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AFTER THE WAR 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 These reflections are the outcome 
 of many discussions, during the 
 past two years, with Men at the 
 Front and the Back. 
 
 I have ventured to address Mr. 
 Robert Smilhe, because, so far as 
 I am able to judge, he represents 
 and leads the most advanced sec- 
 tions of the Labour Party. 
 
AFTER THE WAR 
 
 BY VISCOUNT ESHER 
 
 G.G.B., G.C.V.O. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 1918 
 
,Ai^ ICi^iii^ RssitaYBP 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Addressed to Mr. Robert Smillie 
 
 I HAVE not the honour to know you, but 
 here in Scotland they say you are an honest 
 and good man. 
 
 History teems with examples of the 
 political affinities of good men and evil 
 actions. 
 
 But your aims I assume to be pure. You 
 desire the victory of your country's arms 
 in this righteous war. You desire hereafter 
 to mould judgment and inspire purpose, so 
 as to secure the happiness and well-being 
 of your countrymen. You have enjoyed the 
 experience of intelligent participation in im- 
 proving the lot of your fellow-workers. You 
 see before you, stretching into immeasurable 
 space, a new prospect for those upon whom 
 the labour of the world has fallen heavily. 
 Your sense of duty impels you to take a lead 
 2 ix 
 
 466293 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 in bringing into relation your considered 
 opinion and the law of the land. You desire 
 to adapt political forms to the necessities of 
 the people, as you conceive them. You 
 wish, perhaps in arbitrary fashion, to supply 
 the driving force that is required to bring 
 about political and social change, that you 
 believe to be beneficent. 
 
 I have endeavoured, in the following pages, 
 to put into the simplest language and to 
 compress into the smallest compass some 
 reflections upon political mechanics as I 
 understand them. Speculation upon such 
 matters is not immaterial, for you and your 
 fellows will have to express in statutory form 
 your mind and purpose. 
 
 I ask you then to urge your followers to 
 reason and explore. 
 
 A friend of mine, of over twenty-five years' 
 standing — a follower of yours — a man who 
 has worked with his hands all his life, when 
 we recently discussed these subjects, listened 
 to my plea for old historic influences, and, 
 pointing to an ancient tabard hanging on the 
 wall of the room where we sat, said, " We 
 shall care for them as you care for that, as 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 a thing of beauty, but obsolete." These 
 were fluid words. They contain no moral 
 thought, for nothing that is old, historic, 
 and beautiful can be obsolete in this sym- 
 bolistic world. 
 
 "There is a sanctity in a good man's home 
 " which cannot be renewed in every tenement 
 "that rises on its ruins : and I believe that 
 " good men would generally feel this ; and 
 "that having spent their lives happily and 
 "honourably, they would be grieved at the 
 " close of them to think that the place of their 
 " earthly abode which had seen, and seemed 
 "almost to sympathise in, all their honour, 
 "their gladness, or their sujffering — that this 
 "with all the record it bare of them, and all 
 " of material things that they had loved and 
 "ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves 
 "upon — was to be swept away, as soon as 
 " there was room made for them in the grave ; 
 "that no respect was to be shown to it, no 
 "affection felt for it, no good to be drawn 
 " from it by their children ; that though there 
 " was a monument in the church, there was no 
 " warm monument in the hearth and house 
 " to them ; that all that they ever treasured 
 "was despised, and the places that had 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 " sheltered and comforted them were dragged 
 ''down to the dust. I say that a good man 
 " would fear this ; and that, far more, a good 
 "son, a noble descendant, would fear doing 
 " it in his father's house." 
 
 If we apply these words to the country of 
 Shakespeare and Scott, they lend force to a 
 patriotism that is noble, unaggressive, and 
 reverent. They have nothing in common 
 with the vulgar aspiration miscalled Im- 
 perialism. They are consistent with broad 
 humanitarian sympathy, with yearning 
 towards universal brotherhood, and with 
 the collective effort of men and women of 
 the same race and language. 
 
 You can interlace present hope with past 
 endeavour, and intertwine the literature, 
 art, and ancient institutions of our country 
 with drastic changes in her laws. You can 
 merge racial and historic pride in an inter- 
 national combine for the World's Peace. 
 You can define Progress as "the gradual 
 increasing happiness of the masses, and pur- 
 sue the aim without dishonouring your fore- 
 fathers. There is plenty of width in the 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 world for the individualistic play of mind 
 that loves tradition, that honours memory, 
 that reverences imagination, and the collec- 
 tive initiative and enterprise that mean 
 higher standards of comfort and well-being. 
 To insist upon necessary and inevitable con- 
 flict between them is to render disservice 
 to our country. 
 
 Your opinions, as I understand them, and 
 mine are not in agreement. I do not share 
 your faith in democracy as a form of govern- 
 ment. But we agree in love of our country 
 and fidelity to the men of our race. For 
 their sake, use your influence to bid your 
 friends and associates pause at the threshold 
 of these undetermined issues, and to make 
 sure before sweeping away any institution 
 deeply rooted in historic soil that it is in 
 truth an obstacle. 
 
 / 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE CROWN 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHURCH . . . . .21 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CABINET 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PARLIAMENT 49 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WAR AIM 6l 
 
AFTER THE WAR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CROWN 
 
 The temper of Englishmen being neither 
 subversive nor logical, it is a curious fatality 
 that has allied England to a nation that is 
 both. The French are the most logical of 
 peoples and the fondest of revolution. We, 
 on the other hand, make our sparse revolu- 
 tions according to law and with the utmost 
 regard to tradition. The result has in- 
 variably been a masterpiece of inconsequence. 
 The Great Rebellion, prompted by revolt 
 against autocracy, placed the United King- 
 dom under the heel of the greatest of auto- 
 crats. The Revolution of 1688, originating 
 in the unpopularity of a Stuart king, left 
 England a pawn in the hands of a detested 
 Dutchman. 
 
 1 
 
2 THE CROWN 
 
 The Reform Bill of 1832 was a monument 
 of illogical compromise with a " middle 
 class " struggling to obtain a share of the 
 political spoils. Peel and Lord John Russell 
 fought for years over the bauble of political 
 power, while their partisans disputed as 
 though great " principles " were at stake. 
 The influence of the monarchy, fallen into 
 grave disrepute under the later Hanoverian 
 kings, was re-established during the long 
 reign of Queen Victoria, in spite of the 
 republican propaganda of philosophers and 
 theorists. 
 
 That grave and experienced statesmen 
 should send their decisions in red boxes to 
 the hereditary representative of a certain 
 family for criticism and approval was not 
 considered incongruous ; and that every 
 appointment, naval, military, or civil, should 
 be " submitted " to this strange authority, 
 and defended by elaborate explanations, was 
 not thought .anachronistic. The Constitu- 
 tion, though frequently modified, was as- 
 sumed to be a permanent and unchange- 
 able organism. While democracy was on 
 all men's lips, the love of oligarchy was in 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA 3 
 
 their hearts. The revolutionary families 
 were mocked at by Lord Beacon sfield, but 
 exploited by Mr. Gladstone. Their power 
 was unshaken in spite of the ten-pound 
 householder, and their authority was un- 
 impeded by the middle-class magnates who 
 crowded the scarlet benches of the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 When a girl-sovereign refused to accept 
 a powerful Tory leader as her minister, 
 except upon her own terms, she obtained the 
 support of the English people for her pre- 
 tension. When her youthful husband toned 
 down foreign despatches that had received 
 the approval of cabinets, both powerful 
 ministers and ebullient parliaments yielded 
 with good grace. Never was the influence 
 of hereditary kingship more powerful in 
 England than during the reign of Victoria. 
 Publicists vied with each other in glorifying 
 the hidden power of the Crown. As an anti- 
 dote to political jobbery, as the fly-wheel of 
 the Constitution, as a check upon the hasty 
 judgment of harassed statesmanship, the 
 Crown was cherished by men of all classes 
 and in every stage of political education. 
 3 
 
4 THE CROWN 
 
 The voice of criticism was rarely heard 
 and speedily extinguished. A ministerial 
 portfolio was grudgingly assigned to a cavil- 
 ling politician after pledges had been given 
 for good behaviour. To another, in spite of 
 influential backing, it was definitely refused. 
 With unerring instinct the monarch imposed 
 checks and held the balance even. An 
 amused and applauding nation supported 
 the Crown against a routed minister, and a 
 baffled parliamentary majority. Instinc- 
 tively Queen Victoria turned to those middle 
 classes where political power resided. Their 
 virtues she shared, and their foibles she con- 
 doned. Their moral standards were hers, 
 and with their simple religious beliefs she 
 profoundly sympathized. No head of the 
 State, however selected, could have supplied 
 the nation with a figure in more perfect 
 accord with their prejudices. 
 
 When the Queen celebrated the sixtieth 
 year of her reign, the British Empire gathered 
 round her with ecstatic splendour. When, 
 a few years later, death came, the great in- 
 articulate masses of her subjects, of all 
 races and colours, spread over the face of 
 
KING EDWARD VII 5 
 
 the earth, mourned for her with genuine 
 sorrow. 
 
 Such was the inonarchical revival in Eng- 
 land during the nineteenth century. It is 
 difficult to imagine any system of popular 
 election that would have provided the nation 
 with a great functionary of this type. 
 
 King Edward, though cast in a different 
 mould, inherited many of his mother's gifts. 
 They were, however, modified or strength- 
 ened by the masculinity which was his chief 
 characteristic and most potent charm. Since 
 the days of the Tudors Englishmen had not 
 possessed so manly a monarch. Yet his 
 instinct for the worth of a man was as keen 
 as any woman's. His tact, a sense of fit- 
 ness on all occasions and in every presence, 
 amounted to genius. He had no illusions 
 himself, but he destroyed none in others. 
 His heart, generous and expansive, was in 
 thrall to reason. Long experience of flattery 
 had given him its measure. He could dis- 
 play anger, but resentment never. Forgive- 
 ness of personal injury was no effort to him. 
 A breach of public duty was rarely condoned. 
 Orderliness was, perhaps, the keynote of his 
 
6 THE CROWN 
 
 nature. In affairs great and small he loved 
 order that was rigid but never pedantic. 
 
