gence, but of genius, with an amazing energy and even fury; with humor, with eloquence, with brilliancy of illustration, simile, and rhetoric, which astonishes the world. Then he will resume the function of indolence again.

Mr. Macdonald is working every day and all day. He has none of this supreme capacity for supplying an audience with enthusiasm and making it forget all the crimes and mistakes of the speaker. In the House of In the House of Commons he was a "House of Com

mons man. In the eight years during which I shared membership with him in that strange assembly, I do not ever remember him, in popular phrase, "cutting much ice." All that a majority of listeners to Mr. Macdonald's speeches could acknowledge was the forceful representation in a parliamentary manner of a case presented by a person with no parliamentary backing-a case which had to stand on its own merits.

Above all, there was exhibited parliamentary ability, backed by knowledge of the personalities and conditions of the world. Mr. Macdonald has spent the greater part of his days in visiting not for amusement, but for information, the various centers of the world, and he has written books about them. He was in South Africa during or immediately after the South African War. He has visited Australia, and studied the methods of labor legislation there. He has been many times to America and Canada. Europe has been as open to him as a book. He has been on a royal commission in connection with the Government of India, and has also written his impressions of that astonishing land. It would be safe to say that this Labor leader, more than any other member of

any party in the House, possesses a secure equipment of first-hand and intimate knowledge of the people who are ruling or about to rule the nations.

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I first met him in his little crowded flat in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he and his gracious lady, who combined great power of affection with a fierce consuming desire for the betterment of the world, used to entertain little parties or parties crowded beyond the capacity of what that little flat could hold. You met there in two small rooms, in which the walls were covered with books from floor to ceiling, all that was interesting in international affairs. Here were not only the young men who were pressing forward socialistic ideals in England, many of whom have since died or disappeared; but socialist leaders from Holland, distinguished litterateurs from Italy, or Russians who had passed twenty years in Siberian prisons in the cause of freedom. This was in a time in the early century somewhat similar to the present, when reaction was triumphant, when liberalism seemed dead, and when the crude exultation of brutality and imperialism was the only appeal which seemed able to evoke sympathy among a people very prosperous in worldly affairs and entirely indifferent to the condition condition of the poor. And one always came away from these evenings filled with new impressions. The first was Lamennais's assertion of his experience in prison, "I go there to meet better men than myself." The second was the conviction that there was somehow spreading beneath the surface of society and through the various countries a unity of minds

determined that at all costs the inequalities of modern society should be redressed.

The Labor party was then but a dream. Mr. Macdonald made it a reality. On the one side was its solitary member, Mr. Keir Hardie, and a group of persons who were preaching, in so far as publishers would accept their works, various types of socialist and labor ideals. On the other side was the great organization of the trades-unions, whose mass subscription was as adequate to provide large sums of money as "the party funds" of the older parties (obtained largely by the sale of honors), but of unions still in the main permitting their members to vote for Conservatives or Liberals as they pleased. In the larger of them, such as the coal industry, they normally voted Liberal. It was due to the genius of Mr. Macdonald that he fused together the intellectual socialists, of which he was a member, and the representatives of the tradesunions, who were not socialists at all. The result was that a fund was thus available by which socialists and trades-union secretaries, who were easily persuaded to be socialists in order to obtain a parliamentary seat, came together as a Labor party; and by which, in 1906, mainly, it must be confessed, by the support of the Liberals in the constituencies, a Labor party of forty members actually appeared in the House of Commons.

That party gave Mr. Macdonald his platform. It was comparatively useless in general debate, consisting of a number of men far past middle age who were astonished to find themselves in the House of Commons, who had been accustomed to vote Conservative

or Liberal, and whose attitude was somewhat "on the knee" when any prominent Conservative or Liberal addressed them. But there were four or five men who were working away with their idea in view, and with contentment and patience, until that idea was realized. These were members of what was called the "Independent Labor party," including Mr. Philip Snowden, their most popular orator, and others whose ideas were beyond the trades-unionists' ideas. They were led by Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, whose ability in practical political affairs towered above them all, and has brought him to the goal which to-day sees him leader of the largest opposition party, the most interesting and perhaps the most conspicuous figure in the new House of Commons.

His attainment of this almost intoxicating triumph has been won only after years of more than ordinary vicissitudes of public and private affairs. A man of profound family affection, he first lost a child, and then, through the death of his wife, was reduced to a condition in which worldly success appeared but as dust and ashes. It is curious to note that three of the most accomplished British statesmen, the prime minister (Mr. A. Bonar Law), Lord Grey, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, have passed through this similar experience an experience which, as Lord Grey himself has said, resulted in a time when "I have been through that which would make it very easy for me to die." Mr. Macdonald's own health suffered, and some eight years ago a sentence of death was pronounced upon him by a high medical authority. He has always possessed something of that

fundamental brooding and somber sadness which are characteristic of many of his race, and a continuous interest in the mystery and destiny of human life which many politicians "put away" early in their career.

His has been a life of perpetual intellectual endeavor. Few men not professional journalists have contributed more to the various newspapers of the country. When he first came to London, he started addressing envelops as a clerk, while he studied at natural science in the evenings so hard that the double work broke down his health. All through the eighteennineties and the early years of this century one found an enormous output of matter from his pen. He was editor of the "Socialist Library." He is the author of books almost all occupied with industrial and social matters: "Labour and the Empire," "Socialism," "Socialism and Government," "The Awakening of India," "The Socialist Movement," "Social Unrest," "National Advance," "The Government of India," "Parliament and Revolution," and many more of the like. He has also edited from time to time the "Socialist Review" and other labor papers.

"What I have at heart," was his confession on entering Parliament in 1906, "is to use political power to ameliorate the condition of my fellow human beings. I believe in self-help through mutual aid, and therefore I am convinced that Socialism is the one hope of the people." "Self-help through mutual aid" covers a very wide field of actual economic change, including almost every scheme of coöperation, partnership, profit-sharing, state regulation of industry, or imposed equality of fortune; and he

would be a bold man who would say which of any of these ultimate ideals Mr. Macdonald holds as being the one most worth realization in action. He is essentially a politician rather than a preacher; I mean this in no derogatory sense. He cherishes the vision of a time when all men will be free from hunger and cold. But Mr. Macdonald, despite his Highland ancestry and power of vision, has always been one of those less occupied with the devising of such ultimate ideals than with the carrying into operation of even some small measure of amelioration of the conditions of the people who walk in darkness, to whose welfare he has devoted his political career. So, on looking at him to-day and on looking back at the past, you will not find the elaboration of some great single scheme by which humanity may be freed. But you find a continual pressure, month by month and year by year, in national affairs, in international affairs, through European civilization, and even many remoter regions, such as South Africa, India, and Egypt. That pressure is directed toward "getting something done," some flagrant injustice remedied, some gate broken down or path made clear, over which others may pass; through which those who come after may find clearer capacity for realization of ideals which at this moment, owing to the obstinacy or foolishness of men, must remain in part a dream.

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But if Mr. Macdonald has endured private troubles that would have slashed a man of less persistent courage and determination into obscurity, no less remarkable has been his career in public affairs. At the beginning