THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 IN THE WAKE 
 OF THE WAR
 
 IN THE WAKE 
 OF THE WAR 
 
 PARLIAMENT OR 
 IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT? 
 BY HAROLD ^HODGE M.A 
 
 Of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law 
 Formerly Editor of The Saturday Review 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVII
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE DEVONSHIRE PRESS. TORQUAY.
 
 PA 
 
 56-6.7 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT may reasonably be objected to this book 
 (i) that it is not a book ; (2) that most of 
 what is said here has been said in other 
 
 ways elsewhere ; (3) that one who has never 
 
 cebeen in Parliament can not be competent to 
 
 g criticise a parliamentary system. 
 
 ^ It has however often been found convenient 
 to put into book form that which is really a tract 
 for the times, having none of the character of 
 permanency which every book rightly so called 
 must possess. There is no very serious fraud in 
 giving such writing the external form usually 
 
 r associated with a book when there is no idea of 
 <"* deceiving a reader by appearances. 
 
 It is true that suggestions for the government 
 of the Empire more or less similar to those here 
 set out have been made by others. But absolute 
 originality is hardly necessary to justify, or at 
 any rate to excuse, contribution to a discussion 
 of general interest at this time. The govern- 
 ment of the Empire and the working of the 
 parliamentary system is an urgent question to 
 
 = which statesmen and newspapers alike have 
 
 : gravely invited the public to turn their thoughts. 
 
 s Therefore, if any one has, or thinks he has, some- 
 
 387943
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 thing to say on the matter not perhaps new but 
 said with at any rate a different emphasis from 
 that used by previous speakers or writers, he can 
 hardly be blamed for saying it. 
 
 As to the right to criticise Parliament in one 
 who has never sat in Parliament there is another 
 side to that matter. Grant that only a Member 
 of Parliament, past or present, can know it from 
 within, on the other hand it is extremely difficult 
 to one who is or even has been within to know 
 it from without. The inside view is necessary 
 for understanding Parliament from the Parlia- 
 mentarian's standpoint, but the outside view is 
 as necessary and perhaps more valuable for 
 judgment of the actual place of Parliament in 
 the government and life of the nation. 
 
 The amateur builder of constitutions may 
 be a fair mark for a mild joke. Certainly 
 Mr. Sidney Low is right when he says in the 
 Edinburgh Review " Constitution-making in 
 the study is easy enough." But he graciously 
 adds : " but not on that account futile. It is 
 desirable that all possible methods should be 
 worked out in advance and considered." There 
 is the justification for efforts of this kind the 
 need to try all sorts of ways probable or im- 
 probable. These efforts are not to be taken as 
 practical statesmanship. The amateur giving 
 himself the airs of the statesman, who will have 
 to do what the writer plays at doing, does worse
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 than make himself look foolish. For him to 
 trouble himself meticulously with every con- 
 tingency, every circumstance the statesman 
 must consider, to calculate carefully the chances 
 of acceptance, to work out his scheme to the 
 last detail as though it were going to be put into 
 force to-morrow, is waste of time. When the 
 day comes for the statesman to act he will cer- 
 tainly pay no attention to any of the amateur's 
 pains. It is only by imagination that the 
 amateur may hope possibly to do something that 
 may help the statesman. If he is not too serious 
 and does not let himself be stifled with detail, 
 he may possibly throw out an idea here or a hint 
 there, which the practical statesman may stop 
 to consider. It is for the amateur to suggest, 
 not to do. If he takes his effort responsibly, as 
 though he had to carry out his own scheme, it 
 will probably be at the cost of suggestion. 
 
 At any rate, one who is decisively past military 
 age may plead that building constitutions in the 
 air is not necessarily idleness in him : certainly 
 he might be doing something much more mis- 
 chievous. Possibly, too, he does other work 
 than build constitutions. 
 
 Since writing this tract I have had the advan- 
 tage of reading many recent books and articles 
 on the question of Imperial Government. If I 
 have not borrowed from them any specific ideas 
 needing acknowledgment, it must not be
 
 viii ; PREFACE 
 
 thought that I do not realise the value of these 
 writings. A comparison of views is always help- 
 ful. References have purposely been kept out, 
 since I know from experience the irritating effect 
 of footnotes and references in a book obviously 
 meant to be read rapidly. They merely pull the 
 reader up quite needlessly. If anyone should 
 take what is written here seriously enough to 
 want to verify any of the references, I will gladly 
 enable him to do so. 
 
 HAROLD HODGE. 
 54 Piccadilly W.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 i INTRODUCTION i 
 
 ii THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM - 8 
 
 HI PARTY - 56 
 
 iv A NEW START - 82 
 
 v THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT - - 97 
 
 vi THE IMPERIAL COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 155 
 
 vn THE KING AND THE COUNCIL - 180 
 
 Yin FINANCE - 208 
 
 ix SOME FORMALITIES - - - - -218
 
 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 AFTER the war after the deluge ! Yet 
 sympathise as every one must with 
 this impatience at talk about anything 
 after the war before we have won the war, it is 
 certain there will be an after the war, though 
 none knows if he will see it. Neither does it 
 much matter whether he will or not : the country 
 will go on, and whether a new era will rise upon 
 the blood-red sunset will depend very largely 
 on the thought taken while the war is going on. 
 If we do not think until the war is over, we may 
 find that we have put off thinking until too late. 
 Having not looked before, we shall certainly 
 pine for what is not. The future will then take 
 care of itself, and that generally means that very 
 little care is taken. Events will be our master, 
 and the power to guide them will have gone from 
 us. 
 
 One very often hears it said that it will be a 
 new England after the war ; that nothing can 
 ever be the same again. Will it be a new Eng- 
 land ? The tendency when stress is passed to
 
 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 relapse into the old ways is very strong. How 
 soon the effect of a shock that had seemed com- 
 pletely to change a man wears off. Will it be a 
 new England ? That is the great question. Will 
 the tremendous lesson be lost on us ? Will all the 
 exhortations of the Church pass unheeded, or 
 will the people " turn unto the Lord their God ? " 
 
 The cynic will have a grand time indeed, if the 
 effect of peace is but a gay re-action from an 
 unwonted serious mood. The cynic has had his 
 innings during the war, observing that neither 
 Christianity, nor Church, nor science, nor philos- 
 ophy, nor socialism, nor humanitarianism, nor 
 any other thing has had any effect on belligerent 
 opinion of the merits of the fight. All the Ger- 
 man clergy, all the German philosophers, all the 
 scientists, all the professors, practically all the 
 socialists, are satisfied that Germany is right. 
 All the Entente clergy, all our scientists, all our 
 scholars, nearly all our socialists are satisfied 
 that the Entente is right. The cynic must not 
 have a second innings. 
 
 There is but one memorial really worthy of 
 the great dead in this war, but one tribute worthy 
 of those who have seen us through it a better 
 England and a better Empire. 
 
 It is one of the good sides of war that it brings 
 into bold relief fine types which the dustheaps 
 of a long peace obscure and deface. Many of us 
 whose trade is in words know very well that the
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 writer and the talker have undeserved influence. 
 In the sloth of peace they have an undue advan- 
 tage over the man of action. The military type, 
 especially, does not come by his own in the piping 
 times. He is not good at making money, he is 
 not slick at making speeches, he seldom can write 
 well. But his deficiency in art is compensated 
 by peculiar simplicity and sense of duty. He is 
 an honest man and a gentleman. On the whole, 
 too, a man of belief as against the wordster, who 
 is a man of disbeliefs. When the time for action 
 comes, not a few who have belittled the fighting 
 man are glad to get behind him, and many more, 
 who have had a sympathy with him which the 
 times did not encourage, now openly rejoice in 
 him. This military mood has accentuated the 
 present re-action against the politician ; for the 
 righting man is, on the whole, non-political in 
 most senses, but especially in the party sense. 
 Thus his ascendancy fitted in well with the public 
 mood of resentment against both parties. For 
 long the Englishman has been getting away from 
 politics and party ; there has been a deep feeling 
 that the Parliamentary type counted for more 
 than it was worth. With British ill-logic, he may 
 clap hands at more of it in Russia, but he is well 
 content to see less of it in England. The Parlia- 
 mentary man could always " down " the other 
 in speech, which does not persuade the silent 
 man the more. Therefore, when the war burst
 
 4 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 upon us and nothing was relevant but action, 
 the public was very ready to turn and rend 
 Parliament and Government alike. The real 
 animus there was against Mr. Asquith's Govern- 
 ment, whether Liberal or Coalition, was really 
 more due to their being an epitome of regulation 
 party politics than to their active mistakes or 
 omissions. They were out of touch with the 
 country because the country felt they were out 
 of touch with the time. The exuberant welcome 
 given to the new Government last year was due 
 to the belief that a new order was coming in and 
 the old politics going out. It could hardly fail to 
 make an impression on the public that on the out- 
 break of war, when it mattered only what was 
 done or left undone, parliamentary government 
 was immediately put on one side ; there was no 
 Opposition, and the approaching general election 
 was put off immediately. It was all very well to 
 say that this was an exceptional war measure. 
 Why not be as efficient in peace as in war ? 
 Inefficiency may not be so mischievous in peace 
 as in war, but it is always mischievous. Follow- 
 ing on this at a long interval it is true the 
 public see a Government on non-parliamentary 
 lines. They see government by four or at most 
 five men with practically unlimited powers. 
 They see men put in high administrative posts 
 who had never been in Parliament but who 
 had had experience of the matters they were
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 going to direct. Some of them, too, were men 
 who had hardly ever made a speech. Yet farther 
 on and they see Ministers from India and the 
 Dominions " coming," in Lord Curzon's words, 
 " as members, for the time being, of the governing 
 body of the British Empire." Also they see both 
 parties agreeing in a moment on issues which 
 had for generations divided them with an appar- 
 ently deep animosity. They see " old Con- 
 servatives " and " advanced Radicals " alike 
 accepting measures which year after year they 
 had declared would be the ruin of the country, 
 proposals which " on their honour they could 
 not accept without betraying every political 
 principle they had stood for during the whole 
 of their parliamentary career." The public 
 finds itself left to the conclusion that either these 
 people were wholly unprincipled or the parlia- 
 mentary and party business was all a make- 
 believe, signifying almost nothing. Either view 
 seems easily tenable, but the unreality of party 
 politics perhaps the more probable. Certainly 
 it is impossible any longer to take the old party 
 distinctions seriously. It may be true that in a 
 time of tense distress it is wise to acquiesce in 
 much that one would ordinarily reject ; but it 
 will not do to pretend that things which were to 
 be the ruin of the country in peace time can be 
 harmless now. War will not justify the abandon- 
 ment of the principles of a life-time. The truth
 
 6 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 is, of course, as the public now sees, that there 
 was never any question of the country being 
 ruined, nor of standing up for principles ; for 
 the very good reason that neither party ever had 
 any principles. The war has brought home to 
 the public mind at any rate two things : that 
 party politics paralyse effective action, and that 
 we have no permanent Imperial Government. 
 The spirit of unity amongst the constituent 
 States of the Empire, which the war has 
 emphasised, must be clothed on with a body. 
 
 Is this country, is the Empire, when the strain 
 is off, going to slide back to the stale old party 
 business, the game so absorbing to the players, 
 so irritating to everyone else ? Will the old 
 haphazard relation between United Kingdom 
 and Dominions be allowed to linger on ? The 
 British polity remain amorphous, inorganic ? 
 It hardly seems credible. These are things that 
 matter. We shall be hopeless indeed, if, when 
 the world is in the melting pot, learning nothing, 
 forgetting everything, we pass the things that 
 matter and reach backward to things that do 
 not matter ; if we trouble about parliamentary 
 precedent and " Representative principles," and 
 omit all the realities of government. Let us not 
 imitate those impossible men who, when the 
 world was in travail of a new order, when Caesar 
 was hammering that shapeless distorted mass, 
 the Roman world, into an organic empire " with
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the most painstaking solemnity were watching 
 over every old ornamental scroll and every speck 
 of dust on the constitution."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 
 
 WE shall have at least a chance of 
 knowing where we are in politics 
 if we recognise that parliamentary 
 government, as we have it now, is an entirely 
 different thing from parliamentary government 
 as it was even a few years ago. So different 
 indeed that if we approved of it as it was then, 
 we can hardly approve of it as it is now. But 
 the continuity of name tends to blind us as to 
 the fact. Men go on saying that they approve 
 of parliamentary government, as though parlia- 
 mentary government always meant and always 
 would mean the same thing. Not only in trade 
 is the old name a great asset. It is almost as 
 valuable in philosophy and in politics. Keep the 
 name, and new parties and new principles will 
 have a very good chance of retaining the good- 
 will built up on their opposites. So long as the 
 old name meets his eye as he passes, and sounds 
 in his ear in conversation, the man in the street 
 is likely to take for granted that the old label 
 
 8
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 9 
 
 covers the old sample. Something untoward 
 must have happened to him personally to make 
 him question it, which is precisely the present 
 mood of the public in this country. We have, 
 of course, all along been aware that the British 
 constitution is quite a different thing on paper 
 from what it is in fact. We are all accustomed 
 to the text book distinction between what is 
 legal and what is constitutional. Press and 
 politicians gave us enough of that sort of dia- 
 lectic at the time of the rejection of the Finance 
 Bill by the House of Lords in 1909 to make it a 
 commonplace for many years to come. The 
 distinction is indeed too familiar to be appre- 
 ciated. We take it as the most natural thing 
 in the world that a legal right should stand and 
 be lost by disuse at one and the same time. No- 
 one denied that the House of Lords had the full 
 legal right to reject the Finance Bill, but 
 constitutionally they had lost it ; and, therefore, 
 in view of the pundits, were justly punished by 
 the country for exercising a right which the law 
 had given and had never taken away from them. 
 (In truth, of course, the country neither knew 
 nor cared whether the Lords had acted legally 
 or constitutionally or both or neither. It was 
 simply that the Liberal flood tide of 1906, long 
 dammed up by a Unionist Government that had 
 outstayed its welcome, had not yet subsided.) 
 This distinction between " legal " and " con-
 
 io IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 stitutional " is as fine a subtlety as any in 
 metaphysics or theology without the excuse or 
 the explanation of a transcendental mystery to be 
 expressed. It is really a flat contradiction, and 
 it would be much better to say so plainly. It 
 would remove one obstacle in the way of the 
 people knowing what they are doing when they 
 use the political power which has been given 
 them. Thus one sensible thing at least was 
 done by the Parliament Act. It cleared the 
 ground by making it illegal for the House of 
 Lords to throw out a money Bill. They were 
 no longer left with that power and at the same 
 time deprived of it. 
 
 Bagehot, too, and others, have long since 
 exposed the text book theories of the working 
 of the British constitution. All the beauty of 
 the wonderful machinery vanished in the clear 
 light which showed the driving power to be 
 quite other than that which the constitution or 
 the constitutionalists contemplated ; the wheels 
 worked, but not at all as they ought to have 
 done. 
 
 Thus most people are aware, or, at any rate, 
 have an inkling, that there is a good deal of make- 
 believe about Parliament and the constitution. 
 But in a very dim way. The idea has always 
 been that Parliament is the citadel of freedom ; 
 representative government the voice of the 
 people ; legislation the wisdom of the " three
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 11 
 
 estates." These articles of political faith the 
 country has never understood and has long 
 ceased to believe in. But it does not think 
 enough about politics to disbelieve them or put 
 any other belief in their place. In politics the 
 average man is lazily agnostic. He supports 
 the established order as the line of least resist- 
 ance, indifferent except when his own personal 
 interests are obviously affected, or when he 
 realises that his country is in danger. Politics 
 as such simply do not interest him. 
 
 The advantage such a man has in approaching 
 a political inquiry is the freedom from prejudice 
 which comes of indifference ; the disadvantage 
 is the intellectual indolence which also comes of 
 it. These are two sides of the same mind. One 
 side is unfortunately not a corrective of the 
 other, but rather confirms it. The explanation 
 why a man has not strong views or prejudices 
 on any matter is usually that he does not care 
 enough about it to form a view at all. It is 
 seldom balance of judgment or neutrality. 
 Where does one find a man or woman who quietly 
 thinks a question out and deliberately concludes 
 that the arguments each way balance, and that, 
 therefore, he can not express an opinion ? Such 
 a mind one could respect indeed, but it would 
 not be human, and, therefore, it would fail in 
 attempting to deal with humans. That is not 
 at all the situation we have to deal with, when
 
 12 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 we want to get the average man to look politics 
 in the face and see things as they are. We 
 have to get behind a disposition to take things 
 for granted, we have to make the man think for 
 himself ; to replace a contented, or, at any rate, 
 idle, scepticism with a discontented concern. 
 The Englishman of to-day acquiesces in parlia- 
 mentary government as he acquiesces in the 
 night following day, or in the " beastly English 
 weather." He supposes it was always so, and 
 always will be. 
 
 But parliamentary government is not a law 
 of nature and it is still more difficult to conceive 
 it a law of God it was not always at all, still 
 less was it always as it is now. As everything 
 else human, it varies, changing with time and 
 men's manners ; it may be good for one people, 
 bad for another ; good for one age, very bad 
 for the next. We are not concerned here to 
 arraign parliamentary government abstractly 
 as a system, which would probably be but an 
 idle process. It is impossible to abstract a 
 political system from its circumstances ; hence 
 the inquiry whether aristocratic or democratic 
 government, a representative or a Caesaristic 
 system, is better in itself necessarily better 
 at all time and independently of circumstances 
 is barren. It can result in no conclusion. It 
 may be a very wholesome exercise in dialectic 
 for undergraduates, but men and women of
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 13 
 
 action will hardly have the patience to pursue 
 it. It is not their business. The philosopher 
 may have time for it, and if he have also the 
 brains he may help to get a little nearer the 
 truth ; and he will have done a very great thing. 
 For there is no other way of showing that any 
 form of government is absolutely the best but 
 somehow logically to connect it with absolute 
 truth, or at any rate to raise a presumption of 
 such a connection. Kingship apart, divine 
 sanction can not be invoked for any form of 
 government, and only with great difficulty even 
 for any course of policy. The practical man of 
 affairs cannot concern himself with first principles 
 in politics, for the simple reason that either there 
 are none or they have not been discovered, and 
 are certainly not discoverable by any method 
 of experience. This is not saying that morality 
 and religion have no touch with politics. A 
 man's conduct as a citizen or as a politician, as 
 in every other sphere, will be coloured by his 
 moral character. So far as his religion is effect- 
 ive, he will be guided by consideration of right 
 and wrong in public life as in private life. But 
 between two possible political courses he will 
 usually be unable to deduce from Christian princi- 
 ples which course he ought to follow. Or, to put 
 it more practically, seeing that most people 
 seem to make " Christian principles " mean 
 pretty well what they will, it is impossible to say
 
 i 4 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 which course Christ himself would have followed. 
 Generally, we cannot say that either is right 
 or either is wrong. Everybody knows and 
 admits that at any time there are as many good 
 Christians on one side of a political controversy 
 as on the other. Christianity does not help 
 them to choose. It is only the sourest of parti- 
 zans or the most fanatical devotees or opponents 
 of a policy that regard those who do not agree 
 with them as wicked. There are such, and have 
 been more, but fortunately they are few. And 
 it is quite as difficult to find any canon of political 
 expediency. Applied to a particular case, every 
 canon will often fail you. Practically every 
 case has to be decided on its own merits. In 
 other words nothing could be less scientific than 
 practical politics. It is not to be expected 
 then that one could find a criterion by which a 
 form of government could be infallibly tested. 
 It is little to the point that a representative 
 system has worked well in this country in the 
 past or badly in other countries. The question 
 is not whether parliamentary government is 
 good or bad, but whether it is the best possible 
 plan now and here and for us. Therefore, it is 
 much to the point to remind the man who takes 
 parliamentary government for granted as a law 
 of the British polity, that what he is taking for 
 granted is something quite different from what 
 his fathers understood as parliamentary govern-
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 15 
 
 ment, who also took it for granted. That which 
 totally changes in a generation or so can hardly 
 be a law of any kind. How does every Act of 
 Parliament, not passed under the provisions of 
 the Parliament Act, begin ? " Be it enacted 
 by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and 
 with the advice of the Lords Spiritual and 
 Temporal and Commons, in this present Parlia- 
 ment assembled, and by the authority of the 
 same." Thus to the making of every ordinary 
 Act there go three essential factors, King, 
 Lords, and Commons, or strictly the King is 
 the prime factor ; but the co-operation of the 
 other two cannot be dispensed with. Broadly 
 speaking, an Act of Parliament is the joint 
 product of three parties, and note that a Finance 
 Act, which the Lords have no power to amend 
 or reject, is introduced in precisely the same 
 terms as any other Act. How does this square 
 with fact ? In fact as an agent in the making 
 of an Act of Parliament the King no longer 
 counts, the Lords can only hang a bill up for a 
 fixed time, and with a money bill they cannot 
 even do that ; the Commons are left as the sole 
 operative party, and their power is mainly an 
 illusion. So that what was once the agreed 
 result of the deliberations of the Sovereign, of 
 an independent order representing property 
 and a long tradition of political experience, 
 and of a popularly elected body, may now be
 
 16 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 the work of a single popular chamber, which, 
 in its turn may be representing only a very fleet- 
 ing popular impulse, or may not be representing 
 the feelings of the country at all. It may even 
 be contradicting it. And this chamber itself 
 has completely changed in its constituents 
 many times, and is certain to change again. In 
 the face of these facts, what is the use of speaking 
 of parliamentary government as though it were 
 a fixed quantity and meant the same thing to 
 our forefathers as it means to us ? He who 
 approved of Parliament as it worked a hundred 
 years ago could not support the system we 
 have now. A typical middle-Victorian, to whom 
 Parliament and especially the House of Com- 
 mons was the glory of the nation and a model 
 for civilisation for all time, could only cry 
 Ichabod. Others might think the present plan 
 a better one ; and it may be. But it cannot 
 be reasonable to take for granted as a law of 
 the country's being that which has reversed 
 itself and has meant totally different things 
 at different times. Had Parliament changed 
 its name when legislation became the product 
 not of three but of one constituent Commons 
 in the place of King, Lords and Commons 
 and shown the change in its new name, there 
 would be vastly less inert acquiescence in its 
 rule than there is now. But it is not our way 
 to change names ; we leave the name and charge
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 17 
 
 it with entirely new matter. This makes revo- 
 lution easier, for in this way it comes about 
 without most people, who look mainly to names, 
 knowing there has been any revolution. The 
 position of the King in legislation is a good 
 illustration of this. If the diminution of the 
 King's power had been made plain to the public 
 by officially describing him as First Magistrate 
 instead of King, there would have been great 
 ructions, and it is more than possible that he 
 would never have subsided into his present 
 position. But his loyal subjects hear and see 
 that laws are still passed by his most Excellent 
 Majesty, and are quite happy. The Crown, 
 as everyone knows, is the classical case of the 
 splendid fiction of law and constitution. The 
 King is legally entitled to be and do everything 
 that various rhythmic and noble descriptions 
 say he is and does. But in fact he is not any- 
 thing of these things, and must not do them. 
 Whether he could or can be, and do these things 
 again, is no matter of law, but of force and the 
 will of the Empire. But it is certain that at 
 present, mainly without the knowledge of the 
 country, the politicians have succeeded in re- 
 ducing the King in legislation to a mere formality 
 which cannot indeed be done without, but 
 which is at the command of other than the King. 
 This was made finally clear when King George V. 
 agreed to make as many new peers as Mr. Asquith
 
 1 8 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 might need to pass the Parliament Bill through 
 the House of Lords. The merits of the bill 
 have nothing to do with the matter. The bill 
 may have been necessary ; it may have been 
 good. But that the King should think it his 
 duty, solely because his Minister advised it, 
 to add indefinitely to the number of peers in 
 order that the House of Lords might not be 
 able to reject a bill disabling that House, and 
 so fundamentally altering the constitution of 
 the legislature, a bill, too, on whose rejec;ion 
 no election had turned, was conclusive evidence 
 that, at any rate, in the view of the Crown 
 itself the King personally had lost all power 
 of interfering in matters of legislation. He 
 had become the mere instrument of his Ministers. 
 In order to avoid the flooding of their Order 
 and House with new creations for whose res- 
 pectability they had no guarantee, the peers 
 disabled themselves. They preferred to abandon 
 their historic position in the national polity to 
 risking the social purity of their Order. They 
 were willing to take their chance of having 
 measures subversive of all they held necessary 
 to the welfare of their country being passed 
 over their heads, but they would not take their 
 chance of the infusion into their Order of a 
 crowd of undesirables, whom they might not 
 be able to assimilate for many years, and pos- 
 sibly not at all. Those who were entirely
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 19 
 
 opposed to the Parliament Bill and yet voted 
 for it believed that opposition would only 
 bring upon them both catastrophies, the flood 
 of undesirables and political disability ; there- 
 fore expediency pointed to a course which, at 
 any rate, would deliver them from one. In 
 this, as in everything else of recent years, the 
 peers showed their want of confidence in them- 
 selves. What opposition to the Parliament 
 Bill would in fact have produced no one 
 knows, and is irrelevant here to consider. But 
 the want of belief in themselves which led the 
 peers to accept the bill is very relevant to the 
 good or bad working of parliamentary govern- 
 ment. The peers assumed that a determined 
 front would do them no good ; would have no 
 effect either on the Government or on the country. 
 People who believed in themselves so little could 
 hardly expect others to believe in them or their 
 cause. And they did not. How indeed could 
 anyone argue with effect that men were fit to 
 retain peculiar legislative power who despaired 
 of fighting for their rights, or of making anyone 
 believe they had any rights ? They would not 
 help themselves, and nobody would help them. 
 This is not the temper needed in a body that, 
 as the non-elective factor in legislation, is to 
 co-operate in the country's work, being the 
 complement but not the duplicate of the popular 
 House. It was evident that the peers were not
 
 20 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 of the old order which had played so great a 
 part in parliamentary government, and this 
 change in temper seriously modified the whole 
 political position. Whether or not parliamen- 
 tary government can work successfully without 
 a strong aristocracy, it in fact reached its zenith 
 in this country, as the greatest foreign political 
 thinkers have all pointed out, when the aristo- 
 cracy was very powerful. And the disappearance 
 of this power must be allowed for in estimating 
 the value of parliamentary government in the 
 future. The House of Lords still has a place 
 in public opinion : it counts as a critical 
 authority, especially at moments when the 
 country is actually dissatisfied with the House 
 of Commons. It has counted during the war. 
 Being mainly an assembly of gentlemen, and 
 having amongst its members many of excep- 
 tional ability and experience, and being free, 
 partly through its very impotence, from the 
 disturbing and trivial elements that divert the 
 House of Commons, the Lords in their debates 
 appeal to a serious public and get its respect. 
 But all the time both the Lords themselves 
 and the country are painfully aware that all this 
 good and well-expressed advice is irresponsible. 
 The Lords are not so much as even a sleeping 
 partner either in government or in legislation. 
 They are not so much as the King. A bill 
 cannot become law without the King's signature,
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 21 
 
 but it can become law without the Lords doing 
 anything. They need not be made even a party 
 to the Act. Soon after the Dublin Insurrection 
 the House of Lords passed, without serious 
 opposition, a vote of censure (in effect whatever 
 it was called) on the Government. The Prime 
 Minister and his colleagues, Conservative as 
 well as Liberal, went on their way as jauntily 
 as though they had received a striking encomium. 
 We all know, of course, that a vote of censure 
 by the House of Lords had long ceased to dis- 
 turb a Ministry ; but that dated from the time 
 when such a vote meant a Conservative censure 
 on a Liberal Ministry. This, on the other 
 hand, was a both-party censure, undoubtedly 
 representing accurately the feeling of the country, 
 on a both-party Ministry. Therefore, it was 
 not a party move that was ignored, but the 
 House of Lords explicitly as a House. In short, 
 the Lords have gone out. 
 
 Most people, no doubt, would say that they 
 must in any case have gone out with the ad- 
 vance of democracy. Be that as it may, the 
 use of them would not have gone, neither did 
 they wait to be squeezed out. As the franchise 
 was extended, so much the more useful to assist 
 the popular chamber would be a non-elective 
 body, if it knew its place, kept its head, and 
 had the courage of its position. Unfortunately, 
 the peers did not so understand their part.
 
 22 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 They have stood in the way of others getting 
 the vote instead of insisting on keeping what 
 was theirs. They did not stop the extension 
 of the franchise, but they did allow their own 
 independence to lapse. They became virtually 
 an instrument in the hands of Conservative 
 governments instead of being critical and in- 
 dependent of all governments, irrespective of 
 party. When parties in the Lords were nearly 
 balanced and Ministries stood or fell by their 
 divisions, there was no objection, or no-one 
 felt any, to the Lords acting on party lines ; 
 but when there came to be a permanent majority 
 on one side, the cue, as also the far more excellent 
 part, for the Lords was to take up a generally 
 non-party position, correcting Conservative as 
 well as Radical governments. They could then 
 have justified their status. But they did just 
 the opposite, and, as if conscious of their false 
 position, they gradually abandoned all, adopted 
 resolutions reforming themselves away, and 
 finally consented to their own emasculation. 
 
 Here, again it was want of courage. It re- 
 quired courage in Conservative peers to stand 
 up to a Conservative government. Not un- 
 naturally a Conservative leader of the House 
 of Commons, who had been laboriously rolling 
 a heavy bill through the House for many months, 
 was ready enough to put off the House of Lords 
 with a week's discussion of the same bill in
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 23 
 
 order to get done with Parliament and politics 
 for a season. Every Liberal leader envied him 
 and only wished he could do the same. It would 
 have been very annoying to the Conservative 
 leader had the Lords refused to come into line 
 and insisted on a real examination of the bill, 
 and so have completely upset the time-table. 
 It would have required real moral courage in 
 Conservative peers to do this, especially as most 
 of them would be generally known to, and many 
 of them intimate friends of, the Conservative 
 leader. But if they had had this courage, 
 though their party might have suffered, and 
 some of themselves in their personal careers, 
 their order and their country would have gained. 
 Similar want of courage has prevented the peers 
 from resisting and stopping the continuous 
 introduction into their Order of unfit persons ; 
 men with money, but without manners, intel- 
 lect, or knowledge ; men with intellect but 
 without money or the knowledge of the world 
 necessary for a peer's part ; and men with no 
 recommendation but their party services or 
 the need to flatter their town or county. Thh 
 long process of infusion of the unfit has so much 
 modified the peers' Order that the public hns 
 lost the respect for it that it has always had 
 for an old family and always will have, and the 
 distinction of the new peers in other ways has 
 not been great enough to prevent or compensate
 
 24 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 for this loss of caste. By tending to throw in 
 their lot with rich men outside their Order, the 
 peers have lost much power which they might 
 have had in matters of capital and labour. In 
 British working people there is not, and has 
 never been, any great objection to an aristo- 
 crat. By selling their land, their seats, their 
 pictures, and their libraries, the aristocracy 
 have been stripping themselves of ornaments 
 that appeal to the public imagination. These 
 possessions were worthy of a peer's dignity ; 
 they could be seen ; to a considerable extent 
 the public could enjoy them, and counted the 
 owner a national trustee. Who cares for a 
 duke because he has millions in this or that 
 limited company ? What remains of the average 
 peer that has lost his power in Parliament, and 
 shed everything the public can see ? He may 
 be an excellent man and have brains, but so 
 may anyone else. Of his peer's position there 
 is nothing left but his title. This still secures 
 social importance, which is a real power. But 
 here, too, the peer's power is being cut into 
 deeply by those whom he has himself patted 
 on the back new rich men and women who 
 have no object in life but to rise in the social 
 scale. These the peers and peeresses have 
 taken into their houses freely, and as freely 
 have gone into the houses of their proteges. By 
 lavish and insolent expenditure merely rich
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 25 
 
 folk have bought the social patronage of the 
 peeresses, who are the natural rulers of society. 
 So that even socially the peer does not stand out 
 as he did. The public is able to see that society 
 is a very mixed lot, after all. The general 
 result of all this is that the aristocracy has so 
 shrunk in significance and power that it must 
 be regarded as a small rather than a great 
 factor in the national polity. And this change 
 has a critical bearing on the whole question of 
 parliamentary government. 
 
