industry, his remarkable flair for the news, will stand him in good stead. But behind these qualities is a carefully acquired and continually replenished knowledge of men and things as they are. The government of which this notable man is the head has been called an inexperienced one, and so far as imperial politics are concerned, the criticism applies. But in one sense it is the most experienced that ever sat round the famous table in Downing Street. The bulk of its members know more of the local life and government of the country and the working of its town and country schools, its machinery of health and poor relief, its coöperative societies, the organization of its factories and workshops, than any of its predecessors, Liberal or Conservative. In Mr. Sidney Webb, the new president of the Board of Trade, for example, it possesses the most learned political Englishman alive, the historian of its industrial democracy, the maker of the famous minority report on its poor law, the framer of closely documented surveys of the law and custom of its governing institutions, their meaning and social import. Mr. Webb will be the program-maker of the government, and he will set the pace of its output at the rate of his own indefatigable industry. No figure quite so well equipped as his stands beside him in the inner cabinet or outside it. But men like Mr. Arthur Greenwood and Mr. Frank Hodges represent the new intellectual force in the Labor movement. They are graduates of the more modern type of university, experts in the theory as well as in the technic of modern industry. There lies the hold which Labor possesses on the future. It is probable that the tenure of this government may not be long. Powerful forces from within and without may very well decide that before the summer is over they will have to face a second election. No one can say when some master problem in Labor policy, a critical question like the nationalization or at least the substantial unification of the mines, will suddenly emerge. In that event the issue depends largely on the knowledge and persuasive power of the younger men, of whom Mr. Hodges is a brilliant example. These young men are not revolutionists. The representation of the Glasgow Left Wing, the enfants terribles of the late Parliament and very possibly the militants of this, is confined to the pick of the group. But the main stuff of the government is centralist trade-unionism. Nominally its outlook is that of the party, which is moderate, progressive Socialism. In effect, the stamp of this section of the trade-unions, and its mark on our social history is a conservative one. Mr. Clynes, Mr. Macdonald's deputy leader in the Commons, is of this type, competent, if a little drab. So is Mr. Thomas, the famous leader and diplomatist of the railway men, in a more decorative setting. In the center hundred stands the figure who is in some respects the most important of all. This is Mr. Arthur Henderson, the new home secretary, whose post brings him into personal contact with the king, as well as with the law and with the whole machinery of public ceremony. Mr. Henderson, the "Uncle Arthur" of every Labor tea-table, is the organizer of two victories, and without him and his headquarters staff in Eccleston Square, the Labor Through his hands passes the network of candidatures on which the success or failure of an election depends, the difficult problem of finance, and the adjustment of the thousand points of personal and sectional interest that confront a new, ambitious, rapidly growing party. He comes from the Liberals, and carries with him (though he would vigorously disclaim it) the Liberal tradition and habit of mind to color without penetrating .the predominantly Socialist strain. But no account of the new government would be complete which left out two elements, one a powerful, though not a determining, factor, the other a slight, but significant, infusion. The so-called "intellectuals," who who came to Labor from the Liberal ranks during the war or in the following years, were of the same general type. They were the members of aristocratic or neo-aristocratic families like Mr. Charles Trevelyan, the new minister of education, son of a famous father, Sir George Trevelyan, and descendant of the still more famous Macaulay; Mr. Noel Buxton, who now controls agriculture, with a mixed descent of brewing, banking, and Quakerism; and Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, son of a secretary of Queen Victoria, and himself in his far-off unregenerate days a page in the royal household. Mr. Ponsonby's political color belongs to the radicalism which was never far from Labor. The radical CampbellBannerman's first private secretary, his knowledge of foreign affairs, which came to him from his association with the secrets of government no less than his charming character and literary ability, are his title to the undersecretaryship of foreign affairs. He and his associates are the legacy of Liberalism to its successor. There remains a final mark of Mr. Macdonald's assimilative skill. It would have been impossible to form a Labor government at all without the assent of Liberalism, or a formal alliance between the two forces, jealous of each other, and sharply opposed at the election, and yet presenting a common front against protection. The second device was impossible; the first has proved quite an ordinary feat of good temper and good management. But the Labor ministry stands for a totally new experiment in minority rule. It is a new thing in our politics for a government resting on 192 votes to manage a Parliament of 615 members, even with the help of a second minority of 158 members. It is a newer thing still to put in command of the empire a body resting