If it should prove that Great Britain fails to defeat Kaiserism, and thereby ceases to be Great Britain

- at least, to be the British Empire the cause of failure will be our superstitious belief in a House of Commons as the only possible government in war. To Britons that house has become a sacred fetish in which they put absolute faith, and which they vaunt as the principle of democracy. As the German race are ready to sacrifice their nation to the army, their Kaiser, and kultur, as Irishmen seem ready to sacrifice Ireland to revenge, so Britons will see England go down rather than doubt the collective wisdom of Parliament. All our disasters and our blunders can be ultimately traced to this: that from the inveterate tradition of centuries we put trust in the majesty of Parliament we can only think Parliamentarily, and look to Parliamentary tactics as the road to victory. It would be idle to raise an academic argument about Parliamentary government in peace and normal times. In war and in revolution, I say, it means disaster, confusion, ruin. And we are in war and in revolution.

Against this it will be said that Parliament is being gagged, misled, VOL. XI-NO. 537

and ignored by ministers. There are indeed loud outcries about the tyranny of the dictator of the hour, criticism silenced, and information refused. But this is no real answer. Prime Minister, War Council, Cabinet, and Ministers, however much invested with arbitrary power, exercise their office under rigid conditions of Parliamentary tactics. The tone of the House of Commons, party combinations, divisions, and whips, are ever in their minds and govern their decrees. Be the nominal head of the Government Asquith or Lloyd George

as it might be with Henderson his policy is framed to meet what the House will say, or want, or do. Mr. Lloyd George is in no sense a real dictator. At any rate, he is living from day to day at the mercy of a hostile division, as Clemenceau is not, as Wilson is not much less as Hindenburg is not. Hindenburg finds the Reichstag useful to blow off steam. Clemenceau is master of the Chamber, as Wilson is far more master of Congress. Even the power of the press, which is so often denounced, acts by and through the House of Commons.

In the six years before the war,

when Asquith, Grey, and Haldane knew that a tremendous attack from Germany was inevitable, why did they not make full preparations to meet it? Because they dared not face the House of Commons. When the blow came in 1914, why did they not call the nation to arms? The House was still under the intoxication of 'Peace, Retrenchment, Home Rule.' When the nation forced them into conscription, why did they not include Irishmen? The Nationalist Party were masters of the Parliamentary situation. When all the vital problems of Suffrage, Education, House of Lords, Agriculture, and Finance were mooted, why was the one thought to conciliate the rival factions in the House, instead of trusting the real sense of the nation, which detested most of these factions? When, a year ago, it became certain that the enemy would have enormous fresh resources, why was nothing done? Because the House would not like to do anything! When in a panic they sought to raise an unprecedented age of service, why did they bethink them of Irish conscription plus Irish Home Rule?

In

Why? Because it seemed a good House of Commons bar to opposition. And when conscription in Ireland raised a storm, why was an Irish secretary appointed for the very reason that he had voted against it? Because it would reassure Mr. Dillon and his friends, and bring them back to Westminster where their presence seemed so much desired! No! this world war, in this world revolution, Britain has no dictator; no Government; no statesmen at all. Why not? Because the House of Commons makes it impossible. We have able, patriotic, eloquent, devoted public men, who were bred in the atmosphere of St. Stephen's that mephitic hall of muddle, talk, and compromise

men who never see their country, Europe, or the world unless under the historic eye of Mr. Speaker. Our most famous Parliamentary Ministers

-Walpole, North, W. Pitt, Gladstone in European policy led us into a series of disasters. We were only successful in war when men like Cromwell, Churchill, Chatham, and Wellington broke the Parliamentary fetters. There is no one to deliver us from it now. The old humdrum Parliamentary machine with weeks of futile debate, questions, committees, intrigues, busybodies, Paul Prys, and envious traitors has to go rumbling along, though our men die and food ships sink.