 The shelving of the King and the House of 
 Lords leaves the House of Commons supreme 
 and almost alone as a legislative power, in form 
 at any rate. Formally there is no limit to the 
 power of the Commons. Parliament, as we 
 know, is supreme over constitution and holds 
 the purse strings, and Parliament means the 
 Commons, being the survivor of three partners 
 of whom two have ceased to count. The House 
 of Commons is legally competent to raise the 
 salaries of its members to thousands a year ; 
 to give the vote to every man, woman, dog and 
 cat ; to establish the Roman Church, and to 
 deprive the Anglican Church and all the Non- 
 conformists of every penny of revenue ; to 
 give up a standing army altogether, or introduce 
 conscription in the most stringent form ; to 
 make the Judges elective or destroy all the 
 County Councils at a stroke, paying the Justices
 
 26 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 vast salaries to take over the work of the Coun- 
 cils. On paper the House of Commons has 
 power hardly so much as claimed by any despot. 
 And all this it could do in the teeth of the public 
 it represents. No doubt it would be called to 
 account when the time came for it to ask an- 
 other five years of life ; but a House that chose 
 to run amok could not be pulled up legally 
 before it had had time to commit infinite follies. 
 Yet with all this extraordinary and, if temporary, 
 unlimited power, the House of Commons is 
 not a greater but a less important factor in 
 the community than it was. So far back as 
 in 1858 Lord Stanley, son of the I4th Earl of 
 Derby, says in a letter to Disraeli : " Bear in 
 mind that the House of Commons, great as its 
 power may be, is not what it was before the 
 Press reached its present influence." If that 
 was true over fifty years ago, what is to be said 
 now ? The process noted by Lord Stanley had 
 hardly more than begun in his time. Since 
 then, it has been going on without break and 
 without slackening. The House of Commons 
 has ceased to hold the place it once held in the 
 popular imagination, because it has ceased to 
 perform for the people its old functions. At one 
 time political activity or the visible evidences of 
 political activity were practically confined to 
 Parliament, and the country looked to Parlia- 
 ment for its political news, and indeed for all
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 27 
 
 its political food. The country had practically 
 no touch of the government of the day, except 
 through Parliament. Ministers seldom made 
 important speeches out of Parliament ; the 
 idea of speaking direct to the country, dispens- 
 ing with the House of Commons as intermediary, 
 hardly occurred to them. How is it all changed 
 now ! Now, everyone who can read a paper, 
 and everyone does, and if there are any who 
 cannot or do not, they hear its contents from 
 those who do, gets nearly all the political news 
 as quickly as Members of Parliament ; some- 
 times long before the House, as a House, is 
 officially informed. What can show more plainly 
 Ministers' recognition of the declining importance 
 of the House than their thus venturing to give 
 official news to the public before it has been given 
 to the House news, too, which by etiquette 
 at least the House is entitled to have first ? 
 Practically the only pull the Member of Parlia- 
 ment has over the outsider in respect of political 
 news is that he hears what is said in the House 
 a few hours before the outsider can read it. 
 But as the man without has seldom the slightest 
 desire to read what is said within, he does not 
 feel that the M.P. has any great advantage 
 of him ; certainly not enough to excite his envy. 
 When a really important speech from an im- 
 portant person is expected in the House, the 
 papers reproduce it so soon after it is spoken
 
 28 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 that the public are hardly behind the House in 
 getting it. In this case the public does lose in 
 another way. It has not the great advantage 
 of following the expression and hearing the 
 voice of the speaker, but as very few, almost none, 
 unless he is preparing for a political career, care 
 enough to appreciate nuances of this kind, this 
 privilege of the M.P. is not noticed. It does 
 not enhance the importance of the House in 
 the country. Perhaps an exception must be 
 made of certain folk, familiar enough in the 
 provinces both to candidates and members 
 but hardly known to the general public, who, 
 hanging on the outer ring, like to think them- 
 selves politicians, and that they are playing an 
 important part in public life. Sometimes they 
 are " workers," and their enthusiasm is great. To 
 these the House of Commons is still a magic name, 
 and they would give very much indeed to be inside 
 it in any capacity. These do regard the few 
 hours' advantage M.P.s have over them in 
 hearing debates as a great pull, and they are 
 never so happy as when they get someone who 
 is in the House at the time to describe what 
 happened. For the moment they are them- 
 selves Members of Parliament. If they are 
 made to think, as their informant generally 
 takes care they are, that they have been allowed 
 to know something that ought not to be known, 
 or, in fact, is generally not known outside the
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 29 
 
 House, their satisfaction is complete. They 
 are already, in their own eyes, on the front 
 bench. These busy-bodies, amusing when they 
 do not bore one, are an exception to the growing 
 disregard of Parliament, but they can hardly 
 even prove a rule. On the whole, people find 
 that they do not want the House of Commons ; 
 they can do without it ; they do not look to 
 it for news, and the big men in politics speak 
 to them direct in public meetings more and more 
 frequently. The great efforts are reserved for 
 the platform, and the platform gains at the 
 cost of Parliament. Peers and great com- 
 moners alike use the platform now ; there is no 
 need to trouble to get into any of the strangers' 
 galleries to see and hear any public man. If 
 the working man and the shopkeeper feel this, 
 how much more the highly-educated man of 
 the same class as the M.P. What need can 
 there be for him to trouble himself much about 
 what goes on in the House ? He loses the peculiar 
 " atmosphere " no doubt, but unless he thinks of 
 standing himself, that atmosphere he probably 
 is more than content to avoid. He can do his 
 thinking for himself whether he does or not 
 and when he does read a debate seldom feels 
 he has got much from it. The Press, noting 
 these signs of the times, has given impetus to 
 the whole process by its method of reporting 
 and commenting. Seeing that the public ap-
 
 petite for politics generally, and especially for 
 parliamentary debates, is getting less and less 
 keen, editors, or more correctly proprietors, 
 have been steadily cutting down the space they 
 give to these things until they bulk so small 
 in the papers that the reader, taking them at 
 their face value, thinks little of them. In this 
 as always, the Press takes its lead from the 
 public and gives great impetus to a process 
 already in motion. The educated man is af- 
 fected in another way to the same result. He 
 does not think parliamentary matter unimportant 
 because it occupies little space, but generally 
 he finds, when he does want to read what some- 
 one said in the House, that it has been reduced 
 to a few lines at the reporter and sub-editor's 
 discretion. So he cannot tell what was really 
 said, and is not at all sure that the gist will be 
 correctly given in the few lines before him. So 
 he throws the paper on one side and is still 
 more put off reading speeches, except of the 
 very big guns, who are reported fully. To him 
 the descriptive accounts of sittings in the House 
 are worse than useless. They give him exactly 
 what he does not want. He does sometimes 
 want to know what was said in debate, but he 
 does not care in the least about all the side 
 issues, personal touches, and " business " 
 generally that delight " our parliamentary cor- 
 respondent." Everything tends to " put off "
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 31 
 
 the educated man who is not in politics and 
 does not want to be. The assumption of the 
 modern newspaper seems to be that its readers 
 are divided into two classes : those who either 
 are or want to be Members of Parliament, and 
 those who do not want to be ; and that the 
 former class must want to know everything 
 that happens in Parliament, except what is said, 
 and the latter will want to know nothing about 
 it all. The non-politician is humoured by the little 
 space given to politics and thepolhici; n by the me- 
 ticulous detail of what is given. Both ways it shows 
 the newspaper manager's consciousness of the 
 small hold Parliament has on the general public. 
 But there are internal causes for the decline 
 in the importance of the House of Commons 
 as far-reaching as any without. These are the 
 ever-increasing stringency of the party machine, 
 and the absolute supremacy of the government 
 of the day. Meantime, it is worth noting that 
 the House has no real entity as a house at all, 
 except in so far as it has an " atmosphere " 
 which members cherish as the breath of the 
 nation, and nobody else cares one straw about. 
 The House of Commons does almost nothing 
 as a House ; as something other than a legis- 
 lative body (few men would now like to call it 
 their club) it may have a sort of collective 
 existence. The House is now a stage or a 
 storey in the great edifice of political party.
 
 32 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 The party business, wherever it begins, runs 
 right through the country and merely takes the 
 House of Commons on its way. It runs vertically 
 through the House up to other things. The 
 House is but an episode in the story, hardly 
 more than an accident. The fight between 
 two, or more, parties goes on inside exactly as 
 outside ; there is no transformation when the 
 scene is transferred to Parliament ; everything 
 is done by one party or the other, or with a view 
 to one or the other ; the so-called House is 
 practically always divided and always divided 
 against itself, and, therefore, as a House it falls. 
 There is this party and there is that party, but 
 politically there is no House. " Nor never 
 was ! " Maybe, but that does not make it 
 any more of a House now. It is, of course, 
 perfectly true that the House has always been 
 sharply divided ; for two centuries regular 
 parties have absorbed it in their secular contest, 
 but perhaps not utterly as now. In times past 
 parties have sometimes got together and the 
 House has acted as a whole in defiance of Gov- 
 ernment or Opposition whips. The present 
 non-party aspect of the House of Commons, 
 arising out of the war truce, is not a case in point. 
 It is for one thing a temporary accident, which 
 Mr. Asquith, speaking after his retirement, 
 confidently predicted would not last. He looked 
 forward to the House relapsing into its old
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 33 
 
 party ways. The House as an entity is no more 
 now than it was before the war. It has had 
 no part in bringing about the party truce. That 
 truce was made by the leaders of the various 
 parties and has obtained in the House simply 
 as it has obtained in the country. It is true 
 that once or twice there has been a general 
 rising against the Government, which has had 
 to give way. But that was possible precisely 
 because there was a truce between parties and 
 a government representing both of them. 
 Neither party gave away anything to the other 
 in standing up to the Government. It was no 
 independent action on the part of the House, 
 but both parties by rebelling simultaneously 
 against their chiefs in the Cabinet left matters 
 as between them easy. The significant thing 
 about the present coalition House of Commons 
 is that though it has been perfectly safe from 
 a party point of view for members to take a line 
 independent of the Government they have so 
 seldom had the courage to do so. Yet they 
 have felt that the Government were remiss 
 and lagging behind the country and knew that 
 their constituents would applaud independent 
 action, spurring the Ministry to greater energy. 
 Let them have all credit due to them for shrink- 
 ing from putting difficulties in the Government's 
 way, but, having given the Government a 
 fair trial, and having left them free of criticism
 
 34 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 for many months after the war began, and know- 
 ing that much was going wrong, the unofficial 
 members of the House might reasonably be 
 expected to use the advantage of their present 
 peculiar position and show more independence, 
 to the great advantage of the country. As it 
 is, though we have for once an apparently 
 non-party House, the House of Commons has 
 never counted for less in the country's regard 
 than it does now. The House of Lords has 
 counted proportionately more. Neither has the 
 substitution of a small Cabinet of action for 
 Mr. Asquith's thoroughly parliamentary Gov- 
 ernment a substitution due in no way to the 
 House affected that position. 
 
 Probably the greatest political change that 
 has come over the House of Commons is its 
 complete overshadowing, which is a very mild 
 term to describe the phenomenon, by the Gov- 
 ernment of the day. Naturally this has been 
 observed and dwelt on by many, though practical 
 politicians rather avoid the subject. It is not 
 a pleasant truth to tell the House, and every 
 politician feels that he may one day be a Minister. 
 This overwhelming position of the Government 
 has been brought about by the development 
 of the party machine, and by the closure in its 
 successive and cumulative stages. The effect- 
 iveness of the party machine enables the 
 Government practically to dispose of its own
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 35 
 
 men as pawns. A Cabinet measure can always 
 be forced on the majority by the intimation 
 that if the bill is not carried the Government 
 will resign. Any member that voted against 
 his own Government on a life and death division 
 of that kind would certainly not again be adopted 
 as candidate by his constituents. The voters 
 have been too well " educated " by the machine 
 for that. And all sorts of other unpleasant 
 consequences will fall on the unhappy member. 
 It practically comes to this : he must either 
 give up his political career or go over to the 
 other side. On divisions that are not crucial 
 for the Government he may vote against his 
 party occasionally without fatal but not without 
 distinctly unpleasant results. The Whips will 
 keep a severe eye upon him ; he will hardly 
 be persona grata to his party or his chiefs. In 
 such circumstances it is obvious that the Gov- 
 ernment can control its own men as it will, except 
 the comparatively few who do not wish to come 
 back to the House after the next election. From 
 time to time, no doubt, a strong and prominent 
 man of Cabinet rank may break away without 
 such dire results, but, however strong and popu- 
 lar he may be, he will find his public life thereafter 
 no bed of roses. In fact, he is, as a rule, politically 
 sterilised. Then the Government can keep down 
 the Opposition by means of the closure. Party 
 discipline is so good that a Government with
 
 36 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 even a small majority can in these days make 
 pretty sure of outvoting its opponents when- 
 ever it is desired. The only effective weapons 
 left to an Opposition were criticism and 
 obstruction, and the closure has deprived them 
 of both. Freedom of debate and of criticism 
 has gone when it is in the power of the Govern- 
 ment to cut off debate whenever it likes. 
 Ministers may not be tyrannical ; they may 
 use the power of the closure reasonably ; none 
 the less the whole spirit of debate must be 
 changed. Whether the closure works on the 
 whole ill or well, it necessarily leaves Ministers 
 masters of the House as it was intended to do. 
 The closure was a Government proposal ; it 
 was not the proposal of the House, which has 
 never done anything to save itself from the 
 ruin the closure was certain to bring upon it. 
 This result has been greatly facilitated by the 
 invention of the " Kangaroo " closure, which 
 enables the Chairman of Committee, who is not 
 on the Speaker's serene non-party plane, to 
 jump over any number of amendments and 
 select for discussion only those he thinks im- 
 portant. By this means amendments go 
 undiscussed in batches. It is in committee 
 stage, when details are considered, that an 
 Opposition has a chance of making itself felt 
 therefore this form of closure hits an Opposition 
 especially hard. Yet more drastic is the " Guillo-
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 37 
 
 tine " an effective or oppressive instrument, 
 according to the point of view, which the non- 
 political public knows very little about. How 
 many people realise that it is in the power of 
 the Government, by a mere resolution, which 
 it can always carry, to pass any number of 
 sections of a bill without any discussion at all 
 not with abridged or brief discussion, but 
 with no discussion at all ? And this instrument 
 is used not infrequently by either party when 
 in office. 
 
 So that free parliamentary government, legis- 
 lation by Kings, Lords and Commons, in the 
 long run means the absolute power of the 
 Government of the day. King and Lords have 
 had to stand aside, and the Government have 
 acquired complete control of the House of 
 Commons. The change to an executive not 
 responsible to Parliament would not be such 
 a violent revolution after all ! It is plain that 
 nothing can control or ultimately check the 
 Government but the appeal to the country 
 a general election. So it is not strange that 
 one hears it suggested that the House might 
 very well be done without. Once a Govern- 
 ment is elected (it is in effect elected though 
 not in form), it must run its course until next 
 election. 
 
 This is an exaggeration, but it is a very natural 
 view. Although it can get its way in the House 
 
 .'$87943
 
 38 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 in the end, the Government has to manage a 
 body of over six hundred men, and this manag- 
 ing means a vast amount of worry and thought. 
 Humouring, tact and diplomacy have to come 
 into play. The bludgeon is always there and 
 can be used if necessary ; but it does not look 
 well to bring it out too often. Neither is it 
 required very often, for the House knows it 
 is in the Government's grip, struggle as it may ; 
 therefore, for the most part, it does not struggle. 
 It quietly takes its line from its master. Private 
 Members' Bills have become little more than 
 tactical moves, being introduced either to im- 
 press constituents or to worry the Government. 
 They are not expected or even meant to pass. 
 At any rate, they hardly ever do. Initiative 
 rests with the Government ; Opposition leaders 
 have some say in the business, but beyond the 
 two front benches there is no initiative at all. 
 Little in fact is demanded of the ordinary 
 member beyond that he shall always be there 
 and always vote straight. This is the burden 
 of the private members' complaint, which we 
 have all heard over and over again. He has 
 not a chance : the front benches have the whole 
 game in their hands ; he is reduced to an item. 
 There are still useful activities open to the 
 private member, such as service on private 
 bill committees, and he has a better chance 
 in grand committees than in the Chamber.
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 39 
 
 Then to some of them the small play of party, 
 which they can still indulge in, seems to be 
 infinitely diverting, but there is no doubt that 
 many of them and some of the best find it all 
 very unprofitable. The hope of one day getting 
 to the front bench themselves keeps a good 
 many in the House while others stay out of 
 habit. 
 
 The truth is the House of Commons does 
 not impress the outsider very greatly now. 
 The tall phrases formerly in use : " the grand 
 inquest of the nation," loved by Sir William 
 Harcourt, Bulwer's " sublime arena," seem ridi- 
 culous to us. It is difficult not to be impatient 
 of the mid-Victorian enthusiasm for Parliament 
 and for the House of Commons in particular. 
 Take the account (cited in Mr. Buckle's fourth 
 volume of the life of Disraeli) of the Commons 
 debate on Lord Ellenborough's despatch to 
 Lord Canning, Viceroy of India, on the Oude 
 proclamation, an account gathered from con- 
 temporaries, mainly from Disraeli himself. The 
 note of tense excitement, the nervousness, the 
 universal flutter ! One can imagine the club 
 confabs, the drawing-room whisperings, the 
 running to and fro of great ladies and little 
 men, the button-holing in the streets, the bets 
 and books on the result, all society in an almost 
 uncontrollable agony of suspense. It all seems 
 very curious to us in these days. How could
 
 4 o IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 people take party politics so seriously ? For 
 it was the party and personal side of the business 
 that was taken seriously. The accounts make 
 it perfectly clear without intending it that 
 the question of Indian administration was im- 
 portant far less for its own profound significance 
 than because it might bring about a change of 
 Ministers. Who would win the bout in the 
 game ? That was the interesting question ; 
 that was what was spoiling the sleep of the 
 Great World ; and, what is so strange to us, 
 was really moving the outside public. At that 
 time people were still simple enough to believe 
 that it made a great difference in the government 
 of the country whether one dozen of politicians 
 or another like them sat on the Speaker's right. 
 Something comes of it, of course, but that it 
 usually makes any real difference in the general 
 conduct of the affairs of the country whether 
 one party or the other is in office is hard to 
 pretend off the platform. Both parties do it 
 pretty well or pretty badly, according to the 
 point of view. Certainly the non-politician 
 to-day does not expect one party to do much 
 better than another and therefore is quite 
 incapable of the political excitement of the 
 good mid-Victorians. Not that this holds in 
 political circles ; or it did not before the war. 
 The ordinary member, or the candidate, and 
 his clientele is still full of the national importance
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 41 
 
 of his mission and the significance of the House 
 and its ways. This strikes the stranger in 
 the House at once. The famous " atmosphere," 
 which is undoubtedly there, seems to him just 
 a general fussy importance, much energy about 
 almost nothing, amazing interest in petty trifling. 
 The whole seems unreal, and it is difficult to 
 believe that these gentlemen are governing the 
 British Empire. This, he is told, is because 
 he is not inside : he does not know the House. 
 But there are those who have been in the House 
 and done their time there who think much the 
 same. Is the stranger so far off the mark 
 after all in thinking the House unreal ? Here 
 are 670 men got together with infinite pains 
 and at great expense to deliberate on behalf 
 of the nation on the affairs of State. Yet it 
 is common knowledge that argument in the 
 House has no relation to votes given there ; 
 no one expects anything he says to affect a 
 single other member's views or vote, just as he 
 knows his own vote will be given entirely irres- 
 pective of what he or anybody else may say. 
 This is debate and deliberation ! 
 
 These gentlemen are here in the High Court 
 of Parliament to do their best to promote the 
 good government of their country, and they 
 do this by promptly ranging themselves on 
 two opposite sides, like the teams in a football 
 match. By the rules of the game one side is
 
 42 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 to govern the country and the other is to do 
 its best to prevent them. Very interesting 
 to the players, no doubt, and amusing to on- 
 lookers, were the stakes something less high 
 than the British Empire. But it is just this 
 ceaseless tug, the perpetual scrimmage of one 
 party trying to thwart the other, that is the 
 real business and interest of the House. And 
 having discovered this, the stranger begins to 
 understand things. He begins to understand 
 why what seem big things to him do not interest 
 his M.P. friend, and what he thinks mere trifles 
 interest the M.P. consumedly. Foreign affairs 
 and the Indian Budget leave the House cold 
 and sparsely attended ; a change in their own 
 procedure the Rules of the Game a personal 
 statement or members' salaries draw a full 
 house immediately. He can hardly get his 
 parliamentary friends to discuss foreign affairs 
 at all they are impatient to get to other things. 
 Do they not know anything about foreign 
 affairs, or do they not care ? It soon comes 
 out that " the game never turns on foreign 
 affairs now." (It has been different, of course since 
 the war). And so throughout. Most of the speeches 
 and most of the questions made and put from 
 either side have really in view not the ostensible 
 subject, but an opportunity to embarras the 
 other side. There is nearly always something 
 behind the question.
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 43 
 
 A stranger to the House cannot help noticing 
 what a passion political intrigue becomes to 
 members ; perhaps intrigue is too serious a 
 word ; it is the chicane of the game which 
 fascinates them. See a knot of two or three 
 members talking together, it is ten to one they 
 are discussing some parliamentary trick. 
 Excited, head to head, their whole being con- 
 centrated on the matter, they are whispering 
 mysteriously about a projected " snap " division. 
 The idea is by adroit manoeuvring to get a 
 large hidden force of their own men mobilised 
 for rapid entry into the Chamber when very 
 few of the other side are present ; then pre- 
 cipitate a division and put the Government in 
 a minority. It is of no account what is the 
 matter before the House, nor that the Govern- 
 ment will take no notice of the division. It 
 will be gravely argued that they ought to abide 
 by the division, though a division is significant 
 only as representing the view of the House, 
 which is precisely what the division in question 
 does not do and is not meant to do, or it would 
 not be " snap." And these are not children 
 but men ! The secret of the fascination of 
 this play is no doubt the personal side. Men 
 who meet day after day for months find one 
 another's idiosyncrasies and political fortunes 
 even more interesting than boring, just as 
 gossips find their neighbours. To score off
 
 44 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 one another is a huge delight. Insensibly the 
 House of Commons becomes to most members 
 the world, and many of them have no other 
 world. They see everything through not a 
 rarified but a distorting atmosphere. To them 
 things are not as they are : everything takes 
 a political hue ; and out of the House they 
 often see with difficulty as animals out of their 
 proper element. This partly explains the com- 
 mon want of touch between constituents and 
 members and the general unpopularity of elective 
 representative bodies. Constituents find the 
 man they have sent up changed from what 
 they knew him and he has seldom done what 
 they expected him to do, and what he said he 
 would do. Personally, there seems no reason 
 to think the House has seriously degenerated 
 in intellect or character, though it has greatly 
 changed socially. There are many fewer 
 country gentlemen, who are perhaps less exposed 
 than most members to temptation of personal 
 ambition or other gain : but with that ex- 
 ception probably much the same motives 
 prompt members now as prompted them a 
 hundred or fifty years ago. In this aspect 
 the House of Commons has been so well 
 one might say finally summed up by Mr. 
 Arthur A. Baumann, who was in the House 
 for some years and has never ceased closely 
 to observe political circles, in his " Persons
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 45 
 
 and Politics of the Transition," that it would 
 be idle to attempt to do it afresh here. 
 
 " Let us consider," he says, " what are the 
 chief temptations which lead a man into political 
 dishonesty, or, if that be thought too hard 
 an expression, which induce him to entrust 
 his political conscience to the keeping of party 
 Whips. They are desirous of political office, 
 of professional gain, and of social advantage. 
 In the House of Commons the number who 
 desire ami think themselves fit for political office 
 is very much larger than an outsider would 
 imagine. It certainly amounts to a hundred 
 men on each side, and that is nearly a third 
 of the House. Then there are the lawyers, 
 who, for some inscrutable reason are the only 
 class allowed without reproach to combine 
 the pursuit of professional promotion with the 
 public service. The number of barristers who 
 enter the House of Commons with the avowed 
 object of getting on the bench strikes one in 
 the eye. Then there are the city men, directors 
 and promoters of companies, who find that 
 the letters M.P. increase their fees ; to whom 
 must be added a small number of " literary 
 gents," who find that the same affix increases 
 the market value of their pens. Lastly comes 
 the large intermediate class of those who seek 
 in one or other of the political parties social 
 advantage, or amusement for themselves or
 
 46 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 their womankind, whether in the shape of 
 receptions, dinners, Palace invitations, ribands, 
 baronetcies, or peerages. Add up all these 
 selfish or sinister interests in the House of 
 Commons, substract them from the total, and 
 what remains ! The residue of disinterested 
 patriots in whose ears the whip cracks unheeded, 
 who have spent their money and their time 
 to get elected from sheer love of public duty, 
 is painfully small." 
 
 This is how the House appears to very many 
 observers outside observers, no doubt but 
 most of us are not very good at seeing our- 
 selves as others see us, or at seeing ourselves 
 as we are ; therefore, it is quite possible that 
 outsiders may be as good judges of the House 
 as the House is of itself. Obviously there 
 must be many domestic points about the House 
 that only experienced members can rightly 
 appreciate or even be aware of. On the other 
 hand this finesse in House of Commons refine- 
 ments may actually make it more difficult for 
 Members of Parliament to see their House 
 in its broader aspects. Some of those who 
 have been in Parliament and afterwards have 
 withdrawn from parliamentary life have been 
 heard to say the same. Also, be it noted, there 
 are men now in the House, and not the least 
 intelligent, who would generally endorse all 
 that is said here. Naturally these would not
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 47 
 
 be many. It is human to wish to magnify 
 one's vocation, especially when it has cost much 
 money, much talking, and much energy to 
 enter it. A certain sense of loyalty, too, deters 
 members from detached criticism of their own 
 House. 
 
 Need we even regret the complete domination 
 the Government of the day has acquired over 
 the Commons ? (Probably, it is fair to note, 
 this domination has greatly contributed to 
 make the House just what it is.) Given a 
 Ministry with a free hand, being a compara- 
 tively small number of able men, strong 
 government should be guaranteed. Certainly 
 Mr. Asquith's Coalition Government, to which 
 there was no regular opposition to be suppressed, 
 had as good a chance as any autocracy or any 
 executive not responsible to Parliament. Yet 
 we did not get strong government under it, 
 nor far-seeing government. This may seem 
 rather a sweeping judgment, but it is at least 
 not partizan. Just about half the country 
 has thought this of every government we have 
 had, and in secret generally much more than 
 half, and of the Coalition Government there is 
 really no doubt that practically the whole 
 country thought it. It was the sober view of 
 the non-political man, that is, a man not per- 
 sonally concerned with party politics ; and 
 he was probably on the whole right.
 
 48 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Where was the weak point ? This involves 
 the question, asked by many keen minds, both 
 men of action and political writers where 
 is the real seat of power ? We have seen that 
 it is not in Parliament apparently it should 
 be in the Ministry. But even under present 
 conditions the parliamentary system in many 
 ways diminishes from and hampers the power 
 of the Government. The Prime Minister is 
 wholly unable to disregard the party machine 
 though he may be its driver. For the sake of 
 its own future life, a Ministry cannot dismiss 
 the thought of an election. Is then the real 
 power with the country ? The country can 
 choose between two parties ; it can do no 
 more. It was profoundly dissatisfied with Mr. 
 Asquith's both-party Ministry, and was helpless. 
 It was in front of the Government all through, 
 and had to chafe inpotently while Ministers 
 went through the process of in turn ignoring 
 that which was wanted, declaring it was not 
 wanted, then proclaiming it vital, and ultimately 
 doing it. Here we can trace an indirect power 
 in the country to get something done in the 
 end ; but necessarily the general public can 
 never have administrative power and only 
 very indirect influence on legislation. This 
 influence is all the time modified and generally 
 twisted out of truth by party necessity. The 
 conclusion is that in this country power is not
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 49 
 
 concentrated anywhere ; every depository of 
 power which seems to be final is balanced, or, 
 if not balanced, it is checked by power elsewhere, 
 though never by the ostensible and deliberate 
 checks provided by the constitution. 
 
 Some, no doubt, will see in this our great 
 political glory an even distribution of power. 
 In fact it is haphazard rather than even ; scat- 
 tered rather than well distributed. It may 
 make tyranny impossible, but it also makes 
 strong government impossible. It might savour 
 more of epigram than of accuracy to say that 
 the present state of things gives us the draw- 
 backs without the advantages both of popular 
 and absolute government, but there would be 
 a good deal of truth in the remark. 
 
 No Ministry can afford to be much above 
 or ahead of its own followers ; it must take as 
 its norm, first, the standard of the average 
 Member of Parliament supporting it ; second, the 
 average friendly elector in the country ; third, the 
 average man. Therefore the best thing to do or 
 the best way of doing it is never attempted. Fur- 
 ther, those who have to play up to a certain level 
 of opinion and taste tend to play below it. 
 This is conspicuous in the Press and on the 
 stage ; and it holds in politics. Modern gov- 
 ernments may seem to show but little tenderness 
 for the conscience or feelings of their followers 
 in Parliament, but the Government proposal
 
 So IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 before the House has always taken stock of 
 their general standard. Ministers have satisfied 
 themselves that their friends will swallow the 
 dose. Therefore they can afford to administer 
 it summarily, but this rough treatment is not 
 a proof of independence. 
 
 Also, Ministers have always to be thinking 
 of the ultimate effect on the electorate. What 
 will please the largest number from whom 
 support may be hoped for ? The outcome of 
 this habit of mind is to postpone the ordinary 
 and necessary work of the country to special 
 and controversial matters. Except when peace 
 or war is obviously in issue, it is difficult to 
 get the average Briton to take interest in foreign 
 affairs or in the Army. In the Navy he does 
 take interest, and would be willing govern- 
 ments notwithstanding to spend indefinitely 
 upon it, but the Navy is necessarily a highly 
 expert subject, and beyond wishing it to be as 
 powerful as possible, the average elector rightly 
 takes naval matters for granted. They are 
 not often for him matters of controversy. 
 Hence governments tend to subordinate foreign 
 affairs, Army and Navy to infinitely less 
 important matters of more controversial in- 
 terest at the moment. It is credibly reported 
 that members of Mr. Asquith's Government 
 upon the murder of the Archduke expressed 
 great surprise when it was put to them that
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 51 
 
 the tension between Austria and Servia might 
 lead to grave consequences. They were so 
 much preoccupied with domestic differences 
 of acuter political interest that they had hardly 
 thought about the European situation at all. 
 
 In British Cabinets (the present quite ex- 
 ceptional and parenthetic arrangement apart) 
 foreign, military and naval policy is not dealt 
 with by experts nor treated as a business. It 
 comes as part of the general political process 
 that is to say getting into office and keeping 
 there. Admiralty and War Office fall to this 
 man or that not because of any fitness in him 
 for the job any more than any other department 
 is given to a man because he is fit for it. It 
 is all politics. About the Foreign Office there 
 is a certain selection. Not every successful 
 politician can count on the Foreign Office coming 
 to him in his turn. None the less general 
 political exigencies determine the choice even 
 of Foreign Secretary more than consideration 
 of fitness. Otherwise, it would be hard to 
 account for the selection of a man who spoke 
 no foreign language and could not even read 
 French with ease. However, general character 
 and calibre is more important than expert 
 training, as everything English happily recog- 
 nises, and while one might think it was possible 
 to combine the two more often than seems to 
 be done, the serious thing about our present
 
 52 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 parliamentary plan is not so much that untrained 
 men are put over these departments as that it 
 inevitably relegates Foreign Affairs, Navy and 
 Army to a second place in the mind of the 
 Government. 
 
 Another defect of the present system is its 
 elimination of the soldier-statesman or the 
 sailor-statesman, still more of the soldier-and- 
 sailor statesman. We are accustomed to take 
 for granted that the functions of soldiers, sailors, 
 and statesmen are distinct and cannot be united 
 in the same person. Historic precedent does 
 not bear out this conception. It may be sound 
 as applied to subordinates ; modern naval 
 and military science is so expert that it may 
 be impossible for more than a few in the services 
 to have thought for anything else, but to carry 
 this view right through to the top is to sub- 
 divide counsel to an extent that can hardly 
 fail to teli injuriously on unity of plan and 
 concentration in its execution. How can he 
 correctly gauge a scheme who has no under- 
 standing of the instruments by which it will 
 have to be carried out ? Can he who had nothing 
 to do with making the scheme, and knows it 
 only in part, carry it out so intelligently as one 
 in whose mind it was from the beginning ? It 
 seems hardly disputable that it would make 
 for success if the main thread of statesmanship 
 and naval and military plans were in the same
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 53 
 
 mind. This may be impossible, but need we 
 be as far from such an idea as we are now ? 
 
 It is unfortunate, too, that it is the better 
 element that is now crowded out. The soldier 
 or the sailor has no chance in the parliamentary 
 game with the politician ; with the result that 
 the best type of sailor and soldier gives politics 
 a very wide berth. Lord Kitchener was no 
 exception to this rule, in spite of appearances ; 
 and General Lyautey, one of the greatest of 
 living Frenchmen, soon found political life 
 impossible. 
 
 On the whole, probably nothing handicaps 
 our public men in dealing with a great situation 
 of action, compared with statesmen not respon- 
 sible to a Parliament, so much as their public 
 training and environment. The direct and 
 necessary result of our parliamentary system 
 is to make our very finest young men ex- 
 clusive of the happily large number who go 
 into the Services look to speaking as the great 
 thing in life. And so indeed it is from the point 
 of view of the candidate for public distinction. 
 No man can go far in political life unless he can 
 speak easily ; nothing is out of the reach of 
 the man who can draw and hold a large popular 
 audience. The successful speaker, though he 
 be a fool, may make a very considerable suc- 
 cess in political life : the capable man of action 
 who cannot speak has no chance. It is true
 
 54 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 a man cannot get to the top who has not brain 
 to help a glib tongue ; but his brain will hardly 
 help him without the glib tongue. No doubt 
 this will bring to mind one striking exception. 
 But would Mr. Balfour's intellect have com- 
 pensated for deficiency in mere fluency, had not 
 adventitious circumstances thrust him in the 
 front rank early in his career ? 
 