 King Edward's masterly shrewdness per- 
 ceived the difference between the England 
 his mother had ruled and the people over 
 whom he was summoned to preside. The 
 Education Acts had done their work. A 
 generation trained under totally different 
 conditions, literate, and provided with cheap 
 newspapers, a people pliant before the 
 rhetorical devices of men sprung from them- 
 selves, had taken the place of the opulent 
 middle class on whose support Queen Vic- 
 toria had relied. The King, with a wide 
 and humorous gesture, gathered the conmion 
 people in his wake. They followed him 
 with laughing complacency, and they were 
 prepared to follow him anywhere, proud of 
 his manhood and confident in his good sense. 
 With characteristic penetration, they divined 
 his regard for ordered society and his love 
 of fair play. It was all they asked of him. 
 
 The King's knowledge of men taught him 
 their relative values. His preferences did 
 not blind him, and his scepticism was so 
 sweet-blooded that he was incapable of 
 
KING EDWARD VII 7 
 
 exaggerating human weakness. He is said 
 to have cared for display, but he was gor- 
 geous himself, and appreciated that unre- 
 strained beauty which is so characteristic 
 of England and her children. If he liked 
 pageants, it was as he liked the Derby, for 
 its wide expression of a people's holiday. 
 In solemn moments no one surpassed the 
 King in gravity of soul or outward decorum. 
 When called to the throne, he had lived 
 every moment of his own fifty years of life. 
 He had gathered knowledge from men on 
 the highway of the world. Experience had 
 filled his thoughts with reflections beyond all 
 book learning. If the restraining influence 
 of the Crown upon indiscreet or ill-considered 
 action is its primary function, no one was 
 better equipped by upbringing and by 
 natural gifts to exercise it than King Edward. 
 No elective machinery could have supplied 
 the nation with a leader who so captivated 
 its fancy ; and if the throne had been sub- 
 mitted to the test of a popular election, 
 among all Englishmen then alive or alive 
 to-day no one would have had a chance with 
 the King. 
 
8 THE CROWN 
 
 During the past eight eventful years the 
 traditions of the monarchy have remained 
 unchanged, and are sustained with a quiet 
 dignity that is universally acknowledged, 
 and with a sympathetic regard for the 
 loftiest interests of the Empire that is appre- 
 ciated to its farthest confines. 
 
 The Bureaucratic Government of the 
 United Kingdom since the outbreak of the 
 war resembles the Parliamentary Govern- 
 ment as carried on by Queen Victoria and 
 Mr. Gladstone in 1870 as little as the Govern- 
 ment of those days resembled that of Crom- 
 well. Dimly, perhaps, but surely, the men 
 fighting in France realize the change that has 
 come over their country. During the long 
 periods of waiting, between yesterday's 
 escape and the battle to-morrow, men 
 examine, argue, and discuss. Few customs, 
 habits, and institutions pass unchallenged. 
 Religious beliefs, political compromises, 
 monarchy, the Church, heredity, eugenics, 
 marriage, concubinage, the great shibboleth 
 democracy, are torn, rarely with passion, 
 always with daring frankness, to tatters. 
 The whole order of society is under a micro- 
 
MOMENTOUS CHANGES 9 
 
 scope, scanned by a million eyes, to the 
 accompaniment of the tremendous music of 
 the guns. War has loosed new and volcanic 
 forces. It has swept away the process — 
 slow, broadening from precedent to prece- 
 dent — that our fathers found so dignified and 
 becoming. "Cabinet " government, with 
 its unrecorded mysteries, is no more. Old 
 names survive, but they have lost their 
 meaning. An avalanche of women has been 
 hurled into the political chaos. Institutions 
 as well as ideas will have to be re-sorted. 
 That discussion and heart-searching should 
 occupy those long dreary interludes while 
 men are waiting for death in the trenches is 
 not surprising. 
 
 So long as the human heart is strong and 
 the human reason weak royalty will be 
 preferred to a republic, was the verdict of a 
 writer whose best-knoAvn work glorified the 
 Constitution of our country as he knew it 
 fifty years since. To-day his aphorism will 
 not stand the test of examination, for we 
 can reason about the monarchy and defend 
 it by argument. 
 
 It is not strictly tioie that kingship appeals 
 
10 THE CROWN 
 
 to sentiment rather than to reason. Tra- 
 dition counts for much, and so does sym- 
 bolism. There is undoubtedly the mystery 
 that hedges a king. A president may have 
 been a next-door neighbour, and may be 
 so again ; but the descendant of King 
 Alfred possesses points in the eyes of men 
 of all classes who think of themselves as 
 Anglo-Saxons. But there are also prac- 
 tical, workaday reasons that give a king 
 preference over an elected head of a state. 
 A concrete monarch appeals more readily to 
 plain minds that an indefinite republicanism. 
 That a sovereign state should possess a 
 head or chief is here taken for granted. The 
 point is not in dispute up to now, although 
 it may be raised hereafter, should the 
 sovereignty of states become merged in 
 cosmopolitan federations. 
 
 Looking to the recent experiences of 
 Britain, we can perceive many advantages 
 in the character, habits, and atmosphere of 
 the English Court that republics lack. An 
 English monarch, in possessing a family 
 right to pre-eminence, can afford to estab- 
 lish a standard of morals and manners that 
 
COURTS AND REPUBLICS 11 
 
 an elected president finds difficult to impose. 
 A king's authority in such matters is un- 
 questioned. By inherited tradition, by up- 
 bringing, by surroundings, his judgment is 
 assumed to be superior and his decisions are 
 undisputed. When he speaks ex cathedra 
 upon matters of social order, his word is 
 final. He can afford to impose restraints, 
 and frame rules of conduct, that men and 
 women are ready to obey, because they 
 believe the sovereign to be above social 
 pressure and to be free from partisan pre- 
 judice. The King belongs to no party 
 and to no class. He is nominally the head 
 of an Episcopal Church, but he is the head 
 of a Presbyterian Church as well. He is 
 bred in a special atmosphere, safeguarded 
 from the jealousy and envy, the triumphs 
 and failures, the petty temptations and even 
 the ordinary pleasures of the mass of the 
 people he rules. This aloofness is believed 
 to guarantee freedom from obsession in 
 social questions, and in point of fact it 
 does so. 
 
 Social gradation and social prejudice 
 ramify deep down into our social fabric, 
 4> 
 
12 THE CROWN 
 
 and an Arbiter Elegantiarum is as necessary 
 to the English people as a conductor to an 
 orchestra. Men and women will yield their 
 j adgment before the dictum of a royal prince 
 who would flout an elected representative. 
 In the governance of mankind nothing is 
 small or great. Everything matters. A war, 
 changing the face of Europe, has been 
 brought about by incivility to a public func- 
 tionary, and a revolution has been precipi- 
 tated by a song. 
 
 Probing deeper, other and graver merits 
 are to be foufid attached to kingship. A 
 monarch's education and training are speci- 
 ally directed towards the functions he 
 has to fulfil. Royalty is not only a caste, 
 but a profession. An ordinary citizen, with 
 a unanimous popular vote behind him, is no 
 better equipped to be the constitutional 
 head of a state than a plain man is equipped 
 to argue a complicated case before the High 
 Court of Appeal. He can doubtless make a 
 more or less lame appearance. 
 
 The President of the United States is not 
 a " constitutional " sovereign in the Euro- 
 pean sense. He is a special functionary, 
 
THE PRESIDENT OF U.S. 13 
 
 endowed with authority and powers wholly 
 dissimilar from those enjoyed by any head 
 of any state in the world to-day. His 
 duties, if they are well performed, require 
 aptitudes and gifts of a" special order, and 
 have to be sought for by a rude enough 
 method among the citizens of the United 
 States. If the King of England were asked 
 to exercise the powers entrusted to the 
 President of the American Constitution, it 
 is improbable that the monarchy would 
 remain the appanage of a particular family. 
 The American President belongs to a party 
 or group, and he cannot dispossess himself 
 of this qualification or drawback. An Eng- 
 lish monarch's freedom from party ties, his 
 independence of party bias, his hereditary 
 isolation, his domestic seclusion, are guaran- 
 tees, in the eyes of the people, that he Avill 
 perform impartially the duties assigned to 
 him by the law of the land. That the King 
 can do no wrong is not only a convenient 
 constitutional maxim; it is the honest 
 opinion of the mass of the people. They 
 would as soon believe the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury capable of cheating at cards. 
 
14 THE CROWN 
 
 The instinct of the people is perfectly 
 rational and sound. However an arch- 
 bishop might be tempted, so long as he 
 occupied Lambeth Palace he would not carry 
 the ace of trumps up his lawn sleeve. So 
 long as a king of England is the head of a 
 royal family, so long as he occupies the 
 throne by virtue of his hereditary right 
 under the Act of Settlement, he will do no 
 wrong in the sense in which the word is 
 understood by the people over whom he 
 reigns. 
 
 If the sovereign had been educated and 
 trained in Bloomsbury, if he were elected to 
 preside over Mr. Lloyd George for four or 
 five years and then returned to his Blooms- 
 bury home, the safeguards would not possess 
 the same potency, and if they did the masses 
 of the people would not feel the same confi- 
 dence or security. 
 
 The training of a prince implies familiarity 
 with men and affairs beyond the reach of 
 ordinary persons, and of this advantage the 
 nation reaps full benefit. From childhood 
 royal princes are in the habit of meeting 
 men and women of every class and station. 
 
THE TRAINING OF A PRINCE 15 
 
 They can move freely in any society. A 
 Prince of Wales does not require to be intro- 
 duced. At home and abroad the heir to the 
 throne can and does become personally 
 acquainted with the men who govern. They 
 meet without restraint on either side. Every 
 statesman in Europe was personally known 
 to King Edward. He could tell his ministers 
 all about the men with whomi they were in 
 correspondence and whom they had never 
 seen. This was an asset in the conduct of 
 difficult negotiations of incalculable value. 
 
 When King Edward sat smoking a cigar 
 with Gambetta in a Paris restaurant, he was 
 aware that no " president " could have 
 ventured so far. And until Gambetta 
 passed from the stage, serious difficulties 
 between Great Britain and France melted 
 away. Whether in the society of foreign 
 potentates or ministers of state, whether 
 gossiping with trainers and jockeys at New- 
 market or Chantilly, whether chatting with 
 lord mayors or mayors in the provinces, 
 whether sitting in a miner's cottage or a 
 Highland bothie, an English king is always 
 at his ease : a " president " never. The 
 
16 THE CROWN 
 
 one has notliing to lose and the other so 
 much. Every elected head of the State fears 
 to compromise himself or his friends. The 
 King cannot be compromised. The King is 
 free and independent. His place is assm-ed. 
 He owes it to no man. No man or group 
 of men has a hold over him. So when as 
 head of the State he is called upon to 
 "approve" of individual claims to place, 
 power, or rewards, his judgment is free from 
 bias, and his questions and criticisms receive 
 an attentive hearing from the designating 
 political authority. 
 
