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House of Commons gets excited over such trumpery questions as Proportional Representation, or the Alternative Vote, neither of which matter one brass farthing as compared with the fate of the country which is now in the balance. On the Great War problems and policies the Lords have thrown little or no light, nor have they done anything to keep inept Governments in order, having been satisfied, as in peace-time, to take their cue from Mandarins like Lord Crewe, Lord Lansdowne, or Lord Curzon. The House of Lords still listens to Lord Haldane, and provides platforms for the pernicious activities of Lord Buckmaster and Lord Parmoor. It is now absorbed in its own reform," which has been left so late that people are beginning to ask themselves whether there is anything worth reforming, whether snobbery has not been carried too far by the avalanche of "new creations"! We are familiar with the conventional excuse when Peers are tackled upon their feebleness--" You forget that our best men are away. This is true, but that is no reason why the many hundred Peers who remain should sink into ciphers and should make no effort whatsoever to give the country what it wants. The House of Lords may be relatively harmless in peace. In war it is a profound disappointment.

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If there is something wanting in the Upper House there is equally something wrong about the Lower House, which as an institution has likewise cut a poor figure throughout the Microbe Great War, though its Members have fought and died most gallantly, while many of the very best have abandoned their legislative duties "for the duration." Judging, however, from the attitude of those who remain behind it is uncertain whether the absentees would have been more useful in London than where they are. At one time we thought otherwise, but there seems to be some microbe infecting Westminster, which speedily transforms many white men" into political hacks of a despicable type, who can persuade themselves to stoop to anything in order to secure some temporary advantage either for themselves or for the faction with which they are associated. The atmosphere is so strong that some victims succumb within a week, at the end of which they are unrecognizable. One Monday they are decent members of society, expressing the views held by all self-respecting people upon public affairs;

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by the following Monday they have become "Politicians " with all the weaknesses of their caste. It is nothing to do with class. Some enthusiasts suggest "Politicians behave as they do because some of them are not gentlemen." This is a delusion. When once a gentleman becomes a Politician there is nothing he will not do that other politicians do not do, in fact your greatest gentleman may be your greatest, i.e. your worst, politician. We simply marvel as we watch the operations of men who were and still are in other walks of life the very soul of honour, but who will stoop to any trickery, meanness, or even falsehood, as part of the game between Tweedledee v. Tweedeldum. They retain their private code, and would sooner have their hands cut off than cheat at cards, or their tongues cut out rather than tell a lie outside politics, but inside politics they continually remind one of Frederick the Great's verdict:

Since it has been agreed among men that to cheat or deceive one's fellow-creatures is a mean and criminal action, there has been sought for, and invented, a term that might soften the appellation of the thing, and the word, which undoubtedly has been chosen for the purpose, is Politics.

Retrospect

WHATEVER the explanation, Politicians are inflicting incalculable injury on their calling and destroying the prestige of the Mother of Parliaments. Their chief crime is that though they have usurped all public powers which were formerly distributed among the Estates of the Realm and the Crown, they make no effort to provide the country with good Government when it is most sorely needed, nor do they bring Governments to book when convicted of falsity or incompetence. Their primary consideration is the preservation of the "balance of Parties" in the House or in the Ministry. It might have been supposed that patriotism would count for something to-day, but Party remains dominant, being accentuated by the so-called "Party Truce," which has merely facilitated the wider division of the spoils. At any rate the fact remains that no post has yet been given in any so-called "War Cabinet" to any man except for his "claims" upon some Party, or the amount of newspaper support he was supposed to command. With the solitary exception of Lord Kitchener, who was forced upon the Man in the Cabinet (who preferred Lord Haldane) by the Man in the Street, no man has yet become a Minister on account of his reputed competence in war, and yet some of us affect to be

surprised that we are not yet in Berlin and that Germany is advancing upon Petrograd. The only wonder is that things are not infinitely worse. We have so far been saved from the Politicians by the sailors and the soldiers, the mercantile marine, and the airmen. The younger generation has stepped into the breach and prevented the pass from being sold. We began the war under strictly Party Government almost exclusively composed of Pacifists, united by a common view upon Welsh Disestablishment. When this first Asquith Government broke down in May 1915 we had a Coalition, in which room was found for a certain number of "Unionists" with opposite views upon Welsh Disestablishment, and some Labour men of the same views as the Asquith contingent. The reminder that, not Welsh Disestablishment, but war with Germany was the business in hand was resented by all concerned. This Asquith-Bonar Law combination was first known as the Twenty-Two, and afterwards as the Twenty-Three. Except for the suspended differences upon Welsh Disestablishment and kindred topics, the TwentyThree (apart from Lord Kitchener, who was an accident) were practically all men of the same kidney. Excelling in exposition they not unnaturally regarded words as more important than things. They managed to remain in being until December 1916, being securely based on the bedrock of a triple Caucus-namely, Radicalism, Unionism, and Labour. Their members were no less convinced than their predecessors of their infallibility and indispensability, which they did not hesitate to proclaim in public, while the legend was kept alive by a small but faithful Press. Ultimately they collapsed through incapacity and indecision, partly because several Ministers had become war weary to the point of Defeatism and were suspected of seeking premature peace via American mediation. England has never loved Coalitions, and our last did not escape the common lot. Its fall caused universal rejoicings, not only throughout the British Dominions, but among our Allies, and, indeed, wherever our cause had well-wishers, while, on the other hand, the Central Empires could not conceal their chagrin, having hoped with the assistance of Lord Lansdowne and other Whigs to secure the armistice which would have given them all they wanted.