 It cannot be gainsaid that British public 
 men are brought up on talk. " Words, words, 
 words " are their currency, not acts. This 
 tends to falsify their whole view of men and 
 things, and puts them out of sympathy with 
 some of the best elements in the nation ; especi- 
 ally it unfits them for crises when it is necessary 
 to act at once without talking. Mr. Asquith 
 and his colleagues had been brought up in this 
 school (though one or two of them have also 
 had a fine training in action out of England) 
 and their general attitude to this unparalleled 
 time agreed therewith. They had been accus- 
 tomed to look at things from a parliamentary 
 point of view, and it was difficult for them to 
 see the war in any other light. In all their 
 conduct of affairs one saw the parliamentary 
 hand. To fence with questions and put a good 
 face on things in the House seemed to be the 
 main object. Small blame to them. How 
 could they change their skin ? It is the way all 
 through. In ordinary times every Minister is
 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 55 
 
 much more concerned with the presentation 
 of his case to Parliament than with the case 
 itself. For the most part a subject is important 
 to him in proportion as it bulks large or small 
 in the House of Commons. Civil servants can 
 testify to this. The diversion of their thought 
 and time from their proper work to the prepara- 
 tion of material for parliamentary fence is a 
 great scandal ; but how many know anything 
 about it ? Leaders out of office cannot bring 
 it up against Ministers, for, when their turn 
 comes, which they are all earnestly expecting, 
 they will themselves want to use the civil ser- 
 vants precisely in the same way. And if any 
 other witness is needed, the biographies and 
 private correspondence of great public men 
 provide it. 
 
 Words which are rightly a means become 
 an end,' and Parliament that was meant to be 
 an instrument of the nation becomes its own 
 object.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PARTY 
 
 EVERYONE admits that parliamentary 
 government can not work without 
 parties. Yet everyone decries party 
 and deplores the strength of the party system. 
 It is amusing (and a very common thing) to 
 hear a man in the same sentence gaily belauding 
 parliamentary government, admitting that it 
 can work only by means of party, and damning 
 party and party spirit as the curse of the country. 
 He will do this apparently without a suspicion 
 that there is a screw loose in his political posi- 
 tion or any sort of weakness in his logic. The 
 happy soul is perfectly content to deceive 
 himself. If asked whether he does not think 
 it rather strange that an ideal institution such 
 as Parliament should be able to do nothing 
 without the help of a corrupt influence such 
 as party, the point, it appears, has not occurred 
 to him. When he has waxed eloquent on 
 platforms about the golden age " when none 
 was for a party but all were for the State " 
 
 56
 
 PARTY 57 
 
 he fully thought he was preaching the parlia- 
 mentary ideal. Yet it is very certain that 
 in any State where none is for a party none 
 will be in a Parliament. 
 
 Party is not a parasite on Parliament or 
 a dependent. It is true it flourishes most 
 luxuriantly where parliamentary government 
 obtains, but Parliament lives on party at least 
 as much as party on Parliament. Each is 
 useful to the other : neither can afford to 
 lecture or despise the other. 
 
 Further, it is always said that our delicate 
 constitution can work only when there is 
 substantial, though tacit, agreement between 
 parties on fundamental questions the things 
 that matter. If there is real and vital 
 disagreement on these, the country is rent 
 and civil war shows above the horizon. On 
 the other hand, if there is not this real difference 
 between parties, what is all the hullabaloo 
 about ? All the sound and fury of an election 
 is a sham ? Of course it is, the politician will 
 say, in your sense but not in mine. It will 
 seldom matter very much to the country whether 
 I or the other fellow be elected : but it will 
 matter a great deal to me. Just as it will 
 make all the difference to Ministers which 
 party gets in, though a few months after the 
 election the public will be saying that the change 
 of Government has changed little else (more
 
 58 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 probably it will say " nothing else,") and will 
 be crying in disgust " A plague on both their 
 houses." Honest candidates, of which there 
 are quite a good many, feel the falsity of their 
 position from this point of view much more 
 than most people would think. They cannot 
 win an election without a prodigious amount 
 of labour, talk, dust and noise ; they must 
 thump tubs ; they must kiss babies ; they must 
 be tremendously in earnest ; they must persuade 
 themselves (until they believe it) that there 
 never was so important a contest as theirs. 
 Naturally as intelligent men, not mountebanks, 
 they wish to think that all this business and 
 clatter is about something extremely important ; 
 something national and not personal ; some- 
 thing that will make the world move. This 
 wish fathers thought until by the arrival of 
 polling day candidates often are worked up 
 to the desired condition and do honestly 
 believe that their election will make a real 
 difference to the whole Empire. The cooling 
 down and humiliating process comes later. 
 The dust clears and the candidates begin to 
 see what they really fought each other for. 
 Sometimes, it is true, the issues of an election 
 are national and the differences between parties 
 of Imperial significance. Then the honest 
 candidate is quite happy and endures no after- 
 math of self-contempt ; but it means that
 
 PARTY 59 
 
 the country is in very serious danger. His 
 happiness is the country's sorrow. 
 
 It is almost curious how entirely the public 
 which is not actively engaged in politics 
 declines to adopt the candidate's point of 
 view. The ordinary citizen does not in the 
 least see the contest as one between " causes ;" 
 the fervent appeals to him to support this 
 candidate or the other on patriotic grounds 
 leave him quite cold. If he takes any notice, 
 which usually he does not, he smiles. The 
 canvasser is everywhere a stock if mild joke. 
 By common consent he is everybody's legitimate 
 butt. Anyone who has done any canvassing 
 must be familiar with the half-sarcastic, half- 
 suspicious smile that receives him. Ask a 
 clerk for his principal and state your business 
 to be the desire to see him on behalf of Mr. 
 the parliamentary candidate, and you will 
 be received much as a shabby man that would 
 borrow money or a person coming with an 
 unlikely story. The clerical youth feels his 
 advantage in a moment and, pleased at 
 his unwonted position of superiority, deigns 
 to tell you that he will take in your name but 
 doubts if the principal will see you. Political 
 circles cannot realise how small a ripple in 
 the pool of life is made by a general election. 
 The keen candidate, who secretly suspects it, 
 deplores this apathy and thinks his constituents
 
 60 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 or desired constituents mainly slack and stupid. 
 And it is quite true that a great many of them 
 are wholly ignorant of political matters and 
 a larger number wholly indifferent. But the 
 majority are probably neither so slack nor so 
 stupid as the candidate thinks, but take a 
 juster measure of the whole business than 
 he. They have seen with their eyes and come 
 to their own conclusions. They see no reason 
 for any great excitement on their part, though 
 they can quite understand his. If they were 
 candidates, they would be excited too. They 
 are not unpatriotic at all. Let there be any 
 question affecting His Majesty or the Royal 
 Family ; any question of war ; any issue in 
 which obviously the country and not a party 
 is at stake, and these uninterested folk catch 
 fire and blaze better than the Government 
 or politicians. In short the political apathy 
 of the public is partly ignorance and partly 
 knowledge ; and perhaps more knowledge than 
 ignorance. 
 
 The large percentage of the electorate 
 that goes to the poll may seem to show 
 that the public is not apathetic. But this 
 is an illusion. Stop the working of the 
 party machines for a few years and leave the 
 electors to look after themselves at elections, 
 and then see how many of them go to the poll. 
 Most men regard themselves as belonging to
 
 PARTY 61 
 
 a party though the tie troubles them but little, 
 and if pressure is put on and everything is 
 done to make it easy for them to vote, they will 
 vote. It is almost less bother to go to the 
 poll than to stay away. In these days of 
 perfected party machinery the elector is never 
 lost sight of by his party. The principal agent 
 (whatever he may happen to be styled), the 
 big man at the top somewhere in Whitehall 
 or thereabouts, is in touch with all the army 
 of local agents. These keep their eyes on all 
 the electors known to belong to their party ; 
 they know their movements and watch them 
 ceaselessly. They do, that is, if they are 
 efficient agents and know their job. Every 
 voter friendly or hostile is seen at certain intervals 
 by a canvasser ; so that the agent, in a sense, 
 has his eye on every elector, and his hand as 
 well as his eye on every friendly elector. On 
 the approach of an election the entire electorate 
 is canvassed afresh, and the agent is put in 
 perfect touch with the very latest disposition 
 of the voter. He knows the forces he can count 
 on and takes his steps to put them in motion. 
 Every elector gets a card telling him where to 
 vote and precisely how to vote (not to mention 
 the advice as to whom he should vote for) giving 
 him his number on the register. The voter 
 has only to put one of these cards in his pocket 
 and voting becomes as easy as A.B.C. If it
 
 62 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 is too much trouble to him to walk to the polling 
 place, he will be called for by the candidate's 
 friends and taken there in a carriage. On the 
 polling day someone from the candidate will 
 call on him betimes and inquire after his vote. 
 If he has not voted, another call will be paid 
 him. In well organised committee rooms this 
 process of looking up electors goes on with 
 quiet persistence until by the end of the day 
 a very small proportion of " friendlies " re- 
 main unaccounted for. In these circumstances 
 is it strange that a large percentage of the 
 electorate go to the poll ? Can any inference 
 of concern in the election or political keenness 
 be drawn from the fact that a large percentage 
 do ? How many go to the poll simply owing 
 to the importunity of the local party machine, 
 who can say ? 
 
 It is very difficult for a candidate or a Member 
 of Parliament to gauge the real disposition 
 of the population in his constituency because 
 he is necessarily always surrounded by a keen 
 minority. Do what he may to get at the truth, 
 these are the people he will see the most of, 
 and it is only natural, almost inevitable, that 
 he should think them a truer sample of the 
 whole population than they are. All the more 
 so that these keen people make the same mis- 
 take about themselves. The agent, it is true, 
 is a paid professional ; it is all just day to day
 
 PARTY 63 
 
 business with him. He can take all the hubbub 
 with the stolidity of a " pro " ; he need not 
 be excited or get his head turned or suffer any 
 of the maladies attendant on enthusiasm. He 
 will earn his bread the more worthily by regard- 
 ing elections and " causes " alike as just coming 
 in the day's work. Thus he will be the better 
 agent and do his master best service. But it 
 is difficult even for the oldest agent to keep 
 himself entirely superior to the excitement 
 all around him. Naturally it is the energetic 
 and keen man who is the most likely to suffer 
 from the contagion of enthusiasm. Det. chment 
 of mind and great energy are not often com- 
 bined in the same person. But both are wanted 
 in a political agent. He is nearly always a 
 steadying force, but not enough so to keep 
 the candidate straight in his view of the real 
 mind of the people. The candidate may be 
 so fortunate as to have for his chairman, or 
 confidential political friend in the constituency, a 
 man of knowledge and broad judgment, a man 
 himself fully up to House of Commons form, 
 who is interested in politics, but for some reason 
 cannot or does not care himself to stand. Such 
 a local friend will be the greatest blessing a 
 candidate can have. But such friends are 
 rare ; if for no other reason, because men of 
 that calibre usually will not trouble to concern 
 themselves in local politics. They are put off
 
 64 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 by the pettiness of it all. It is not possible 
 to deny that local political " leaders " and the 
 workers and helpers generally are busy-bodies 
 (for the most part amiable busy-bodies no 
 doubt), who like to think they are doing im- 
 portant public work. Their fussy enthusiasm 
 is certainly amusing when it does not irritate. 
 It flatters these gentlemen to flutter round the 
 candidate. It gives them, certainly in their 
 own eyes and perhaps in the eyes of some others, 
 a certain local importance : and it may be 
 really useful to them, if they want to have a 
 place on municipal bodies. The more youthful 
 local politicians are often honest, and in a 
 sense more or less pathetic, victims of an illusion 
 that they are serving their country. They are 
 aspirants to fame, and full of enthusiasm for 
 their side. Then there is the out-and-out party 
 man : he is a familiar figure in local political 
 circles. We all know the man who likes to 
 take a firm stand on the hearth rug and, bending 
 backward, both hands plunged deep in his 
 pockets, tell you fiercely that he is an " out- 
 and-out party man." There is seldom any 
 desire to take up the challenge, for it is difficult 
 to conceive him anything else than a mere party 
 man. However, this sort always seems to 
 think it something of a distinction to be a great 
 partisan and is proud of the title. The candidate 
 must cultivate him, of course, for to him he is
 
 PARTY 65 
 
 obviously useful ; just as the same type in 
 Parliament is useful to his leader and very 
 pleasing to the Whips. 
 
 This is the candidate's entourage, and it is 
 very unrepresentative of the mass. In a pro- 
 vincial town of moderate size the agent is pretty 
 widely known ; he is a local somebody as is 
 the Chairman of the Association and others 
 among the active politicians. In a large town, 
 unless otherwise of weight, these count for less ; 
 and in London they do not count at all. In 
 a Metropolitan division hardly anyone has 
 ever heard of the agent or of the magnates of 
 the local Association ; and if he did hear of 
 them, their names could signify nothing to 
 him. They are a tiny coterie to themselves. 
 In rural districts the local politicians are probably 
 pretty well known ; for there anyone of local 
 prominence is, if possible, pressed into service. 
 But the agricultural labourer marks them very 
 little. On the whole, the local politician of 
 the county division is a superior type to the 
 provincial town magnate, who, in his turn, is 
 superior to the local politicians of a London 
 division. Generally the local political Asso- 
 ciation and the circle of which it is the centre 
 have no influence at all on the political views 
 of electors. They have much more influence 
 on candidates than on the people. The candidate 
 often hesitates to take a strong course which
 
 66 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 he feels to be wise for fear of offending or hurting 
 the feelings of someone prominent on his Asso- 
 ciation. He fears domestic difference, and is 
 worried about possible jealousies in this quarter 
 or that. He seldom dares to speak over the 
 heads of the coterie to the people who are going 
 to elect or reject him ; which is unfortunate, 
 for it tends to enfeeble his position and even 
 his character as a public man ; and narrows 
 his outlook. It is natural, of course, that he 
 should pay attention to the agent, the profes- 
 sional electioneer. A man new to politics or 
 even to the locality can hardly help being very 
 much, in the agent's hands ; and it takes a good 
 deal of strength to stand up against him, even 
 in an old hand who knows the political game 
 and the constituency. The agent necessarily 
 looks at things from one point of view only 
 getting in his man. He really has nothing to 
 do with the policy or views, save in so far as 
 they may affect his candidate's chances. In- 
 evitably the agent is against any view or any 
 course that he thinks risky, that may alienate 
 a man here or there, that may not be popular. 
 He is for the safe game. He shakes his head 
 at anything original in the candidate's politics, 
 any point of view unusual in men of his party, 
 even an unwonted way of putting a common- 
 place notion. He wants his man to go on the 
 well-worn lines familiar to the party. Probably,
 
 PARTY 67 
 
 from the agent's point of view electioneering 
 pure and simple, or more probably simple 
 without being pure he is right. Anything 
 exceptional is likely to shock the average man 
 and to put him off. As for the candidate he 
 can hardly help coming into line. All this 
 surely turns out the Member of Parliament 
 according to stereotyped pattern, and makes 
 him run in a dreary groove. It depresses the 
 tone of public men and of Parliament. 
 
 But what is the aspiring Parliamentarian 
 to do ? How is he to escape the treadmill ? 
 He starts, we will say, with many ideas, with 
 strong convictions, with a sincere wish to put 
 his ideas into action, believing they will make 
 for the good of the country and the happiness 
 of the people. " If I am to do anything," 
 he says, " I must first get into Parliament." 
 (This may be his fundamental error : but as 
 he is a candidate, that is obviously what he 
 will think). " It is no use my expounding 
 magnificent views and great plans, if I cannot 
 get into a position to carry them out. To do 
 that I must get into Parliament, and I cannot 
 do that unless I win this election. The first 
 thing obviously is to win the election." His 
 agent and most of his friends, nervous of his 
 reputation for ideas, are always urging upon 
 him the same. u You cannot afford to risk 
 anything now ; first, win the election."
 
 68 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 The agent's point of view predominates from 
 the beginning. In the original choice of candi- 
 dates wealth, local influence, and claims on 
 the party, which means the return due either 
 for large contributions to the party chest or 
 for special services done at the Whips' request, 
 count for much more than ability, education, 
 manners, or birth. Not so much from sordidness 
 in the forces that make the choice as in the 
 deliberate calculation that these are the things 
 that most help a candidate to win. If in ad- 
 dition to wealth and local influence a man have 
 brains, birth and manners, no doubt it is all 
 the better. But to be known, or to be thought, 
 to have ideas will not help him ; it will more 
 likely stand in his way. 
 
 The candidate soon discovers for himself 
 that it is not politics that win elections. He 
 begins, perhaps, full of the great questions of 
 the day. He is keenly interested in foreign 
 politics and imperial questions. His agent soon 
 damps him down. The people, he says, don't 
 care about those things ; (in fact they care 
 more about them than agents and such like 
 imagine). Talk to working men about wages ; 
 to middle-class men about taxes and property ; 
 and, if you can, always bring in something 
 local. Don't be afraid of abusing the other 
 side roundly ; hot and strong is what the people 
 like.
 
 PARTY 69 
 
 In other words, he is to avoid big questions ; 
 to talk cheap clap-trap loudly, and, so far as 
 he can, make the election of a Member of an 
 Imperial Parliament a Parliament which is 
 to take charge of world-wide interests turn 
 on local issues. He is inclined to rebel, but 
 is pulled up with the thought that, after all, 
 the only thing now is to win the election. This 
 is only a means to an end. If he can only get 
 in, he will mind the big things later. He is 
 told he must not, at any cost, put forward some 
 proposal he is keen on : " fatal in this constitu- 
 ency." He is asked to support another which 
 he dislikes ; he declines. " At any rate, don't 
 openly oppose it. Say nothing about it," says 
 the agent, adding that if the candidate opposes 
 it, he will not answer for the consequences. 
 The wretched candidate writhes, disliking the 
 whole business, and does say nothing. 
 
 Suppose there is talk, or something more 
 definite than mere talk, of some Government 
 work being undertaken in the constituency ; 
 something that will bring work and wages 
 for a large number, and trade to the shopkeeper. 
 Can a candidate adopt an independent attitude 
 towards the proposed public work ? Not he ! 
 To put it honestly if bluntly, whatever he privately 
 thinks of the scheme, he has got to support it, 
 and it is a hundred to one that he will support 
 it. There may be a candidate here and there
 
 yo IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 that has the courage and honesty openly to 
 oppose a scheme which promises gain to the 
 constituency, but of which on general national 
 grounds he does not approve ; and the reward 
 for his strength of character will be that he 
 will lose the election. Candidates do not often 
 find themselves in this difficult position of con- 
 flict between their conscience and their interest 
 over a proposed public work, because it is not 
 often a scheme is so monstrous that no rational 
 man can honestly support it. So the candidate 
 is pretty certain to think the scheme a good 
 one, or, at any rate, harmless, without any 
 forcing of his conscience ; or he does not realise 
 that he is forcing it. It is only in retrospect, 
 when he reflects that he has been on the side 
 of every proposal likely to strengthen his position 
 in the constituency, that he begins to consider 
 whether his support has been genuine and his 
 independence unimpeachable. It was noticed 
 during the many years of opposition to running 
 trams over Westminster Bridge and along the 
 Embankment that Conservative Members of 
 Parliament for constituencies north of the 
 Thames mainly opposed the scheme, while 
 Conservative Members of Parliament for con- 
 stituencies south of the Thames to a man 
 supported it. The real backing of the scheme 
 indeed the only case for it at all came from 
 the large numbers of employees living in South
 
 PARTY 71 
 
 London who went to a place of business on the 
 other side of the Thames. Matters of this kind 
 have far more influence on the results of elections 
 than any political consideration, as a candidate 
 very soon finds out. He must, of course, 
 proclaim the established party commonplaces. 
 The people must see that he floats with the 
 main current of his party's policy. That is 
 common form and expected. Beyond that he 
 had better give his attention to non-political 
 matters in the constituency. The common 
 phrase " nursing a constituency " is an apt 
 one. There is not much politics in nursing ; 
 it would be very bad nursing if there were. 
 It is quite true that these non-political matters 
 religious organisations, hospitals, friendly 
 societies, schools, orphanages, social clubs, ath- 
 letics are better worth his tim than local 
 politics. The most scrupulous man may cultivate 
 these without any loss of self-respect ; but it 
 seems rather irrational that parliamentary elect- 
 ions should mainly turn on attention to matters 
 over which Parliament has little or more often 
 no control and with which Parliament is not 
 likely to be concerned during the whole time 
 the successful candidate will represent the 
 constituency. 
 
 The calculation behind all this can be put 
 shortly thus : constituents known to be strong 
 supporters of one side will vote for that side
 
 72 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 in any case ; if your friends, they need only to be 
 brought to the poll ; if your opponents, you 
 can do nothing with them. Therefore both 
 these classes, who make the majority of the 
 electorate, may be ignored. The remaining 
 voters take little interest in politics, or they 
 would be definitely on one side or on the other. 
 So between these three political argument is 
 shut out. There is no need to convert the 
 convinced friend ; you cannot convert the 
 convinced enemy ; and the rest do not come 
 to meetings, neither knowing nor caring one 
 straw about party politics. These, who are 
 generally thought to determine elections in 
 doubtful constituencies, can be got at only on 
 lines affecting their ordinary life their wages, 
 income, business, pleasures. Questions of social 
 reform will interest them, if they are themselves 
 directly affected. This largely accounts for 
 the ever increasing prominence given to social 
 reform in election campaigns. Social reform 
 is a very great national matter ; a candidate 
 can hardly give his mind to a greater ; and it 
 would be unfair and untrue to put down all 
 the concern shown by candidates for social 
 reform to interested electioneering calculations. 
 But the way in which these questions are put 
 in different constituencies according to the 
 character of the district shows very plainly 
 that the catching of votes does too often enter
 
 PARTY 73 
 
 into the matter. Social questions are seldom 
 discussed on their merits at elections or indeed 
 in Parliament. Dealing with the Insurance 
 Act one side insists on what the voter will 
 get from the State and from his employer ; 
 the other on what he will have to pay. The 
 Free Trader declares that the victory of his 
 side will bring down prices while Tariff 
 Reform will mean starvation : the Tariff Re- 
 former declares that his plan will mean good 
 work for everybody and universal prosperity. 
 Perhaps telling the truth would not be such 
 bad electioneering after all. 
 
 It is also certain that only on a matter 
 affecting him personally can a staunch supporter 
 be alienated or a staunch opponent brought 
 over, and this ten times to one will be a non- 
 political matter. By opposing a proposed 
 public work for instance, you might alienate 
 even a friend and by supporting it you may 
 bring over an opponent, should the rival 
 candidate be simple enough to oppose the 
 work. 
 
 On the whole, looking at the matter with the 
 eye of a professional electioneer, this is a fair 
 survey ; and we can see what is the situation 
 an honest candidate has to face. It is difficult 
 almost to impracticability. Sometimes, no 
 doubt, a great question of the moment, such as 
 Home Rule in 1886 or Free Trade in 1906,
 
 74 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 will really sway the people ; and professional 
 electioneering will err, though not wholly even 
 then. But such conditions are rare. It is 
 not evidence of special depravity in British 
 political natures that the parliamentary and 
 party system has worked out in this way. It 
 is the natural result of forces which only men 
 far above the average in character could resist. 
 Given human nature as it is, quite a slight 
 examination of the elements of party would 
 enable any fairly intelligent person to foresee 
 what must happen. He cannot be at all 
 surprised that party politics have worked out 
 as they have done. For if politics were 
 taken up only by able men who entered public 
 life as a duty, a burden to be borne by the 
 patriotic as cheerfully as may be, not as a 
 career for ambition nor from any desire of 
 distraction, there would be no parties and no 
 parliamentary government. Such a temper 
 would prevent differences of view from ever 
 being bitter ; they would always be genuine 
 even if they became acute, but they would not 
 often become even acute. Amongst men of 
 goodwill things settle themselves. Anything 
 in the shape of division organised on a permanent 
 basis would be seen to be absurd and could 
 not be kept up. This is not indeed self-evident, 
 and some may be inclined to dispute the 
 assumption; nor is it possible to test its justice
 
 PARTY 75 
 
 historically, for the conditions postulated have 
 never come about and never will. But the 
 ease with which differences do settle themselves 
 amongst two or three men of goodwill, unin- 
 fluenced by tradition or organisation or 
 considerations external from the matter in 
 hand, certainly does suggest that in politics 
 the same result would follow from the same 
 conditions. See what has happened lately ; 
 party being in abeyance, men mostly opposed 
 in their views meet to consider one of the most 
 controversial of all questions franchise and 
 they agree on a programme. Note too the 
 rapprochement on Drink and tentatively on 
 Ireland. If anyone chooses to object that 
 parties are in themselves a good thing, not a 
 necessary evil nor a something for want of a 
 better, he will of course be going to the root 
 of the matter and, if he is correct, the whole 
 of the foregoing assumption falls to the ground. 
 Some first-rate men have held this view at 
 least they have said they did but they have 
 mainly been party politicians whose whole 
 vocation would be gone if parties dissappeared. 
 Disraeli often argued that party was a useful 
 institution in itself ; but he was an enthusiastic 
 Parliamentarian and knew that party was vital 
 to the life of the constitution to which he was 
 attached and was for ever eulogising. 
 
 The theory of party is community of action
 
 for common ends. A few men find they have 
 certain views in common and they see that by 
 sticking together they are more likely to get 
 their way than if they acted sporadically and 
 without plan. Other small groups do the same. 
 Two groups find their objects very similar 
 and join up ; but the homogeneity of the 
 amalgamated group is not so close as it was 
 in either of the two constituent groups. So 
 the new group covers a correspondingly wider 
 ground. Other groups, assimulating to one 
 end or the other of the amalgamated group, 
 also join in. This process of agglomeration 
 goes on until a multitude of scattered and 
 unrelated items have collected into two groups 
 so large that any independent unit remaining 
 outside has little or no chance. The agglomera- 
 tion naturally settles into two large groups ; 
 because the original small groups containing 
 men of extreme and sharply defined views 
 will be the most opposed to and farthest removed 
 from each other, and, being the most homo- 
 geneous and the most active because of their 
 strong views, will be the first to draw others 
 to them. Thus the process of gravitation will 
 attract the other units to one or other of these 
 consolidating groups according to their general 
 tendency, some being caught merely by 
 proximity. Whether or not this will bear 
 examination historically as an account of the
 
 PARTY 77 
 
 growth of the party system, it is a true rationale 
 of party. Seen thus, there is no exception 
 either moral or intellectual to be taken to it. 
 It is rather laudable. Yet it is easy to perceive 
 that it contains the seeds of its own degeneracy. 
 Men who have got together for ends not quite 
 the same must all sacrifice something. The 
 sacrifice may conceivably have begun in a high 
 act of self abnegation, but it easily degenerates 
 into a light abandonment of principle. Those 
 who have joined for one purpose soon find 
 themselves co-operating for quite another ; or 
 when the first object has been obtained, elated 
 with their power, they prefer not to disband 
 but to go on to other conquests. In this way 
 combination comes to be the one permanent 
 element, the causes which are the justification 
 or excuse for the combination being a quite 
 inconstant quality. Party loyalty is not only 
 entirely natural, but in many ways good ; for 
 there is an element of personal friendship in 
 it. Long association for any purpose gradually 
 establishes a claim one upon another amongst 
 the associaties, which is not lightly to be 
 abandoned. Instinctively he who withdraws 
 has an uncomfortable feeling that he is in a 
 way backing out of a common undertaking ; 
 and those whom he leaves feels this at least 
 as strongly and are usually not slow to remind 
 the seceder of it. But if he is convinced that
 
 78 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 the association as a whole is abandoning its 
 undertaking, he cannot rightly be accused 
 of desertion if he abandons them. They are 
 the deserters. Only personal regard for those 
 with whom he has been acting need then hold 
 him back. He ought to feel a reluctance to 
 leave them ; and there the strain comes. It 
 always requires moral courage to prefer principles 
 to friends, and the sting of the position is that 
 we are generally haunted with doubts whether 
 we are not treating those we are leaving shabbily. 
 Hence good-natured men, and most men are 
 good-natured, generally stick to their old 
 associates and party, and so party becomes 
 an end in itself. Prominent politicians fre- 
 quently plead without any consciousness of 
 insincerity fidelity to party as proof of fidelity 
 to principle. The man in the street generally 
 thinks it quite enough to say " I have always 
 been a Radical " or " I have always been a 
 Conservative " to vindicate his political 
 consistency. There have been times when a 
 new and contradictory policy has been sprung 
 upon a party, and the great bulk of the members 
 have accepted it without difficulty. The 
 abandonment of lifelong views did not seem 
 to them to involve so serious a breach with 
 their political past as would failure to stand 
 by the party. The compelling power of party 
 is as great as it is because to those who are
 
 PARTY 79 
 
 politically keen politics in fact mean party, 
 and the far larger number who are not keen 
 do not take the trouble to distinguish between 
 party and policy. It is so much easier to 
 label yourself Liberal or Conservative, and, if 
 you care to vote at all, vote accordingly. There 
 can be no serious doubt that most electors 
 belong to this party or that by accident. Their 
 fathers did, their friends do, or most of those 
 they happen to live amongst do. The vast 
 majority take their politics readymade, and 
 it would be very difficult for them to do otherwise. 
 How many have the time seriously to think 
 out their own political position ? The utmost 
 the ordinary elector can do is to think about 
 the " burning questions " of the day. In fact 
 his party thinks about them for him : or more 
 correctly it shows him his line. We are in 
 this vicious circle ; the man in the street follows 
 the lead of his party but the party is not led 
 by anyone. We speak of party leaders and 
 party leading : it is not party leading : it is 
 all party managing. Management is the 
 Parliamentarian's conception of Government, 
 and it can hardly be otherwise. Indeed it is 
 part of the very object of our system to prevent 
 strong leading. That which has been regarded 
 as the most characteristically British political 
 attitude has always suspected in strong leading 
 a menace to private freedom.
 
 80 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Are the new Franchise proposals likely to 
 do much to curb the power of the Machines ? 
 Proportional representation might do some- 
 thing, but it is idle to pretend to speak with 
 any certainty of its working. We simply do 
 not know. But we do know that an enormous 
 addition of inexperienced voters will not abridge 
 but will extend the field of the Machine's opera- 
 tion and will multiply opportunity. All that 
 the Machines do now amongst men will have 
 to be done on a larger scale. The great change, 
 the introduction of the woman voter, adds 
 an uncertain element. Are women likely to 
 be less or more independent as voters than 
 men ? For the moment only a limited number 
 of selected women will get the vote (the age 
 limit is a very severe selection in itself). These 
 may be a little more independent than the 
 average man voter. But it is certain that in 
 no long time votes will be given to women on 
 the same terms as to men. Once the disability 
 of sex is abandoned, no case is left for keeping 
 out any woman who has the qualifications 
 that enfranchise a man. We shall have practi- 
 cally manhood and womanhood suffrage. This 
 will certainly give the Machines a vast field 
 for enterprise. But seeing that men have no 
 independence as voters, women can hardly 
 have less. The chances are that the multitude 
 of women voters will be about as independent
 
 PARTY 8 1 
 
 as the multitude of men. But undoubtedly 
 amongst large classes of young women maid 
 servants, factory and other working girls, 
 girls in retail shops, women clerks, teachers 
 the Machines will find quite new openings for 
 action. Appeals can be made to them that 
 would not move men at all. The personal and 
 domestic bait will be much in evidence. Then 
 the political indifference of a very large number 
 of women will compel the Machines to excep- 
 tional activity. It will be a great business to 
 get the women to vote. Victory may easily 
 turn on who gets the larger number of his women 
 supporters to go to the poll. Great indeed will 
 be the rivalry of the Machines. 
 