 Every promotion to the higher ranks of 
 the public service, naval, military, and civil, 
 was submitted to Queen Victoria, and reasons 
 had to be given and questions answered. 
 Every list of " Honours " was carefully 
 scrutinized by the Queen herself. Her pub- 
 lished correspondence shows the care that 
 she bestowed upon these matters. No 
 " president " would be given credit for that 
 impartiality which was universally accorded 
 to the Queen. In higher matters of State 
 a king possesses experience, records, and 
 traditions that no president can claim. 
 
ROYAL ARCHIVES AT WINDSOR 17 
 
 The Royal Archives at Windsor are a mine 
 of wealth in a country like ours, where 
 precedent is honoured as a counterpoise to 
 ill-considered action and jobbery. The 
 accumulation of such archives depends upon 
 family custodianship. No " president " 
 chosen from a party group could afford to 
 leave traces of his rule to his successor. 
 The custom of British sovereigns since the 
 accession of George III has been to avoid 
 as far as possible verbal explanations of 
 policy from ministers. Writing to the 
 sovereign must often have been tedious to 
 Peel or Gladstone, but they never shrank 
 from a process that possessed the double 
 advantage of clarifying their own minds 
 and of placing on record, with secrecy 
 upon which they could rely, their reasoned 
 opinions. 
 
 No one familiar with the inner history of 
 Queen Victoria's reign can dispute the value 
 to the State of the intimate communion 
 between sovereign and minister. The letters 
 of her ministers to the Queen would never 
 have been written to a president, who would 
 have carried them away in a carpet-bag. 
 
18 THE CROWN 
 
 Not only would English literature have been 
 the poorer, but the policy of the country 
 during those eventful years might have been 
 less restrained. Influence as distinct from 
 authority is the peculiar appanage of a royal 
 prince. Substitute a president for a monarch 
 and influence dwindles, while if authority is 
 not enhanced at the expense of ministerial 
 responsibility, where is the gain ? 
 
 Mr. Gladstone laid stress upon the " aggre- 
 gate of direct influence normally exercised 
 by the sovereign upon the counsels and pro- 
 ceedings of ministers," and the veil lifted 
 when Queen Victoria's correspondence was 
 published substantiated his assertion. 
 
 The entry of America into the European 
 orbit, and the clearer recognition by EngHsh- 
 men of the powers granted to a president of 
 the United States by the American Consti- 
 tution, may lead to examination and contrast 
 of the two systems of government. It may 
 presently be desired by Great Britain and 
 the Dominions and a democratized India 
 to fasten duties and responsibihties upon 
 the head of the State that are now exercised 
 by a body of persons subject to popular 
 
DUTIES OF THE HEAD OF THE STATE 19 
 
 control. Under such circumstances, excep- 
 tion might be taken to the hereditary em- 
 ployment of such expanded powers. There 
 is, however, another method of strengthening 
 the execution while retaining the advantages 
 of the hereditary principle. Even as matters 
 stand to-day the Executive in Great Britain 
 has been greatly strengthened. It was 
 an inevitable outcome of the war. The 
 present Prime Minister enjoys a freedom of 
 action far superior to that of Lord Palmer- 
 ston or of Lord Salisbury. A system that 
 leaves the head of the State untrammelled 
 by popular election, and free to exercise 
 popular functions, possessing a moderating 
 and unifying influence over a widely extended 
 empire, appears better suited to our Imperial 
 needs than the system so elaborately con- 
 trived by Alexander Hamilton and his 
 Federalist colleagues. 
 
 A return to the constitutional practice of 
 the pre-war period is unlikely. The evolu- 
 tion of our system of government has pro- 
 ceeded too rapidly and too far. Imperial 
 and Commonwealth needs have put a heavy 
 strain upon the ancient forms of parhamen- 
 5 
 
20 THE CROWN 
 
 tary rule at Westminster. The " Cabinet ' ' 
 — the mysterious pohtical growth that sprang 
 from the compromises of the eighteenth 
 century — has suffered a war-change. The 
 Dominions and India are taking a share in 
 the direction of British policy that they are 
 not likely to relinquish. 
 
 But reflecting minds in the trenches and 
 beyond, while noting these changes, and 
 while endeavom'ing to sift pohtical chaff 
 from wheat, may hesitate before concluding 
 that a repubhcan form of government is 
 the last word of democracy. They would do 
 wisely to make sure that the elective plan — 
 itself a compromise -under which presidents 
 are chosen, yields better results than that 
 process known as heredity, under which King 
 George ascended the throne. The King is 
 not a power, but an influence. If the great 
 masses of the people throughout the Empire 
 will only grasp the importance of this dis- 
 tinction, the stability of the monarchy is 
 not likely to be shaken. * 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 For the majority of fighting soldiers the 
 Church of England has no meaning. Her 
 history, her services, and her functions are 
 outside the range of their knowledge and 
 experience. These young men would call 
 themselves Christians, but rather from want 
 of any other respectable classification than 
 from an acceptance of the doctrines and 
 conduct that Christianity implies and im- 
 poses. For Christianity and the Church, 
 so far as they are aware, have no necessary 
 cohesion. Of Christian dogma they speak 
 often coldly and critically, though rarely with 
 disrespect. Of the Chm'ch it is otherwise. 
 
 The army chaplains, of all denominations, 
 brave, kindly, helpful as they are, have 
 passed difficult hours in amicable discussions 
 that they themselves have invited. On 
 Sunday evenings and on many weekdays 
 
 21 
 
22 THE CHURCH 
 
 they have encouraged debate and instigated 
 free discussion. In hospitals and clearing 
 stations they have sat at bedsides receiving 
 confidences and giving counsel. If the 
 hierarchy will listen to these devoted sons 
 of the Church, and if they take action 
 in accordance with deductions they cannot 
 fail to draw, they may preserve the Church 
 of England. They should listen, too, to the 
 ministers of the Presbyterian communities 
 — above all to the men from the north. 
 
 It is difficult for the inhabitants of cities 
 to understand village life. When a country 
 lad drifts into a town, he speedily forgets 
 his boyhood. Memory is submerged in 
 violent contrast. In the country a village 
 clusters round the Church, its most con- 
 spicuous object. In cities the Church 
 is submerged. Street-bred people cannot 
 understand the place of the Church in the 
 rural life of the country. In their eyes the 
 country parson stands for reaction. He is 
 a parasite living somnolently in infinite 
 contentment. He cares little for education 
 that is not doctrinal. He pays low rates 
 of wages himself and discourages the idea 
 
CITIES AND VILLAGES 23 
 
 that they are inadequate. He beHeves in 
 almsgiving as the panacea for poverty. He 
 wears broadcloth, but holds fustian to be 
 good enough for his parishioners. He 
 preaches submission to the will of God, when 
 he means the squire. He looks with cold 
 disapproval on the public-house, but gets 
 up bazaars. A local tyrant himself, he 
 requires humility from others. Upon the 
 village schoolmaster and the recipient of a 
 food-ticket alike he imposes the test of 
 conformity. 
 
 This is the caricature that passes for 
 high verity in the eyes of the townsman 
 when he endeavours to argue that the 
 Church is responsible for the " degrading 
 lethargy " of rural life in England. He 
 does not realize the monotony of the English 
 village, its quiet, uneventful days sloAvly 
 passing aloof from the great world ; its 
 dark long evenings, unenHghtened by the 
 humours of the cinematograph. The com- 
 munal life even of a French village is un- 
 known in om's. No gleam from the outer 
 world penetrates the hedgerows. Great 
 artists in the past, Crabbe, George EHot, 
 
24 THE CHURCH 
 
 and Mrs. Gaskell, have painted the picture. 
 To-day Hardy and Barrie and Synge have 
 sketched in illuminating detail. In these 
 small backwaters of humanity is obliged by 
 his profession to reside a priest. He is 
 there as the guardian of a shrine that for 
 centm-ies has stood unchanged ; only the 
 lichen has spread over the face of its stone- 
 work. Under the porch is hung a roll of 
 names, his predecessor^ since, perhaps, the 
 tenth century of the Christian era. Their 
 bones He under the yew trees. The dogma 
 this man preaches from the worn pulpit on 
 Sundays has been modified or altered, but 
 the gospel is unchanged. He has come, an 
 educated, experienced man from the outer 
 world, and has brought with him its wider 
 significance. He has travelled in Italy and 
 Spain- He has talked with poets and poH- 
 ticians. He has even read the Quarterly 
 Review and seen an aeroplane. A son has 
 fought for the Empire in India ; another was 
 lost in the Antarctic seas. A daughter has 
 retm-ned to the village on a holiday from 
 the hospital which she has chosen to make 
 her home. The fresh air from the great 
 
THE PARISH PRIEST 25 
 
 spaces beyond blows tlirough the vicarage 
 upon the hntels of these isolated cottages. 
 That is one interpretation of the Church's 
 work in rural England, altogether apart 
 from its spiritual side. 
 
 The clergyman is an educational influence 
 of superlative value, although he is not the 
 official teacher. His wider knowledge, based 
 on experience that his surroundings lack, 
 permeates these small communities. He 
 supplies for his parish a peripatetic school 
 of simple philosophy, cheap certainly, and 
 ridiculous sometimes, but invaluable as is 
 the village well, whose waters would not pass 
 any severe hygienic test. Replace him by 
 the teacher, it is argued, and the money 
 that he costs will do more to widen the 
 horizon of these peasants than his dubious 
 personality. 
 
 How easy, and yet how difficult ! For a 
 schoolmaster is rarely a teacher, and learn- 
 ing is far removed from education. 
 
 To the young Scotsman this reasoning 
 appeals feebly. Thanks to the old-fashioned 
 dominie, thanks to a century and a half of 
 acquired custom, thanks to the value long 
 
26 THE CHURCH 
 
 ago put upon education in the Scottish 
 glens, thanks to the system of bursaries 
 for ambitious lads, Scotland is truly, as her 
 sons maintain, sixty years ahead of rural 
 England. There is no comparison even now, 
 under model Boards of Education, spending 
 freely upon their scholastic system, between 
 the average Scottish and English school- 
 master. 
 
 It is not a matter of educational tests, but 
 of upbringing, of social gifts, of aptitudes, 
 and of intellectual atmosphere. It would 
 take a generation or two to produce the 
 like in England. Destroy the Established 
 Church, abohsh the parish priest, substi- 
 tute for him the only type of schoolmaster 
 of which there is any supply available, and 
 every English village becomes intellectually 
 derelict for a time. 
 
