicity with the dawn of the New Year. Hegel is reported to have pursued his philosophy at Jena even while the battle, which was to decide the fate of Prussia for the next seven years, was raging outside the town. The novels of Jane Austen would never suggest that while she was writing the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars were in process of recasting the continent of Europe. But it is given to few to free themselves so completely from the conditions of the life about them; and it is doubtful if such detachment is altogether estimable. To-day, at any rate, in conditions of close intercourse and rapid communication, the good European observes the international scene, and in the troublous times of post-war perplexity the good citizen is concerned for the welfare of his country.

At an early stage of the electioneering campaign we were told that the election merited no heat at all. As a prophecy of the attitude of the majority of citizens, this statement seems to have proved true. Reports from the provinces, especially from the north of England, showed that the electorate was weighing the issue seriously in the scales; but the excited headlines of the Press reflected only the excited oratory of politicians. It is a common gibe against the professional politicians that they treat the politics of their country as a game. This judgment is perhaps too cynical. It comes from those who are professedly disinterested, whom Samuel Butler would have described unkindly as 'professional truth-tellers.' It comes from those who are content to fasten on the evil by-product and to ignore the solid principle of good. The flippant fireworks of political speakers may well suggest that they are aspiring to the rôle of Nero, who played the

fiddle while his city sank in flames. But these are the traditional tactics of party leaders who declaim at the bar of a swollen electorate; and allowances are due to advocates who plead their cause before miscellaneous audiences who are largely untrained to logical thinking, but quick to respond to a ready wit which can score a pretty point against a public opponent. For it is the case that in the conditions of democratic' rule political battles are largely won by talking, and the politician who can talk to the best effect and commend himself the most happily to the palate of a popular audience finds his battle already half won. Nor does it follow that the flippant orator or the skilful debater is not sincere. His points upon the superficial plane of public oratory at the hustings may match precisely his personal convictions. It may not be the highest form of sincerity, for that is inseparable from the love of truth, and sets devotion to the truth above loyalty to a party. Sincerity, in the plenary sense of the word, is a quality which would almost inevitably produce a politician, not less than a churchman, of the kind which has commonly been called 'cross-bench.' Or, at all events, to such a politician the party label would be of general, but not of invariable, application. We seem to observe that this more loose adherence to the party is a mark of the post-war revival of the party system. If this be the case it is full of good promise. Still it may be that a good party man marks a step towards the difficult accomplishment of being a good man; and loyalty to a party gives the colour of sincerity to methods of controversy and a style of advertisement which may contribute to a temporary triumph, but can hardly find a place in the more enduring categories of truth.

To scan the speeches of political protagonists is to realise that an election campaign is a great debate. The first impression of the listener or the reader is perhaps that the debate is conducted primarily for the benefit of the debaters; that the issue, which according to their profession carries the fate of the body politic, is but a device for the amusement and the profit of politicians. The alternation of rhetorical challenge and ironical retort, flung across the country from one chosen centre to another, leaves the elector, who has not already made his choice, no wiser than he was before, and helps him but little to determine the economic. effect of a tariff. The confusion of some many-cornered controversy suggests to him that in the political arena, even if the combatants do not use the abusive names which adorned the correspondence of Milton and Salmasius, personalities are allowed to seem more important than policies. The red-hot shots of the oratory now known by the generic name of Limehouse,' which darken counsel in the shadows cast by their flares of invective, cause him to reflect with a melancholy wonder upon the depths

to which a politician will descend when he aspires to the lofty heights of statesmanship.