 On the whole, the effect of the new proposals 
 will hardly be to make one less ready to remove 
 Imperial Questions from the sphere of party 
 politics.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A NEW START 
 
 JEALOUS as the average Englishman, especi- 
 ally the middle-class Englishman, may 
 be of strong leading, he is all for it at a 
 crisis which he feels to be national. He expects 
 the need for strong leading automatically to pro- 
 duce both strong leaders and strong leading, and 
 is angry when it does not. In ordinary times he 
 acquiesces in, even if he does not actively prefer, a 
 system which fosters neither strong men nor 
 strong leading, and then grumbles at that which 
 is sown in quiet times bearing its own fruit 
 in times of storm. Or, to vary the metaphor, 
 he puts dove's eggs under hens and expects 
 them to turn out eagles when desired. He will 
 not learn not to expect miracles. Miracles 
 have happened : why should they not happen 
 again ? The situation should produce its man. 
 Unfortunately, it does not always ; and if it 
 did, he might be too much handicapped by 
 want of experience and training to be able to 
 do much. Over and over again during the war 
 have we heard of the need of a wholly different 
 
 82
 
 A NEW START 83 
 
 type of man, different methods, different every- 
 thing in times of great stress from what is needed 
 or desirable in ordinary times. A generally 
 easy-going temper, a reasonable slackness, a 
 pleasant mood that does not take things too 
 seriously is the natural line in peace. We intend 
 to be comfortable, and we pity or look down 
 on other countries who put themselves in strait 
 waistcoats in order to be ready for what may 
 never happen. It is even argued deliberately 
 that on a general balance it is worth while 
 to be caught napping at a time of emergency 
 if you enjoy your sleep during the much longer 
 time when there is no emergency. You have 
 a better time than he who has one eye open 
 always in order to have two open at a crisis. 
 He may have the pull of you when the crisis 
 comes, but he has paid an excessive price for 
 the advantage. Well, if that is the calculation, 
 it is irrational to be furious with somebody 
 or everybody when the emergency does catch 
 you napping. To exclaim that you ought to 
 have been warned, you ought to have been 
 waked up earlier, is to ignore the whole position 
 you chose to adopt. If you want to sleep in 
 quiet times, you must pay for it in the 
 rough, just as he who wants to be wide 
 awake in the storm must pay the price in the 
 calm. To expect an entirely different order 
 of things suddenly changed ways and suddenly
 
 84 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 changed human nature the moment war 
 bursts upon us, is absurd. The whole notion 
 of a set of ideas and methods being wanted in 
 war time different in kind from what is wanted 
 in peace will not hold water. It is a question 
 of degree, not of kind. We had for many years 
 been content with a system which was not 
 government, and then when the war came 
 we suddenly called on the Ministry to govern. 
 This was reversing engines ; it was not putting 
 on more steam ; and the result was what might 
 have been foreseen. Gradually, with much 
 creaking and straining, the ship of State was 
 brought round to meet the new conditions. 
 But it was not till well on in the third year of 
 war that an efficient order was developed. 
 
 We may make up our minds that if we want 
 in the future to be ready for emergencies and 
 able to cope with them rapidly when they come, 
 we must change our ways and make a new start 
 in peace time. But we have first to decide 
 whether we do want to take up a new attitude 
 to emergency the chances of international 
 complications and of war. Do we really want 
 to be ready for everything ? We are all saying 
 now that we do ; but it will be more helpful 
 to try to see clearly what being ready for every- 
 thing must mean and then decide whether the 
 effort is worth the price. If we conclude that 
 on the whole it is not worth the price, then
 
 A NEW START 85 
 
 let us admit as much to ourselves frankly. 
 If, on the other hand, we decide that the effort 
 must be made, let us face it manfully and begin 
 to think and act. At any rate let us give up 
 talking and talking about the need for a new 
 start and all the time be slipping back into the 
 old ways. 
 
 It may be that a new start is as necessary 
 socially and economically as politically ; it 
 may be that those who would learn and not 
 shirk the lesson of the last two or three years 
 must face changes not at all to their liking. 
 But the urgent need in the eyes of all who 
 believe in patriotism and in the British Empire 
 is to build up an Imperial Government. This 
 may prove compatible with social and economic 
 developments most of us have hitherto regarded 
 as incompatible. But if such changes are, to 
 say the least, hazardous for the future of the 
 Empire, that can only be a greater and more 
 insistent reason for putting the men and ma- 
 chinery of Government in order. 
 
 Some seem to think that patching up will 
 suffice " restoring " the old constitution. They 
 seem to think that an Act of Parliament reversing 
 most of what had been done since 1906 will 
 save the situation. Not that they would bring 
 back exactly the position as it was before that 
 year. They recognise that it is not possible 
 to undo in that simple way, and that undoing
 
 86 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 never results in anything being done. They 
 would not, for instance, restore the House of 
 Lords simply to its pre-Parliament Act conditions. 
 The present position is impossible because we 
 have no Second Chamber with any power at 
 all ; what we want is a new one, not the old 
 re-built. That means some kind of elective 
 body, chosen on a fancy franchise that could 
 not last or on a simple franchise that might last 
 but with fantastic electoral divisions, an arti- 
 ficial arrangement devised to produce something 
 differing from the House of Commons. Obviously 
 it is desirable that the Second Chamber should 
 really differ from the First ; if it does not it 
 is mere duplication, and worse than superfluous. 
 But how it is to differ in kind in something 
 essential as well as in accidents except by being 
 hereditary, or, at any rate, non-elective no-one 
 has yet even suggested. But this essential 
 difference the hereditary non-elective charac- 
 ter of the House of Lords is just the one thing 
 those who were discontented with the Lords 
 were determined to be rid of. Nor is its restora- 
 tion contemplated. Any other " restoration," 
 therefore, can hardly excite the enthusiasm of 
 him who would try to build up a more effective 
 Imperial Government. This sort of rebuilding 
 suggests certain churches that have been well 
 described as " severely restored." This 
 restoration spoils but does not bring back the
 
 A NEW START 87 
 
 old ; it merely bars the way to something 
 good that is new. It is not restoration that 
 is wanted. It is a false diagnosis of the symp- 
 toms that suggests treatment by restoration. 
 British politicians do not, for the most part, 
 read Roman history (we are always being 
 warned of the snare of the historic parallel, 
 and certainly one way to avoid it is not to 
 know any history) or our restorers would 
 remember Sulla. He was the greatest of all 
 restorers, and his work lasted about fifteen 
 years. He knew but deliberately ignored the 
 character of the case he was treating. He 
 did not exactly try to put new wine into old 
 bottles ; he was, on the contrary, most desirous 
 of putting old wine into the old bottles ; but 
 the old bottles were too far gone even for that. 
 With us the danger is of trying to patch up 
 very old bottles to make them hold new wine. 
 Have we any right or reason to expect Parliament 
 and Party to change its nature and draw out 
 in the public service different qualities in men 
 from those they have drawn hitherto ? Or, 
 to put the position slightly differently, can 
 we expect Parliamentary government in the 
 stage of growth or decline which it has reached 
 to throw out any new and vigorous shoot ? 
 If it did, the old dry wood could be cut out 
 or left to rot off, and the new growth to develop 
 untrammelled. Some, no doubt, have faith
 
 88 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 in the rejuvenating power of the crisis we are 
 going through to make the parliamentary system, 
 like Tannhauser's staff, put forth shoots and 
 live again. But we have no right to calculate 
 on the deus ex machina. It is safer to expect 
 Parliament and parliamentary institutions to 
 follow their appointed course, and look elsewhere 
 for the new impulse necessary for new work. 
 
 There is general agreement that the inadequacy 
 of our Government in the past to the demands 
 of the Empire is largely due to party, and 
 Parliament is impossible without party. This 
 thought is making the average man, and many 
 women as well, begin to wonder whether after 
 all parliamentary Government is the necessity 
 to national life we had been accustomed to 
 think it was. It is difficult for him to think 
 of England without a Parliament. And he 
 will hardly try to do it. Still he is not sure 
 there may not be some more excellent way of 
 managing Imperial business than by means 
 of an omnipotent Parliament which really means 
 a handful of rhetoricians playing to and on 
 six hundred less skilful rhetoricians trying 
 in their turn to play to or on the people. You 
 may cut down the supremacy of Parliament, 
 you may define its powers and limits by Act, 
 you may adjust the relations of First and Second 
 Chambers as you will : but in the end if you 
 govern the Empire through Parliament at all
 
 A NEW START 89 
 
 you will always have left Government by rhetor- 
 icians for rhetoricians which is not the same thing 
 as Government by statesmen for an Empire. 
 In the nature of things, or at any rate in the 
 nature of humans, those who are ultimately 
 responsible to Parliament will think of Parlia- 
 ment most, and what Parliament really means 
 we have seen. Shall we not be on the right 
 track if we substitute Empire for Parliament, 
 the government being ultimately responsible to 
 the Empire and so thinking of the Empire 
 rather than Parliament ? 
 
 Two essential things are left out, if they are 
 not excluded, by our present system. We 
 have no Imperial Government no government 
 either including or representing all parts of 
 the Empire and the people though under a 
 democratic regime have no concern in the 
 settlement of questions of policy. The party 
 machine has got the people to leave thinking 
 to others and be content themselves with 
 taking a party ticket. This is not intelligent 
 democracy, if it is democracy at all, any 
 more than it is good Government. It may 
 be, and probably most democrats would 
 admit as much, that the great majority of 
 electors can never have time to give thought 
 to political details or to take any executive 
 part at all. But the ordinary elector ought 
 to be able to form something of an opinion
 
 90 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 on every broad questions of public policy. 
 This he cannot do without thinking of them, 
 and he will not think of them unless they are 
 formally put before him for some sort of decision. 
 Having them put to him in the uproar of a 
 mass meeting items in a general farrago of 
 party points carefully touched with prejudice 
 does not make him think at all. At a small 
 and quiet meeting he might learn more, but 
 small meetings are apt to be addressed by 
 small men, who may not be able to stir the 
 few present to any interest in the question 
 argued. What is wanted is some plan by 
 which the work of Government may be efficiently 
 thought out and carried into action at the 
 same time that the intelligence of the people 
 is brought into co-operation with the executive. 
 Perhaps the best chance of securing this end 
 would be to entrust the work of Government 
 to a small number of able men untrammelled 
 by reference to party or elections, who must 
 take the opinion of the people by Referendum 
 on the larger questions of policy. If it is said 
 that these are precisely the questions the ordinary 
 elector is not competent to decide, so that it is 
 dangerous to submit them to him, this is simply 
 an argument, good or bad, against democracy. 
 Details the people cannot deal with, and if 
 principles should not be put before them either, 
 then the people can do nothing. But if origin-
 
 A NEW START 91 
 
 ation and suggestion lies with the Executive, 
 who would first think out the whole question 
 with the utmost care and then put it before 
 the people in a form they can understand, it 
 is likely the people will give a reasonable 
 commonsense answer, just as on the whole 
 juries give reasonable verdicts. Were a case 
 put to a jury, as political issues are put to 
 the public at an election, with no judicial 
 summing up and in all probability after hearing 
 one of the advocates only, one would tremble 
 for the interests of justice. Much depends 
 on the atmosphere or temper in which a question 
 is put and received. And after all, you must 
 take some risks somewhere. Either you must 
 risk a strong independent executive acting 
 in their own interests instead of that of the 
 public or putting their own interests before 
 that of the public ; or you must risk the less 
 intelligence and the less expert information 
 of the public betraying them into incompetent 
 judgements. Both these risks may be minimised 
 but the choice between them will always remain 
 and will always have to be taken. In the 
 conditions of to-day the choice is obviously 
 already taken and everything must be done 
 to help the public to answer honestly and 
 intelligently the questions referred to it. 
 
 In this country, as perhaps in every other 
 country, it is always wise, if a change is necessary
 
 92 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 to make it as little violent as possible. It 
 is, also, of course, policy to prevent it being 
 obtrusive. Most people object to changes 
 according as they affect themselves. Changes 
 that may profoundly modify the future course 
 of events but disturb present appearances but 
 little are received with equanimity ; whereas 
 an obvious alteration in externals that will 
 be forgotten a year hence often produces fiercely 
 agitated opposition. Heroic changes, the clean 
 sweep and so forth sound very well and no 
 doubt appeal to youthful reformers and to 
 enthusiasts of any age : the idea stirs the 
 imagination. But always this violent course 
 offends a larger number than it pleases ; and 
 it seldom leads to lasting results ; and if it 
 does, it is usually more a negative than a positive 
 result. It is not the order of nature, where catas- 
 trophe is the exception, while fruitful growth and 
 structural modification is effected by a slow 
 accumulation of minute changes. On the whole 
 the revolution that least disturbs the present 
 order has the best chance of success every 
 revolution is necessarily a great disturbance 
 of the existing order, but most revolutions 
 can be effected with more destruction or less, 
 according to taste, and the statesman will 
 probably think the less the better. 
 
 To blot out Parliament and all that follows 
 or straggles in its strain from British national
 
 A NEW START 93 
 
 life would be a shock to the country so great 
 that even the very large number who are pro- 
 foundly dissatisfied with Parliament would 
 probably rally to its side. Those who during 
 the war have daily wished Parliament and 
 all politicians at the bottom of the sea would 
 be horribly alarmed at the proposed fulfilment 
 of their desire. Their conservatism would be 
 too strong for them. Perhaps it would not 
 have been too much for them a year after the 
 war began, but feeling has had time to cool 
 down ; and the root-and-branch mood has 
 passed. Seen from without Parliament and 
 elections are so inextricably interwoven with 
 English life that one can hardly think of it 
 without them. The very disregard of Parlia- 
 ment which now obtains springs partly from 
 its extreme familiarity. Yet, when it comes 
 to parting, one is apt to regret that which he 
 had despised. A reformer with the genius 
 and power of Julius Caesar might improve 
 Parliament away but any less man would only 
 sweep away himself. Without any sweeping 
 change of this kind it would be possible to 
 withdraw from parliamentary control certain 
 matters of Imperial concern. An Imperial 
 Council, not responsible to any parliament, 
 British or Colonial, might take over the work 
 of the Foreign Office, Admiralty, War Office, 
 India Office and Colonial Office. The Council
 
 94 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 would include representatives of all the self 
 governing Dominions, with an Indian assessor 
 to the Secretary of State, and one of the 
 British members might be a representative of 
 organised labour. This Council would be obliged 
 to refer to the whole body of electors throughout 
 the Empire certain fixed questions every year, 
 and other questions, involving changes, as 
 they came up. 
 
 Such a scheme, which will be discussed in 
 detail in succeeding chapters, would leave 
 Parliament so far as the general public was 
 concerned almost where it was. Parliament 
 would still deal with the matters which almost 
 exclusively occupied and exclusively interested 
 it for many years previous to the war 
 taxes, trade, franchise, education, social re- 
 form, labour, land. These are practically 
 the only questions the people heard anything 
 about at elections ; and elections would still 
 happen and the same subjects be talked about 
 as before. " Liberal " and Conservative " 
 would still go on : the debates would seem 
 to the reader, and largely to the listener, pre- 
 cisely what they were before. The newspapers 
 would have just as much to write about : neither 
 their pages nor their bills would be deprived 
 of " copy " by the change. There would still 
 be openings of Parliaments to describe : they 
 would still be able to record that Mr. Balfour's
 
 A NEW START 95 
 
 servant was seen in Whitehall on the first day 
 of the session : that Mr. Nobody was the first 
 to put in an appearance at the House : that 
 Mr. Churchill called on the Prime Minister. 
 They could still put in large letters on their 
 bills " First Arrivals." The public could still 
 have the show on opening day, and there would 
 still be addresses for parliamentary aspirants 
 to move in both houses. All the trappings 
 of Parliament would remain. The political 
 career would still be open to ambitious young 
 men, anxious for fame or a serious amusement. 
 Honours, orders and rewards of all the recognised 
 sorts would still be given as before. And those 
 who were in earnest about home affairs, including 
 such vast matters as education and labour 
 reform, would find as much work as they could 
 want in Parliament. Those who find Parliament 
 attractive and interesting now would find it 
 attractive and interesting then. 
 
 Neither would Parliament seriously suffer 
 as an instrument of education : which is 
 probably its most useful function. Parliamen- 
 tary life and election campaigns do make a 
 great many people think a little about large 
 and important questions who otherwise would 
 not think of them at all. It would be something 
 of an educational loss if politics were to drop 
 out of public attention. Not that they would 
 in fact drop out if Parliament ceased to be.
 
 96 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 There is as much political talk when Parliament 
 is " up " as when Parliament is sitting. The 
 newspapers will always provide plenty of 
 political fodder. So far as Imperial and Foreign 
 affairs go, under a scheme such as has been 
 suggested the public should take more interest 
 in them than they do now. These matters 
 would not be so much overshadowed by domestic 
 issues as at present. Moreover the electorate would 
 then be placed in a more responsible position 
 vis-a-vis Foreign and Imperial policy. On the 
 whole the public would soon hardly notice 
 that there had been any change at all : but 
 the difference would be that we should then 
 have an Imperial Government.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 BY this plan we should have a Government 
 manned by and representing the whole 
 Empire with power to deal with British 
 imperial interests wherever they were involved. 
 The status of the Colonial Parliaments, which 
 have now not even a nominal place in Imperial 
 matters, would be unaffected directly. Thus 
 there was no need to discuss the parliamentary 
 and party system as it works in the Dominions. 
 On the whole, the evidence does not seem to 
 suggest that it enjoys any immunity there from 
 the vices which have mastered it here. But 
 the British Parliament would be profoundly 
 modified in its substance, being no longer supreme 
 although hardly changed in any of its accidents. 
 Hitherto, there has been no Imperial Govern- 
 ment, although the British Parliament has 
 called itself Imperial and the British Government 
 is responsible for the government of the Empire. 
 It is responsible for countries and peoples, 
 being part of the British polity, over whom it 
 
 97
 
 98 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 has practically no control. There is, on the 
 one hand, no authority really supreme through- 
 out the Empire, and, on the other hand, 
 there are vast portions of the Empire whose 
 people have no more organic association with 
 the supposed British Imperial Government than 
 they have with the Governments of Russia or 
 of the United States of America. The King, 
 no doubt is supreme, and his sovereignty 
 acknowledged as much, and in the same way 
 in Australia and Canada as in Great Britain. 
 But the British King acts only through his 
 Ministers, and his Ministers in the self-governing 
 Dominions have no jurisdiction without their 
 own colony. His Ministers here, " at home " 
 in the United Kingdom have control over 
 matters concerning the whole Empire, and 
 in form have a certain jurisdiction even in 
 self-governing Dominions. Thus the Crown in 
 a sense is divided against itself. Its action 
 through a Dominion Government is limited, abso- 
 lutely ; its action through British Ministers 
 is limited in some directions, but in others 
 it is theoretically unlimited. The King is 
 supreme in Canada, but in Canada he cannot 
 deal with any matter, say, of Indian policy 
 or with foreign affairs. In Britain he can deal 
 with all these things, but there he is not supreme 
 over trade policy in a Dominion, even when 
 it involves trade relations with foreign Govern-
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 99 
 
 ments. A more unintelligible division of power 
 in a single sovereignty has never been, and 
 indeed will never be ; nor would it ever have 
 been but by accident. Such an arrangement 
 or want of arrangement deliberately en- 
 visaged would not be tolerated or even considered. 
 But it is true that anomalies allowed to grow 
 up unnoticed in this way no-one thinking it 
 his business to trouble about them sometimes 
 work better than carefully thought out schemes : 
 and the logical absurdity of the present state 
 of things need not, as it very certainly would 
 not, trouble us much if it brought with it no 
 practical disadvantages. But unfortunately it 
 does. The assumption that the British Govern- 
 ment is supreme in matters affecting the whole 
 Empire is breaking down, as necessarily in 
 view of the changed circumstances of the 
 self-governing Dominions, it must break down : 
 and the result is that there is no Imperial 
 Government. 
 
 There can be no more directly or essentially 
 Imperial matter than the defence of the Empire 
 against foreign attack, or the assertion of its 
 power vis-a-vis other countries. And the key 
 to policy under these heads is ultimately power, 
 and power means Navy and Army. Yet the 
 Imperial Government has neither right nor 
 power to call upon the self-governing Dominions 
 to contribute one man or one penny to either
 
 ioo IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Navy or Army. Danger to the Empire war 
 does not alter the position. A world com- 
 bination against the British Empire would 
 give our Imperial Government no right to claim 
 help from the self-governing Dominions either 
 in money or men. In peace time the Imperial 
 Government cannot direct or superintend the 
 training of a Colonial militia ; it can at most 
 give advice when asked. There was much 
 significance in the Dundonald incident in Canada. 
 
 The Imperial Government has no power to 
 settle general conditions and terms of military 
 service for the Empire it cannot even influence 
 these conditions outside of the United Kingdom, 
 India, and the Crown Colonies, and shrinks from 
 doing this in some parts within the United 
 Kingdom. Whether military service shall be 
 compulsory or voluntary is a strictly Imperial 
 question, if any question can be : it cannot 
 be local ; yet in the British Empire it is treated 
 as a local question. In one part of the Empire 
 compulsory service obtains ; in another part 
 it does not. British citizenship carries no even 
 responsibility. 
 
 The " Imperial Government " cannot control 
 even during a life-and-death war the shipping 
 of the Empire. Yet it is obviously impossible 
 for the Government to take forethought and 
 provide for food and other emergencies that 
 will arise, if it cannot calculate closely the
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 101 
 
 shipping resources it will have at its use. In 
 the third year of the war when deficiency of 
 tonnage was pressing and America had not 
 yet come in, two British ships, registered one 
 in Canada the other in Newfoundland, were 
 diverted to a new American line to ply between 
 the United States and South Africa. One of 
 these ships was transferred during the war 
 from the United Kingdom register to Canada, 
 and so passed out of the control of the Imperial 
 Government. 
 
 So little have we an Imperial Government 
 that the Government called Imperial is unable 
 to assert or to decide the right of a British 
 subject to free entry into all countries under 
 the dominion of the British King : the right 
 to move from one part of the Empire into another. 
 We have had the spectacle of one country 
 within the Empire striving successfully to keep 
 out of its borders their fellow subjects from 
 another country within the Empire : though 
 happily the War Conference this year has 
 taken a step to compose this matter for the 
 future. But the Imperial Government, stand- 
 ing in loco parentis to the people of India, 
 was helpless. Evidently the pax Britannica 
 is a very different thing from the pax Romana. 
 The British Government could talk and it 
 could write : it could advise, it could demur, 
 and it could soothe : but it could do nothing.
 
 102 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Further evidence that its character as an Im- 
 perial Government was gone can not be heeded. 
 Obviously it had lost all power to control or even 
 revise the Acts of a Dominion Government on 
 an essentially Imperial issue, an issue involving 
 the rights and status of every British subject 
 in the Empire and pertinent to every Dominion 
 Government as well as to the Government of 
 India and the Crown Colonies. The point 
 here be it noted is not whether the South 
 African Government was right, nor whether 
 the rights of coloured British subjects as to 
 settlement in other parts of the Empire require 
 regulation, but that a Dominion Government 
 took the settlement of such a question into its 
 own hand instead of referring it to the Imperial 
 Government. Plainly it was perceived that 
 there was no Imperial Government or this could 
 not have been done. The " Imperial Govern- 
 ment " knew itself, and the South African 
 Ministers knew the " Imperial Government." 
 
 This absence of an Imperial Government has 
 necessarily tended to make the different units 
 making up the Empire look at things from a 
 private and sometimes a separate and even 
 divergent point of view ; a tendency saved, 
 though happily it has been saved, from worse 
 results only by the strong sentiment of racial 
 fellowship and pride. The want of a head 
 to the Empire has been partly made up by the
 
 103 
 
 greatness of its heart. But the strain has often 
 been, at the very least, uncomfortable. One 
 might like to forget, though it is better to be 
 warned than to forget, that Mr. Philip Schreiner, 
 when Premier of Cape Colony at the time of 
 the Boer War, announced that he would wish 
 to keep the colony neutral. Neutral between 
 what parties ? Between the British Empire 
 and her enemies then in the field. Yet Mr. 
 Schreiner did not regard himself as a rebel ; 
 to him the attitude he had announced seemed 
 quite compatible with the constitutional position 
 of the Cape as a British colony. 
 
 Not less significant was Sir Wilfred Laurier's 
 pronouncement urbi et orbi that Canada, or, at 
 any rate, a Canadian Government of which 
 he was the head would not join in a war waged 
 by the British Imperial Government, of which 
 his Government and the Dominion did not 
 approve. Morally, this may be a plausible 
 position ; it sounds even attractive, but that 
 is not its significance. Its significance is in 
 the conception it betrays of Canada's position 
 constitutionally. That Sir Wilfred Laurier 
 could think that Canada was free to come into 
 or stand out of a British war solely according 
 to her own will shows that he did not conceive 
 Canada as part of an Empire or Commonwealth 
 at all, but as an independent unit without 
 obligation either to the United Kingdom or
 
 i o 4 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 any other part of the Empire ; and, of course, 
 any notion that the " Imperial Government " 
 was anything different from any colonial or 
 local Government was far from his mind. No 
 doubt the independence of Canada would not 
 mean to him political separation, but absolute 
 free equality with the United Kingdom and 
 other British units. But the position he took 
 up, whatever he meant, carried him much 
 farther. An aggregate of free sovereign peoples 
 acting together for common ends would not 
 leave any one of them free to co-operate with 
 the others or stand aloof from them at its pleasure. 
 It would have either to come along with the gene- 
 ral decision or leave the association. It might 
 be left free to withdraw entirely from the asso- 
 ciation at its will, which would be very 
 unusual and would point to the loosest 
 possible connection, but Sir Wilfred Laurier 
 wants more than this. Canada, in his view, 
 was free to refuse to co-operate with the rest 
 of the Empire, or British confederacy, or what- 
 ever political arrangement be conceived, and 
 yet remain in the general polity a perfectly 
 loyal unit. For Sir Wilfred does not seem to 
 have contemplated separation. Yet he must 
 have known that he was throwing over the 
 Revised Regulations, which make the Imperial 
 officer commanding in chief in war time supreme 
 in a military sense in Canada as much as in
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 105 
 
 Britain, supreme over local as well as Imperial 
 forces. Such a conception of the position of 
 Canada is so anomalous that it becomes intelli- 
 gible only if construed in relation to the facts 
 of the so-called Imperial Government. At the 
 back of Sir Wilfred's mind, we may assume, 
 was the feeling that he would not be bound by 
 a decision of war or peace by the British Gov- 
 ernment which he did not regard as an Imperial 
 Government at all ; that Canada had as much 
 right to decide as the United Kingdom. In 
 other words, he was not flouting the Imperial 
 Government, but asserting, what was true, 
 that there was no Imperial Government. It 
 would, of course, be quite misleading to take 
 either Mr. Philip Schreiner or Sir Wilfred 
 Laurier as representing public opinion in the pro- 
 nouncements we have referred to : some would 
 agree with them, more would not. But no 
 public man could so have expressed himself 
 if there had been an Imperial Government 
 in fact as well as in name. 
 
 The present position allows of an unfortunate 
 way of looking at our relations one to another 
 in both United Kingdom and Dominions. We 
 " at home " are inclined to feel that as we have 
 to pay nearly the whole of the Defence Bill of 
 the Empire, we are entitled to settle its policy 
 as we think fit. We pay, therefore we ought 
 to choose. Essentially the same attitude is
 
 io6 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 assumed conversely by the Australian or the 
 Canadian. He says : " You at home call the 
 tune, therefore you ought to pay the piper. 
 If we like to give something towards the Navy, 
 and to help with men in time of war, it is en- 
 tirely an act of grace. You have no claim 
 as of right on us, we do not admit any duty 
 to contribute at all." The position on both 
 sides is perfectly rational ; there is nothing 
 to say against it as a business relation ; but 
 between brothers it is not the happiest way of 
 looking at things. It ought not to be a true 
 way. But as things are now, it is a true way, 
 and is contrary to the brotherly relation which 
 is the life of the Empire. Such an arrangement 
 would severely try the good fellowship of any 
 family ; it makes for divergency instead of 
 unity of interest : for discrepancy instead of 
 harmony of view. It has too much accustomed 
 people to think of diversity between Dominion 
 and Imperial interests instead of community ; 
 even to contemplate with a certain apathy the 
 falling away of some portions of the Empire. 
 There was a time when it was almost a common- 
 place of political conversation here that, if 
 a self-governing colony wished to leave us, no 
 attempt would be made to prevent it. (It 
 is curious, by the way, that many went on 
 saying this in spite of the South African War, 
 when very vigorous efforts were made to suppress
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 107 
 
 Cape rebels by force. Also the Irish attempt at 
 secession was put down by force. It is not encour- 
 aging to Irish loyalty to hear that a British colony 
 that chose to rebel and set up on her own account 
 would only be blessed by the mother country, 
 and told to go in peace. The Irishman might 
 ask why is that heinous in him which would 
 be venial in a Canadian ?) The idea of a part 
 of the Empire wishing to break away ought 
 not to occur to us, and it shows the loose and 
 unsatisfactory notion we have of the Empire 
 that until lately such an event has hardly 
 seemed unnatural It is a strange perversion 
 of natural affection that takes it as a sign of 
 good-will to a colony that we should be willing 
 to acquiesce in its breaking away from us and 
 take no step to prevent it. " If you like to 
 go, go : I wash my hands of you " is not the 
 attitude of affection of any kind. " I will not 
 let you go, for I cannot do without you " is 
 much more complimentary. Citizens of the 
 Dominions will hardly thank certain people 
 here, who take themselves very seriously, for 
 their extreme readiness to part with the Dominions 
 whenever they want to go, though indeed they 
 are more likely not to have heard of these 
 people at all. Happily one hears very much 
 less of this kind of thing than one did : and 
 we may hope that the war will give it its coup 
 de grace. It will, if with a new era we get rid
 
 io8 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 of the debris of an old regime and start again. 
 For this is the outcome of miserable want of 
 foresight, of indolence, and neglect in the past. 
 Elizabethan statesmen had the imagination to 
 conceive a great future in overseas settlements ; 
 they saw them as the expansion of England : 
 they planted English institutions on the other 
 side, and left them to grow, not untended. 
 Later they were possibly tended too much, 
 interfered with : but they were not neglected. 
 Very different was it with the early and mid- 
 Victorian politicians. If these did not forget 
 the Colonies, it was only because they could 
 not. Most of them would have been only too 
 glad to be wholly oblivious of their very existence. 
 They were never more upset than when any- 
 thing happened to remind them that there were 
 Colonies, and if it was impossible to ignore 
 what had happened and they had to act, it 
 was a sore grievance. We have an unerring 
 gauge of the temper of the mid-Victorian attitude 
 to the Colonies in Disraeli's description of them as 
 " dead weights." They were dead weights 
 because they interfered with the political game 
 at home. Years before, in a letter, he speaks 
 of the " wretched Colonies," wretched because 
 they interfered with his budget. And Disraeli 
 had more imagination than any other politician 
 of the nineteenth century, and if he had not 
 always the great vision of Empire now commonly
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 109 
 
 attributed to him, he was at no time " little 
 England." Indeed, in 1851 he had suggested 
 that representatives of the Colonies should 
 sit in the British Parliament. If Disraeli then 
 could let the political game under his eyes so 
 completely obscure his vision of the colonial 
 future, what might we expect of the ordinary 
 politician of that day ? We might expect pre- 
 cisely what we got. Total incapacity to gauge 
 the colonial situation expressed in active neglect. 
 Neglect indeed was developed into a policy. 
 The grant of self-government is now generally 
 described as a statesmanlike and far-sighted 
 calculation of the best interests of the Colonies 
 and the Empire. The Colonies were to be 
 allowed to develop on their own lines, free 
 from interference from " home." Thus they 
 would be able to grow untrammelled and fulfil 
 their proper destiny. What that destiny was 
 is generally not said : for any attempt to answer 
 that question brings into difficulty the whole 
 assumption of the far-sighted statesmanship 
 of the men who granted self-government. If 
 it is said that the destiny contemplated was 
 the ultimate separation from England to set up 
 an independent State, we do not like the idea 
 in these days, though it obviously fits in with 
 the action of the statesmen in question. Yet, 
 if it was their idea, they were hopelessly in- 
 capable of reading the future, and without
 
 no IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 the first quality of a statesman. On the other 
 hand it is impossible to say that these men 
 thought the destiny of the Colonies was to 
 grow up integral parts of a British Empire, 
 to be an expansion of England ; for it is clear 
 from statements of their own that they thought 
 nothing of the kind. If what they did was in 
 fact the best thing for the growth of the Empire, 
 it was a marvellously lucky accident : it was 
 neither statesmanship nor foresight. The truth 
 is that nearly all English politicians were sick 
 of the Colonies and were only too well pleased 
 to give them self-government in the full belief 
 that it must lead to their final dropping off 
 from England. It was the easiest and an 
 apparently happy way of ridding themselves 
 of a nuisance. The Colonies were just allowed 
 to drift : there was no idea at all of that educat- 
 ing them in a manly way by letting them have 
 responsibility and freedom, which in the light 
 of events has in later times been read into 
 their policy. That the responsibility of freedom 
 is a great educational factor few will dispute, 
 certainly none will who has seen anything of 
 the working of English public schools. But 
 it is not the whole of education and cannot 
 be given recklessly and imintelligently. Whether 
 it was given prematurely or too suddenly instead 
 of in stages to this colony or that is a question 
 much open to debate. But it is quite certain,
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT in 
 
 as Disraeli expounded in one of his later speeches, 
 that had the politicians who granted self-gov- 
 ernment been farther sighted and conceived of 
 the Colonies as to the expansion of England 
 in its infancy, they would also have conceived 
 the policy of self-government very differently. 
 With the future of the Empire always in their 
 view, they would have been infinitely more 
 interested in the Colonies than they were, and 
 it would have been clear that they cared for 
 them. Putting before them their destiny of 
 equal partnership in the Empire with the United 
 Kingdom, they would have made it easy for 
 them to develop on lines the most harmonious 
 with the common interest of a great Empire. 
 They would have regarded them in a sense 
 as heirs, neither taking advantage of them 
 nor leaving to them what they were as yet 
 not old enough to deal with. They would 
 have associated them as soon as possible with 
 the Government of the Empire, and reciprocally 
 the Colonies would have grown into the Imperial 
 system. Developments incompatible with or 
 not easily fitted into the common polity would 
 have been discouraged from the beginning. 
 An Imperial military system, trade policy, 
 and government would have grown up almost 
 spontaneously. It would have come without 
 irk, without any hurt to rightly independent 
 feeling in the Colonies ; self-government in
 
 ii2 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 domestic affairs would have been as full as 
 now. But instead of caring for them as heirs 
 of the Empire, Georgian England was inclined 
 to exploit them, and Victorian England to let 
 them " rip " ; hinc illse lacrimae, or many of 
 them. 
 