 This reasoning may impress the men who 
 criticize and are ready to destroy the posi- 
 tion held by the village clergy. It will not 
 convince them. The picture engraved upon 
 their minds of the idle, ultra-Tory, patron- 
 izing, archaic vicar has cut too deep. It 
 may, however, lead them to pause. Upon 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE PARSON 27 
 
 these matters women will have much to say, 
 and women have hitherto been loyal to the 
 Church. 
 
 In cities and larger towns its position is 
 both stronger and weaker. The vicar of an 
 urban parish is a less conspicuous figure. 
 He excites no jealousy, and criticism passes 
 him by in the crowd. His stipend is un- 
 coveted by town folk and his activities un- 
 noticed. The vicarage is a street number. 
 He shares with the rate-collector, the district 
 visitor, and the sanitary inspector the honour 
 of calling on the poor. Battling against 
 heavy odds, he fights a clean way for the 
 Cross through grimy streets. The obsequious 
 smile of the postulant, and the smug gravity 
 of his chm'chwardens, leave his reason clear 
 and his heart unscarred. He is the army 
 chaplain of the Church Militant, the type 
 of padre with whom the young men, fresh 
 from the trenches, love to wrestle in argu- 
 ment. In Flanders they will talk with him 
 by the hour ; but in Bermondsey they will 
 greet him with a nod. He possesses none of 
 the attributes of the tyrant, and does not 
 strike his neighbours as reactionary or 
 6 
 
28 THE CHURCH 
 
 archaic. But they " have no use for him," 
 and the cinema is next-door and the music 
 hall over the way. The Evening News can 
 be got at every street corner, and there are 
 cheap trains to and fro on Sunday. 
 
 The young men and women who will 
 shortly have a predominant influence over 
 the future of Great Britain are untrained in 
 the art of government, and quite inexperi- 
 enced beyond a contracted orbit. Social 
 problems are compared by them with their 
 obvious momentary needs. They cannot 
 tell whether a tree grows from its root or 
 its top. Like children, their desires are 
 clear to themselves, but they can trace no 
 relation between the fulfilment of them and 
 the social organism that renders their fulfil- 
 ment possible. 
 
 If older men are bUnd, if they misunder- 
 stand the portents, then the resistless stream 
 of young men returning from the war, and 
 of young women overflowing the channels of 
 employment, will be certain to sweep away 
 every obstacle that appears to stand between 
 them and their ambitions and their enjoy- 
 ment of life. 
 
IMMANENT CHANGE 29 
 
 Some years ago the Scottish Churches 
 recognized the danger. They are drawing 
 close together and seeking " unity of com- 
 mand." Scepticism and indifference had 
 led to a marked change in the attitude of 
 the Scottish people towards the Church of 
 their fathers. The authority of the minister 
 had for some time been on the wane. The 
 number of communicants had dwindled. The 
 sacred character of the Sabbath was violated ; 
 cheap newspapers and cheap science were 
 doing their work. In the face of peril the 
 old schisms are likely to be healed in Scot- 
 land. It is an example and a warning to 
 those who cherish the Church of England, 
 not for its spiritual mission only, but as an 
 organic feature of the institutions of our 
 country. 
 
 To direct the revenues of the Church to 
 education, to turn cathedrals into national 
 museums, and churches into school-halls, 
 are proposals sufficiently plausible to attract 
 the superficial glance of a new and in- 
 experienced electorate. The clergy of 
 all denominations in England should take 
 heed. Lincoln and York, Canterbury and 
 
30 THE CHURCH 
 
 Gloucester, are not only provincial and 
 diocesan centres. They are the pinnacles of 
 a great edifice that stands for the material 
 well-being of a large section of the people, as 
 well as for the spiritual life of England. 
 
 When Henry Warden undermined the 
 faith of the vassals of the Halidome, it was 
 not long before the great Abbey of Kenna- 
 qhair became the appanage of a greedy Scot- 
 tish noble. It was impossible in the six- 
 teenth century to convince the Roman 
 prelates of their danger. The hold of the 
 Catholic Church upon the people had 
 been so long estabhshed. The hierarchy 
 was powerful and wealthy. Its adherents 
 were men and women of the highest rank. 
 In spite of a display of courage and un- 
 daunted tenacity, Catholicism was spoliated 
 and destroyed by the determined attack of 
 a few enthusiastic preachers. Knox, power- 
 ful as he was, proved powerless to save the 
 Church revenues and buildings for the 
 scheme of education that he favom-ed, and 
 incidentally preserve them for the aesthetic 
 benefit of Scotland. The Catholic clergy 
 would not listen to compromise, and mis- 
 
'rtlE REFORMATION 31 
 
 judged the strength of their detractors. The 
 lesson should not be thrown away. 
 
 To a Catholic of the sixteenth centiu'v the 
 Reformation appeared to be the negation 
 of all spiritual life, and of Christianity itself. 
 Destruction of the quiet, monastic life, 
 whatever element of truth there may have 
 been in its abuses, seemed to the Catholic 
 an act of sacrilege. That the monks might 
 yield some of their privileges and their super- 
 fluous wealth to the hard-pressed laity was 
 to desecrate the house of God. No accom- 
 modation was possible. Consequently the 
 clash of competing interests led to results 
 that benefited nobody. The waste of wealth 
 was only equalled by the loss of opportunity. 
 Scotland lost splendid monuments of Gothic 
 art, and a great chance was missed of apply- 
 ing wealth, learning, and individual work 
 to the moral, intellectual, and material 
 benefit of her people. The Roman Catholic 
 Chm'ch lost everything. 
 
 The storm gathered slowly and spread 
 gradually over the face of the land, but it 
 was only by degrees that the devastation 
 became apparent. 
 
32 THE CHURCH 
 
 The men and women who, to-day, mis- 
 conceive the uses of the clergy, undervalue 
 their labours, dislike their influence, and 
 scoff at their transcendental beliefs, may 
 succeed in bringing about one of two results. 
 They may provoke an act of pure destruc- 
 tion, and leave their country, themselves, 
 and their children's children the poorer by 
 the loss of so much that is beautifid, healthy, 
 and inspiring. Or they may, calmly and 
 without passion, prevail upon the clergy 
 to come into line with the spiritual require- 
 ments of the modern world. 
 
 In order to succeed in this they would 
 have to convince the clergy that the Church 
 exists for the sake of the masses, and that 
 the masses are the best judges of their own 
 requirements. This would be a difficult 
 but constructive act, and in the spirit of 
 sound reformation. 
 
 Meantime the clergy, if they are wise, will 
 meet these young people half-way, and will 
 conform their mode of life to the demands 
 of men and women who have been born 
 again in the course of the war. If the people 
 insist that their spiritual pastors should be 
 
OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE CLERGY 33 
 
 lay teachers as well, the clergy would be 
 wise to submit. Many prejudices would 
 have to be abandoned ; life would be harder 
 in many cases ; habits would have to be 
 changed and sacrifices incm'red. But funda- 
 mental truths would remain in the custody 
 of the Church. 
 
 The experiences of the war have demon- 
 strated beyond all question the \irtues of 
 individual English men and women. It has 
 been as though a race had risen from the 
 dead. Courage, endurance, soberness, obedi- 
 ence, sacrifice ! If from inability to under- 
 stand the moral dilemma resulting from a 
 war that has made such demands upon the 
 religious beliefs of the people, the clergy 
 cling to old-estabHshed habits, to anti- 
 quarianism, formalism, and euphemism, they 
 will lose the best chance the Church of Eng- 
 land has ever had, and maybe the last. 
 
 Dogmatic theology makes no appeal to 
 youths and maidens hard pressed by the 
 hurry of the modern world. Time is wasted 
 in preaching the Word to the unconverted, 
 in old lovable and simple fashion. Scepti- 
 cism and indifference towards transcendental 
 
34 THE CHURCH 
 
 things never yield to argument. Against the 
 mind that denies or doubts the presence of 
 God no reasoning prevails. It is sufficient 
 to remember, 
 
 " That almost everyone, when age, 
 
 Disease, or sorrows strike him, 
 
 Inclines to think there is a God, 
 
 Or something very like Him." 
 
 But the value to the nation of a corporate 
 effort, such as the Church of England, in- 
 stinct with a sense of national life, can make 
 if it pleases, is great enough to justify its 
 maintenance by an electorate, however care- 
 less of spiritual things, however cold to the 
 higher aspects of religion, and sceptical of 
 its truths. 
 
 If the clergy — and the experience of the 
 war shows that they can do so— are ready 
 to sacrifice ease, to subdue controversy, and 
 suppress retort ; if they are prepared to 
 change their habits, modify their practice, 
 and transmute their functions, they will 
 suffer no moral loss, and they will give the 
 Church in England and Scotland a stronger 
 hold over the soul of the nation than she has 
 ever yet established. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CABINET 
 
 The Cabinet has been called a Board of 
 Control chosen by the Legislature. This 
 description is inaccurate. The Cabinet in 
 its origin was a secret committee of the Privy- 
 Council, chosen by the sovereign. It was 
 a growth — some considered it an excrescence 
 — on the dual system of government under 
 which the sovereign selected his ministers, 
 but with the consent of the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 The Privy Council has now ceased to be 
 an operative part of the Constitution, and 
 has become a mere list of persons whose 
 party services receive a titular reward mid- 
 way between the Peerage and a baronetcy. 
 The Cabinet is no longer selected by the 
 sovereign, but by the Prime Minister of the 
 day, whose tenure of office depends upon 
 
 7 35 
 
86 THE CABINET 
 
 his command of a majority in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 Importance has been attached by theorists 
 to the fusion of executive with legislative 
 power. The evolution of the Cabinet 
 authority was assumed to ensure this con- 
 stitutional result, and did so, with more or 
 less success, up to the outbreak of the war 
 in 1914. Then came a rapid change. Cabinets 
 in the eighteenth century were small, but 
 their tendency was to expand. Wilham III 
 and Queen Anne presided over a Cabinet 
 composed of six or seven ministers. The 
 early Hanoverian kings, unable to speak 
 English, ceased to preside at the Cabinet, 
 and abandoned this function to the First 
 Minister. The secrecy of Cabinet discussion 
 was always rigidly maintained. Even the 
 normal meetings of "His Majesty's confi- 
 dential servants " were unrecorded until the 
 institution was over a century old. No 
 secretary was ever present, and no minutes 
 of the Cabinet proceedings were kept. Only on 
 rare occasions a document called a " minute 
 of the Cabinet " was formulated, and the 
 names of the ministers approving or dis- 
 
CABINET DEVELOPMENT 37 
 
 approving were placed upon record in the 
 archives of the sovereign. 
 