on even an elastic formula of Socialism. The British Constitution, if it abhors a vacuum, is a singularly good conductor of forces hitherto unknown to it. On the whole, the country, even the Conservative element, accepted the new situation with its accustomed phlegm. This agreeably diversified world of men contains no more naturally adaptive creature than the Englishman. But there are limits even to adaptability. There was the monarchy to consider, there was the House of Lords, and there were the imperial and specially the war services. The king, a wise man, with his family traditions of progress and accommodation,-the terms are almost identical,-made no difficulty, and the household appointments consequent on a change of government were matters of easy arrangement. But the House of Lords was more difficult. residence to the exterior empire with the government of which the history and ambitions, the family interests, and the moral attachments, of the aristocracy, are closely connected. He is described, and justly so, as sympathetic to Labor. But his appointment has been taken as a sign that there was to be a continuous government of the empire, and that at a critical hour the defense services were not to suffer a serious breach of continuity. Above all, the fleet was secure. It is a declining power, its absolute by almost a lifetime of work and veto on legislation has disappeared, and the practice of giving it an almost equal share of the great offices of state has been modified or almost forgone by successive Liberal administrations. But it had a prescriptive right to at least one of the five secretaries of state and one under-secretary, as well as a claim to have policies and legislative proposals fairly laid before it. Mr. Macdonald's difficulty here was that he had a bare half-dozen peers who could be called members of the Labor Party, or sympathizers with its social outlook, and that this little group contained only one or two possible ministers. One of them, Lord Haldane, is a man of light and leading, and of wide political experience, and also a lawyer of eminence and an ex-lord chancellor. His services were secured; the problem of the representation of the departments remained. This has been solved by creating new peers: General Thompson, Mr. Sidney Arnold, a personal friend of the prime minister, and Sir Sydney Olivier, the new and brilliant secretary for India, and an ex-governor-a very successful one of Jamaica. In this way the House of Lords was deprived of its constitutional grievance. The new prime minister had obviously cut down its effective share in government, but he could not be said to have ignored it. But the device which secured the new ministry against a breach with the services was the appointment of Lord Chelmsford, an ex-viceroy of India, and also an ex-governor-general of two Australian states, as first lord of the Admiralty. Lord Chelmsford can hardly be called a party politician. He is of the official class, born into Conservatism, but belonging Lord Chelmsford's appointment, with one or two others, had their expected and useful influence on public opinion. The press, previously hostile in sections, became on the whole a favoring, almost an approving, influence. Even the "Morning Post," the organ of the "die-hards," changed its tone, while the "Daily Mail," the representative of representative of the Rothermere newspapers, turned with its wonted speed from its attitude of unyielding hostility to one of acquiescence and even of applause. There was to be "fair play" for the new government. The "Mail" guaranteed it, and even offered itself as a mentor of Mr. Macdonald's new model. Essentially, the prime minister's task was accomplished. He had kept his party together, had assured it an ally in the House of Commons strong enough to maintain a working Parliamentary majority, and had even contrived to give his ministry something like a national basis. This is the opening phase of England's new departure in government; its success as an experimental force, a hitherto untried adventure in political democracy, lies on the knees of the gods. Myths come from a seed that grows on any soil. Everywhere the people must have pictures and stories to make abstract conceptions stick in their memories. As the English have invented and cherished John Bull to be a characteristic symbol of their nation, so the Americans have invented and cherished Uncle Sam. What Hercules was to the average Greek, Paul Bunyan, on a humorous plane, is to the American lumberman. And who can say that Uncle Remus and Colonel Carter of Cartersville do not personify accepted types to the point where they cease to be types and become mythical personages? An interesting study might be made of the American myths and their significance. From the Journal of John Thane. Uncle Sam seems now as old as the United States, but actually he had his origin in a joke during the second war with England, when certain workmen jocularly expanded the initials U. S." into a familiar name for the Government. The name spread through the army, and thence eventually into all the States. At first it had to contend with the older sobriquet "Brother Jonathan," coined during the Revolution, and the two long divided the field about equally between them. Since the Civil War, however, Uncle Sam has left his rival well behind. Variously represented in caricature, he had always suggested the primitive Yankee, at once archaic and patriotic in his costume. It is notable that of late years he has been ceasing to be the angular, unkempt creature that he was during the lean, simple years of the republic, and has grown in girth, fastidiousness, and benevolence of aspect. Thus each generation recreates its myths in its own image. |