 However, Canada, Australia, New Zealand 
 and South Africa have come through somehow. 
 Happily they have now all become too big 
 and too important to be neglected. They are 
 all determined to play their part in the game 
 of Empire, and the British Government, very 
 glad of their assistance, is desirous only that 
 United Kingdom and Dominions together should 
 turn their common energies and resources to 
 the best account. The time when the Colonies 
 could be exploited or neglected is past. Perhaps 
 it is they who are able to be "difficile" now 
 rather than the United Kingdom. 
 
 But unfortunately the new era has not to 
 do with a clean slate. Haphazard colonial 
 policy has inevitably resulted in particularism, 
 which is not the same thing as a healthy diver- 
 sity, in dealing with common Imperial needs. 
 Take the Navy. Canada does not contribute. 
 Australia keeps up a local Squadron. New 
 Zealand and the Cape Colony give money for 
 a ship of war a contribution to the Imperial 
 Navy without conditions. 
 
 To the Army all the Colonies have contributed
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 113 
 
 men and money during the war : but on no 
 general Imperial plan. The soldiers coming 
 from one Dominion are paid at a different rate 
 from those coming from another Dominion or 
 from the British Army. It illustrates the 
 present confusion that one has to speak of 
 the " British Army " in distinction from, say, 
 the Canadian or Australian contingents ; as 
 if they were not British soldiers. Yet they 
 are not soldiers of the British Army. Some 
 speak of the " Imperial troops " as against 
 the Dominion contingents, which is worse still. 
 
 In peace time the Dominions have their own 
 militias These are primarily local forces and 
 it is likely that every Dominion will continue 
 to keep up a local military force ; and certainly 
 it is desirable. But while these will necessarily 
 be under the immediate control of the Dominion 
 government, they should also fit into a general 
 Imperial system. These militias are voluntarily 
 put at the disposal of the Imperial government 
 in time of war : so it would be well if in peace 
 time the Army Council had some touch with 
 them and a voice by right in their organisation 
 and training. These local forces would be 
 in addition to the Imperial Army to which 
 the whole Empire would contribute on the 
 same basis. 
 
 Every self-governing colony, again, has framed 
 its own trade system with a view to its own
 
 ii 4 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 position solely, as though it were a wholly 
 detached state. The United Kingdom has done 
 precisely the same. It is not a question of 
 trade policy being one and utterly the same in 
 all parts of the Empire, and opinions may 
 differ much as to what is the best trade policy 
 for the Empire as a whole. The point is that 
 there has never been an Imperial trade policy 
 at all. United Kingdom, India (so far as was 
 allowed) and the Dominions have all acted 
 without reference one to another. There is no 
 recognition of any common commercial interest. 
 Further it is to be noted that by steady pressure 
 the Dominions have claimed and have obtained 
 the power to make treaties of their own with 
 foreign powers. Not, of course, without the 
 cognisance of the Central Government, but 
 without its practical intervention. Dominion 
 Ministers negotiate direct with foreign Govern- 
 ments. 
 
 All these particularist developments are the 
 natural and rational outcome of the position 
 into which the United Kingdom and the other 
 units of the Empire have been allowed to drift. 
 The Dominions have no power in Imperial 
 questions. The Imperial Government has practi- 
 cally no status inside the Dominions ; there 
 is no Government representing both United 
 Kingdom and Dominions. In such circum- 
 stances is it strange that people " at home "
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 115 
 
 do not realise the importance of Canada or 
 Australia : that they know so little about them ? 
 The truth is that in the matters that most 
 interest people in the United Kingdom these 
 countries do not come in, or do not evidently 
 come in. During the war, of course, the gal- 
 lantry of the Australian, Canadian, and other 
 overseas contingents have kept the Dominions 
 continually in the public eye here. Yet even 
 the very admiration one hears on all sides of 
 the ready answer of the Dominions to the call 
 to war betrays a sense that they are not part 
 and parcel of one nation with the United King- 
 dom : or, at any rate, that there is something 
 which makes it not a matter of course that 
 Australia or Canada would send troops and 
 help in every way possible. We do not think 
 of the British Empire as a self contained political 
 entity. As Sir William Robertson said at the 
 Canada dinner last year : " There were many 
 people in this country who had doubts, and 
 certainly many who had been quite astonished 
 at what the Oversea Dominions had done. 
 Why should there have been any astonishment ? 
 It was due to a want of confidence born of 
 ignorance. In other words, we did not under- 
 stand one another in this Empire of ours." 
 
 On the other hand, the colonial citizen is 
 necessarily inclined to look at things from the 
 point of view of his own colony. It is not
 
 ii6 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 primarily the business of his Government to 
 look at things from an Imperial point of view ; 
 and he is prone to think of his colony as the 
 one really important thing in the Empire, and 
 perhaps in the world. It is not easy for him 
 to realise that in the interest of the whole it 
 may be necessary that a part his colony 
 shall in this or that be subordinated. In times 
 past nearly all Imperial duties defence, military, 
 naval, and foreign policy having been done 
 for him, an irresponsible temper naturally ensued 
 together with an air of self-sufficiency if not 
 self-conceit. The sentiment of Empire a citizen 
 of the Dominions usually has strongly more 
 strongly than large numbers of Englishmen, 
 Manchesterism having never taken root overseas 
 but he realises less its facts. He can hardly 
 know what it really means. There have been, 
 and are, great Dominion Ministers of whom it 
 would be absurd to say this ; but they are 
 exceptional. 
 
 But it is said all these things do not matter 
 these anomalies, these constitutional defects, 
 these temperamental weaknesses : when the 
 strain comes, they disappear. The present 
 political relations between United Kingdom 
 and Dominions may be indefensible ; we may 
 have no Imperial Government : but the right 
 spirit is behind, and in spite of any formal 
 shortcomings, it makes the present arrangement 
 work, which is everything.
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 117 
 
 No doubt, it is true that a right spirit can 
 make a bad system work, while the best system 
 is useless with a wrong spirit. But this is an 
 argument for a good spirit, not for a bad system. 
 It is precisely because the right spirit is there 
 that it is worth taking infinite trouble to give 
 it free passage. That this spirit in the end 
 gets over most of the stumbling blocks we have 
 allowed to come and remain in its way can 
 hardly be a reason for leaving them there. It 
 is not the stumbling blocks that make the spirit : 
 on the contrary, they chafe it. There will 
 always be plenty of difficulties to exercise and 
 discipline the spirit : we do not need to invent 
 them or deliberately to let them be for fear of 
 the spirit " waxing gross." But in fact it is 
 not true that these anomalies and defects in 
 system do no practical mischief : they do, and 
 evidences of this mischief have not been wanting 
 of late. Some of these injurious results are 
 on the surface. 
 
 (1) The want of an authority supreme 
 throughout the Empire makes it impossible to 
 mobilise the Empire's resources for War, or 
 for any other purpose. Much as has been done 
 in this direction, no-one will pretend that the 
 resources of the whole Empire have been tapped, 
 or nearly so. 
 
 (2) The British or Imperial Government 
 cannot gauge beforehand what the contribution
 
 ii8 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 of the dominions in men or money will be in the 
 event of War. Thus they cannot tell what 
 strength they can put into the contest, should 
 it seem to them necessary or wise to fight. 
 There are understandings between Central and 
 Dominion Governments on this subject even 
 in peace time, and when war is upon us or even 
 imminent communications take place. They 
 certainly did before the outbreak of this war 
 with some precision. But this is not putting 
 the Central executive in a position to gauge the 
 resources of the Empire as a guide to its policy. 
 For that it must be in touch with them, have 
 full knowledge of them, and be in a position 
 to claim their use the whole time. Yet the 
 calculation of resources must be policy's main 
 determinant, or at the very least a necessary 
 preliminary to decision. However right or 
 desirable it may be to take a stand on this or 
 that point, it is no use doing so if you have not 
 the strength to stay there. Not knowing where 
 you are, how can you tell where you will be ? 
 Yet that is the position of our Government. 
 They may, no doubt, safely assume that the 
 Dominion Governments will give some help in 
 the event of war ; but it is wrong that in so 
 grave a matter there should be room for assump- 
 tion at all. Surely there should be knowledge 
 instead of presumption. But even reasonable 
 presumption fails when it is a question how
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 119 
 
 much aid the Central Government may look 
 for from the Dominions. Probably indeed the 
 Dominion Governments themselves could not 
 say very long beforehand. They cannot know 
 until the time comes. Maybe this deficiency 
 could be met by means of permanent treaties 
 between the Dominions and the United Kingdom ; 
 but a strong Imperial executive would be more 
 effective. Treaties might give occasion for 
 unprofitable haggling and delay. Continuity 
 would be difficult to preserve. The changes 
 of party politics in the Dominions and " at 
 home" would cause treaties to be revised in 
 this direction or that with little regard to Im- 
 perial necessity. A good deal of the uncertainty 
 that now attends the Dominions' contribution 
 would remain. 
 
 (3) The present relation between United 
 Kingdom and Dominions tends to make Foreign 
 Governments think of them as practically 
 separate and independent States. They are 
 thus inclined to speculate upon their action 
 in the event of the British Government going 
 to war as a doubtful quantity. They have not 
 felt that in fighting the United Kingdom they 
 will of necessity be fighting the whole British 
 Empire : not in fact, even if they must be 
 technically. This necessarily has an effect on 
 their policy. If they knew that they must in 
 any event reckon with the entire resources
 
 120 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 of the whole British Empire, they might be 
 proportionately more cautious. Any venture 
 that might bring a Power into conflict with 
 the United Kingdom would become an even 
 more serious matter than it is now. In this 
 war indeed the Central Powers found out their 
 mistake very soon, but after, not before, war 
 began. It may be a good lesson for the future, 
 but lessons are apt to be forgotten. 
 
 Somehow we do get over all these difficulties, 
 but we pay the price ; and one day it may 
 happen that the price is prohibitive. With 
 still the best will in the world we may find the 
 way barred. Trusting to luck has in it an 
 element of wisdom, for there must always be 
 many things that cannot be foreseen, and 
 which it is mischievous to attempt to provide 
 for. But it is not wise to leave to luck what 
 can be foreseen, and so can be provided for. 
 Fortunately, the logic of events seem likely 
 to force a re-settlement of Imperial organisation. 
 The whole gravamen of the position has changed. 
 Until recently it was rather the United Kingdom 
 that was inclined to " grouse " at an arrange- 
 ment that left it to pay the bill arid do most of 
 the work of Imperial defence. Now it is the 
 Dominions who are claiming a right to share 
 in the Government of the Empire. They cannot 
 be expected to wait indefinitely, and it is not 
 likely that they will. It will not be possible
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 121 
 
 to let the matter slide, which is by far the best 
 reason for expecting that something will be 
 done. Certainly there is now a general con- 
 sensus of the best opinion that a new setting 
 must be provided for the various constituents 
 of the Empire, a setting more congruous with 
 the truth of the situation. 
 
 Many of the best minds, both here and in 
 the Dominions, have long felt this, and probably 
 many more have thought the same who shrank 
 from saying so publicly. Public men have been 
 very shy of speaking plainly about the relations 
 of the Dominions and the United Kingdom. 
 If they did not avoid it altogether, they trod 
 very gingerly as on very delicate ground. Pious 
 sentiments were expressed, but the line was 
 drawn at anything definite. It was considered 
 too dangerous. The story of the Imperial 
 Federation League is very significant. The 
 League throve considerably on sentiment and 
 general propositions. It got public men of the 
 greatest significance to decorate it and to speak 
 for it. But after a time it occurred to a good 
 many of its members that the League should 
 do something to attain its objects : it could not 
 or ought not to live for ever on dinners and 
 platitudes : and the thought became insistent. 
 The result was a scheme, though Mr. Gladstone 
 said it was not a scheme, because finance was 
 not gone into. At any rate, it was something, and
 
 122 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 that something proved too much for the League. 
 It died of the effects. It is quite curious what 
 a nervous diffident atmosphere hung about 
 Imperial Federation all through : largely, no 
 doubt, because it set out to get the support 
 of men of both parties. This necessitated the 
 avoidance of all party help and party methods, 
 and the sinking of all sorts of important issues 
 for fear of setting Imperial Federationists of 
 opposite parties by the ears. This made the 
 propaganda unreal and deadly dull. Possibly 
 the movement was premature, though it was 
 not wholly barren : certainly Dominion Govern- 
 ments were inclined to sniff at it. They had 
 a way of instructing their representatives at 
 an Imperial conference not to discuss Imperial 
 Federation. The public mind, both here and 
 in the Dominions, was not trained on to this 
 point of view as it is now, neither was there the 
 
 j. 
 
 present revulsion from party and politicians. 
 On the whole, it is not a matter for amateur 
 and irresponsible propaganda : it will have to 
 be done by Statesmen, if done at all, and perhaps 
 the fewer of them the better. There was always 
 something pitiable and even ridiculous in the 
 obvious inadequacy of the Imperial Federation 
 League to its enormous object. And of indepen- 
 dent thought on the question, in which such a 
 body could have been useful, the League was 
 sterile from difference of opinion within.
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 123 
 
 There are, of course, various ways of providing 
 an Imperial Government. Many suggestions 
 have been made in speeches and books, some 
 of them more or less resembling that set out here. 
 
 The simplest plan is Imperial Government 
 in the strict sense, the plan of the Roman Empire, 
 by which the whole Empire was governed from 
 the centre directly or indirectly ; local Gov- 
 ernment being left in the hands of the local 
 communities. It was on the whole a wonderful 
 success ; perhaps the most successful experiment 
 in Government there has yet been. Neither 
 was it anti-popular or inconsistent with personal 
 freedom generally, though it was not in the 
 conventional and unintelligent phrase of modern 
 times "free government." The Emperor, or 
 more correctly the Government, took its Minis- 
 ters from all classes and from all parts of the 
 Empire. The able man, whatever his position 
 or race by birth, had a better chance of getting 
 on and rising to a high position than he has 
 or had in most free countries. Provincials 
 more than once rose to be Emperors. Were 
 the British Empire governed as was the earlier 
 Roman Empire, citizens of the Dominions would 
 have more power and more part in the Govern- 
 ment of the Empire than they have now. But 
 other times, other minds. For Englishmen to- 
 day this model of Government is not in the 
 picture.
 
 124 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Another way is a British Confederacy as dis- 
 tinct from a Federal Union. This is roughly an 
 agreement between a number of Sovereign 
 States for certain definite objects. The Sove- 
 reignty of every constituent State naturally im- 
 plies that its consent is necessary to the validity 
 of any Act of the Confederacy and practically 
 its right to withdraw. This kind of Union is 
 not in effect much more than an alliance between 
 foreign countries. The Central Administration 
 of a Confederacy, if there is one, is not a Gov- 
 ernment ; it is an agency on behalf of the whole, 
 the constituent States carrying this advice 
 into effect. A re-arrangement of the British 
 Empire on these lines would not be a consoli- 
 dation, but rather a dissolution. It would, 
 at any rate, be breaking the bone in order to 
 re-set it. It could be adopted only as a last 
 resource, when it had become evident that 
 there was not enough homogeneity between 
 United Kingdom and Dominions to make closer 
 union possible. Under such an arrangement 
 military and naval administration would be 
 more difficult and probably less effective than 
 now. 
 
 Then there is the Federal plan. In any event 
 there must be a Federal element in the Imperial 
 organisation, for it already exists in the 
 Dominions, and only a very foolish man will 
 disturb existing colonial institutions if Imperial
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 125 
 
 needs can be satisfied otherwise. But when 
 one speaks of a Federal constitution one generally 
 has in mind the United States. Shall we take 
 the American constitution for a model ? The 
 American Union is a very different thing from 
 a Confederacy. It results in a consolidated 
 State, in fact, whatever may be its theory. Its 
 constituent parts are not really Sovereign States 
 at all. They surrendered their Sovereignty 
 when they left the control of Army and Navy 
 to a President elected by the whole people. 
 However much the Government and people 
 of a constituent " State " may dissent from the 
 use of Army and Navy made by the President, 
 they must put up with it if the majority of the 
 States' representatives in Congress support it. 
 Therefore, it is not a Sovereign State and this 
 adds to the adaptability of American arrange- 
 ments to British use. But the Crown, the 
 corner-stone of any British Imperial system, 
 is an institution so different from the American 
 President that on the whole the United States 
 can hardly be looked to as a model. The 
 Australian Commonwealth may call its Second 
 Chamber a Senate and the other a House of 
 Representatives, but its constitution is not 
 on the American plan. It knows nothing of 
 the American pains to separate executive from 
 legislative power. Indeed the Australian con- 
 stitution is at pains to identify them, disallowing
 
 126 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Ministers of State to hold office for more than 
 three months without a seat in Parliament. 
 Also, the Australian Parliament is, on the British 
 model, dissoluble at the pleasure of the Governor- 
 General, which means the Government of the 
 day ; in sharp contrast to Congress elected 
 for a fixed term which neither Congress nor 
 President can abridge. The life of an American 
 administration, again, is unaffected by con- 
 gressional majorities. The Americans find the 
 intricate complication of their constitution, which 
 national pride and traditions endear to them, 
 sometimes difficult to work. It would not be 
 wise for others in different circumstances, and 
 with different antecedents, to try to copy it. 
 In the American Congress those who favour 
 a new Parliament for the British Empire may 
 perhaps find something of a precedent. It is, 
 at any rate, relevant as a guide ; perhaps 
 some would say as a warning. But probably 
 there will be general agreement that the best 
 and most practical way in this, as in every 
 English problem, will be not to seek a clean 
 slate and a brand new start, but to find a point 
 in something we already have from which to 
 go on to the new. The new part will be 
 expansion or development. 
 
 On these lines was the proposal, favoured 
 by Disraeli at one time in his career, to allow 
 representatives of the Colonies to sit in the
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 127 
 
 House of Commons. At that time there was 
 much to be said for the proposal. It would 
 have been a not infelicitous way of bringing 
 Colonies and United Kingdom together : tenta- 
 tively and gradually it would have accustomed 
 Colonial statesmen to Imperial business, and 
 might well have led almost insensibly to the 
 direct association of the Colonies in the Gov- 
 ernment of the Empire. The logical difficulty 
 of restricting the Colonial representatives to 
 discussion and vote on Imperial issues would, 
 no doubt, have been great ; and it is almost 
 certain that the line of distinction between 
 British and Imperial would often have been 
 passed for the sufficient reason that no criterion 
 would always hold. Matters must from time 
 to time be in issue, which it would not be possible 
 to classify as Imperial or domestic, being, in 
 fact, both or neither. But in practice this 
 would not have mattered very much. Such 
 questions would not come up frequently, and 
 the difficulty would settle itself according to 
 the circumstances of the moment. The point 
 could become pressing only if the Colonial 
 contingent were deliberately unreasonable and 
 determined to interfere in the domestic affairs 
 of the United Kingdom. In that event the 
 whole arrangement would probably break down. 
 It could work only amongst men of goodwill ; 
 which is true of parliamentary Government
 
 128 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 as a whole. But there is no reason to think 
 that the Colonial representatives would have 
 acted in this way ; and in any case they would 
 at first have been very few, and would probably 
 have taken their tone in most things from those 
 around them. Thus to introduce Colonial in- 
 fluence would essentially have been statesman- 
 ship on the lines of growth. A small beginning 
 might have grown into very big things with the 
 saving of much difficulty that has now to be 
 met. 
 
 But the time for this experiment has gone 
 by. The Dominions are great and powerful 
 communities and would not consent to be 
 merged in the British Parliament : and if they 
 were represented in numbers justified by their 
 population and status, Parliament would become 
 unworkable. It could not manage both the 
 domestic affairs of the United Kingdom and the 
 general business of the Empire. 
 
 In fact in present conditions this proposal, 
 on closer examination, is seen to resolve itself 
 into another of the proposed solutions of the 
 Imperial Government problem an Imperial 
 Parliament. Parliament as we have it now 
 is called " Imperial," but it does not represent 
 the Empire, and gives much more time to 
 domestic than to Imperial questions. The Im- 
 perial Parliament contemplated by those who 
 put it forward as the best means to an Imperial
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 129 
 
 Government would be a new machine independent 
 of, and in addition to the British Parliament, 
 in which the United Kingdom and all the 
 self-governing Dominions would be alike 
 represented. This implies an Imperial Ministry, 
 responsible to the King and to the Imperial 
 Parliament. In other words the plan is to 
 govern the Empire in exactly the same way 
 as the United Kingdom is governed now : it 
 is not an expansion of the British Parliament 
 and Government, but an Imperial copy of it. 
 It would necessarily involve the withdrawal 
 from cognisance of the British Parliament of 
 all strictly Imperial matters, which in its turn 
 implies the distinction between Imperial and 
 domestic. This distinction is proverbially diffi- 
 cult to draw, but it is a difficulty incidental to 
 every suggestion for an Imperial Government. 
 This settled, the constituents of the new Parlia- 
 ment would have to be defined. Its members 
 might be selected by the Parliaments of Britain 
 and of the Dominions, which would make the 
 Imperial Parliament a popular assembly 
 indirectly elected. This would in effect mean 
 selection by the British and Dominion Ministries 
 of the day, or something very near it, and would 
 leave the local Parliaments (local as against the 
 Imperial Parliament) still pre-occupied with 
 and powerful in Imperial matters. The elections 
 to those local Parliaments would really be as
 
 130 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 much concerned with Imperial as with domestic 
 issues, however little Imperial questions might 
 figure in the campaign, for they would indirectly 
 determine who should represent the country 
 in the Imperial Parliament, and ultimately 
 who should be the Imperial Ministers. In this 
 way the economy of the whole scheme would be 
 frustrated or at least seriously deranged. But 
 fancy arrangements of this sort indirect elect- 
 ions, colleges of electors, and so forth are 
 wholly out of favour now. American experiences 
 have shown their futility as a counter force to 
 party, and it is generally recognised that if you 
 have democracy in fact, it is merely mischievous 
 to disguise it in form. It is not at all likely 
 that were an Imperial Parliament attempted, 
 the local Parliament would be allowed to nomi- 
 nate its members. Election to the Imperial 
 Parliament will be direct ; the peoples of the 
 United Kingdom and the Dominions voting in 
 an election concerned only with Imperial affairs. 
 At any rate, it is to be hoped that the device 
 of holding elections of various descriptions 
 and the Imperial election on the same day will 
 be avoided. There may be mechanical con- 
 venience about one long list, but it hopelessly 
 mixes the issues and leaves the average elector 
 the helpless tool of the party agent. Certainly 
 the ordinary Englishman would have no idea 
 where he was, had he, on receiving his ballot
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 131 
 
 paper, to vote at the same time for members 
 of the County Council, British Parliament and 
 Imperial Parliament. The long array of names 
 would amaze him, and with so handsome a 
 choice before him he would probably put a cross 
 against all the wrong men. It might make 
 very little difference either way, but the theory 
 is that the elector votes for the men of his choice. 
 Even if he did, it is ten to one it would be the 
 choice of his party, for only by taking in with 
 him a marked list of candidates would he ever 
 succeed in voting correctly. 
 
 Election to the Imperial Parliament being 
 direct, the Imperial constituency and franchise 
 would have to be settled. In the great diversity 
 of the constituent countries of the British 
 Empire this would be an extremely difficult 
 task, and it is likely that " Reform " questions 
 would never be out of the programme of the 
 Imperial Parliament. A uniform franchise suited 
 to all, and working with even results, would 
 be an unattainable ideal. The choice would 
 be between a common franchise operating very 
 roughly and always generating grievances, and 
 a system of diverse franchises, every constituent 
 countr\ having its own. In the conception of 
 an Imperial Parliament an elector is neither 
 English, Canadian, Scotch nor Australian. All 
 vote simply as British citizens, and a varying 
 franchise would be an anomaly, though not
 
 1 32 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 necessarily fatal, as the experience of the 
 South Alrican Union shows. Numbers, too, 
 would be a difficulty. If representation in 
 Parliament were to be in the same proportion 
 to the electorate as now in the British and 
 Dominion Parliaments, it would be unwieldy 
 and very difficult to work. Large numbers 
 tend to dilatory obstructive and unbusinesslike 
 ways in a deliberative assembly ; the very 
 reverse of what is wanted for the conduct of 
 Imperial policy. On the other hand, if the 
 membership is kept down to a small and easily 
 manageable figure, it would be hard on such a 
 colony as Newfoundland which would be left 
 practically a negligible quantity, unless its 
 sparse representation happened always to include 
 a genius or at the least an unusually brilliant 
 mind, which is not likely. No doubt propor- 
 tionately Newfoundland would come out level 
 with the United Kingdom, South Africa, or 
 any other constituent country, but absolutely 
 her voice would be too small to be heard. The 
 grievance would be mitigated, perhaps remedied, 
 by varying the ratio of representation in favour 
 of the less thickly populated countries, allowing 
 them more members per so many thousand 
 Imperial electors. But this would bring new 
 difficulties of its own, and would leave indefinite 
 opportunity for complaint. Indeed, the whole 
 question what should be the ratio of representa-
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 133 
 
 tion in the Imperial Parliament, how many 
 electors should be entitled to return a member, 
 would be a thorny one to settle. All these 
 difficulties would arise, and they would be 
 serious, but, after all, they are mechanical 
 and might be got over if the mind of the Empire 
 were set on an Imperial Parliament. They 
 might not be settled satisfactorily ; they cer- 
 tainly would not be settled finally : but a way 
 out would be found. The project would not 
 break down on these points. 
 
 More serious is the difficulty in the way of 
 personnel arising from the great distances 
 separating one part of the Empire from another. 
 If the venue for the Imperial Parliament were 
 London, and it could hardly be anywhere else, 
 the members of the United Kingdom would 
 have a very great advantage over the members 
 for the distant Dominions. They would be 
 practically on the spot ; they would be able 
 to combine other occupations with attendance 
 in the Imperial Parliament ; their ordinary 
 life would not be deranged. To the Dominions 
 man, on the other hand, it would mean the 
 abandonment of all his former pursuits, and 
 giving up everything to his Parliamentary work ; 
 he would be living neither in his own coun- 
 try nor in England, obviously a great com- 
 plication to a family man. Travelling expenses 
 would be very heavy, though the burden would
 
 134 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 no doubt fall mainly on public funds. But 
 in any case service in the Imperial Parliament 
 must be very expensive to the Dominion member, 
 and it is not likely that salaries would be com- 
 mensurate. The outcome of these conditions would 
 be that only rich and independent men of leisure 
 or professional politicians would represent the 
 Dominions in the Imperial Parliament. By 
 professional politician is meant a man who 
 lives on his parliamentary salary and has no 
 other serious interests than his political career. 
 This would undoubtedly be the prevailing type 
 in the Imperial Parliament, for the sufficient 
 reason that the number of very rich and leisured 
 men in the Dominions is not large. There 
 are plenty of rich men in these countries, as 
 everyone knows, but they are generally not 
 leisured men. They are usually men of great 
 administrative and business capacity, who have 
 built up or helped to build up immense com- 
 mercial undertakings, and are now directing 
 them. The man who has the genius for work 
 of that sort and on that scale cannot live without 
 action and is contemptuously impatient of 
 the debate and intrigue that inevitably makes 
 up more than half of parliamentary life in 
 any country and under any conditions. He 
 may go into Parliament to try it, but he seldom 
 sticks to it. If he does, it is often to speak 
 plainly in order to be in a position to keep
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 135 
 
 things politically smooth for the undertaking 
 with which he is connected ; though he generally 
 finds that this can be done better through 
 another whom he can control, or, at the least, 
 effectively influence. Another, but rarer, type 
 of Colonial millionaire does no business, but 
 devotes himself to art. He becomes what 
 used to be called a great patron of the arts, 
 and sometimes, like the famous Mr. Salting 
 from Australia, a connoisseur. For this sort 
 Parliament has even less attraction than for 
 the business man. No doubt there will always 
 be a certain number of men who have made 
 fortunes in the colonies and live in this country, 
 doing some business, but mainly living the life 
 of leisured Englishmen of the upper class. They 
 have their town house and their place in the 
 country : they will be in London during the 
 season, they will shoot in the autumn, and go 
 to Monte Carlo later on. These might wish to 
 enter the Imperial Parliament, if they thought 
 it gave them social prestige : but it is very 
 doubtful if it would. There is no longer much 
 social prestige about the British Parliament 
 in spite of its traditional association with Society. 
 A brand new Imperial Parliament would not 
 have this association at all. In any case, this 
 type would not be a good Dominion representative 
 because he would have lost touch with his coun- 
 try and would probably be unsympathetic with 
 
 1
 
 136 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 the Dominion point of view. On the whole, the 
 professional politician will have to man the 
 Imperial Parliament. 
 
 Of a different kind is the difficulty that might, 
 and probably would, arise from particularism. 
 Everyone of the Dominions would naturally 
 be desirous to figure prominently in the Parlia- 
 ment of the Empire, and every Dominion 
 member would laudably be anxious to do his 
 utmost for his own Dominion. The representa- 
 tives of the same Dominion would tend to look 
 at most things from the same point of view, 
 and would tend to act and very likely sit together. 
 It is at least easily conceivable that one Dominion 
 would take a different view of its interests from 
 another, and that little differences would spring 
 up. This would tend to draw closer together 
 the members from the same Dominion and 
 induce them to organise on a local basis. Thus 
 Dominion groups would grow up with regular 
 leaders. This would not necessarily make the 
 Imperial Parliament unworkable, but it certainly 
 would make against its success. Grouping 
 on a particularist basis has no justification in 
 an Imperial Parliament. Cutting right across 
 the main line of objective, it would distract 
 attention and so impede action. It might lead 
 to much worse things, accentuating differences 
 and resulting in division rather than unification. 
 If this seems a pessimistic view, it must be
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 137 
 
 remembered that the Imperial Parliament would 
 be a very large assembly, and all large assemblies 
 tend to be fissiparous. The tendency indeed 
 can hardly be kept under by any other means 
 than the iron hand of a national party machine, 
 as in the United States. The remedy is then 
 hardly better, if it is not worse, than the disease. 
 It is also a serious question for the Empire 
 whether an Imperial Parliament would not 
 intensify and even create difficulties between 
 coloured and white British subjects. The 
 colour question is always with us, and is difficult 
 enough without unnecessary emphasis by 
 constitutional machinery. An assembly pur- 
 porting to represent the whole Empire and 
 actually representing all white British subjects, 
 but excluding all coloured British subjects, 
 would be a perpetual advertisement of the 
 disabilities of colour. It would be an irritating 
 reminder to all educated coloured subjects of 
 their inferior position. It would almost be a 
 challenge to protest. It may be said that they 
 would be in no worse position than they are 
 now. They have no share in the Government 
 of the Empire now, and they would have none 
 then. But they are now only on a level with 
 thousands of white British subjects. The line 
 of demarcation now is not one of colour. But 
 ask all white subjects to send representatives 
 to an assembly which is to govern the Empire,
 
 138 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 while you carefully refrain from asking any 
 coloured subjects, and their inferiority becomes 
 obvious. Grant that it is not possible more 
 than tentatively and to a very limited extent 
 to associate coloured subjects in the Government 
 of the Empire, that is not a reason for placarding 
 their disability. A well educated, well born, 
 and intelligent Indian subject knows now that 
 neither India nor the Empire is governed by 
 a popular or representative body. He knows 
 that Parliament does not represent the Empire, 
 but only the United Kingdom. He is not an 
 inhabitant of the United Kingdom ; he has 
 no grievance. But what will the same man 
 feel if he sees the South African Boers, who 
 rebelled against the British King, his Emperor 
 of India, and refuse to let Indian fellow subjects 
 of his settle in South Africa, sending repre- 
 sentatives to a popular Imperial Parliament 
 from which he is excluded, and for which he is 
 not allowed a vote ? The strain on the loyal 
 subject, who in the ordinary course is quite 
 content to leave politics alone, would be great, 
 but what about the other kind, the restless, 
 chattering, agitating Babu ? What a theme 
 for his oratory ! Nothing could suit his book 
 so well. He now agitates for popular repre- 
 sentative Government, and is told it is not 
 compatible with Imperial interests. Set up 
 your Imperial Parliament, and what answer
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 139 
 
 have you to him then ? Only that he is not fit 
 because he is not white. There have been, we 
 know, Indians in our British Parliament. But 
 such a thing has been too rare to excite opposi- 
 tion. Anyway, it is quite certain that, whatever 
 arrangements of franchise or qualification for 
 membership were made, at most there would 
 not be more than a very small number of coloured 
 members of the Imperial Parliament, and these 
 few would rather emphasise by their sparseness 
 the coloured subjects' inferiority than mitigate 
 it. On the whole, it is most likely that the 
 Imperial franchise would never be given to 
 the coloured peoples. We know what is South 
 African sentiment on the colour question (the 
 Cape coloured franchise notwithstanding) and 
 most whites who have lived in a country of mixed 
 coloured and white peoples agree with it. The 
 colour question would be a running sore in the 
 Imperial Parliament, the despair of Govern- 
 ments, the hope and opportunity of every crank. 
 It will be argued, no doubt, that similar 
 objections from the coloured subjects' point 
 of view would lie against an Imperial Council 
 from which they were mainly excluded, and 
 against a Referendum which ignored them. But 
 this is an argument on paper. In practice, 
 omission from a small Council of ten or twelve 
 is not on the same plane at all with being omitted 
 from an assembly of many hundreds. Neither
 
 1 4 o IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 is at all the same thing not to be asked to write 
 an answer to questions put by a Cabinet, as 
 not to be allowed to vote for a representative 
 of the land which you inhabit. In India the 
 Referendum would excite no interest. It would 
 be difficult for the coloured agitator to make 
 capital out of it. It has no spectacular side : 
 it does not lend itself to oratory. The absence 
 of coloured men from a white Parliament can 
 be s en ; seen by those who never come within 
 a thousand miles of London. A Cabinet is 
 not seen, and a Referendum is a colder and less 
 obstrusive thing than an election. In India, 
 at any rate, it could never come under the eyes 
 of the people, and it would be really difficult 
 to make even educated Indians understand 
 what a Referendum which they had never come 
 across was. After all, this is confessedly a 
 matter of appearances. The power or impotence 
 of the coloured subject will be just the same 
 either way ; it is a question of what he would 
 notice ; what he would realise. 
 