 The Prime Minister was in the habit of 
 writing to the sovereign after Cabinet 
 meetings a short precis of its decisions 
 in the form of a confidential letter; but 
 the literary gifts and caligraphy of Prime 
 Ministers varied, and these documents 
 hardly constitute an accurate record, nor 
 were they at any time used for purposes of 
 reference. 
 
 The Cabinet Council was unrecognized as 
 an integral part of the Constitution, and the 
 term Prime Minister was no more than a 
 complimentary expression, until Mr. Balfom' 
 obtained for his successors, though not for 
 himself, its official recognition. 
 
 During the twenty years previous to the 
 war, the powers and influence of the Cabinet 
 Council had waned. This loss of power as 
 well as prestige was due to two causes — 
 the numerical increase of its members and 
 the growth of the ascendancy of the Prime 
 Minister. The size of the Cabinet led to the 
 informal practice of an inner Cabinet or ring 
 of the most influential ministers. 
 
88 THE CABINET 
 
 In Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet of 1880 im- 
 portant questions were discussed and decided 
 by a small group witliin the Cabinet, which 
 merely registered their decrees often after 
 action had been taken. This practice be- 
 came normal as time rolled on. It contained 
 the germ of the plan now in force under 
 Mr. Lloyd George. Necessarily the Cabinet 
 Council, though still retaining its place in 
 the public eye, suffered a diminution of 
 authority. 
 
 The Prime Minister, meanwhile, was ceasing 
 to be a minister primus inter pares, and was 
 becoming vested with sole executive author- 
 ity, relying upon the support, accorded to 
 him personally, of the House of Commons, 
 rather than upon the collective responsibihty 
 of the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone was erroneously 
 credited with having estabhshed complete 
 supremacy over his colleagues, and was 
 accused of exercising over them dictatorial 
 authority. But Mr. Balfour certainly did ; 
 and his and Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's 
 decisions were unquestioned by their col- 
 leagues. Perhaps the final evolution of 
 the Prime Minister from the chrysalis stage 
 
POWER OF PRIME MINISTER 39 
 
 occurred when Lord Salisbury survived his 
 dismissal of Lord Randolph Churchill. 
 
 When forming one of his later adminis- 
 trations, P»Ir. Gladstone said that the next 
 most serious step to taking a colleague into 
 the Cabinet was leaving out a colleague who 
 had once been admitted. He meant by this 
 to draw attention to the gravity of cheapen- 
 ing Cabinet office, and of lowering the 
 prestige of the Cabinet as the supreme 
 executive organ of the nation's will. Events 
 have achieved what he would have looked 
 upon as a deplorable tendency in our system 
 of government. The fact that there are 
 three ex-Premiers living to-day, and a 
 countless horde of ministers and ex-ministers 
 floating about the parliamentary lobbies, has 
 depreciated the credit of official life in public 
 estimation. Outside a comparatively small 
 body of parliamentary reporters, there is not 
 a man alive who could tell off Mr. Asquith's 
 Cabinet of twenty-three without a mistake. 
 Yet there are still numerous readers of poHti- 
 cal history who are perfectly familiar with 
 every figure of the Grenville ministry or 
 Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet of 1841. 
 
40 THE CABINET 
 
 If the Cabinet, as a collective instrument 
 of government, carries insufficient moral 
 weight, its day is over, for as a piece of 
 executive mechanism it is completely out of 
 date. During the past thirty years those 
 who have had chances of watching the inner 
 working of the constitutional machine would 
 agree that a Cabinet of poor quality is 
 generally the more efficient instrument of 
 government, provided that the Prime 
 Minister possesses character and decision. 
 The Cabinet of 1880, crammed with nota- 
 bilities, containing men of high capacity, 
 eloquent, and enjoying popular influence, 
 was the weakest Cabinet of recent times, 
 and that of Sir Henry Campbell Banner man 
 was the strongest. 
 
 A Cabinet works well or ill according as it 
 is loyal to its chief, and if its members are 
 in agreement upon broad and simple political 
 issues. Disloyalty between colleagues and 
 a conflict of principles among its members 
 are fatal to Cabinet efficiency. 
 
 As politics, therefore, become more com- 
 plex, as political sects become more 
 numerous, as personal ties become slacker 
 
EFFICIENT AND INEFFICIENT CABINETS 41 
 
 and personal rivalries more acute, efficient 
 government by means of such a committee, 
 collectively responsible for secret decisions, 
 becomes more difficult. Under the pressure 
 of the war it has become impossible. Is there 
 any good reason to think that this is a 
 passing phase, and that when peace comes 
 the old traditional customs of parliamentary 
 rule under the control of a Cabinet Council 
 can be resumed with advantage to the State ? 
 
 The population of the United Kingdom 
 has quadrupled since the reign of George III. 
 The Empire has grown out of all recognition. 
 The business dealing with the affairs of Great 
 Britain and of the Empire, transacted daily, 
 has been proved by the experience of the war 
 to require a change of method, as well as a 
 large expansion of officials. The method 
 was changed when Mr. Lloyd George became 
 Prime Minister. It was his first ministerial 
 act. 
 
 Before the war the administration of their 
 departments had occupied the whole time 
 of the departmental ministers, of which the 
 Cabinet was mainly composed. They had 
 no leisure to consider questions of grave 
 
42 THE CABINET 
 
 import that arose from day to day in spheres 
 of vital interest to the nation, but which 
 were not classified under departmental 
 headings. This duty fell to the Prime 
 Minister. He possessed no departmental 
 staff, and no " office," other than a few 
 private secretaries. He worked on a system 
 inherited from Sir Robert Walpole, and his 
 work overwhelmed him. It was not per- 
 formed. Some years prior to the war he 
 had been fm'nished with a secretariat for the 
 purpose of co-ordinating the previsional 
 efforts of the Admiralty and the War Office. 
 This was called the Committee of Imperial 
 Defence. Fortunate in its personnel, the 
 Secretariat of the Committee of Imperial 
 Defence had made preparation for the out- 
 break of war. Its remarkable and patriotic 
 secretary foresaw the necessity of stretcliing 
 out a hand beyond the departments with 
 which he was specially concerned. Sir 
 Maurice Hankey induced successive Prime 
 Ministers to realize that modern war was 
 a matter in which every State department 
 was concerned. By means of sub-committees 
 of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 
 
THE PRIME MINISTER 43 
 
 almost every problem that was bound to 
 arise if war broke out received some con- 
 sideration. A " War Book " was prepared, 
 and its value will be appreciated when the 
 whole history of the war is laid bare. 
 
 In August 1914 Mr. Asquith at once took 
 possession of the secretariat of the Committee 
 of Imperial Defence. The evolution of this 
 secretariat into a secretariat for the Cabinet 
 was natural and inevitable. As the war 
 progressed a further evolution became conse- 
 quential and necessary. The War Cabinet 
 was formed and its secretariat was strength- 
 ened. Mr. Lloyd George roughly divided 
 departmental administration from the duties 
 of considering, and settHng, the larger 
 problems raised by the daily management 
 of the business of the war. The system 
 is still imperfect, and requires constant re- 
 vision. The question for the nation is 
 whether the new system, improved as it can 
 be, shall be applied to the government of 
 the country when the war ceases. 
 
 For years to come the storm-swell of the 
 war will continue to break upon the shore of 
 our country's domestic wants. A " Peace 
 8 
 
44 THE CABINET 
 
 Book " will prove to be as grave a necessity 
 as was the " War Book." No one supposes 
 that it will be possible to abandon the 
 system of separating administration from 
 the business of the Supreme Executive, until 
 a considerable time has elapsed. War con- 
 ditions are bound to have their aftermath. 
 Emergence from them will take time, and 
 the work of a Peace Cabinet will absorb as 
 much energy as is bestowed to-day upon the 
 business of the war. The sessions of the 
 War Cabinet are practically permanent. 
 The old summons to " His Majesty's con- 
 fidential servants " has become a memory. 
 The War Cabinet is in constant session, and 
 possesses a number of most capable secre- 
 taries. Its work is simpHfied by agenda 
 tables, by preparatory memoranda, and its 
 discussions, as well as its decisions, are placed 
 on record under the supervision of one of the 
 very ablest of public servants. There is no 
 resemblance between the secret conclaves of 
 the Cabinet Council of previous governments, 
 and the meetings of Mr. Lloyd George's War 
 Cabinet. 
 
 No one with knowledge and experience of 
 
THE WAR CABINET 45 
 
 the conduct of business before the war and 
 at the present time, is under any illusion as 
 to the possibility of again returning to 
 the older plan. Pubhcists who know little 
 of the inner working of the Cabinet system, 
 except from hearsay, clamour for its revival. 
 Professional politicians, for diverse reasons 
 connected with party motive or personal 
 ambition, follow suit. But with all its im- 
 perfections the as yet unsystematized system 
 is better suited to the requirements of the 
 Empire, than the old Cabinet Council which 
 had become obsolete before the war. 
 
 The new plan possesses another advantage. 
 It is adaptable to the aspirations of the 
 Dominions to take part in Imperial delibera- 
 tions, and to exercise influence over Imperial 
 decisions. These aspirations have been in- 
 dulged, and cannot remain unfulfilled. The 
 new Cabinet system has been evolved upon 
 lines well known in the practice of the science 
 of government, as Englishmen have for 
 generations understood that science. It was 
 born under circumstances of national neces- 
 sity ; and though modifications and improve- 
 ments follow quickly as fresh necessities 
 
46 THE CABINET 
 
 arise, the principle of a small executive 
 Cabinet Council, free from the onerous duties 
 of administration, is certain to remain the 
 keystone of the arch of government when 
 peace comes. 
 
 That the question will be fully debated 
 before the tribunal of public opinion is 
 certain. Attempts will be made to confuse 
 it with the plan adopted of appointing con- 
 trollers of all kinds, with their vast horde 
 of bureaucratic employees. This plan is a 
 compromise with the exigencies of such a 
 war as this, and does not possess the element 
 of permanency. If the new electorate insist 
 upon hearing reasoned arguments, and 
 require to see and to examine statements of 
 fact, as to the comparative working of the 
 two Cabinet systems, both before and during 
 the war, there is little doubt of the issue. 
 The first step should be the circulation for 
 popular use of the War Cabinet Report for 
 the year 1917, compressed into a readable 
 form, and sold at the lowest price ; and this 
 should be followed by an official estimate, to 
 be framed by authority of the War Cabinet 
 itself, of the probable rate of reduction of 
 
FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 47 
 
 the volume of business devolving upon the 
 Executive Government, over a series of years 
 at the expiration of the war. With this 
 information before them the people can be 
 trusted to exercise a sound judgment and 
 to decide upon a sound policy. 
 
