whether Great Britain was let down or not, and the cheers were a tribute to the man who in Ireland, in Egypt, and in India has trampled the name of Britain in the dust. It is a fortunate thing for Mr Lloyd George that he is not gifted with a sense of humour. Otherwise he could not have listened to those cheers without uncontrollable laughter.

However, Mr Lloyd George did not laugh, either at himself or at his audience. He went on to proclaim that Liberalism was "the Great Orme that stands between the country and the violent tempest that otherwise would sweep over the land," and that it had more than once saved Britain from revolution. But all this praise of himself and his newfound friends is wholly irrelevant. The Conservatives and the Socialists know equally that the praise is undeserved, and that it will never again be bestowed upon the leaders of Liberalism except by themselves. Mr Lloyd George may blow on his nail as long and as hard as he pleases, he will never get his hands warm again. That is not the way for a defeated and discredited Party to win its way back even to a modest esteem. Mr Winston Churchill has followed a wiser course. He makes haste to leave the sinking ship. He has always had a quick sense of impending ruin. He left the Conservative Party just on the eve of its collapse, and once more he proves himself ready and will

ing to go out and meet his opportunity. This kind of prudence does not inspire respect. He who has ratted twice may easily rat a third time, and we would listen to Mr Churchill's speeches against Socialism with more respect if we did not remember that not long since he was quite prepared to support a policy of nationalisation. It seems, indeed, as though there were no longer any place for principle or a settled opinion in politics. A demagogue changes views which are inconvenient as easily as he changes a coat which he is tired of. He does not ask himself how best he may serve his country. He seeks only a short-cut to a seat in the House and high office. Mr Churchill was eager to leave the Conservative Party when its majority had melted away. He is equally eager to come back to it, because he knows that there is no place for him in either one of the other two parties. He can hardly be received with open arms by those who see clearly that in pretending to help them he is merely resolute to help himself.

Nor was his first approach to the Party made with conspicuous tact. Having loudly proclaimed his desire to fight Socialism, he opposed the antiSocialist candidate at Westminster as though he leading a forlorn hope against heresy and rebellion, and did his utmost to get the Socialist elected. It is not by such means that a man, who has

deserted the Party when it suited him, can hope to regain the confidence of the Party. Since his adventure at Westminster he has adopted a more modest demeanour. He thinks that he and the Conservative Party can help one another without much fuss or changein other words, "not by altering in any respect their positions and principles in regard to public affairs, but only by mutually respecting each other's position and trusting to the deep and slow tide of events to make effective and wholehearted co-operation not only natural but inevitable." This sounds well enough, and means nothing. How, indeed, shall the Conservative Party respect Mr Churchill's position, when all that it knows about it is that it is the position of an opportunist out of a seat?

However, as he stood upon a Conservative platform, he showed himself magnanimous in making concessions. He was kind enough to express his disapproval of the repeal of the M'Kenna Duties. "What was the need of that?" he asked. "What harm are they doing? Whoever claimed that he was being injured by them?" Who indeed? And the argument in favour of the M'Kenna Duties may be extended to all the other duties which Mr Churchill opposed with singular acrimony at the General Election. Speaking to a new brief, Mr Churchill put the case with lucidity. "A trade was flourishing," said he, "competition both at home and with foreign

imports was active, the public consumer was continually securing better motor-cars at cheapening price, the Revenue was securing £2,500,000 a year from articles of admitted luxury, and the dollar exchange was improved by the restriction of unnecessary purchases in the United States." Omit the word "luxury" from the argument, and in Mr Churchill's words we find a defence for a general tariff. There is no difference between motor-cars and films and pianos on the one hand, and toys and steel rails on the other. And don't let it be forgotten: Mr Churchill is an impenitent Free Trader!

With the same fervour of the newly converted Mr Churchill, who once told the Dominions with ferocity that a door of good British oak was banged, bolted, and barred against them, is now in favour (for how long?) of Imperial Preference. The attitude of the Government towards Imperial Preference is characterised by the same unnecessary partisanship and by a chilling disdain "

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the disdain expressed in the banged, bolted, and barred door of British oak was something more than chilling-" for the interests and sentiments of the Dominions, who came to our aid so valiantly and generously in the Great War." It is. indeed, idle to contrast the Mr Churchill of then with the Mr Churchill of now. The one, no doubt, is just about as sincere as the other. And when Mr Churchill proceeds to denounce the present Gov

66

ernment as 'one vast monument of sham and humbug," which indeed it is, when he points out in the policy of the Socialists examples of political inconsistency beyond compare in modern public life, which, if we exclude Mr Churchill himself, is true enough, in lack of humour he rivals Mr Lloyd George, the demagogue who has helped to rid the Empire of such encumbrances as Ireland, Egypt, and India, and then declares that he "will vote against every Government and every Party that lets Great Britain down." Do politicians ever laugh at themselves, we wonder, or have they been so much bedevilled by the adulation of the picturepapers as to believe themselves more than mortal?