 Last, and most serious, an Imperial Parlia- 
 ment would renew on a much larger scale in a 
 more malignant form all the defects and vices 
 of the old parliamentary system. There is 
 nothing either in Dominion political life or in 
 parliamentary circles at home to justify any 
 hope of a better pattern in an Imperial Parlia- 
 ment. There is no reason to look for any
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 141 
 
 improvement in personnel : on the other hand 
 there is great reason to expect a much more 
 powerful party Machine. In no country, not 
 even in the United States, would the Machine 
 ever have had so grand an opportunity and so 
 wide a field. The very mechanical difficulties 
 of getting together a large assembly gathered 
 from all quarters of the globe would play irre- 
 sistibly into the hands of the Machine. Here 
 would be a Paradise indeed, a happy hunting 
 ground, for every known species of political 
 parasite, and probably for some unknown ones 
 which the new opportunity would discover. 
 The swarm would soon become the faithful 
 henchmen of the first man of no conscience and 
 unusual capacity for intrigue. To a certainty 
 we should have our " Bosses." 
 
 We are thus left with the proposal of an 
 Imperial Council or Cabinet as the Executive 
 of the Empire drawn from and representing 
 both United Kingdom and Dominions. This 
 does not involve an Imperial Parliament, but 
 the Council might be responsible to the British 
 and the Dominion Parliaments, or it might 
 be responsible to no Parliament, only to the 
 people. An obvious objection to making an 
 Imperial Council responsible to the Parliaments 
 of the Empire is that it would no less than 
 the Imperial Parliament involve the Govern- 
 ment of the Empire in the train of parliamentary
 
 i 4 2 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 ills. Indirectly it is true, but none the less, 
 the Council would be in the hands of party. 
 Having to get its acts confirmed by parliamentary 
 sanction, having to go to Parliaments for money, 
 having to get its constructive schemes passed 
 by them, how can it escape anything the parlia- 
 mentary system involves ? The Council would, 
 no doubt, be a more efficient executive instru- 
 ment for Imperial business than the Cabinet 
 under our present system, but we should still 
 be in the toils of party politics. Imperial 
 questions would be a regular part of the British 
 and Colonial parliamentary programmes ; they 
 would be turned into account by Ministry 
 and Opposition as it suited either. But apart 
 from this the multiplicity of Parliaments, whose 
 consent would be necessary to the policy of 
 the Imperial Council, would make government 
 practically impossible. 
 
 Mr. Herbert Samuel has suggested in the 
 " Nineteenth Century and After," by way 
 of a beginning avowedly a transitional arrange- 
 ment an Imperial Executive directly 
 representing the Dominions (with the omission 
 of Newfoundland) and including certain British 
 MinistersForeign Secretary, Secretary of State 
 for War, First Lord of the Admiralty, and 
 possibly others. This Imperial Cabinet is to 
 submit its proposals to an advisory Assembly, 
 which, having shaped them according to its
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 143 
 
 discretion, will forward them as amended to 
 the British and Dominion Parliaments to accept, 
 amend, or reject. It is perhaps not a defect 
 in a tentative arrangement that it abounds in 
 anomalies, nor is it a final objection that it does 
 not result in an Imperial Government in any 
 true or complete sense. It does not profess 
 to do this, but only to make the way easier 
 thereto. It is more serious, if the position taken 
 up in this book as to the parliamentary and 
 party system has any justification, that the 
 arrangement leaves all power, Imperial as com- 
 pletely as local, in the various Parliaments of the 
 Empire. Also, it is difficult to understand 
 how Imperial business is to be got through at 
 all, if every proposal of the Imperial Cabinet 
 has first to be shaped by an advisory Assembly, 
 and then has to run the gauntlet of some five 
 Parliaments, every one of which may amend 
 them as it pleases, or reject them. The amend- 
 ments of the different Parliaments might be 
 contradictory. Differences between the British 
 or a Dominion Parliament and the Imperial 
 Cabinet or Assembly would be got over, we are 
 told, by the local Parliament taking the bill 
 into its own hands, and passing it in the shape 
 it desired. But that could be done only in the 
 case of a proposal which did not apply equally 
 to the whole Empire ; but most items of Imperial 
 policy would. These would break down en-
 
 i 4 4 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 tirely if the United Kingdom or a Dominion 
 stood out of them. In the event of such a 
 breakdown would there be a reversion to Imperial 
 Government as we have it now ? That would, 
 at any rate, be a way out. Mr. Samuel's sug- 
 gestion may be feasible as an experiment towards 
 a more excellent way, but only so. The plan 
 might fail but still have been a useful experiment. 
 Lastly, let us consider an Imperial Council 
 not responsible to any Parliament, but responsible 
 to the King and the people, whom it must consult 
 by Referendum. This plan at least delivers 
 us from the vices and weaknesses of Parliaments ; 
 neither can it be the sport or the prey of party 
 in at all the same sense as an elected body is 
 and always must be. Party spirit and organi- 
 sation could, no doubt, be brought to bear on 
 a Referendum, but only in a much modified 
 and less virulent form. Then, the close 
 association of Cabinet life would neutralise 
 particularist tendencies and induce a com- 
 munity of view infinitely more difficult to obtain 
 in a large representative assembly. Meeting 
 day by day round a table, members of the 
 Imperial Council would get to know one another 
 so well that a sympathetic understanding would 
 be easy ; and this would leave the way clear 
 to a common appreciation of the common 
 object, the good government of the whole 
 Empire. In such conditions differences springing
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 145 
 
 from apparent discrepancy in regional or local 
 interests might be trusted to shrink into practical 
 insignificance. Situations would be made the 
 best of, not the worse ; difficulties would be 
 minimised rather than magnified. It would 
 be no one's object to make trouble or to exacer- 
 bate such difficulties as were there. No doubt 
 some of the benefits of opposition and criticism 
 would be absent as well as the mischief. But 
 there would be the criticism of the Press and 
 of the public, which even now Governments 
 are much more concerned about than the criticism 
 of the parliamentary Opposition with this 
 difference, that neither newspapers nor citizens 
 would then feel bound to attack or defend the 
 Government (according to the point of view) 
 right or wrong. It is probable that the general 
 tendency would be rather to criticism and dis- 
 satisfaction, for it is natural to us to be disconten- 
 ted with those who look after our affairs, but the 
 grumbling should be more intelligent than it 
 is now, for it would not be machine made. 
 Even under a coalition Ministry, which is both- 
 party, not at all the same thing as non-party 
 government, criticism of the Government has 
 been more intelligent, more substantial than 
 the regular trouncing of Ministers by the party 
 not in office. 
 
 How far any constitutional arrangement will 
 assist independence in the Government and
 
 146 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 yet avoid irresponsibility, only trial can show ; 
 and even long trial may leave it doubtful what 
 is the result produced, and still more doubtful 
 what produces it. Men's judgments are deter- 
 mined, or, at any rate, strongly inclined by 
 their temperaments. One man will by nature 
 always suspect irresponsibility or defective 
 accountability to the people in the national 
 Executive ; another will see always want of 
 independence. Each will lay the mischief he 
 perceives to the charge of the constitution. 
 Different minds will, of course, see different 
 dangers in the plan here proposed. That plan 
 admittedly goes on the belief that want of 
 independence is a more serious evil in Imperial 
 Government than unaccountability ; though it 
 is not admitted that the proposed arrangement 
 would induce an irresponsible temper in the 
 Executive. 
 
 The departments here assigned to the 
 Imperial Council cover the distinctively Imperial 
 side of the work of the British and Dominion 
 Governments. 
 
 The Crown Colonies should be under the 
 Imperial Council. They are now administered 
 directly from the centre by what is regarded 
 as the Imperial Government ; so it would be 
 only consistent that a really Imperial adminis- 
 tration should take over these Colonies. It 
 is not likely they would object. They are
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 147 
 
 inclined to think they are interfered with too 
 much from home ; so they would hardly be 
 sorry to escape from parliamentary meddling. 
 Sometimes, no doubt, a Crown Colony grievance 
 is ventilated in Parliament ; but it is generally 
 a grievance of the minor sort, something personal, 
 that is thus advertised. Most Crown Colonies 
 might be willing to give up that boon for the 
 assurance that Parliament would not be able 
 to thwart an exceptionally enterprising Colonial 
 Minister or Governor's plans for the colony. 
 At the same time there are objections from the 
 point of view of the Imperial Council. Much 
 of the Crown Colony business is not really 
 Imperial ; it is indeed very local. In these 
 communities the white population is not large, 
 and their affairs are on a comparatively small 
 scale. The appointment of their judges and 
 magistrates is a very different kind of business 
 from that which should properly occupy an 
 Imperial Council. The less the Council had 
 to do with patronage, the better. They would 
 have no party to manage and humour, so they 
 could get on without having ribands and stars 
 to bestow, and the paid appointments neces- 
 sarily in their control would be numerous enough 
 without adding any that could safely be left 
 in the hands of parliamentary Ministers. 
 However, this Crown Colony patronage would 
 in fact be managed entirely by permanent
 
 148 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Civil Servants of the Colonial Office. It need 
 not trouble the Colonial Minister much, and 
 the Imperial Council almost not at all. 
 
 Certainly the development of tropical 
 countries, with all their natural wonders and 
 unsounded resources, their diversities of race 
 with' all the complicated problems attendant, 
 the government of large native populations 
 by a handful of Englishmen, mostly young ; 
 all this is very much work for an Imperial 
 Government. Crown Colonies have not always 
 received " at home " the consideration they 
 deserve. What does the average man and 
 woman over here know about them, or care ? 
 It would only be right that, if there were an 
 Imperial Council, these most remarkable pos- 
 sessions, more characteristic than any other 
 of British rule, and best illustrating the 
 peculiarity of our Empire, should be the special 
 care, perhaps the favourite ward, of the Imperial 
 Government. 
 
 Lastly, there is the question of trade. Should 
 there be a distinctively Trade Member of 
 Council ? Trade is very certainly an Imperial 
 matter ; the Empire's existence largely depends 
 on trade : trade plays a large, indeed the largest 
 part, in the intercourse between this country 
 and the self-governing Dominions, and is an 
 important element in British relations with 
 foreign countries. Government cannot avoid
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 149 
 
 having constant touch with trade. In the 
 United Kingdom it has much less close touch 
 with it than in many other countries ; here 
 Government does not directly stimulate trade ; 
 it does not assist the private trader in competi- 
 tion with foreign rivals ; it does not control 
 or interfere with railways and steamship 
 companies in the interest of British trade : it 
 does not subsidise them with that object, nor 
 assist new and pioneer ventures. The assump- 
 tion has prevailed here that Government can 
 help trade best by leaving it alone. It could 
 not help intervening when it became a question 
 of duties on foreign imports, but by putting 
 duties only on the smallest number of articles 
 possible, it kept this intervention within the 
 narrowest limits. Most of the Dominion Gov- 
 ernments have taken a very different view of 
 their duty, adopting a policy much more akin 
 to that of the Continental powers, in commercial 
 methods as well as in the matter of duties. 
 So far as trade is concerned every self-govern- 
 ing unit of the Empire has been regarded and 
 has acted as a separate state, putting on 
 or taking off duties against other parts of the 
 Empire or foreign powers as it liked, with a 
 view solely to its own private interests with- 
 out any regard to the interests of the Empire 
 as a whole. 
 
 The Dominions being integral parts of the
 
 150 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 same polity with the United Kingdom, at 
 first sight it would seem natural that there 
 should be but one tariff for the whole Empire 
 fixed by a central authority fairly representing 
 every country within the Empire. Such an 
 authority has not yet existed, and to this mainly 
 perhaps is due the very strong feeling shown 
 by the Dominions, especially Canada, when 
 there has been any attempt, or appearance 
 of an attempt, by the British Government 
 to question the colonial claim to settle all 
 questions of tariff in their own way. The Dominion 
 has felt that it was an attempt of one part of 
 the Empire to coerce another part, both being 
 as to the matter in hand equal. There could 
 be no such feeling in the case of intervention 
 by a Central Government in which the Dominion 
 affected had a voice in the same way as the 
 other states making up the Empire. Whatever 
 was done by the Imperial Government would 
 then in part be the Dominion's own doing as well. 
 There would not be the same opportunity for 
 friction. Logically, of course, the claim of one 
 part of an Empire or of one unit of a Common- 
 wealth to make its own tariff arrangements 
 with a foreign power independently of the 
 Commonwealth as a whole is untenable. It is 
 a contradiction in terms. Nothing on any 
 ground of political theory can be said in excuse 
 of an arrangement by which certain foreign
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 151 
 
 Powers allow any Dominion to withdraw 
 separately from a treaty made with that Power 
 by the British Government. It is sheer negation 
 of unity. Still the Empire goes on, though 
 that does not prove that everything has been 
 for the best. This extraordinary state of things 
 grew up partly by neglect of the United Kingdom 
 consequent on the belief that the Colonies would 
 soon drop off, so that it did not matter either 
 way ; partly from a total failure to understand 
 the Colonies' economic position. Neither United 
 Kingdom nor colony considered the commercial 
 needs of the other. Indeed by adopting a 
 system of Free Imports the British Government 
 made anything in the way of an Imperial trade 
 policy impossible. Such a system might suit 
 a highly organised country, commercially and 
 industrially advanced, but it could not suit 
 a young community that had to make its own 
 way. For revenue purpose the Colonies were 
 obliged to depend mainly on import duties. 
 Could the Colonies have got on with a tariff 
 against the foreigner, but with none against 
 the United Kingdom ? For the imposition of 
 duties on British goods makes the really bizarre 
 feature in the present arrangement. (Mr. 
 Chamberlain seemed to feel the falsity of the 
 position when replying to the Lancashire cotton 
 deputation, though clearly if the Dominions 
 are to be free to protect their manufactures by
 
 152 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 a tariff against British goods, it would be wholly 
 inequitable to prevent India doing the same 
 because India is not governed by a Parliament.) 
 Anyway, the Colonies thought they could not 
 get on without Protection against Britain, and 
 the home Government followed the line of 
 least resistance. Matters just drifted. The 
 right way would have been to take the Colonies 
 entirelv into our confidence, treat them as 
 
 j 
 
 equals, and with them try to make an arrange- 
 ment, which, with a little give and take on 
 both sides, would have suited both at least 
 fairly well and saved the position of the Empire 
 at the same time. That, it may be answered, is 
 very nice on paper ; but how could it be done ? 
 But the point is there was never even an attempt 
 to do it. To show how it could be done is for 
 practical statesmen, not for the writer of a 
 tract. It has been suggested that there should 
 be a general tariff against foreign imports 
 uniform throughout the Empire : which would 
 leave United Kingdom and Colonies alike free 
 to discriminate in favour of our present allies, 
 and still more in favour of one another. Thus 
 the duties against imports from other foreign 
 countries would be higher than the duties 
 against allied imports, and much higher than 
 those against any part of the British Empire. 
 Such an arrangement might, it seems, meet the 
 need ; but in such matters details are everything ;
 
 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 153 
 
 it is a question of how it would work out. How- 
 ever, we are now all agreed that things might 
 have been managed better than they were ; that 
 leaving them to drift was not such heaven-sent 
 wisdom as economic pundits used to tell us it 
 was ; and that a new start is desirable. This 
 cannot be made without a new Imperial 
 Government. 
 
 In present circumstances no doubt an Imperial 
 Council could hardly touch trade. But this 
 war has suggested to many formerly opposed 
 to the idea that the Empire should present a 
 common front to the rest of the world in trade 
 policy ; that parts of the same Empire ought 
 not to be mere competitors one with another 
 as though they were foreign countries. Without 
 saying that Imperial Preference is a condition 
 precedent of Imperial unity because the Dominions 
 would think a share in the control of foreign and 
 all Imperial policy not return enough without 
 trade preference for a greatly increased contri- 
 bution to Imperial funds, the adoption of a 
 Preferential system would certainly facilitate 
 closer union ; and at present the trend is all 
 that way. In such an event the Imperial 
 Council would naturally have much to do with 
 trade. One of its members would be Imperial 
 Trade Minister with a trade department for 
 the Empire. But the present Board of Trade,
 
 154 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 being concerned with domestic interests, would 
 not be taken over. 
 
 Finance in connection with the Imperial 
 Council will be treated in a separate chapter.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE IMPERIAL COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 THE idea of taking out of the hands of 
 Parliament and its purview very im- 
 portant departments of Government 
 and entrusting them to a Council formally 
 appointed by the King will be a stumbling 
 block to many simply because of its unexpected- 
 ness. Custom has hallowed the supremacy of 
 Parliament to a certain conservative type of 
 mind, even though it be much dissatisfied with 
 this supremacy in practice and loudly says so. 
 Others, not merely conservative, will shrink 
 from the idea on the ground of caution. They 
 will argue that many bad things are best left 
 alone for fear of worse not an heroic position, 
 certainly, but conceivably not unwise. Yet 
 on balance are the dangers of such a change 
 so great as the dangers of leaving things as 
 they are ? Many years ago Lecky, who certainly 
 had not a rash or even an heroic temperament, 
 was convinced that the safety of the State 
 would compel a modification of parliamentary 
 
 155
 
 156 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 supremacy. He thought we should have to 
 limit the powers of Parliament by a written 
 constitution. Already the sacro-sanctity of the 
 un-writtenness, if one may so say, of the con- 
 stitution has been violated by the Parliament 
 Act, which defined the powers of one House of 
 the Legislature. The proposal here made would 
 be the substitution in part of a written for the 
 un-written constitution. It would meet some 
 of the dangers pointed out by Lecky, and could 
 hardly do other than make for stability in 
 the management of the business of the Empire. 
 If the cautious objector will test his first im- 
 pression by serious examination of the plan, and 
 try to envisage its results, he may be inclined 
 to waive opposition, even if he is not converted 
 to more than benevolent neutrality. It is 
 not he that should find great difficulty in accept- 
 ing it. And the mere Conservative, with whom 
 Parliament and its omnipotence was bred in 
 the bone, may be soothed by finding that 
 Parliament will be little changed outwardly. 
 He will not miss much. He does not think 
 Parliament perfect, and so long as it goes on 
 at all he may not be very sorry to see some of 
 the work done better by other men. It may 
 even seem to him in the way of reconciliation 
 between two incompatibles, in both of which 
 he believes, the necessity of Parliament and 
 the good Government of the Empire.
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 157 
 
 Then there are those who will say the pro- 
 posal is anti-democratic ; a stock objection, 
 always ready to hand, or rather to mouth, with 
 those who condemn first and think afterwards, 
 if they think at all. Others however may make 
 the point seriously, perhaps feeling that such 
 a plan would in more than one way make for 
 good Imperial administration, but at the same 
 time might weaken the power of the people. 
 Regarding democracy as the greatest of ideals, 
 they could not accept even good government 
 at the price of encroachment on the democratic 
 principle. They would probably see that to 
 charge a scheme with being anti-democratic 
 or undemocratic does not prove it to be wrong ; 
 that with some this charge would have no 
 weight at all ; still for them with their principles 
 right or wrong this charge, if it can be 
 proved, is final. 
 
 This is a less difficult attitude to deal with 
 than the cautious or the Conservative attitude, 
 for it rests not on temperament but on argument 
 from merits. It is not a feeling ; it can be met. 
 
 In the first place democrats who do not 
 regard the teaching of history as irrelevant 
 may be reminded that in the past democracy 
 has fulfilled itself much more successfully through 
 the leadership of one or a few men of action 
 than through a representative assembly. A 
 multitude cannot act for itself ; it can only
 
 158 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 act through a much smaller number, and very 
 often most effectually through one man. A 
 numerous representative assembly is no more 
 able to act than the multitude it is supposed 
 to represent ; it has to leave action to a small 
 committee, who, being mainly chosen from the 
 assembly itself, are not primarily men of action. 
 This executive will naturally either be the 
 servant of the assembly and not of the people, 
 or it will be the servant of the people and will 
 ignore the assembly. In other words, from 
 the democratic point of view, if the assembly 
 is strong, it merely comes between the people 
 and the executive : if the executive is strong 
 and carries out the wishes of the people, the 
 assembly becomes superfluous, and that which 
 is or has become superfluous can seldom be 
 left in an organism without harm to the parts 
 still in vigorous action. The most effective 
 and successful representative Government has 
 not been democratic ; and when it has become 
 democratic it has generally declined, and the 
 decline has not infrequently ended in its decease. 
 This experience is usually cited in evidence of 
 the mischiefs wrought by democracy ; but it 
 may just as well prove the harm done by repre- 
 sentative assemblies. The two have not got 
 on well together, though both take their stand 
 on " freedom " ; both take it as their trade 
 mark. But it is no more true or more relevant
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 159 
 
 to say that democracy is incompatible with 
 parliamentary Government than that parlia- 
 mentary Government is incompatible with 
 democracy. Possibly " incompatible " is too 
 strong a word, but, at any rate, neither can 
 attain its full stature or fully " express itself " 
 except at the expense of the other. This is 
 a commonplace of political observation ; it 
 meets one at every turn in ancient, especially 
 Roman, history, and many modern countries 
 illustrate the fact quite as strikingly. 
 
 Nor is the antagonism between democracy 
 and Parliament, sometimes open, sometimes 
 veiled, difficult to account for. It is the truth 
 that the electorate distrust the elected body, 
 a parodoxical position following on the discovery 
 by the electors that those whom they have 
 elected do not really represent them. They 
 choose their members on the faith of a number 
 of representations, which these gentlemen when 
 they get into the Chamber find themselves 
 unable to justify. There is no need to ascribe 
 to them bad faith ; many of them honestly 
 believe that they will satisfy the expectations 
 they have aroused and intend to do so. But 
 the electors only know that certain things 
 were promised to them, which they have not 
 received ; and in their resentment they are not 
 much inclined to make distinction between 
 bad faith and honest but empty intention.
 
 160 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 It is equally unsatisfactory to them either way, 
 and a feeling of general distrust of Parliament 
 remains. This distrust is not mitigated but 
 rather embittered by the remindei sometimes 
 administered by the local member on his defence 
 that he had not promised anything ; he had 
 only said he would do his best to get this or 
 that. It is an unfortunate plea, for, however 
 good in logic, it makes the elector feel that he 
 has not only been disappointed, but done. 
 In his mind, if not openly, he charges his member 
 with cunningly choosing words which, while 
 they would not commit him, would be taken 
 by any plain man to be a promise. 
 
 Also, the electorate come to observe that 
 when a man enters the Chamber, no matter 
 how truly he has seemed to be one of them, 
 in no long time he comes to see things in a House 
 of Commons light ; he takes his tone from 
 Parliament, and not from the people. This 
 they do not like. Also the more observant of 
 them perceive that even as a piece of machinery 
 the House of Commons is faulty in its 
 representation of the people. 
 
 There can, to begin with, be no just repre- 
 sentation except on a proportional system ; 
 as the electoral commission has lately found. 
 The rule of the absolute majority, even of a 
 true majority, is not properly representative, 
 though it may be the most convenient, some 
 would say the only, practicable plan.
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 161 
 
 This radical, if inevitable, vice in the 
 representative character of the House as it is, 
 is greatly exaggerated by the fallacies of distri- 
 bution. Everyone knows that many places 
 have too many members for the number of 
 electors, others too few. It might happen 
 that a minority of the electors returned a 
 majority of the whole House ; and the 
 views of the minority, not of the majority, of 
 the people be given effect to. Whatever the 
 result, this is flatly anti-democratic. This is 
 an extreme case, no doubt, and not likely to 
 happen ; but it always happens and must 
 happen that anomalies of distribution prevent 
 the House of Commons being a fair abstract 
 of the nation. 
 
 The crowning paradox is that representative 
 Government would work less well than it does 
 if representation were fair. To be fair, parties 
 must stand to each other in the House in the 
 same proportion as the votes cast for the various 
 parties in the election. If one party gets one 
 third more votes than the other, it should have 
 one third more members, neither more nor less, 
 in the House. But this is not what happens. 
 The party that gets a majority returns a balance 
 of members over the other party greater than 
 the difference in the votes cast justifies. 
 
 Take the figures at some general elections when 
 the number of members returned unopposed 
 were comparatively few.
 
 1 62 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 In 1892 votes were cast as follows : 
 Liberal, Labour and Nationalist . 2,293,041 
 Unionist . . 2,056,737 
 
 Liberal, Labour and Nationalist 
 
 majority in House of Commons . 40 
 
 The true majority according to the votes 
 cast would have been 36. 
 
 In 1906 : 
 
 Liberal, Labour and Nationalist . 3,168,595 
 Unionist . . . . . 2,463,608 
 Liberal, Labour and Nationalist 
 majority in House of Commons . 356 
 
 This should have been 84. 
 
 In January, 1910 : 
 
 Liberal, Labour and Nationalist . 3,539,517 
 
 Unionist . . 3,127,887 
 
 Liberal, Labour and Nationalist 
 
 majority in House of Commons . 1 24 
 
 This would work out at 42. 
 
 Thus, if representation in Parliament agreed 
 with the facts in the country, a strong Govern- 
 ment one resting on a large majority would 
 seldom ensue. 
 
 Proportional representation should go far, 
 it is true, to correct this fallacy, but probably 
 with the result that majorities would not be 
 large enough to make any Government secure.
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 163 
 
 It is also a true democratic objection to 
 Parliament that it does not change with changes 
 in public opinion. After a general election 
 the successful party preponderates in the House 
 more than it does in the country, and usually 
 this difference between House and country 
 widens as time goes on. Bye-elections will 
 correct this to a certain extent, but there may 
 be no bye-elections, or very few ; and in any 
 event bye-elections will not suffice to bring 
 the House into line with the country if there 
 has been a general change of public feeling. 
 No-one will question that many Ministries have 
 remained in office for a considerable time after 
 they have lost the confidence of the country, 
 whether Ministers had realised the fact or not. 
 In this way measures may be passed which, 
 if they had been referred to the people, would 
 have been rejected. The House of Commons 
 does not mirror public opinion. This may 
 or not be an objection on merits. If at an election 
 the people chose trustees to carry on for them 
 the business of the country until the next 
 election and had no further concern until 
 members came to render an account of their 
 stewardship, the objections we have been 
 discussing would not apply. But this is not 
 the theory that now obtains ; it is emphatically 
 not the understanding on which members are 
 elected or on which they profess to act. From
 
 1 64 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 a democratic point of view these objections to the 
 House as a representative body are all valid. 
 They, at the least, make it more than arguable 
 that on a system of Referendum the whole 
 people would be much more accurately repre- 
 sented than they are under the parliamentary 
 system. 
 
 It is true that the Referendum here contem- 
 plated gives the country only a disposing power ; 
 it does not give power to propose anything. 
 But on matters of foreign policy, Army and 
 Navy, in short all Imperial questions, with 
 which alone we are concerned here, the country 
 has never wanted to propose, and certainly 
 never has proposed. The thought required for 
 initiative in these departments is not possible 
 to a great multitude of people of whom nearly 
 all are pre-occupied with private business of 
 their own. They wisely prefer to let experts 
 propose, but they do require, or should require, 
 that these shall be experts in fact as well as 
 in name. As it is, they leave initiative in these 
 things to the Government, but not with complete 
 confidence, for they are aware that Ministers 
 like themselves have their pre-occupations, which 
 take their mind off their proper work of gov- 
 ernment. No statesman that has to look after 
 the fortunes of his party as well as the fortunes 
 of his country can give undivided attention 
 to his Ministerial work. He will frequently
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 165 
 
 suffer from the divided mind that so often 
 wrecks action. The divided mind is as fatal 
 in life as it is in all games. 
 
 The great, indeed the overwhelming advantage, 
 a Referendum has over an election, is that it 
 puts before the nation one issue at a time. 
 It does not mix up personal with public issues ; 
 nor one political issue with another. An election 
 not only invariably does this but does it in the 
 worst possible way. The personal side of politics 
 counts for a great deal more than policy. Un- 
 avoidably, seeing how much more a person 
 means to ninety-nine people out of a hundred 
 than a plan. A person is a living thing, a 
 policy is an abstraction. Policy gets its interest 
 and reality for most people from the person 
 who advocates it. This preference for persons 
 over policy is sound enough in itself, for in 
 the long run persons are more important than 
 policy. If the electorate were avowedly asked 
 to choose persons, leaving policy to those whom 
 they have chosen, it would be in itself a more 
 reasonable plan than that now in vogue. A 
 multitude has a better instinct for a man than 
 for a policy. But party would never give such 
 a system a fair chance. The people would not 
 in fact choose at all ; the persons to be supported 
 would be selected for them by the Machine, 
 and very sordid grounds of selection would 
 soon prevail. The assumption that the people
 
 1 66 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 choose their candidates on political grounds 
 and give a considered judgment on policy, has 
 its uses. It tends to prevent corruption and 
 keeps down the element of private interest. 
 On the other hand, the crossing of the personal 
 and political interest always gravely confuses 
 the issue. It is impossible to know how far a 
 constituency is supporting a policy or sup- 
 porting a man. It frequently happens that 
 a constituency returns a particular man time 
 after time, but as soon as he drops out promptly 
 returns a candidate of exactly the opposite 
 policy. It is then clear that the constituency 
 hitherto had been choosing their man but not 
 their policy. An election does not give the 
 chance of dealing with the personal and political 
 issues separately. The converse also happens. 
 A man is put forward because of his policy, 
 whom many of his own party dislike and some- 
 times regard as unfit to be in Parliament. A 
 conscientious elector is then placed in a painful 
 position. Is he to help an unworthy man to 
 get into Parliament and so lower the whole 
 tone of public life ? Is he, on the other hand, 
 to withhold his support from the policy he 
 believes to be right ? Is he to support a policy 
 he believes to be wrong because the candidate 
 who favours it is an excellent man in contrast 
 to the man representing the policy he believes 
 to be right ? The elector is in a cleft stick.
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 167 
 
 He must support either a bad man or a bad 
 policy ; or he must do nothing. A most 
 unsatisfactory way out however he decides. 
 
 There is also the personal interest of electors. 
 This cannot be entirely eliminated, and very 
 certainly is not. In every election there are 
 always electors who have a personal interest 
 in the success of one side or another. It may 
 not be corrupt- or not consciously corrupt ; 
 it may simply be that the adoption of a certain 
 measure will be favourable to his fortunes 
 without any doubtful conduct on his part. 
 In such a case very few would have the in- 
 dependence to put public interest first. Similarly 
 local interests with a good many will outweigh 
 Imperial interests. 
 
 And what a clash of purely political issues ! 
 Foreign policy, Colonial questions, Home Rule, 
 Tariff Reform, Social Reform, Socialism, Trade 
 Union questions, Army, Navy Finance, Edu- 
 cation, Church, the Budget, House of Lords. 
 This is the farrago that is put before the elector ; 
 and our constitutional authorities gravely assume 
 that every one of our voting millions gives a 
 considered and independent judgment on every 
 one of these questions. How many have the 
 time to do anything of the kind ? How many 
 the will ? How many the ability ? Not only, 
 it must be remembered, is this mass thrown 
 at the country pell mell, without any attempt 
 
 M
 
 1 68 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 at arrangement, but it is presented exclusively 
 by advocates, and not very scrupulously by 
 them. The political advocate is restrained by 
 none of the customs and courtesies that keep 
 the barrister within bounds. He has no bench 
 to respect, and no Bar to regard. How can 
 the elector tackle these questions ? To take 
 them seriously he should have followed their 
 previous history carefully ; he should read 
 what the best papers on both sides say : he 
 should hear both candidates, and go to as many 
 meetings on one side as on the other. Having 
 done all this by way of preparation, he should 
 calmly think over the whole matter with as 
 little prejudice as possible before giving his 
 vote. Not one will even attempt to do this ; 
 and, to tell the truth, he would be a fool if he 
 did. This is not a question of democracy. It 
 is almost as impossible for highly educated 
 men, who have an occupation of their own, 
 to do this as it is for working men. The ordinary 
 elector knows he would be hopelessly lost in 
 the maze of issues, and trusts himself to the 
 one tangible thing his party. 
 