 No rhetorical device should be permitted 
 to obscm'e a simple business proposition. 
 The various functions of government, both 
 legislative and executive, can be readily 
 understood by plain men. There is no 
 mystery about them, though the pro- 
 fessional politician dearly loves the people 
 to think so. 
 
 To rule by oligarchic methods is an art. 
 The greater the artist and the more complete 
 his powers of mystification, the simpler his 
 task becomes and the better the people are 
 governed. A democratic form of govern- 
 ment should be divorced from art altogether ; 
 otherwise it is dishonest. If the people are 
 to be consulted, if they are to rule, they must 
 know the whole truth in order to exercise a 
 free judgment. 
 
 In order to choose wisely between the old 
 and the new Cabinet systems, the people of 
 
48 THE CABINET 
 
 Great Britain and the Dominions should 
 insist upon receiving impartial statements 
 of their working, and, having obtained them, 
 there is very little doubt what the decision 
 will be. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PARLIAMENT 
 
 Parliament is not the House of Commons. 
 This is not a platitude, but a reminder. 
 Recent legislation, although it has weakened 
 the constitutional powers of the House of 
 Lords, has not destroyed its influence. Other 
 events and developments may have done so. 
 It is too early to judge. Theorists and 
 publicists continue to discusss the bicameral 
 system. Their views are of minor import- 
 ance. The vital issue is whether the great 
 mass of the people are not feeling as indiffer- 
 ent towards our parliamentary traditions as 
 they are towards Church establishment. 
 There are indications that a preacher with 
 strong convictions, with a clear hold upon 
 a simple plan of applying the principles of 
 democracy by a more direct method — 
 Rousseau's, for example — would have little 
 
50 PARLIAMENT 
 
 difficulty in overturning parliamentary 
 government based upon representation. 
 
 " America," the working men of the north 
 are fond of saying, " has not come into this 
 war for nothing." They then proceed to 
 use arguments, familiar enough, in favour 
 of separating legislative from executive 
 functions, advocating a wide delegation of 
 legislative authority to sections of the United 
 Kingdom, where different habits, ideas, and 
 requirements prevail, coupled with an exe- 
 cutive chosen by popular vote for a definite 
 period. 
 
 The points were put to the writer by an 
 intelligent artisan, who is working for the 
 State at a low rate of wage, and hears these 
 matters constantly discussed. 
 
 "We do not mean to let Somersetshire 
 control the requirements of Fife. The people 
 in the south are sixty years behind us. We 
 have no time to look after their interests, 
 but we do not mean them to regulate om-s. 
 Before the war we were left behind by the 
 Germans in education and commerce. In- 
 formation vital to us could only be obtained 
 in Potsdam. The cause of this was a defec- 
 
POPULAR OPINION IN TRAVAIL 51 
 
 tive parliamentary system, under which 
 legislative and executive functions were 
 muddled up. The Americans manage better. 
 So do the Swiss. We must alter our system. 
 Great Britain's external business we should 
 be wilHng to trust to a Prime Minister elected 
 for fom' years, provided that no secret 
 arrangements were valid, that diplomacy 
 was abolished, that war could not be de- 
 clared or treaties made without an appeal 
 to popular vote." 
 
 This summary of the views of a man, 
 given as they were in considerable detail, 
 showing that full discussion takes place 
 among the working classes upon these sub- 
 jects, contains nothing very new, except its 
 menace. It is folly to ignore the fact that 
 popular opinion is in travail, and that the 
 new electorate, men and women, is unlikely 
 to listen to old advocates of old measures, 
 but is determined only to listen to protag- 
 onists who have new measures to offer. 
 
 An octogenarian House of Commons is 
 
 ignored by the masses of the people. Its 
 
 debates are not reported by the papers they 
 
 read. Its members are hardly known to 
 
 9 
 
52 PARLIAMENT 
 
 them by name. There is not a member of 
 the House of Commons, save one, who com- 
 mands the public attention enjoyed by the 
 anonymous leader-writers of the Daily Mail. 
 No local member of Parliament can compete 
 in influence with the editors of great local 
 newspapers like the Glasgow Herald. The 
 present Prime Minister's speeches are read 
 because they are reported and because they 
 are referred to in leading articles. No minor 
 luminary is heard beyond the four walls 
 within which he speaks. 
 
 The Press has usurped the functions of 
 Parliament as they were performed in the 
 nineteenth century. It controls the Execu- 
 tive, and makes and unmakes ministries. 
 Parliament, parliamentary tradition, to- 
 gether with statesmanship as a school of 
 politics, have lost their hold on the faith of 
 the nation. Mr. Henderson is reported to 
 have said at Nottingham, that he had been 
 brought up to believe government to be a 
 difficult art, for which special training and 
 special education were requisite. Experi- 
 ence of office had disabused the Labour 
 Partv leaders of this delusion. Cabinet 
 
MR. HENDERSON'S VIEWS 53 
 
 Councils, shrouded in mystery, were mere 
 mumbo-jumbo, and two or three adminis- 
 trations could be formed out of Labour men 
 who would govern the country no worse, 
 and perhaps better, than the present Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Mr. Henderson's judgment may be faulty. 
 That is not of much importance. The 
 gravity of his remark lies in its wide- 
 spread acceptance by his hearers. It could 
 not be otherwise. One statesman after 
 another has been subjected to the bitterest 
 criticism in the Press. Politicians have been 
 ridiculed and reviled, individually and in 
 groups. Refutation has proved to be im- 
 possible, as the critics hold every dominat- 
 ing position. The Press wins its way by 
 attack, and by the possession of the initia- 
 tive. Explanations by the men attacked 
 are treated as excuses. Their reputation is 
 sullied and their influence undermined. By 
 this process the man himself, and the 
 institution of which he forms an integral 
 part, are deprived of the authority that they 
 are elected to exercise. No underpinning 
 of the parliamentary fabric appears to be 
 
54 PARLIAMENT 
 
 possible. The e^il has progressed too far. 
 The superstructure requires to be lightened, 
 and new additions erected upon solid foun- 
 dations, as much in harmony with an ancient 
 building as circumstances will permit. 
 
 The separation of legislative from execu- 
 tive functions ; delegation of legislative 
 powers by the nation to provincial assem- 
 blies ; a federal parliamentary body for 
 financial control ; a judicial check upon im- 
 perfect legislation ; a " referendum " to the 
 nation upon certain reserved matters of 
 national importance ; an executive chosen 
 by direct election every four or five years ; an 
 annual deliberative Imperial Conference, — 
 these are the projects that are under discus- 
 sion both in rear of the British armies in the 
 field, and in the workshops of the north. 
 This fact cannot be ignored. 
 
 The widened political outlook of men who 
 have for months been living in foreign coun- 
 tries, and absorbing new impressions, inclines 
 them to examine and discuss conventionali- 
 ties and institutions. These men have dis- 
 covered new standards of comparison and 
 fresh ideals. Men to whom the specula- 
 
ARGUMENT AND AUTHORITY 55 
 
 tions of Rousseau and Kant ate unknown 
 have unconsciously felt the impact of their 
 buried memories. The mature wisdom of 
 Henry Maine, of Fitzjames Stephen, of Henry 
 Sidgwick, and of John Morley, will have to 
 be disinterred from dusty bookshelves and 
 formulated anew for a generation that has 
 profited by the Education Acts of forty years 
 ago. Ideas are novel to these men and 
 women that appear dry as dust to a scholar 
 of Balhol. 
 
 But there are two circumstances that 
 cannot be overlooked by the contemptuous 
 oligarch, and the opportunist politician. 
 These men and women do not bow to 
 authority in matters of opinion. They 
 require reasoned argument, and are not 
 content with unsupported statement. And 
 they have been constituted by the laws of 
 their country the final Court of Appeal. 
 The form of government called democracy has 
 yielded into their untrained hands a dominant 
 voice in the settlement of the institutions 
 under which they are to live. 
 
 They realize that representative demo- 
 cracy is not the only form democracy can 
 
56 PARLIAMENT 
 
 take. They see that representative demo- 
 cracy, as hitherto understood in Great 
 Britain, is not the only method by which 
 popular control can be exercised. The ex- 
 ample of America, where the principle of 
 democracy is interwoven with the oligarchic 
 system that was believed to prevail in Eng- 
 land under George III, does not stand alone 
 in contrast to the democratic Constitution of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 For in Great Britain itself and in France 
 the principles of popular representation have 
 been abrogated for four years. No French- 
 man can be found to pretend that the French 
 Chamber represents France, any more than 
 anyone in England maintains that the 
 House of Commons represents the people of 
 Great Britain. Both these bodies are mere 
 mass meetings of persons who have arrogated 
 to themselves, by resolutions prolonging 
 their self-ordained privileges, the power to 
 sit and discuss measures, that have been 
 placed before them by officials, under the 
 authority of Mr. Lloyd George in England 
 and M. Clemenceau in France. The demo- 
 cratic dictatorship of these statesmen has 
 
EMERGENCY MEASURES 57 
 
 been confirmed, not by free assemblies repre- 
 senting the people, but by the assent of the 
 people themselves, given informally and 
 passively, and registered by the Press as 
 the vocal organ of popular opinion for the 
 purpose. 
 
 This abnormal delegation of supreme 
 executive authority to one man, who is free 
 to select his instruments of government, 
 was not a deliberate act, but an evolution 
 of democratic rule under the pressure of the 
 war. After this fashion precedent after pre- 
 cedent has been created in our past history, 
 as emergencies have arisen, from the days 
 of Simon de Montfort to those of Mr. Lloyd 
 George. 
 
 But emergency measures have a curious 
 way of becoming static. The assent to Acts 
 of Parliament is given in Norman-French 
 to-day, because it was the language of the 
 Plantagenet baronage ; and a Prime Minis- 
 ter is evolved to preside over Cabinet 
 Councils because a Hanoverian sovereign 
 was unable to speak English and had to be 
 addressed by Sir Robert Walpole in Latin. 
 The party system, believed by many to be 
 
58 PARLIAMENT 
 
 an emanation of high statesmanship and 
 often defended as such, was in England a 
 Jacobite incident, and in the United States 
 a reHc of slavery. In democratic France it 
 does not exist, yet the French democratic 
 form of government has stood the war test 
 as well as ours or the American. 
 