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The Transformation

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CURIOUSLY enough, neither House of Parliament played any part whatsoever in this transformation, except that of passive spectators, many Members subsequently expressing their mortification at their effacement. But they had no one to thank but themselves for allowing others to usurp their authority and permitting Governments to be reconstituted behind the scenes. The Commons no less than the Lords have consistently adopted the attitude during the last three and a half years that, however obviously incompetent a War Government, it is not for them to lift a little finger to improve it, their rôle being confined to registering its decreesgood, bad, or indifferent. That a Legislature thus inspired should cease to count can surprise no one but itself. Mr. Lloyd George swept into office on a wave of enthusiasm, and, despite indignant pundits who pronounced his task "impossible," had little difficulty in forming a new Government, though we were not allowed to know at the time what pledges he thought himself compelled to give to secure the support of Labour and other indispensable ingredients. There was much astonishment at the remarkable rapidity with which Mr. Bonar Law and the "Unionist " tingent of the Coalition, who had been regarded as Mr. Asquith's bulwark against Lloyd-Georgism, executed the volte face which gave them control of the incoming "National Government," as it was euphemistically termed. Only one Member of Parliament, and a comparatively unknown man, Sir Maxwell Aitken, played any part at this crisis. He was credited with being the artificer of the arrangement which transferred Mr. Bonar Law and the "machine" controlled by him from the Asquith to the Lloyd George side of the account, a hypothesis coloured by the sudden promotion of Sir Maxwell to the Peerage. It must be said that every one outside the Old Gang and their immediate hangers-on were so enchanted to see the last of them that the formation of the new Cabinet escaped criticism, all the more because Mr. Lloyd George had the intelligence to place capable men who were not professional politicians at the head of some Departments, while his opening acts encouraged us to hope that at last we had a Government which would govern. Fifteen months' experience of its ministrations have unfortunately not confirmed this sanguine expectation. Outside its own orbit the New Gang are generally regarded as no less deficient than the Old Gang, and though they

have done some things that needed doing which the Old Gang would have left undone, the New Gang have certainly done other things that the Old Gang would have spared us, and of which it must be added Mr. Asquith would be incapable. From TwentyThree the War Cabinet suddenly dropped to Five. This was a change for the better so far as numbers were concerned, as it was grotesque that any Twenty-Three should try and run any war. But the weakness of the Five, as of the Twenty-Three, was that they included no man with any serious knowledge of war.

THOSE Who in December 1916 thus arrogated to themselves all the functions of the Government of the British Empire were: Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, Mr. Bonar Law, The Pledge Mr. Henderson, Lord Milner. There have been some changes in the interval-General Smuts is an occasional member of the War Cabinet--Mr. Barnes has replaced Mr. Henderson, but the Government have lost Sir Edward Carson, who was in the War Cabinet for a few months, and who the Prime Minister unsuccessfully sought to replace by Mr. Winston Churchill. None but a sycophant could maintain that the Five are equal to their tremendous task. When they began, any of us who ventured to express anxiety upon their obvious weakness were met by the assertion that though Ministers had no firsthand knowledge of war they had sufficient intelligence to appreciate their own limitations and might be trusted to take their strategy from soldiers and sailors, Lord Milner's famous tribute to Sir William Robertson being paraded as a pledge of the new Government's good faith:

The men we look to in these days are men of the stamp of Sir William Robertson; and the best thing that men like myself and others in a similar position can do is to put our backs into the work that lies before us, and give them all the help we possibly can. We must look to their wisdom, experience, and judgment to show us the right way, and we must put our shoulders to the wheel and drive the coach as hard as we can on the road they mark out for us. (Viscount Milner, Caxton Hall, January 1, 1917.) We confess to having hoped that Lord Milner, who had a reputation for sagacity and strength of character, would prove as good as his word, and would restrain his eccentric Chief from interfering in matters outside his ken, confining his peculiar energies to channels in which they would be most useful to the nation-especially popular propaganda. The presence of Sir William Robertson as Chief of the Imperial General

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