Yet there is a second impression. For with all this testimony to the flippancy, the folly and the malignity of political controversy, we have to admit that there is everywhere an under current of serious conviction, of positive belief, of driving desire for the national welfare. None can be supposed to foresee his country's ruin in his party's triumph. Political leaders and lesser candidates for the constituencies have persuaded themselves of the unrivalled merits of their parties' policies, and wrestle for their victory. In the process of publicity and private canvassing the undecided elector reaches some kind of conclusion. Of course, the minds of some electors are made up from the outset. They are as good party men as their political leaders. Or their business. interests have always stood to gain by the policy of one particular party, and their outlook is naturally limited by the prospect of profit or loss. Some conscientious citizens see the situation afresh, and think it out in the light of new conditions. Others again hardly think it out at all, but are swayed by the manner, appearance or promises of candidates; others by the memory of previous promises which they have interpreted too literally and therefore perceive to be unfulfilled; others by prejudice or passion which issues in personal violence. The campaign opens in expectation, passes through the familiar stages of argument and controversy, and goes down to the less eventful but more decisive issue of Election Day. Something of the same process will be found in the minds of whole masses of enfranchised citizens who read and listen and ruminate, and wait for the judgment to form in their minds. Like the prophet on the mountain, the elector hears the wind, and feels the earthquake, and sees the fire. Finally he hears, or persuades himself that he hears, in the policy which promises to prove the most profitable or the least dangerous, the still, small voice of inspiration; and he casts his vote accordingly. So that even in current electioneering the judgment of Walter Bagehot is in some sense verified that 'discussion is the great solvent of custom.'

Such is a picture, not, I hope, too much of a caricature, of current electioneering in the conditions of widely enfranchised citizenship. I make no pretence of profound penetration into the psychology of electors, for that is not the theme. It is another gospel which the election compels one to preach. That is, first, the failure of politics, as they issue in social and economic expedients, to solve the real problem of national welfare, and, secondly, the need of new vision and new inspiration from the life of the Spirit, which will change the hearts of men. That the General Election which prompted my writing has now passed into

history in no wise invalidates a thesis which appeals to the centuries and will hold while the world stands. The picture which I have drawn may be good, or it may be bad. But the situation which it seeks to present must be admitted to be bad. Perhaps the system of parties, as we know it, will of itself produce nothing better; and gibing and denunciation and plausible promises of the good time which will follow a party's triumph at the polls are the inevitable tools of the trade of materialism. That the system of representation is sound or faulty is not the issue. That the candidates who are returned as members of Parliament do or do not fairly sustain the cause in which their constituents return them is not the question which goes to the root of the matter. The theory of the Abbé Sieyès in the French Revolution carried the system to a perfection beyond the possibilities of practice:

The genuine national will proceeds from debate, not from election, and is ascertained by a refined intellectual operation, not by coarse and obvious arithmetic. The object is to learn not what the country thinks, but what it would think if it was present at the discussion carried on by men whom it trusted. Therefore there is no imperative mandate, and the deputy governs the constituent.1

Such mitigation of democracy' would no doubt provide a useful restraint upon popular demand and a valuable correction of popular misunderstanding. Indeed, the debates in Parliament may be thought, by comparison with the speeches produced by the feverish excitement of electioneering, to go some way to fulfilling the Abbé's doctrine. But the member of Parliament does not govern the constituent; and on the fundamental issue the Abbé's doctrine is foreign to current constitutional practice, by which the constituency demands the loyalty of the member and the Cabinet appropriates his power. The democratic doctrinaire would not concede to debate by a few the authority which proceeds from election by many, for, on the democratic hypothesis, the larger the electorate the more surely must its choice be right. There are some among us who would even submit to a referendum of the people the solution of problems which a comparatively few experts alone can be expected fully to understand. The democratic postulate is expressed in the aphorism Vox populi, vox Dei.' In other words, the majority is always right. This fallacy has only to be stated in order to be repudiated.2 Lord Birkenhead, at an earlier stage of his career, set himself to show with his customary force and clarity that the voice of the people is not to be identified with the voice of God. If it were, then the exchange of a narrow majority for one party to-day for a narrow majority for another party next year would signify a change 1 Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution, p. 161. 2 Cf. Selden's Table Talk on Councils,