 Thus none can say what he really thinks 
 on any question. If he did try to think them 
 out for himself, he would almost certainly find 
 that he agreed with his party on some things 
 and not on others. It would be the most 
 natural thing in the world for him to agree
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 169 
 
 with one side, say, on foreign policy, with the 
 other on social reform. But he has to give a 
 block vote. What happens is that the voters 
 who think for themselves vote for the man who 
 agrees with them in the particular issue they 
 care most about. The other questions they 
 " lump." At most elections one question is 
 to the fore, and there is generally some sort 
 of a national judgment on that. This simplifies 
 matters, but it means the neglect of nearly 
 the whole field of politics, and especially of 
 Imperial issues : for it is generally on some 
 home question that controversy is acute, and 
 it is the controversial matters that attract. 
 If you take the line that the bulk of the people 
 are totally unable to judge on most political 
 issues, and therefore it is no loss but rather a 
 gain that these issues are put to them in a way 
 that makes it impossible for them to express 
 an opinion, you can rationally defend the present 
 system. But on democratic grounds it is im- 
 possible to defend it. If a nation is a democracy, 
 it is simply fraud to put national issues to the 
 people in such a way that they cannot possibly 
 make head or tail of them. It is bad, too, that 
 they should have no opportunity to educate 
 themselves on matters of Imperial policy. Give 
 them the chance of expressing an opinion on a 
 definite Imperial matter unmixed with any 
 other issue and they will rise to their responsi-
 
 1 70 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 bility as citizens, as they cannot do when they 
 know of no choice but between one man or 
 another and one party or another. 
 
 It is clear that a Referendum avoids all these 
 objections ; for it puts but one issue before 
 the nation, not crossed with other political 
 issues nor complicated with personal considera- 
 tions. No doubt an issue might be submitted 
 which affected the private interests of some 
 of the electors, and in that case votes might 
 be given on private grounds as now at an election. 
 This is perhaps less likely to happen in the 
 Imperial departments, as to which alone a 
 Referendum is proposed here, and in any case 
 the proportion of the whole electorate affected 
 personally will be far too small to decide the 
 issue. A group or section may determine a 
 local election, but to turn a vote of the whole 
 nation is a very different matter. Dockyard 
 constituencies, it is well-known, often determine 
 their election on a question of dockyard wages ; 
 but if this question of wages were included 
 in a general naval estimate submitted to the 
 whole country, the dockyard vote could hardly 
 be a determining factor. 
 
 Under a Referendum no one would be compelled 
 to sacrifice one conviction to save another. 
 The hard case of the Tariff Reforming Home Ruler 
 or the Unionist Free Trader could not happen. 
 Nor would the elector who subscribed to neither
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 171 
 
 regular party be shut out, as he usually is now. 
 The Socialist, for instance, has in most places 
 to put up with a Hobson's choice between a 
 Conservative or a Liberal. Under a Referendum 
 he would record his vote on the immediate 
 issue like anybody else, and count for as much. 
 There are others very different from the Socialists, 
 who are so much aloof from party politics that 
 now they do not care to vote at all. These 
 would have their chance and would no doubt 
 record their vote conscientiously. And no-one 
 could question that the result of a Referendum 
 showed the view of the nation so far as it went. 
 There could be no fallacies of distribution or re- 
 presentation. True, it would not be possible 
 to compel people to vote, and the total number 
 of answers recorded might fall far short of the 
 total electorate. But we are in that case now : 
 we should be no worse off. If fewer voted on 
 a Referendum than now at an election, it would 
 only mean the weakening of party pressure 
 hardly a thing to lament. There would at 
 least be a much stronger presumption that the 
 person who did vote on a Referendum voted 
 on merits, because he took more interest in the 
 question, than when he voted for a party 
 candidate at an election. 
 
 When the adoption of the Referendum was 
 before the country at the election of December, 
 1910, it was urged that it would bring in its
 
 172 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 train just the same party business as the election 
 of a candidate. There would be meetings, 
 demonstrations, canvassing ; the whole force 
 of party machinery would be turned on precisely 
 as now ; the wire-puller would be as busy as 
 ever. 
 
 The proposal then was to add the Referendum 
 to the present system unmodified, simply as 
 a further test of public opinion. The questions 
 referred to would be the same as those which 
 had been occupying party controversy for many 
 months and had become the commonplaces of 
 Parliament and platform. So that the matter 
 would be referred to the people in a complete 
 party setting and the party machinery could 
 be trained on to a nicety. In these circum- 
 stances it is likely that the result of a Referendum 
 would be much affected by party influence. 
 But even so it can hardly be, as was claimed 
 by opponents of the Referendum, that its use 
 would make no difference at all, leading to 
 precisely the same result as would a general 
 election ; for had this been the conviction even 
 of those who put it forward, they would have 
 cared very little whether the Referendum were 
 adopted or not. If it could make no difference 
 to the result, what did it matter to them if it 
 was adopted ? One must credit any man with 
 intelligence enough not to be much excited 
 in opposition to that which he knows will make
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 173 
 
 no difference. One side being enthusiastic in 
 favour of the Referendum and the other strenu- 
 ously opposed to it, it is a safe inference that 
 both sides thought that it might, probably 
 would, produce a result differing from that 
 of a general election. Obviously one side 
 expected it to tell in their favour : the other 
 feared it might tell against them. Very reason- 
 ably. Even with all the buzz of party around 
 him the elector would find it a very different 
 thing quietly to answer a written question, 
 detached from and not crossed by any other 
 question, from giving a vote for this man or 
 that with every kind of local association thrown 
 in. A great many would feel that answering 
 " yes " or " no " to a plain question was a 
 more deliberate affair than putting a cross to 
 a name. Moreover, if at heart he did not agree 
 with the majority of his party, he would feel 
 that taking a non-party view on one question 
 was not at all the same thing as voting for the 
 opposition candidate, who, if he got in, would 
 sit for years to oppose the party on all sorts 
 of other questions as well as that the elector 
 was voting on. Independent judgment would 
 be vastly easier, and the power of the Machine 
 accordingly less. 
 
 Under the plan here proposed the Reference 
 would be exclusively to matters not within 
 the cognisance of Parliament, and having no
 
 174 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 common ground with the questions occupying 
 election campaigns. The Referendum would 
 not take place in a party atmosphere. Foreign, 
 naval and military matters, freed from contact 
 with ordinary party politics, would not engender 
 any great heat. There would no doubt be 
 meetings and plenty of written matter in con- 
 nection with the Referendum, and there should 
 be. Every reasonable means would be used to 
 educate the people on the issues, and to get 
 them to think before they voted. But meetings 
 without a candidate and the background of 
 an opposition would give little opportunity 
 for the " enthusiasm " loved of the wire-puller, 
 and would have small attraction for the rowdy. 
 They would probably be dull affairs, but if 
 they led a few to think rather than many to 
 shout they would be an improvement on most 
 election meetings. Propagandist societies of 
 different kinds might organise meetings in order 
 to influence electors towards their way of think- 
 ing. In this way organised influence could 
 be brought to bear. Neither could the great 
 political parties be prevented from holding 
 meetings, if they would, though it would be 
 improper for them to do it, the question not 
 being within the purview of Parliament. It 
 would be a scandal deliberately to try to introduce 
 party into Imperial policy, the Imperial Council 
 being a non-party body. Whether this would
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 175 
 
 prevent it being done is not certain. But the 
 number of electors that go to meetings is pro- 
 portionately few, and the number who are 
 influenced by what they hear there fewer. 
 There would be no question of pulling down 
 or setting up a Government, no Ins and no 
 Outs, and without that the savour strength 
 or sting of party is gone. 
 
 It may be a question whether canvassing in 
 connection with the Referendum should be 
 allowed. To stop it would be difficult, yet 
 so much mischief is done by canvassing that 
 it might be worth while to prohibit it, which 
 would at least very sensibly abate the nuisance. 
 What is stated in writing matters but little ; 
 it is fixed, it can be seen by all sides and can 
 be answered. It is much the same with what 
 is said at a public meeting. But what is said 
 by canvassers cannot be traced and can never 
 be overtaken, an advantage which the can- 
 vasser, female not less than male, educated 
 as well as uneducated, is well aware of and 
 knows how to turn to the utmost account. 
 The misrepresentation and exaggeration, to use 
 no severer term, that goes on in house-to-house 
 canvassing is appalling. Excellent people when 
 they turn canvassers are often so much carried 
 away by their anxiety to help their man and 
 damage the other fellow that they literally 
 do not know what they are saying. Repeat it
 
 176 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 to them six months after the election and they 
 will promptly deny they ever said anything of 
 the kind. The denial is quite honest. They 
 truly cannot believe they did say it. 
 
 At any rate when Imperial policy is in issue 
 the public ought to be protected against this 
 sort of thing. We must not have the work 
 of the Imperial Council bedevilled by such 
 mischief makers, whether silly women or wicked 
 men, or contrariwise, or both. 
 
 Sometimes it is asked : Is the mass of the 
 electorate fit to give a direct judgment on 
 specific questions of policy ? What ! Can a 
 democrat admit such a doubt ? Well, he will 
 not in general terms. Ask him whether he 
 really thinks that the mass of the people are 
 competent to decide on the innumerable grave 
 questions that go to the government of a country, 
 and he will either answer roundly that he does 
 not, or that they must be allowed to express 
 an opinion in order that they may become 
 competent. They can be educated into com- 
 petence in no other way. But when you suggest 
 to him that the people instead of choosing 
 representatives should themselves answer parti- 
 cular political questions he often falters. This 
 shows that he does not think that the introduction 
 of the Referendum would leave things practically 
 as they are now, and that he has doubts after 
 all of the entire political fitness of the masses.
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 177 
 
 He evidently doubts if it is not putting on them 
 a greater political strain than they ought to 
 be expected to bear. Dialectically such a 
 position is not tenable for a democrat ; but 
 none the less there may be a something in it. 
 It must be faced. The question really is this : 
 Can the bulk of the electors be trusted to give 
 an independent answer to a public question 
 affecting them personally ? Can any class ? 
 If it were referred to income-tax payers with 
 income from 1,000 to 400 a year, or from 
 400 to 200 a year, whether incomes within 
 those limits should be tax free, how would 
 most of them answer ? What would a Referen- 
 dum on the point show ? Suppose it were 
 referred to the people whether old age pensions 
 should be quadrupled at a stroke, or the whole 
 of the insurance contribution be paid by the 
 employer ? It cannot honestly be questioned 
 that it would be easier for the elector to vote 
 in favour of proposals of this kind, benefiting 
 him at the expense of others, on a Referendum 
 than now it is to get his candidate to do it for 
 him. The intervention of Parliament is operative 
 to moderate excessive proposals of this class 
 because most of the members would personally 
 suffer if they were carried. They are not in 
 the position of the larger number of electors, 
 who would immediately gain. It is not reason- 
 able to expect the average man to take very
 
 1 78 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 long views ; to expect him to see that what 
 is his immediate gain may be his ultimate 
 greater loss ; that his gain is at the public 
 expense. There are very few of any class who 
 refuse the chance of a personal gain regularly 
 authorised by the community. It is so easy 
 to be persuaded that a public measure which 
 is good for oneself is good for everybody. We 
 must expect that proposals of great present 
 advantage to the bulk of the electors will be 
 accepted if referred to them, though it may be 
 to the injury of the community. Therefore, 
 doubtful proposals of that kind ought not to be 
 Referred ; and few Governments would be 
 likely to do it. One may paint lurid pictures 
 of a demagogue giant proposing that all property 
 should be confiscated and distributed at once 
 amongst the working classes. The people might 
 pass it, and ruin would follow. But it is easy 
 to imagine possibilities which would bring any 
 system or any nation to grief. This is, on the 
 whole, a reasonable country, and while it is 
 certain that public money will be used more 
 and more to improve the lot of the poorer people, 
 it is likely that the Executive, whatever its 
 form, will see that wild cat proposals are not 
 Referred. 
 
 Certainly an Imperial Council could be trusted 
 not to run idle risks with the Referendum, 
 though there is no reason to fear the judgment
 
 THE COUNCIL AND DEMOCRACY 179 
 
 of the country on general Imperial questions. 
 For patriotism and Imperial outlook the public 
 can be trusted quite as well as Parliament, 
 perhaps a little better. During the war the 
 country has been steadily in front of Parliament. 
 There is no evidence to justify the fear that 
 has been expressed that the country on a Refer- 
 endum would habitually vote for sweeping 
 reduction of the Army and supplies. On the 
 contrary, the public is always ready for more 
 expenditure on the Navy. On matters of 
 defence the bulk of the people are sound. They 
 want their King to be well served and the 
 Empire to be strong. They are content so 
 long as they believe that the Government of 
 the Empire is in capable hands and conducted 
 by single-minded men. Little Englanders, paci- 
 fists, internationalists, and so forth make some 
 noise, but the Referendum would soon show 
 their smallness. At the same time it would 
 curb any tendency to extravagant jingoism. 
 If this is mainly surmise, experience, so far as 
 we have had it, goes to show that the Referendum 
 is, on the whole, a moderating influence.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 
 
 THE Crown would not only be a highly 
 important factor in the working of 
 this scheme of Imperial govern- 
 ment but would be almost necessary to its 
 existence. The Crown would be the unifying 
 piece, locking the whole machine together. 
 Without the Crown it would be likely soon 
 to fall to pieces. In a republic of any kind 
 such a scheme would be very difficult to work. 
 If the Imperial Council were elected, the curse 
 of party would come in. If the President alone 
 were elected, and he appointed the members 
 of the Council, party would have an opening 
 almost as great. There would be no authority 
 to whom the whole people could look as equally 
 representing all and equally outside and above 
 all ; there would be much more room for local 
 jealousy. The United States have got on so 
 far, it is true, with an elected President, but 
 not the most enthusiastic American would 
 claim that they had also escaped the curse 
 of party. 
 
 1 80
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 181 
 
 But could any elected magistrate keep 
 together the widely distant and deeply differing 
 constituent countries of the British Empire ? 
 Nationalist independence would rebel against 
 authority sprung from a merely equal constituent 
 state. Canada would hardly submit to a 
 President hailing from Australia. The King 
 is one thing : a Magistrate elected by people 
 no better than themselves quite another. The 
 historic claim of the British Crown puts the 
 Sovereign in a unique position which every 
 colony and dependency can recognise and admit 
 without difficulty or reservation. The King 
 stands in the same relation to all, equally 
 above and equally essential to all. 
 
 And in the eyes of the people the King is more 
 than a symbol of Imperial Unity and much 
 more than " First Magistrate of the Realm." 
 The cheap commonplace, ever on the lips of 
 the clever sciolist anxious to be thought modern, 
 that the Divine Right of Kingship is exploded, 
 obsolete, has itself become obsolete. Nothing 
 could be more alien from the popular feeling 
 for Royalty in this country to-day than those 
 threadbare Whig phrases which with portentous 
 iteration laid down that the Crown was the 
 creation of Parliament and the King nothing 
 but a chief magistrate. Puritan and eighteenth 
 century Whig sermons on this text have in 
 this day fully as antiquated a ring as Caroline
 
 182 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 exhortations to passive obedience. In later 
 times, too, in the Victorian reign of the Liberal 
 saints even Bagehot sounds curiously out of 
 date, when he says " At this moment, though 
 the dogma of hereditary right has been confuted 
 for ages, though it has been laughed at for 
 ages, though Parliaments have condemned it 
 .... the tenet still lives in ordinary minds." 
 Condemned by Parliaments. How awful ! 
 What does the public care for that condemna- 
 tion to-day ? It is difficult not to smile at 
 the complacent superiority that dismisses as 
 " ordinary " the mind that can accept what 
 Bagehot has rejected. Put " dogma of God " 
 for " dogma of hereditary right " and the whole 
 sentence has the cocksure ring of the smug 
 young atheist, the clever youth, who used 
 to flourish in Mechanics' Institutes in mid- 
 Victorian days. No doubt this people that 
 " knoweth not the law " (not being Whigs) 
 are accursed, but the fact remains that for 
 them Divinity still does hedge a King. The 
 main body of English people have never been 
 touched by these Whig doctrines : and Irish, 
 Welsh, and Scotch no more. An Act of Parlia- 
 ment might define a king to be something 
 else, as it might define a horse to be a cow ; 
 but for the bulk of the people Acts might 
 come and go ; the King remains a King. These 
 doctrines were handy to justify a successful
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 183 
 
 aristocratic intrigue and became fashionable 
 amongst intellectuals, and later they fitted 
 in very well with the materialist Manchester 
 views that came to permeate the middle classes. 
 But the prayer book and the Coronation service 
 in particular have embodied the national and 
 popular conception of Kingship better than 
 Acts of Parliament. To the common people 
 the King is, as he has ever been, the Lord's 
 Anointed. Without analysing their feelings, 
 without thought of expressing their sense in 
 precise terms, without any conscious theology 
 they think of the King as by religious sanction 
 a person apart from other men. If they did 
 not, there would certainly be no King at all. 
 What is a " symbol of national unity " to 
 the work girl, the field-labourer, the ordinary 
 London working-man, or, for that matter, 
 to the farmer or to the middle class merchant's 
 wife ? What is a " Chief Magistrate " to them ? 
 So far as he meant anything, it would be some- 
 thing unpleasant. What remains of the 
 British King, if he is stripped of all religious 
 investiture ? He does not govern, he does not 
 command armies, he has to accept every Act 
 his advisers choose to impose upon him. Without 
 the touch of something more than human, 
 the King of England dwindles to a shade. 
 The discrepancy between regal facts and regal 
 forms would gape too wide for the people not 
 
 N
 
 1 84 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 to note it. There are those to whom, as to the 
 Whigs before, the Crown is a useful fiction. But 
 let the nation as a whole be seized of the idea 
 that the Crown is a fiction, and its usefulness 
 will not save it. To the unsophisticated mind 
 a King must be something real or nothing at 
 all. The people now have the instinct that 
 the King is sacro-sanct. His office, being 
 from above, makes him really different from 
 other people, whatever his personality, though 
 by faithlessness to his trust he can forfeit his 
 divine commission. There is an " intellectual " 
 type that cannot believe that the crowd has 
 any real enthusiasm for Royalty. But every 
 newspaper-man knows that nothing national 
 interests the ordinary reader nearly so much 
 as the doings of Royalty. A big Royal function 
 wedding, betrothal, funeral will send up 
 circulation much more than an election or 
 anything else political. The Imperial tour of 
 the Duke and Duchess of York was followed 
 eagerly and pinned out on the map by hundreds 
 and thousands, who would never see either 
 of them. In a public procession any of the 
 less known princesses will cause much more stir 
 in the crowd than the Prime Minister. The 
 trouble people of all classes will take to get a 
 sight of a King or a Queen is really wonderful. 
 Prints of Royalties are the favourite pictures 
 in cottage and model blocks, and are prominent
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 185 
 
 in middle class houses ; they get scarcer as 
 you get nearer to the top. Ask photographers 
 whose photographs sell best ? All this is so 
 irrational, and yet felt by everybody to be so 
 sound, that only an irrational explanation 
 will suffice ; which accounts for the rationalist 
 being always astray in these matters. He 
 who is not too big or too " intellectual " to 
 believe in a Divine Power investing a King 
 can sympathise with Royalty's irrational at- 
 traction for the multitude and gauge its signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 To the self-governing Dominions, to the 
 native people of India, to the small British 
 communities scattered over the world, the 
 King is the Empire in a more vivid way than 
 to us at home. They feel that he is their King 
 as much as he is our King ; that loyal duty 
 to him gives them equal fellowship in all the 
 traditions and all the splendour of the British 
 name. The person of the Sovereign is much 
 more to them than are our political institutions : 
 and this agrees with their recognition of the 
 King's authority but not of the authority of 
 the British Parliament. They acknowledge the 
 acts of British Ministers in Imperial policy 
 because they are the acts of the King, but the 
 intervention of Parliament many of them do 
 not acknowledge. And this is perfectly logical ; 
 for if they admit any power in the British Parlia-
 
 1 86 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 ment to dispose of matters of Imperial interest 
 and so affecting them as much as us, they put 
 themselves under us, Parliament being in theory 
 the people. But the act of a Minister is in a 
 different category. His authoriry according to 
 a very general colonial view derives solely 
 from the King, who is equally over us and 
 over them. 
 
 It is true Lord Salisbury proposed to pass 
 an Act of Parliament imposing on Newfoundland 
 certain conditions as to French fishing rights 
 which the colony was most unwilling to accept. 
 But the whole proceeding was greatly resented 
 by the colony. It was asserting a right in 
 the people here to coerce the people of a colony. 
 It was an unfortunate incident, and, had the 
 colony in question been as strong as Canada 
 or Australia, things would have taken a different 
 course. 
 
 It may be that legally this colonial contention 
 is wrong ; it certainly does not square with the 
 Colonial Laws Validity Act : but that is not 
 the point. The point is that, right or wrong, 
 this view is in fact not uncommon among citizens 
 of the Dominions. It is, at any rate, a per- 
 fectly rational view, and any plan that is in- 
 compatible with it will have more difficulty 
 in getting acceptance from the Dominions than 
 one that admits it. Even if convinced that 
 their constitutional position was not legally
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 187 
 
 sound, it is doubtful if those who had accepted 
 it would agree to any plan that was inconsistent 
 therewith. The scheme here set out is, at 
 any rate, entirely in sympathy with Dominion 
 sentiment in this matter. The Imperial Council, 
 being independent of all parliaments alike, 
 and responsible only to the King and people 
 of the Empire, stands in exactly the same 
 relation to all constituent States. The question 
 of the Imperial status of the British Parliament 
 would not even arise. The Imperial Govern- 
 ment would be truly His Majesty's Government, 
 and as such the whole Empire would have no 
 difficulty in recognising it. 
 
 The King would appoint the members of 
 the Imperial Council. Obviously it would defeat 
 one of the main objects of the scheme, the 
 elimination of party, if members of Council 
 were elected. It would be even worse to leave 
 it to the Parliaments or the State Ministries 
 to select them. Every vice of the Parliamentary 
 system would then be brought to play on the 
 Imperial Council. Men would be put forward 
 for seats on the Council not because of fitness 
 or capacity as men of action, but as a reward 
 for " political services," which would mean 
 mainly their power of interesting large audiences 
 or their influence with the Press. Slickness 
 in parliamentary debate would, no doubt, also 
 count.
 
 1 88 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 The King in making choice of original members 
 of the Council would necessarily seek advice 
 on all sides. He would consult leading men 
 of all classes and groups both here and in the 
 Dominions. Naturally, he would turn to his 
 regular advisers, his Ministers, both British 
 and Colonial. But he would be under no 
 constitutional necessity to accept their views 
 or even to give them any special weight. It 
 would perhaps be unfortunate if he did. A 
 parliamentary politician, no matter how eminent, 
 is likely to prefer a parliamentarian. Happily, 
 there are always one or two big men in public 
 life, men equally great in and out of Parliament, 
 who could be trusted to look without as well 
 as within " political circles " for choices for 
 the Imperial Council. It is not improbable 
 that these would lean rather to men who had 
 not been parliamentarians. Generally, while 
 it should not be a disqualification for service 
 on the Imperial Council that a man was or had 
 been in Parliament, it still less should be a 
 qualification for it. Perhaps one might put it 
 this way : there would be a presumption against 
 the parliamentarian, the party politician, but 
 the presumption would be rebuttable. It is 
 practically certain that the Council would always 
 include one or two men who had had large 
 experience of and attained eminence in political 
 life ; so that it might be desirable that other
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 189 
 
 members of the Council should be of a different 
 type. Certain limiting conditions would be 
 imposed on the King's choice. The members 
 representing Australia, New Zealand, Canada, 
 Newfoundland and South Africa, must respect- 
 ively be citizens of the Dominion they represent. 
 It may be that from time to time one or other 
 of the Dominions would gain by having as a 
 representative a particularly able man not of 
 that colony. But the importance of the Council 
 being in close touch with the whole Empire is 
 paramount. The people of a self-governing 
 state would never feel quite in sympathy with 
 an Imperial Government that did not include 
 one of their own fellow citizens. Nationalist 
 sentiment would not be conciliated by repre- 
 sentation no matter how able, if the representative 
 were not " one of us." Nor is there much fear 
 that even one of the smaller Dominions would 
 be unable to supply a man competent to serve 
 on the Council, though, of course, it might 
 happen that a bigger man could be got from 
 without. 
 
 Assuming that the Council consisted of ten 
 members, five of whom must be citizens of 
 the Dominions, it would be reasonable for the 
 present, in view of relative white population 
 and wealth, that the remaining five should be 
 citizens of the United Kingdom. 
 
 It would also be well that one of the members
 
 1 9 o IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 of Council should be a sailor and another a 
 soldier, who would be in charge of the Admiralty 
 and War Office respectively. This is not to 
 say there might not be other soldiers and sailors 
 on the Council besides these. 
 
 Also at least one member of Council should 
 be a member of some responsible trade union. 
 Organised labour is one of the most powerful 
 elements in the Empire, and no Imperial Gov- 
 ernment could succeed that was not in sym- 
 pathetic touch with it. Whether the Labour 
 Member of Council could also represent a 
 Dominion might be a matter for discussion. 
 Certainly there could be no disability on a 
 Dominion representative being also a trade 
 unionist ; but it probably would be better 
 always to have a Labour representative distinct 
 from the Dominion members and the heads 
 of departments. 
 
 Should it be a condition that one of the 
 members must be an Irishman ? There is much 
 to be said for it. An unfortunate political 
 past has tended to estrange Ireland from Im- 
 perial Government. It would be more than sad, 
 if, when a new start was being made in the 
 Government of the Empire with the express 
 object of drawing all its peoples closer together, 
 Irishmen were to look on indifferent, feeling 
 they were not concerned in the new move. 
 Ireland has never lacked brilliant men in the
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 191 
 
 service of the State. Obviously in view of past 
 associations it would be wise to select as the 
 Irish Member of Council some distinguished 
 public servant who has lived apart from political 
 and parliamentary circles. The names of many 
 great Irishmen who have served as soldiers 
 or administrators out of the United Kingdom 
 suggest themselves at once as examples of the 
 type desired. In the event of Ireland being 
 reorganised on an antonomous or Home Rule 
 basis, she would certainly be entitled to have a 
 representative on the Imperial Council, and 
 that representative must be an Irishman. Should 
 any part of Ireland remain beyond the juris- 
 diction of the Home Rule Government, the 
 Irish representative could not be taken from 
 that part ; but there would be nothing to 
 prevent Irishmen still governed directly from 
 Westminster serving on the Council as United 
 Kingdom representatives. 
 
 Obviously from an Imperial point of view 
 the adoption of the plan set out in this book 
 would greatly reduce the importance of the 
 Home Rule question, and would remove many 
 of the more serious difficulties most Unionists 
 have felt in accepting any policy of Home Rule. 
 
 If it is asked : Why not a Scotch member 
 and a Welsh member ? it is difficult to conceive 
 a British Imperial Council into which a Scotch- 
 man had not forced entry ; and as to Wales,
 
 192 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 in these days can one conceive of Wales being 
 overlooked ? England perhaps of all the partners 
 is most in danger of being forgotten. 
 
 The King's choice would also be under one 
 disability. No member of Council could at 
 the same time be a member of any State Parlia- 
 ment, British or Colonial, or of any State 
 Ministry. His position would become impossible 
 if he were. 
 
 Who should be chairman or president, and 
 who should represent the different departments 
 under the Council's control, would probably 
 best be left to the Council itself to decide. No 
 doubt the King would have his view as to the 
 best man for president, and would not hesitate 
 to let the Council know it. The Council being 
 a small body and not deliberating in public, 
 there would be no delicacy about introducing 
 the King's name and considering his advice. 
 
 The first Council appointed, the King in filling 
 up subsequent vacancies would probably be 
 mainly guided by the advice of the existing 
 members ; who by experience and by their 
 position should best be able to judge. Or would 
 there be no question of being guided ? Would 
 the King have no option ? Would it be his 
 duty to accept the advice of his Ministers, the 
 members of the Council, in this as in every other 
 matter whether he personally agreed with it 
 or not ? This raises a question as to the whole
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 193 
 
 position of the Sovereign on the setting up of 
 a new order, which the creation of a Council 
 of Empire would amount to. Would this step 
 be so really a new start that the old convention 
 of the King acting solely through his Minister 
 no longer held ? Or would it be no more than 
 a change in constitutional detail, political con- 
 ditions in other respects remaining as they were 
 before ? Generally it has been assumed here 
 that constitutionally there would be no changes 
 except such as necessarily resulted from the 
 creation of the Imperial Council. But this 
 does not help us in considering the position 
 of the Crown. It is possible plausibly to argue 
 both that the new arrangement must involve 
 a modification of the Crown's position, and 
 that it need not. It would be possible to define 
 the position of the King in any Act or Acts 
 setting up the Imperial Council, but it would 
 probably be very much better to leave it to 
 settle itself. 
 
 It seems likely that in fact the Crown would 
 take a more or less direct part in appointing the 
 members of the first Council and setting the 
 new machinery to work. If in this the King 
 acted only on advice of Ministers, it would 
 mean that the new order was set going entirely 
 by Ministers under the old order, there being 
 no other Ministers by whom to act. A Council 
 not responsible to Parliament would be ap-
 
 i 9 4 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 pointed by parliamentary Ministers, which is 
 not reasonable, and could hardly work for the 
 best success of the new order. The natural 
 way would be for the King as outside and above 
 Parliament on whom both old and new orders 
 equally hung to take the initiative in getting 
 the new order to work. Whether after that 
 he would act in everything Imperial only on 
 the advice of the Imperial Council as now only 
 on the advice of his Ministers, time would settle, 
 and settle best. There is no fear in these days 
 of mischievous encroachment by the Crown. 
 It is likely indeed that before long it would 
 come to be established that the King acted 
 entirely on the advice of his Imperial Ministers ; 
 though the appointment to vacancies on the 
 Council might well be an exception. If it were 
 within the exclusive power of existing members 
 of the Council to fill up the membership when- 
 ever there was a vacancy, it might lead to a 
 kind of in-breeding, to a stereotyped official 
 character. Naturally the recommendation of 
 the Council would have great weight, but it 
 need not be conclusive. If it is not to be con- 
 clusive, the King must have the constitutional 
 right to make appointments to the Council 
 on his own motion. He would not, it may be 
 assumed, appoint against the wishes of existing 
 members ; but he might appoint independently 
 of them. In other words, he would not thrust
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 195 
 
 upon them a man to whom they objected, but 
 he might not take the man they asked for. 
 
 The duration of the appointment is a question 
 of great importance. It must be of such con- 
 siderable length that members of the Council 
 could feel that they were securely in the saddle 
 and not exposed to risks of interruption before 
 their plans had time to mature. They must 
 be put beyond any temptation to hurry. It 
 is one of the serious weak points in nearly all 
 parliamentary systems that Ministers, never 
 being sure how long they may be in power, are 
 tempted to bring things to a head before they 
 have had time to develop. They naturally 
 are anxious to crowd as much as they can into 
 their own term of office. They cannot wait 
 to take long views. One of the gains reasonably 
 to be hoped for from an Imperial Council is 
 the correction of this habit in government. 
 Give such a Council a good long term of office, 
 independent of the chances of party politics, 
 with nothing to gain from haste, and it would 
 be able to settle down quietly to steady work. 
 It would have time to think ; the atmosphere 
 in which it would work would favour thought. 
 It would have no House of Commons to distract 
 its attention from the real issues ; and it should 
 not as a rule need to work at very high pressure. 
 
 Should then its members be appointed for 
 life ? Could their good sense be trusted to
 
 196 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 retire when they were incapacitated by age or 
 other infirmities ? That is what in fact happens 
 with the leaders of public life the men who 
 govern the country as things are now. A 
 fixed retiring age undonbtedly has its bad side : 
 it often withdraws from active life the best men 
 for the work they were engaged on, men still 
 in full possession of their powers. If possible, 
 a hard and fast limit should be avoided ; some 
 men grow old so much more quickly than others 
 that to fix for all the same retiring age is quite 
 unscientific. In many services it may be un- 
 avoidable ; but such an arrangement would be 
 wholly unsuitable to a supreme Council of ten. 
 At the same time it would be taking an un- 
 necessary risk: to allow every member to remain 
 on the Council as long as he thought fit. Ex- 
 perience of political life shows very clearly 
 to what that may lead. The ideal is a fixed 
 tenure of office long enough to give the holder 
 a chance in favourable conditions of doing 
 the utmost of which he is capable, but not long 
 enough to induce slackness or subject the office 
 to the shortcomings of senility. There can 
 be no necessarily best span of life for an appoint- 
 ment, but ten years uninterrupted will always 
 give a man a fair chance, and is not so long 
 that an unfortunate appointment will work 
 irreparable mischief. Original members of the 
 Council might be appointed for ten years. Their
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 197 
 
 tenure of office would determine at the end of 
 that time, but it would be wise to make them 
 eligible for reappointment. We could not 
 afford to lose good men who were still available 
 for service. Members appointed to fill up an 
 accidental vacancy happening during the 
 decennium would hold office for ten years from 
 the date of their appointment. The Council 
 itself, unlike Parliament, would never determine ; 
 there would never be a new or an old Council. 
 At the end of the first ten years all the original 
 members would cease to be councillors, but 
 re-appointment would operate from the moment 
 the ten years were up so that there would be 
 no break in continuity. Similarly the re- 
 appointment of members put on the Council 
 subsequently would follow immediately on the 
 determination of their ten years of office. 
 