 The Constitution of the United Kingdom 
 has undergone a process of change that may 
 prove to be permanent. On the other hand, 
 it may be that the old school of parha- 
 mentarians will manage to push the State 
 coach back into the old ruts. That they will 
 endeavour to do so is already apparent. But 
 it is equally clear that an effort will be made, 
 probably under the leadership of Mr. Lloyd 
 George, to graft pernmnently upon our 
 institutions the governmental practice that 
 has prevailed dm*ing his premiership, shorn 
 of attributes that belong to a period of war 
 and are unnecessary in normal times, but 
 retaining the principle of severance between 
 executive authority and responsibility to a 
 legislative assembly. His success or failure 
 will largely depend upon the international 
 outcome of the war, upon whether an appeal 
 
A CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE 59 
 
 to the electorate takes place before the war 
 ends and the response he gets, upon the secret 
 conferences with the dominion representa- 
 tives, and largely upon the Irish settlement, 
 if that haven can be reached before peace 
 comes. 
 
 It will depend finally upon the impression 
 left on the mind of the masses, with whom a 
 decision now rests, by Mr. Lloyd George's 
 success or failure to achieve fulfilment of 
 the task he undertook. Parliament has had 
 little to do with the conduct of the war, 
 beyond registering the decrees of the Prime 
 Minister. Criticism, except of a perfunctory 
 kind, has been silenced. The Prime Minister 
 has looked for support to the newspaper 
 Press and not to the House of Commons. 
 The only effective control exercised over the 
 action of ministers has been by the Press, and 
 not by the House of Commons. 
 
 Although the basis of legislative power has 
 been widened by an immense increase of the 
 electorate, a check has been imposed simul- 
 taneously upon the interference of the Legis- 
 lative with the Executive Government. 
 
 A constitutional change that may prove 
 10 
 
60 PARLIAMENT 
 
 to be permanent has been brought about by 
 a combine between the Prime Minister of the 
 day, and organs of pubHc opinion other than 
 the elected representatives of the people. 
 
 This novel factor cannot be ignored. The 
 inarticulate masses do not become articulate 
 by the mere process of putting a cross against 
 the name of a parliamentary candidate, 
 although the delusion that they do has been 
 carefully fostered. An anonymous writer of 
 leading articles, with an eye to the sale of his 
 paper, is just as likely to represent faithfully 
 pubhc opinion as a Member of Parliament 
 elected by a bare majority. 
 
 Upon this hypothesis the government of 
 Mr. Lloyd George is founded. 
 
 Upon this hypothesis he has challenged 
 the enemies of this country to give or receive 
 the " knock-out blow." 
 
 In the success of the Allies, Parliament will 
 have played a very subordinate part, and 
 its powers and future influence cannot fail 
 to be permanently affected by its impotence 
 in one of the greatest crises in our history. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WAR AIM 
 
 The Destruction of Militarism, a League of 
 Nations, the Limitation of Armaments, are 
 fine plirases. Treated rhetorically, they stir 
 deep emotions. But the Allies have not, so 
 far, agreed upon their interpretation or 
 definition. 
 
 Territorial readjustment, on the other 
 hand, is to-day, as it always has been, an 
 indispensable attribute of a treaty of peace 
 following upon complete victory. 
 
 President Wilson has shown in his numer- 
 ous allocutions a consciousness of this 
 primordial difficulty. 
 
 The great wars of the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries are so well known, that a 
 schoolboy could run off lists of battles lost 
 and won, while the names of the statesmen 
 who provoked and of the generals who 
 fought them are household words. But 
 
 61 
 
62 THE WAR AIM 
 
 few memories retain the list of peace treaties 
 signed dming that period, and still less their 
 provisions. When examined, these peace 
 treaties are almost invariably based on the 
 conviction of their protagonists that peace 
 was definitely assured, and in nearly every 
 case intelligent publicists and deluded peoples 
 believed that the latest treaty was about to 
 herald an era of indefinite peace. But in no 
 case did these peace treaties fulfil the hopes 
 of their framers. 
 
 It is a chastening of the spirit to find that 
 the statesmen and diplomatists who signed 
 the numerous peace treaties scattered over 
 two centuries, from the Peace of Westphalia 
 to the revolutionary year of 1848, in nearly 
 every case believed that they were ensuring 
 the pacification of Em'ope. Nations shared 
 the political delusions of their rulers. The 
 more drastic the changes in the European 
 map, the more assured were the map-makers 
 of the permanent character of their work. 
 There is a pathetic ring about the speeches 
 of English ministers, and the popular re- 
 joicings in England, over the ill-starred 
 Treaty of Amiens. 
 
THE LEAGUE OF PEACE 63 
 
 In no case was the deception more com- 
 plete than in the readjustment of 1815. The 
 Holy Alliance then formed was signed by the 
 " All Highests " of the day. They declared 
 that they would govern their own peoples 
 and deal with neighbom-ing states by 
 " taking as their sole guide the precepts of 
 the holy religion of om* Saviour, namely, the 
 precepts of justice. Christian charity, and 
 peace." 
 
 All the European sovereigns became mem- 
 bers of the League of Peace except the Pope. 
 The " precepts of the Holy Rehgion of om- 
 Saviour," as apphed by Metternich, their 
 interpreter, succeeded in securing an em- 
 barrassed pause for a generation, after which 
 the ci\dlized world threw off the yoke, and 
 plunged once more into an orgy of revolution 
 and war, that has continued without inter- 
 ruption to the present time. 
 
 President Wilson is too trained a philo- 
 sopher not to have misgivings whether 
 democracy has so transformed the human 
 heart that, after all this bloodshed, after 
 these disappointed hopes of a better world, 
 after similar experiences renewed again and 
 
64 THE WAR AIM 
 
 again in all their bitterness, man shall have 
 ceased to be the cin:iously clannish animal, 
 idealistic but objective, generous but com- 
 bative, inexorably struggling for existence, 
 that he has shown himself throughout the 
 ages. 
 
 Democracy, however, may prove to be 
 more than a composite and indefinite word, 
 implying a form of government. Like the 
 Cross, it may create a new impulse. This 
 is the contention of its votaries. The old, 
 semi-pagan churches, round which ci^^hzed 
 Europe has gathered for centuries, that 
 have connived at her blood-thirstiness and 
 blessed her sacrifices, may come to be 
 annexed by a novel dispensation, borne over 
 the ocean from a younger race, bearing a 
 name of new significance. 
 
 We are faced by the immediate human 
 motives of the warring peoples. Common 
 prudence demands of the few who guide the 
 many, that they should formulate a re- 
 arrangement of our relations, both to our 
 friends and enemies. If they are wise, 
 British statesmen will not postpone to the 
 end of the war the necessary task of survey- 
 
PRESIDENT WILSON'S IDEAL 65 
 
 ing the possibilities of the future, and they 
 cannot confine their aims and ambitions to 
 the horizon they scan from the sea-walls of 
 the British Empire. 
 
 Throughout history very few statesmen 
 have successfully pursued general aims, and 
 seized the supreme opportunity ; and if 
 Cromwell and William the Silent, Chatham 
 and Bismarck, are exceptional names, the 
 majority of statesmen seem to have followed 
 some indefinite instinct, or to have impro- 
 vised as opportunity arose, and thus, from 
 want of preparation, have found themselves 
 forced to barter away the fruits of victory. 
 
 It must be assumed that President Wilson 
 and those who follow him will have tested 
 their grand inspiration by the lessons of the 
 past and the probabilities of to-day. The 
 destruction of militarism, the limitation of 
 armaments, a league of nations, are not the 
 product of a novel idealism ; these ideas 
 have floated through Europe from the earliest 
 times, and many federal plans based upon 
 them have been given a trial. 
 
 For it has been maintained by philosophers 
 that federation between states is of all forms 
 
66 THE WAR AIM 
 
 of government the one that promises to 
 provide the strongest and safest securities 
 for the liberty and progress of the world. 
 Be it so. Is then a League of Nations to be 
 taken to mean a super-federation, including 
 in some new and as yet undefined constitu- 
 tion the already federated states of the 
 world, together with countries like France 
 and Spain and Italy, whose forms of govern- 
 ment are much more centralized than those 
 of the greater Powers, and China, Russia, and 
 Japan, whose ideals and aspirations are so 
 divergent ? 
 
 Such a problem requires cool consideration 
 and unbiased jvidgment. It should not be 
 approached with inflamed vision. That 
 psychological error lies at the root of Ger- 
 many's grievous crimes. She iias seen her 
 own future and the future of the world 
 through a bloodshot haze. The German 
 doctrinaires have infected the homely Ger- 
 man people with a virus of false aims, that 
 have proved to be their ruin. It required 
 a Gothic simplicity of soul to believe that 
 Germans, num^erous and powerful as they 
 are, could succeed in placing Deutschland 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY 67 
 
 liber Alles. The world is far too big and too 
 full. Nor can America, powerful as she is, 
 and potentially more powerful, force her 
 ideas, however idealistic and pure, alike upon 
 civilized and uncivilized mankind. It is a 
 method that is totally at variance with the 
 fundamental conception of democracy, and 
 no grouping of nations that is conceivable 
 can impose its volition — call it Kultur or 
 anything else — upon an unconvinced, un- 
 converted, and unwilling world. 
 
 However admirable, however beneficial, 
 however desirable the sentiments of Presi- 
 dent Wilson may be, they have first to be 
 transformed into political ideas, before there 
 can be any reasonable chance of putting 
 them into practice. This transformation is 
 not a simple matter ; but it is the task that 
 lies before the chosen leaders of the Anglo- 
 Saxon peoples here and overseas. 
 
 What is the contributory influence of the 
 formula, a League of Peace, upon the pros- 
 pects of the peace that some day will have 
 to be signed ? 
 
 When Mr. Lloyd George was explaining the 
 functions of the Versailles Inter-Allied Coun- 
 11 
 
68 THE WAR AIM 
 
 cil to the House of Coinnions on December 
 20t]i, 1917, he stated that " nations have 
 come together to set up a coiiiplete machine 
 which is a clearing-house, not merely in mili- 
 tary matters, but for financial, for economic, 
 for shipping, for food purposes, and for all 
 things that are essential to the life of the 
 nations," and he went on to suggest that 
 this Council, organized for the purposes of 
 tlie ^var, might contain the nucleus of that 
 League of Nations to which so many look 
 forward, after the war, as a means for estab- 
 lishing permanent peace throughout the 
 world. This suggestion, and it was nothing 
 more, is the furthest point reached as yet by 
 European statesmanship towards the realiza- 
 tion of President Wilson's hopes. 
 