If Mr Churchill had possessed a genuine sincerity, the absence of which he deplores in the Socialists, he would have returned to Conservative principles on bended knees and in humility of spirit. He might, then, have persuaded some to believe that he truly repented; that, apart from his own advancement, he really wished well to the country. He has done nothing yet to persuade us of these things. He comes back as though he had a right to a warm welcome, that it was enough for him to raise a finger and to speak a word in order to be acclaimed a true-blue trustworthy Conservative. He has no such right. He will never ring true until he has been thrice tried in the fire, and not even his capacity

of

winning the support of jockeys and ladies of the chorus will persuade us that he is a heaven-sent statesman. He is merely one of a vast crowd which cannot bear that anything should be done in the world without its intervention, and which believes that if it lifts up its voice on this side or that some beneficent result must follow at once.

The Conservative Party has endured for nearly twenty years without the aid of Mr Churchill, and it would be a matter of indifference

to that Party

whether he came back or not, except for one danger. Mr Churchill is not likely to take a keen interest in any Party or in any enterprise if he do not conduct it himself. And when he is once more a Conservative member, he will look about him for a few friends with whom to conspire. He will find them waiting for him. There is Lord Birkenhead, the ex-galloper, who was once ready to die for the cause of Ulster; and there is Mr Austen Chamberlain, that singular leader of the Unionist Party, who, without consulting his friends, did what he could—and, unhappily, it was a great deal to destroy the union of Great Britain and Ireland, which he was pledged irrevocably to defend. These gentlemen, with a complacent levity which we do not like to remember, sacrificed without a murmur the thousands of loyal Irishmen who trusted them, and who are rewarded for this reckless trust by the loss of life or livelihood. With

To read the returns of the French elections, indeed, is to understand how incapable is a democracy, with universal suffrage, to choose efficient rulers. Efficiency seems a fatal bar, in these levelling days, to any man who aspires to aid in the government of his country. We all remember, when our own present Government

was

formed, we were asked to look not upon the fitness of our new Ministers, but upon their origins. 'Look at A.," we were told. "He began in a coal-mine, and there he is now a Secretary of State." Or, "Regard the simplicity of B., now the head of a great department, once a poor lad in a factory." We confess that we find snobbishness of this kind irrelevant and contemptible. If there is a supreme virtue in having been in mine or factory, as many of our rulers would have us believe, they are guilty of gross vulgarity who call attention to their happy fate. It is as bad as though an aristocrat should boast his birth or a millionaire his gold. In choosing our rulers we should ask only what this man is or that, not what he was. Nor, until the electorate clears its mind of the popular cant, are we ever likely to be governed justly and well.

The elections in France, then, are a complete condemnation of the democratic principle. The most highly distinguished candidates have been ruthlessly discarded. The famous General de Castelnau, who helped to win the victory for France, has

proved during the last four years a wise counsellor, and is therefore held unfit to represent a French constituency. It is difficult to think of the French Chamber deprived of the eloquence and criticism of M. Léon Daudet. That he should have been put out to make way for a Socialist is little less than a tragedy. The fearless leader of a small band of Conservatives, the gallant champion of the humanities, he has held his own for four years against the fury of his opponents, and has succeeded in forcing his honest unpopular opinions upon the Chamber. Moreover, he has been sincere in action as well as in speech. When the Chamber, after the manner of Chambers elected by universal suffrage, voted higher salaries for its members, M. Daudet was almost alone in refusing to accept the increased salary until the victims of the war were pensioned, and insisted that the money due to him should be devoted to lightening the lot of neglected soldiers. Happily for France, exclusion from the Chamber will not silence M. Daudet's power of persuasion. He is still master of his journal, 'L'Action Française,' in whose columns he has preached for years, and for years, we hope, will continue to preach, the doctrines of a sane and sound conservatism. With M. Maurras, the greatest living writer of prose in France, at his side, he has striven to reawaken in his country the wise belief in kings, and to counteract by