 In this way the King would have an 
 opportunity of introducing new blood into 
 the Council more frequently than at the end 
 of every ten years from the beginning of the 
 Council. The responsibility of deciding 
 whether or not to re-appoint would not be light ; 
 sometimes no doubt it would bring about a very 
 difficult and delicate position ; but the King 
 would have the assistance of first-rate advice. 
 Other members of the Council would be able 
 to help him in the case he would find most difficult 
 and perhaps painful of all, the case where
 
 198 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 a very distinguished but ageing member of 
 long service on the Council wished for re-appoint- 
 ment but was not really equal to the work. 
 Such a situation demands judgment, strength, 
 tact and manner in the highest degree, but no 
 arrangement can prevent it sometimes arising 
 in every branch of public life. In the ordinary 
 course no doubt members of the Council would 
 be re-appointed, for those who were getting 
 too old or found the work too heavy for them 
 would resign or let it be known that they did 
 not desire to be re-appointed after their ten 
 years were up. There is the danger of re- 
 appointment becoming practically invariable 
 it would, of course, be the line of least resistance 
 for the King but the Press and public would 
 probably check such a tendency. Anyway, 
 vacancies would be sure to occur by the various 
 accidents of so long a span as ten years. 
 
 Then there is the question whether fixity 
 of tenure should be absolute during the ten 
 years for which the appointment was made. 
 Undoubtedly, it should be practically absolute, 
 but it might not be safe to provide no legal 
 means of getting rid of a member during his 
 natural term of office. There is always the 
 risk of some wholly abnormal development. 
 Suppose he wholly incapacitates himself by 
 drink or suffers a hopeless nervous breakdown, 
 yet will not resign ? Perhaps it might be provided
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 199 
 
 that the King could remove a member from 
 office at any time on the written petition of 
 all his colleagues on the Council. The necessity 
 of unanimity amongst his colleagues would be 
 protection enough against oppression, but would 
 not preclude action in very serious cases. 
 
 Members of Council would of course be paid 
 and presumably at about the same rate as 
 Cabinet Ministers are paid now. No member 
 of Council would be able to sit in either house 
 of any Parliament within the empire. Parlia- 
 ment, whether British or Colonial, not being 
 competent constitutionally to deal with Imperial 
 affairs, a member of the Council would in 
 Parliament have no reason of being ; and daily 
 association with parliamentary and party circles 
 would not be good for him. Besides, he could 
 not be in the Lower House, and with great 
 difficulty even in the House of Lords, and not 
 at all in any other Upper House, without 
 belonging to and being an effective member 
 of one party or another, which would be totally 
 incompatible with his position on the Imperial 
 Council. Consistently, discussion of matters 
 transferred to the Imperial Council should not 
 take place in Parliament. It would be idle 
 for Parliament to debate questions with which 
 it had no power to deal, and it should be out 
 of order. This need hardly be laid down form- 
 ally in an Act : the House itself could deal with
 
 200 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 it. No Government would care to encourage 
 questions which it could not answer or speeches 
 on matters beyond Ministers' control. Members 
 who insisted on talking at length on questions 
 proper to the Imperial Council, not to the 
 House, would soon become a nuisance, and 
 steps in the form of a standing order would 
 probably be taken to restrain them. But 
 every citizen would have the right to put 
 questions to the Council in writing, which, if 
 in proper form, and the public weal allowed, 
 would be answered. There would be subjects, 
 it is true, of interest common both to the 
 Imperial Council and to Parliament labour 
 questions, for instance, and Parliament must 
 of course be free to discuss them. Both 
 War Office and Admiralty are large em- 
 ployers of labour and Members of Parlia- 
 ment discussing labour matters could not be 
 debarred from mentioning in a speech on 
 some general industrial topic dockyard or 
 arsenal labour, though neither Ministers 
 nor Parliament would have power to interfere 
 in any way between the Imperial Council and 
 the men it employed. A regular debate on a 
 current dispute between Admiralty or War 
 Office and some of its men would be a different 
 thing. But on the whole it would probably be 
 best to leave that too to the discretion of the 
 House or of the Government. There would,
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 201 
 
 no doubt, from time to time be difficulties 
 in deciding whether a particular matter were 
 entirely for the Imperial Council or of interest 
 common to Council and Parliament. It would 
 be for the Speaker or Chairman of Committee 
 to decide. If the Council thought the decision 
 prejudicial to its work, its Chairman would no 
 doubt confer privately with the Prime Minister 
 and a modus vivendi would be reached. These 
 things are not usually difficult to arrange when 
 there is good will on both sides ; and it is party 
 that prevents this good will. Arrangement 
 between Parliament and a non-party body like 
 the Council would be easier than between 
 two parties. 
 
 The Council's duty in the use of the 
 Referendum would need to be defined with 
 some precision. It should be made compulsory 
 on the Council to refer certain defined questions 
 to the country. Every year the Army, Navy 
 and Foreign estimates would have to be sub- 
 mitted and approved by the people : in short 
 an annual Imperial Budget, covering the whole 
 expenditure of the Imperial Council. This would 
 be a statement of the military and naval 
 establishment proposed for the year (including 
 rates of pay) in terms comparative with the 
 year preceding. All the ordinary proposals 
 of the Council for the year would be submitted 
 together and accepted or rejected en bloc.
 
 202 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 A Memorandum (in readable easy language, 
 if possible) explanatory of the actual questions 
 referred might be issued with the question 
 form shortly before the voting day. 
 
 But questions of a certain defined class 
 would have to be referred specifically, and not 
 on the same day as the ordinary annual 
 Referendum. These would include such organic 
 changes as the introduction of compulsory 
 service or its extension or restriction or alteration 
 in the number of year's service. 
 
 In addition to these compulsory Referenda 
 the Council should have the power to take a 
 Special Referendum when it thought fit. Unfor- 
 seen questions might arise that did not fall 
 within the category of any of the compulsory 
 Referenda, but the Council might wish to take 
 the view of the people upon them. 
 
 It would be desirable for the Council to 
 publish an annual report which would be a 
 survey of the Empire for the year. Blue books 
 and White papers would be issued by the 
 departments concerned as they are now ; and 
 the Council would no doubt send frequent 
 communications to the press, which would 
 take the place of answers to arranged questions 
 in Parliament on matters of emergency or of 
 critical interest. 
 
 In this way the public would be kept in 
 touch with Imperial affairs as closely as now ;
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 203 
 
 in fact more closely, for the touch would be 
 a truer one. In ordinary times imperial 
 questions reach the general public mainly 
 through the distracting medium of party debate 
 in Parliament or party writing in newspapers. 
 Under the government of a non-party Council 
 the public would be able to think of Imperial 
 matters unmixed with" politics," and not a 
 few would be only too glad to do so. They 
 alone would regret the disasppearance of 
 debates on foreign policy whose interest was 
 in the political game rather than in the questions 
 debated. The press would be as free as ever 
 to discuss all foreign and Imperial questions. 
 It would fearlessly criticise both the policy 
 and methods of the Imperial Council, and its 
 significance in this sphere would be greater 
 than it is now. The press would then have 
 to fulfil some of the legitimate, though generally 
 ill-performed, functions of Parliament. It 
 would be the national critic of Imperial policy 
 and the national ventilator of Imperial questions. 
 This office it could perform in a non-party 
 spirit, and it is likely that many papers would 
 make it a point of pride to keep their treatment 
 of foreign and imperial questions free of party 
 taint. The new position occupied by Imperial 
 policy would, it is to be hoped, lead to the 
 appearance of high class Reviews entirely 
 devoted to those subjects. There would be
 
 204 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 an end of the present dilemma which practically 
 leaves only a choice between party discussion 
 of these subjects and no discussion at all. 
 
 It has lately been laid down by irresponsible 
 wisdom that " Without (a Parliament) no 
 genuine discussion of foreign affairs can take 
 place, and government becomes a secret 
 committee which need not report." Well, what- 
 ever might happen without a Parliament, it 
 is certain there is no genuine discussion of 
 foreign affairs in this country with one : and 
 has not been for many years. Does this very 
 confident authority on constitutional machinery 
 really suppose that the Government is not now 
 and was not before the war " a secret committee " 
 so far as foreign policy is concerned ? Does he 
 really think that Parliament is taken into the 
 Government's confidence ? That all the items 
 of the House of Commons count in the direction 
 of foreign policy ? That the few speeches made 
 on foreign affairs make any difference in what 
 is done ? (They may make a difference to the 
 speaker's career : that is all). Why, not half 
 the members of the Cabinet itself are really in 
 the confidence of the Foreign Secretary and 
 Prime Minister on foreign questions. This writer 
 could hardly help knowing all these things; yet 
 he puts forward Parliament as the remedy ! 
 
 Sometimes, when an important change was 
 to be Referred, the Council would probably
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 205 
 
 descend into the arena, arguing and explaining 
 by letters or articles in the papers or even by 
 appearance on the platform. In the event 
 of its annual programme being rejected it 
 would have to put the position vigorously and 
 clearly before the public in order to secure 
 the acceptance of an amended scheme which 
 would be submitted later. Would this happen 
 often ? Would the public show an irresponsible 
 spirit and reject the arrangements for the 
 year without thought of consequences ? Suppose, 
 it may be objected, the Empire rejects net the 
 annual programme both original and amended 
 year after year ? Well, no doubt the whole 
 system would collapse. But so would any 
 system if those who are to work it determine 
 instead to wreck it. It is reasonable to assume 
 ordinary sense of responsibility and not mere 
 levity in the people of the British Empire. 
 Nothing could be easier than to make the present 
 parliamentary system unworkable, if the country 
 had the levity to do it. But let English men 
 and women understand what is asked of them 
 and they will act reasonably. They might 
 refer back the Council's annual programme 
 through discontent with some part of it. But 
 it would be apparent what was the obnoxious 
 feature and the Council would either modify, 
 give way, or convert the public to its plan. It 
 is most unlikely the Empire would reject the
 
 2o6 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 whole arrangement en bloc twice following. 
 Or the Council might refer the programme 
 again with the omission of the vexed questions, 
 which might be reserved for a Special Referendum. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the whole business 
 of the Referendum has some affinity with 
 " politics " and political methods ; and the 
 management of the Referendum would distract 
 the Council's attention to some extent from 
 its proper object the consideration of Imperial 
 issues on their merits only. The Council would 
 be forced sometimes to consider not only what 
 was best but also what would be acceptable 
 to the people. But so must popular government 
 of any kind. Moreover the distraction would 
 be incomparably less under the plan here proposed 
 than under a parliamentary system. Trying 
 to get public assent to a specific proposal by 
 argument is utterly different from trying to 
 get yourself preferred to a rival by all varities 
 of persuasion. 
 
 The workability of the Referendum in a 
 vast Empire scattered over the world seems, 
 at any rate at first sight, a " very large order." 
 But cable and wireless telegraphy have made 
 many impossible things possible. In these days 
 there would be no greater difficulty in conducting 
 a Referendum all over the Empire at once than 
 in one of its constituent Dominions alone. 
 The form would be settled by the Council here
 
 THE KING AND THE COUNCIL 207 
 
 and would then be cabled or wirelessed to 
 the proper office in every unit of the Empire : 
 where it would immediately be printed 
 and circulated. The Council would have a 
 regular agent in every Dominion in the person 
 of the Governor and his staff. It would take 
 no longer to circulate this in Australia or Canada 
 and take the answers of the electorate than 
 it would if the Referendum had originated in and 
 been peculiar to one of those Dominions. The 
 figures for the Dominion would be counted there 
 and the total would be communicated to the Impe- 
 rial Council without delay. The totals from all 
 the Units of the Empire should reach the Council 
 very soon after the Referendum had been 
 taken on the same or nearly the same day 
 or days everywhere and the grand result 
 could be published the next day in London 
 and all over the Empire. It would take longer 
 to circulate the Annual Survey and other 
 publications of the Council, but fore-sight 
 could always provide the time necessary.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FINANCE 
 
 THERE would naturally be a Finance 
 Member of Council, whose duty it 
 would be to watch expenditure and 
 keep the Council informed of and alive to the 
 financial side of every measure proposed. The 
 members representing the Admiralty and War 
 Office would frame estimates of the needs of 
 their departments as they do now, and would 
 lay them before the Council. There they would 
 be fully discussed and criticised, and no doubt 
 there would sometimes be a struggle between 
 the Military or Naval member and the Finance 
 member, though the temptation to reduce the 
 strength of the forces for the sake of financial 
 appearances would be very small compared 
 with the strain to which a party Government 
 is exposed. The Council having reached agree- 
 ment, the Finance Minister would draw up a 
 complete estimate of expenditure of all sorts 
 for the coming financial year to be included in 
 the annual Referendum ; which would takt 
 
 208
 
 FINANCE 209 
 
 place at a date, which in the event of rejection 
 would leave the Council ample time to consider 
 the situation and revise the estimates for a 
 second Referendum before the end of the fi- 
 nancial year. The Council would thus not be 
 left without supplies. The estimates approved 
 by the people,, the Finance member would 
 then proceed to apportion the total amount 
 required for the Imperial services among the 
 constituent states of the Empire proportionately 
 to their annual income or their taxable value. 
 
 Nothing would be charged against India, 
 which pays her own way, and in keeping up 
 the forces required for Indian defence makes 
 at the least a fair contribution to the Imperial 
 services. It would be foolish to alter the present 
 system of Indian Government merely in order 
 to bring it formally into line with the rest of 
 the Empire ; whereby, moreover, the Empire 
 would lose financially, for on a basis of annual 
 income India would contribute less than she 
 pays now. Ultimately, the Secretary of State 
 for India, representing the Imperial Government, 
 would decide in case of differences from the 
 Indian Government as now ; and he would 
 annually present an Indian budget to the Council 
 as now to Parliament ; and the figures would 
 be published. There would not need to be 
 any change in the conduct of the India Office. 
 
 This apportionment of Imperial charge among
 
 210 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 the units of the Empire United Kingdom, 
 Dominions, and Crown Colonies would mean 
 to most of them an increase of taxation. Their 
 present contributions to Imperial service would 
 then be brought into the common expenditure 
 of the Empire, and must be set against the levy 
 under the new scheme ; but it would usually 
 leave a balance against the Dominion. It is more 
 than possible that some of the units of Empire 
 would not, on a just review of their position, 
 be able to contribute on a strictly proportionate 
 basis proportionate to annual income or tax- 
 able value. An exactly proportionate contri- 
 bution might mean much more to one State 
 than to another. A small unit, whose income 
 was not large and resources comparatively small 
 or as yet undeveloped and so demanding all 
 available capital, might be paying a great deal 
 more than a richer and more advanced Dominion, 
 if it contributed on the same basis. Therefore, 
 it might be wise or indeed necessary to establish 
 a graduated basis of contribution. This would 
 no doubt tell heavily against the United King- 
 dom ; but in any event the " home " population 
 must expect for a long time to come to take 
 the lion's share of the burden of Imperial 
 expenditure. They will not " jib " at it. They 
 have had this honour for long: after all noblesse 
 oblige. The basis and method of graduation 
 would be discussed and settled by the Council :
 
 FINANCE 211 
 
 the Dominion members looking after the interests 
 of the State they represented respectively. 
 
 The Imperial budget of expenditure having 
 been approved by the people and apportioned, 
 the Finance member of Council would then 
 make precepts on the British Treasury and 
 all the Dominion treasuries. The Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer and the Finance Ministers of 
 the other States of the Empire must accept the 
 precept without amendment except that it 
 would be open to any of them to show that 
 the amount of the precept was not correctly 
 calculated on the basis legally established ; 
 mistakes in arithmetic must, of course, be 
 corrected. The Council's precepts having been 
 correctly made, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 and the Finance Ministers would have to collect 
 the money and pay it in to the Imperial 
 Treasury by a fixed time. Parliament would 
 have no power to vary the precept of the Imperial 
 Council in any way. The Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer presenting his budget would naturally 
 point out very clearly to the House for what 
 proportion of the total expenditure and the 
 taxation required to meet it he was not respons- 
 ible. Some members might criticise the Council's 
 estimates, but the Government would probably 
 refrain from joining in the discussion, and, if 
 challenged, would content themselves with point- 
 ing out that these items of expenditure were
 
 212 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 not within their province. Should the point 
 of excessive expenditure and taxation figure 
 prominently at an election, the party in power 
 could be trusted to make the country thoroughly 
 understand that Parliment and the Ministry 
 had nothing to do with the amount spent on 
 the Army and Navy ; which would certainly 
 be put forward as the main cause of the heavy 
 National Bill. The public might also be 
 reminded that it already approved this ex- 
 penditure, if it had, by the Referendum 
 previously held. There is no reason to think 
 that the Chancellor of the Exchequer or a Domi- 
 nion Finance Minister would unjustly incur any 
 serious odium for expenditure which was no 
 fault of his. The Metropolitan Borough Coun- 
 cils do not seem to chafe at having to collect 
 the county rate, which they have no hand in 
 fixing, and which meets expenditure entirely 
 outside their control. It is made clear to the 
 ratepayer that the County Council and not 
 the Borough is responsible for that portion of 
 the rate, and that seems to be enough. In the 
 unlikely event of a British or a Dominion Gov- 
 ernment refusing or failing to collect its Imperial 
 quota, the Imperial Council would have the 
 right (conferred expressly by the Statute creating 
 the Council) to take the place of the defaulting 
 or recalcitrant Government and itself collect 
 the contribution payable by that Government
 
 FINANCE 213 
 
 to the Council. Every Government must have 
 the power ultimately to compel payment by 
 the taxpayers of taxes necessary to carry out 
 the duties that Government has undertaken. 
 The Council would have the right to use all 
 the local machinery of collection, including 
 the courts and execution, and, if needed, the 
 Imperial military forces. If the British or a 
 Dominion Government and all its agents refused 
 to obey and resisted the Imperial Council, that 
 would mean rebellion, and the situation to be 
 faced would be that of a constituent unit of 
 Empire trying to secede. A less remote, indeed, 
 quite a possible contingency, is that of a con- 
 tributory State, thinking it was being rated 
 in an unjust amount to Imperial purposes, 
 passively refraining from collecting the money 
 as a protest. The Council would then step in 
 and collect for itself. This however would 
 involve something more than collection : for, 
 the defaulting Government not having budgetted 
 for enough money to include the Imperial 
 charge, the Council would have to consider 
 ways and means and settle what new additional 
 taxation should be imposed to produce the 
 amount required. 
 
 It may seem unsound that the Imperial 
 Council should have the power to spend but 
 not the responsibility of finding the money. 
 It is as though the Council drew a cheque for
 
 214 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 Parliament to honour. What would happen 
 to an arrangement by which one man was to 
 run up the bills and another man had to meet 
 them ? The analogy of the private person 
 involves a fallacy. The Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer does not have to find the money ; the 
 taxpayers find the money. As Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer he does now impose expenditure 
 which others have to meet : in so far as he is 
 a taxpayer himself, he helps to pay for the 
 things he is buying for the nation. It would 
 be the same, so far, with the Imperial Council. 
 In both cases it is the taxpayers that would 
 find the money and not the authority that 
 incurred the expenditure or imposed the taxes. 
 
 But the Imperial Council would not have 
 to consider in what form the taxpayers should 
 be required to contribute the money, nor would 
 they have to collect it. The Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer or the Finance Minister has 
 to do both. 
 
 The total amount to be spent in the year on 
 Imperial defence and policy is essentially an 
 Imperial concern ; it is not particular or local ; 
 but the way in which the people of a particular 
 State of the Empire shall make their contribution 
 to this common burden of expenditure is parti- 
 cular, and should therefore be settled by a 
 particular and not the Imperial Government. 
 Countries vary in the character of their resources,
 
 FINANCE 215 
 
 in the habits of their people, in the stage of their 
 development. Therefore not the same kind 
 of taxation suits all. A tax might be fair and 
 lightly borne in the United Kingdom which 
 would be felt to be very burdensome in one or 
 other of the Dominions : a tax might be very 
 productive in one colony and not at all in another ; 
 long custom may have produced complete ac- 
 quiescence whether of content or indifference 
 in a form of taxation in one country whose 
 novelty in another would provoke active 
 opposition. It would be impossible for the 
 Imperial Council to devise a scheme of taxation 
 which would be fair and would suit the many 
 and widely differing States of the Empire. 
 Leave taxation to the different particular Gov- 
 ernments and there is far better prospect of 
 the taxes being suited to the needs and character 
 of the country. The incidence of taxation, which 
 is a question not of how much but how, interests 
 the people more than its total amount. There 
 is seldom any real popular excitement about 
 the amount of national expenditure or the 
 burden of taxation, but there is often acute 
 excitement about a particular tax. Therefore, 
 if there is anything at all in representative 
 Government, it is the representative body which 
 should be responsible for the form in which the 
 people are made to contribute to State expenses. 
 So far as the form of taxation goes, the scheme
 
 216 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 here proposed would leave things just as they 
 are. 
 
 But though the Council in settling the amount 
 to be spent would be independent of Parliament, 
 and Parliament in settling how the money was 
 to be raised would be independent of the Im- 
 perial Council, naturally the Finance Minister 
 of the Council and the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer and Dominion Finance Ministers 
 would be in one another's confidence. They 
 would be in constant communication and would 
 work together. The Finance Branch of the 
 Imperial Council would be in close touch with 
 the British and the Dominion treasuries. Every- 
 thing would be done to dovetail their respective 
 functions. Friction is always possible, and there 
 might be a certain amount of jealousy. But 
 that would not put the new scheme of 
 Government in any worse case than the present. 
 
 As to the control of the Imperial Council 
 and the risk that its irresponsibility for the 
 selection and collection of taxes might introduce 
 extravagance, its members would be sane and 
 experienced men, probably the reverse of irres- 
 ponsible in temper. They would know that 
 there must be reason ki expenditure, and would 
 have regard for public opinion. There would 
 be the check of the Imperial Auditor and Con- 
 troller's office, and there might well be an 
 independent unofficial committee to do what
 
 FINANCE 217 
 
 the Committee of Public Accounts does now. 
 The Institute of Chartered Accountants might 
 be asked to select a committee for this purpose 
 annually. Public spirited men, who need not 
 all be accountants, could certainly be found 
 to undertake this duty without fee, their ex- 
 penses only being paid. Also, the Finance 
 Branch of the Imperial Council would itself 
 be a check on expenditure as is the Treasury now. 
 Popular control of finance would be secured 
 as effectively by the Referendum as by Parlia- 
 ment. Constitutionally, as we all know, 
 parliamentary discussion ranks high as a national 
 bulwark against extravagance every text-book 
 tells you it is the main business of the House 
 of Commons. It is amusing to compare the 
 theory with facts. Parliament at any rate 
 utterly failed to prevent very rapid and enormous 
 increase in pre-war expenditure. Minute ex- 
 amination of expenditure by the House there 
 is none : millions and millions are voted every 
 year without question or comment ; and when 
 there is a debate on finance, it is hardly ever 
 a serious examination of expenditure. It is 
 usually a party move. So far as the House 
 of Commons goes, a Government with a working 
 majority can be as extravagant as it likes : 
 it will suffer nothing there for its want of thrift.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOME FORMALITIES 
 
 THE work of building up a new Imperial 
 Constitution would naturally fall to 
 a special Imperial Conference, set in 
 motion perhaps by the annual Empire Cabinet. 
 Hitherto these conferences have rather care- 
 fully kept away from such questions, but times 
 have changed and this shyness is wearing off. 
 Close co-operation in the war has familiarised 
 the different states within the Empire with the 
 idea of closer permanent union. 
 
 A resolution in favour of closer organic union 
 would perhaps first be passed ; the same 
 Conference might go so far as to pronounce 
 in favour of an Imperial Council. This would 
 probably result in the United Kingdom and 
 the Dominions appointing a delegacy with 
 express instructions to frame a constitution 
 based on an Imperial Council. It is not likely 
 that the delegacy would be given power absolutely 
 to commit the government which it represented ; 
 but it is probable that a scheme agreed on 
 
 218
 
 SOME FORMALITIES 219 
 
 by them would be accepted. It would then 
 have to be submitted to Parliament here and 
 in the Dominions. 
 
 If a scheme were adopted on the lines traced 
 in the foregoing chapters, the Bill setting up 
 the Imperial Council could not be presented 
 in absolutely identical form to the British 
 Parliament as to the Dominion Parliaments, 
 since the change it would make in the status 
 of the British Parliament would not apply 
 to the Dominions. 
 
 The adoption of such a scheme would be a 
 bigger or at any rate more debateable question 
 for the United Kingdom than for the Dominions. 
 To them it would be an increase of power leaving 
 their parliamentary system directly unaffected. 
 To the United Kingdom in some ways, though 
 more in appearance than in fact, it would be 
 a great change. Men to whom their parlia- 
 mentary career is everything, who conceive 
 the whole world from the point of view of a 
 member of the British Parliament, could not 
 be expected to welcome a change which, 
 diminishing from the power of Parliament, 
 reduces their own importance at the same 
 time. Many members of Parliament, of course, 
 are not of this sort, but many are and these, 
 we may be sure, would fight hard against the 
 new plan. If they succeeded in their opposition, 
 the matter would have to be taken to the
 
 electorate ; who, if in favour of the plan, would 
 return members pledged to vote for it. Or the 
 government of the day might wish to take the 
 view of the people by Referendum. If they 
 thought it necessary to obtain parliamentary 
 sanction to this, it would be difficult for members 
 to oppose it. It would look as if they were 
 afraid to take the opinion of the people. Anyway 
 it is certain that if the Referendum went in 
 favour of the new plan, it would soon pass through 
 Parliament. 
 
 If both Government and Parliament were 
 against and refused to take a vote of the people 
 upon the plan, there would still be the last 
 resource force. This is not a fantastic or a 
 wicked suggestion. Quite lately force has 
 played a decisive part in British politics. It 
 is quite certain that if the Ulster Unionists 
 had not made a very resolute demonstration 
 of force, a scheme of Irish Home Rule would 
 have been imposed upon them against their 
 will, though not unconstitutionally. They 
 may have been right or they may have been 
 wrong ; that is not the point. The point is 
 that quite recently force was resorted to for 
 a political end with complete success. After 
 the war, if there were a strong body of sober 
 opinion that the Government and the parlia- 
 mentarians were preventing the country from 
 expressing its view on a constitutional change
 
 SOME FORMALITIES 221 
 
 which happened to lessen the power of Parliament, 
 a short way would probably be found to get 
 rid of the obstacle. A large proportion of the 
 electorate would by that time have received 
 a military training. There would be no 
 fighting, of course, for the Government, realising 
 what was likely to happen, would give way 
 and the people would vote on the plan. If 
 they voted against it, the matter would drop 
 for a time ; if they voted for it, Parliament 
 would pass the Bill. 
 
 The Bill would put the Imperial Council 
 for all Imperial purposes very much in the 
 place of the British Cabinet under the old 
 regime except that the Council would not need 
 to go to Parliament for anything. The draftsman 
 of the Bill would accomplish this by the proper 
 legal formulae expressing the technically correct 
 constitutional steps, of which the effect would 
 be to make the Council, under the King, supreme 
 over the whole Empire, subject to the obligation 
 to consult the people by Referendum. This 
 obligation the Bill would define. What H.M. 
 Government can now do without consulting Par- 
 liament the Council would be able to do without a 
 Referendum. Any measure proposed by the Coun- 
 cil and endorsed by Referendum would have the 
 force of law and would be law : it would be an 
 Act though not an Act of Parliament. It might 
 be technically described as an Act of Empire.
 
 222 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 It would of course require the King's signature. 
 It would be the duty of every state or municipal 
 authority in the Empire to enforce by its courts 
 and police throughout its jurisdiction any Act 
 of Empire or any direction legally given on 
 the authority of Council. 
 
 The Bill would specifically define what points 
 the Council was under compulsion to refer 
 to the people and would empower the Council 
 to refer other points at its discretion. 
 
 As partly declaratory of the Council's sphere 
 of action and jurisdiction, the Bill would lay 
 down that the Secretaries of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, War, India, and the Colonies and 
 the First Lord of the Admiralty must 
 be members of the Imperial Council. This 
 would automatically vest the administration 
 of those offices in the Council. But the declara- 
 tory words must not limit by implication the 
 action of the Council or its power to those 
 offices. 
 
 The Bill would lay down that any act of the 
 Council dealing with business wholly without 
 its sphere of action, that is to say, local or 
 state business proper to the British or a Dominion 
 government or Parliament, and any act or 
 resolution of the British or a Dominion Govern- 
 ment dealing with business not proper to 
 the United Kingdom or the particular Dominion 
 was invalid as ultra vires.
 
 SOME FORMALITIES 223 
 
 This would involve a Supreme Court to 
 decide disputes as to what was or was not 
 proper to the Imperial Council or to a State 
 Government or Parliament. This function could 
 be perfectly fulfilled by the Judicial Committee 
 of the Privy Council to whom it would be open 
 to either party to refer disputed points. There 
 would be no need of any other distinctively 
 Imperial Court than the Judicial Committee 
 nor of Imperial police. The Imperial police 
 would be the military. 
 
 The Bill would empower the British and every 
 Dominion Government, with the consent of 
 Parliament, to propose to the Imperial Council 
 that it should take over any department now 
 administered locally and administer it as an 
 Imperial department, the Council accepting 
 or refusing the proposal at its discretion ; pro- 
 vided that the department proposed to be 
 transferred was not necessarily local in its 
 operations. To secure the observation of this 
 proviso it might be required that the consent 
 of the Judicial Committee be obtained to every 
 such transfer. If the Council desired to take 
 over a department from a State Government 
 which that Government had not proposed it 
 should take over, the Council could approach 
 the State Government, and, if it was willing, 
 the transfer could go forward. If not, the 
 Council could suggest that the Imperial Council
 
 224 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 and the State Government should jointly refer 
 the question to the electorate of the particular 
 State, both agreeing to abide by the result of 
 the Referendum. If the State Government 
 refused, the matter would drop, but could be 
 brought up again after a reasonable interval. 
 
 Should the Council desire to amend its own 
 constitution in a way that did not encroach 
 on the powers of any State Government, the 
 Bill would empower it to refer the proposed 
 amendment to the people. If endorsed, the 
 amendment would take effect and become law. 
 
 No legal way has yet been provided of amend- 
 ing the Council against its own will. But it 
 is conceivable that the Council might develop 
 in one direction or another undesirable or 
 absolutely mischievous tendencies ; it might 
 prove insufficiently adaptable in form. Only 
 experience can effectively test a constitution, 
 and experience is almost certain to disclose 
 points that will want correcting ; and as it 
 is at least possible that those working the con- 
 stitution will not wish to make the correction, 
 it is well to provide a legal means of doing this 
 in spite of their obstruction to be used only 
 as a last resource. The obvious remedy for 
 a deadlock caused by the Council refusing to 
 Refer an amendment of its constitution obviously 
 necessary or insistently demanded by important 
 elements in the country is to leave it to the
 
 SOME FORMALITIES 225 
 
 King on his own motion to Refer the question 
 to the people. This would be an extreme 
 course, and would be resorted to only in the 
 event of all other means to find a way out of 
 the deadlock failing. The necessity of the 
 King's intervention would be safeguard enough 
 against precipitate or too frequent action. It 
 is more likely than not that it would never be 
 needed, but the knowledge that it was there, 
 legally ready to be used, would not be a bad 
 thing for the members of the Council. 
 
 It may be objected that this might expose 
 the King to popular clamour in the event of 
 his not putting the Referendum in motion on 
 some occasion when there was some popular 
 discontent with the Council. But the public 
 cares little for constitutional questions : the 
 matters on which a question of the King's 
 intervention might arise would usually not 
 excite the people at all. The matters within 
 the Council's control that would most affect 
 the people the Council must, willingly or un- 
 willingly, refer to them. Should there arise 
 a question affecting the Council's constitution 
 which did happen to stir the public deeply, 
 it is obvious that in a democratic country the 
 Referendum would have to be put in motion. 
 It is fairly certain that the Council would anti- 
 cipate intervention by the King. If the 
 Referendum should go in favour of the Council,
 
 226 IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR 
 
 well ; if it should go against them it would be 
 against them none the less when the King 
 intervened, and they would appear in a worse 
 light than if they had spontaneously gone to 
 the people. The Council would, of course, 
 know what the King meant to do. There 
 would in practice be no conflict between King 
 and people. 
 
 It is not meant that only the points taken 
 in this chapter would find a place in the Bill 
 establishing the new order. That Bill would 
 embody all the constructive proposals herein- 
 before made. But it seemed desirable to make 
 clearer from the legal point of view certain 
 points in the scheme hitherto rather implied 
 than set out. Legally indeed, the scheme would 
 involve many other consequent changes. But 
 these are formal technicalities, which are better 
 left out of a sketch which necessarily can be 
 no more than suggestion. 
 
 THE END
 
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