 If the international craftsmen whose duty 
 it will be to compose the differences of the 
 belligerent states share Mr. Lloyd George's 
 optimism, and if they follow the line of the 
 Federalists who were faced with the framing 
 of the American Constitution, and if they 
 adopt the methods of admirable patience and 
 labouring constancy that were character- 
 istic of Alexander Hamilton and his col- 
 
INTER-ALLIED QUESTIONS 69 
 
 leagues, they may, conceivably, dispel the 
 hitherto familiar idea, that laws and institu- 
 tions are not made, but grow. xVpproached 
 in that temper and with a leaven of faith, a 
 hitherto insoluble problem may perhaps be 
 solved. If a League of Nations is to be 
 formed ad hoc at a Peace Congress, it follows 
 that diu-ing the concluding period of the 
 war, unity of political guidance should supple- 
 ment unity of military direction among 
 the Allies. 
 
 The regulation of inter-alHed questions, 
 postal, telegraph and wireless, railways, 
 shipping, aerial communications, inter-allied 
 economics, finance, commerce and tariffs, 
 social problems affecting aliens, education 
 and technical development, are all matters 
 that may yet be satisfactorily handled under 
 some co-operating authority during the pro- 
 gress of the war. Add to them a careful 
 working out of the far more difficult 
 questions of international treaties, and 
 an international constabulary; then the 
 machinery existing at the conclusion of the 
 war, thus supplemented and carefully mani- 
 pulated by statesmanship, confident in 
 
70 THE WAR AIM 
 
 its own instincts, may provide an inter- 
 national policy for a still hesitating world. 
 
 The framers of schemes for a new govern- 
 ance of Em-ope are doubtless aware, that 
 we have travelled far beyond the mediaeval 
 conception, derived from Cicero and through 
 Augustine, that indi\d duals and communities 
 can only live under a system of rights and 
 obligations imposed by the law of natural 
 society, based on a principle of mutual non- 
 interference. The system, formulated by 
 Grotius, which met with general acceptance, 
 but never received practical recognition, has 
 no living force in Europe to-day. Our 
 international morality is the roughest of 
 rough compromises. International law has 
 never resembled the legal system of rules 
 governing civil relations, for the simple 
 reason that international law has never in 
 reality possessed the sanction of a combina- 
 tion of consenting states possessing an organ- 
 ized force for the pm'pose of imposing their 
 combined will and decrees. It is essential 
 to the plan advocated by the President of 
 the United States that this sanction should 
 be found, and it can only rest upon an inti- 
 
ORGANIC AND INORGANIC STATES 71 
 
 mate combination of states directed to this 
 end. 
 
 It has never so far been found possible to 
 effect a combination between organic and 
 what have been called inorganic states — 
 between a state hke France and a state hke 
 Austria, or even Great Britain, that rules 
 over alien elements " supported by force, 
 but divorced in feeling from the rest of the 
 population." A League of Nations presup- 
 poses the combination of such states, and 
 their willingness to accept the decision of a 
 Court of Arbitral Justice, that they are bound 
 to constitute as their first co-ordinated act. 
 
 History teaches us that wars are five times 
 out of ten caused by conflicting fundamental 
 principles, rehgious or poHtical. This being 
 so, a state cannot reasonably be expected to 
 run any serious risk of a wrong decision, when 
 the interests at stake appear to the vast 
 majority of citizens to be of the utmost 
 gra\aty. Here we seem to be confronted by 
 an insuperable obstacle, unless the moral 
 and intellectual nature of the average human 
 beings composing the greater communities 
 of the world undergoes a radical change. 
 
72 THE WAR AIM 
 
 Furthermore, it is unlikely that when the 
 most important questions are at issue any 
 legal precision could be given to their solu- 
 tion, even though the litigants were willing 
 to accept the judgment of an international 
 tribunal. 
 
 To establish the moral hegemony of an 
 international authority, that will succeed 
 where the Papacy has failed, is the task 
 that is about to tax the statesmanship of 
 President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George. 
 
 If President Wilson possesses enough 
 vision and will, if Mr. Lloyd George pos- 
 sesses enough genius and skill, they n^ay 
 succeed. ^They may find the key to a new 
 polity, and they may draw after them the 
 sceptical and the disingenuous among their 
 colleagues at the Council table. But co- 
 operation will be difficult to secure, in view 
 of the differences in national character and 
 national circumstances among the nations 
 and loose federations, of which the Conference 
 or Congress is bound to be composed. 
 
 It is the fashion to speak of democracy 
 as though it were a creative force, when in 
 reality it is nothing more than a form of 
 
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 73 
 
 government. And of all forms of govern- 
 ment democracy is, perhaps, the noisiest 
 and yet the weakest when it comes to execu- 
 tive action. 
 
 Let us assume, however, that the tone of 
 the Peace Congress will be " democratic," 
 but even so the atmosphere of a Peace Con- 
 gress cannot be rarefied. It will be heavy 
 and thick with political passion. The stan- 
 dards of human motive will not be high — 
 certainly no higher than they were at 
 Vienna in 1814, or at Berlin in 1876. Why 
 should they ? The ethics of national politics 
 have not changed much since an Athenian 
 aristocrat, finding himself outstripped in the 
 race for power, turned to the common people 
 for support, secured their suffrages, called 
 his rule democracy, and kept himself in 
 power for forty years. As for the ethics 
 of international politics, they have been 
 exemplified by the statesmen of the Central 
 Powers in their acts, and denounced by the 
 statesmen of the Allies in their declarations. 
 They reached the lowest depths in August 
 1914. 
 
 If an angel of tlie Lord, a great writer has 
 
74 THE WAR AIM 
 
 said, were to strike the balance whether the 
 world of the Antonines was more intelligent, 
 more humane, more civilized, and more 
 prosperous then or now, it is doubtful 
 whether the decision would favour the 
 present. 
 
 We may feel confident that, when this 
 question of a League of Nations comes up 
 for discussion at a Congress of Peace, the 
 sharpest encounter will be between two 
 divergent schools of ideas, both of them of 
 German origin. On one side of the Council 
 table the followers of Kant will urge in 
 language that has not been surpassed in 
 clearness, that the remedy for war is a 
 Federal League of Nations, in which the 
 weakest is as strong as the strongest, since 
 it relies for protection on the united power 
 of all, and the adjudication of their collective 
 will. On the other side of the Council table 
 will sit men who believe with Bernhardi 
 that " war and brave spirit have done more 
 great things than love of your neighbour." 
 
 We cannot evade the stern fact that the 
 leaders of the Allies, and the allied peoples 
 themselves, are not whole-heartedly on one 
 
STATE EQUALITY 75 
 
 side or the other— that, although President 
 Wilson is in ardent agreement with Kant, 
 there are others, claiming to be leaders, who, 
 in their secret hearts, hold to the view of 
 Bernhardi. 
 
 The unequal development of the human 
 race is a factor that cannot be overlooked. 
 Great communities have been compared to 
 great mountains, that have in them the 
 primary, secondary, and tertiary strata of 
 human progress. Still more aptly does this 
 image fit a conference of European states, 
 and yet it is difficult to imagine a conference 
 or a League of Nations that is not based upon 
 the principle of the political equayty of the 
 several states of which it is composed, if it 
 is to fulfil the hopes of the idealist. 
 
 State equality was the fundamental idea 
 of the framers of the American Constitution, 
 when they allotted two representatives in 
 their Senate to every state, irrespective of 
 its size, population, or stage of development. 
 It was the exact opposite of the principle 
 that governed the formation of the German 
 Confederation. One has stood the test of 
 time ; the other has not. If a League of 
 12 
 
76 THE WAR AIM 
 
 Nations is to stand the strain of national 
 sentiment, we should assume the accept- 
 ance by Great Britain or Germany of repre- 
 sentation in a League of Nations equal to 
 that of Switzerland or Portugal. For the 
 idealist is bound to hold that the future 
 happiness of mankind depends upon the 
 abandonment of the usual tests of territorial 
 expansion, numbers of population, wealth, 
 and even culture, when fixing the rights of 
 national representation, since in his view the 
 equality of nations is of far greater import- 
 ance in the scale of human progress than the 
 equality of man. 
 
 These reflections are not captious. They 
 are an honest endeavour to point a specific 
 moral that must be understood, if any serious 
 attempt is to be made to frame a peace on 
 the lines advocated by President Wilson. 
 The leagued nations will have to become 
 familiar with what the Greek historian 
 called the co-existence of freedom and self- 
 imposed restraint, before they can hope to 
 preserve unshaken the fabric they desire to 
 raise. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Lloyd George speaks 
 
GOD, PATRIOTISM, PROGRESS 77 
 
 peace to the people, he should pray for divine 
 inspiration, for no remembrance of former 
 things will help him. He should pray for a 
 Pauline conversion of the great peoples of 
 the earth, for no scraps of paper will change 
 the habits and traditions of ages. The deci- 
 mation of the warlike races may help him 
 to pacify Europe, as the wholesale slaughter 
 of the barons in the Wars of the Roses helped 
 Henry VII to pacify England. But just as 
 in the fifteenth century many other causes 
 were at work, that enabled the Tudor 
 sovereigns gradually to impose a new 
 authority on their unruly subjects, until the 
 soul of England was changed, so parallel or 
 subsidiary causes must be sought out and a 
 stimulus given to their evolution, if Europe 
 and the world are to be pacified when this 
 war ends. 
 
 This is a war aim that will justify all the 
 sacrifices Great Britain has made, and those 
 yet to coj.ie. The words God, Patriotism, 
 Progress, are often lightly used. Their 
 implication varies according to the circum- 
 stances of those who use them. Their mean- 
 ings are not to be found in a storm of 
 
78 THE WAR AIM 
 
 conflicting passions. If this war has been 
 worth waging, and is worth fighting out to 
 the last man, it is because on our side are 
 ranged the hopes of those who desire to see 
 their fellow-men of all races freed from old 
 limitations, not of thought, but of action, 
 and to transform social habits and remould 
 political institutions, in tune with the dreams 
 and aspirations of all that is best in Eng- 
 land and America. To ensure such a victory 
 over the reactionary spirit of Germany, or 
 the forces of reaction nearer home, it is not 
 necessary to destroy our national landmarks, 
 as the Germans have destroyed Rheim.s, 
 but it is necessary to avoid old pitfalls and 
 all weak compromise either with our enemies 
 or ourselves. 
 
 frinted by Hazell, Wation <b Viney, Ld., London and Aylethury, England. 
 
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