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So, too, the Irish dilemma is mainly due to the superstition which surrounds the name of Parliament. To the average Briton Parliament is a sort of terrestrial Providence a heaven to which patriotic souls may ascend to glory. A glamour of mundane omnipotence gilds it. When Mr. Gladstone proposed Home Rule for Ireland, very wisely, as most of us thought, but identified this with the ambiguous term of Parliament, Irishmen and too many Britons, Australians, and Americans took this to mean the practical autonomy and independent supremacy of an Irish. House of Commons. All Parliaments within the British Empire have real independence with only a formal suzerainty. To the average Briton the idea of any Parliament being subordinate to another Parliament was a paradox. Mr. Gladstone and his party might reiterate with cogent eloquence that the new Parliament in Dublin was quite an understudy to the old Parliament in Westminster. To the Irish this seemed only meant to save Mr. Gladstone's face and to ease the Gladstonian conscience; but that, in fact and for the future, a

Parliament in Dublin really meant the national independence of Ireland. And the more familiar the idea of a Dublin Parliament became to Britons, to Ulster, to our Colonies, and abroad, the more readily it settled down to the idea of Irish independence which, as Euclid says, 'is absurd.'

Of course, the believers in Parliamentary parties will cry out that all this means a military dictatorship for autocracy, and rank Prussianism. To charge me with anything of the kind, who for fifty years now have denounced all forms of aggression, warlike adventures, and absolutism, would be ridiculous. A veteran republican in principle, a fervent advocate for a real popular government and the root principle of the purse strings being in the absolute control of representatives of the Nation, I have never been false to this faith for an hour. But I have always repudiated the autocracy vested in the House of Commons and I have always held up the American as a far wiser type of government. In such war such revolution as this, I see that our venerable formulas about Hampden, Pym, Somers, Pitt, and Fox are leading us straight to ruin. I make no charge against our public men. They are doing their best in the system in which they were bred. It is the obsolete system which is at fault. I join in no factious cry. I only say this: In the death grapple of the nation there must be one head; in a world war strategy belongs to trained soldiers

not to orators.

The report of Lord Bryce on a Second Chamber (Cd. 9038) is a most able document which will have permanent interest and great authority. By cruel chance it appears in a time. of military crisis and of a whirligig at home, so that no immediate effect can be given, though it well deserves

to be studied, even in mid-revolution as we are. Ever since 1906 I have constantly written and spoken on this problem, and in March, 1910, I published an elaborate scheme of reform, which, with one essential difference, runs parallel to the proposals of the conference. The points of identity in these two schemes are these: (1) A chamber of 300; (2) having different sections by different modes of elections; (3) all on the proportional system; (4) with one small section from the present House of Peers; (5) the principal section to be chosen by electors of local areas; (6) the sections sitting for different terms of years; (7) the present rules as to all financial questions to be retained and improved; (8) differences between the two Houses to be settled by joint conference. All of these points are most ably discussed in the report, which is especially cogent in respect to the functions and the elements of a Second Chamber; on indirect election; on proportional election; on territorial areas for electoral bodies; on finance; and on maintenance of those traditional elements which are compatible with modern democracy. All this is excellent and convincing.

The points on which I propose to offer criticism are these: (1) The election of eighty-one Peers, including five bishops; (2) payment of salaries to Senators; (3) election by the House of Commons in geographical groups; (4) settlement of differences between the two Houses, not by aggregate voting of a two-thirds majority, but by conferences of sixty members of the two Houses, and finally 'by the House of Commons alone.' Of these points Nos. (1) and (2) are subordinate; but Nos. (3) and (4) would reduce the Second Chamber to be a mere appendage and creature of the First Chamber, and thus would fall

The retention in a Second Chamber of an element from the present House of Lords is a sound principle and is forcibly argued in Section 26 of Lord Bryce's report. But the retention of eighty-one Peers, including five Bishops, and these to be jointly selected by the two Houses, is excessive in number, and nugatory as a maintenance of historic continuity. The scheme I propounded in 1910 gave fifty Senators to be elected by the House of Lords being Peers, Com-moners, or ecclesiastics of any Church. By this method probably one-third of those chosen would not be Peers and the Peers who were elected would be chosen not as Peers but as statesmen. The suggestion of salaries to the new Senators is a sorry concession to democratic greed.

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But the proposed selection of threefourths of the Second Chamber by the First Chamber voting by panels, and the final decision of differences by the House of Commons alone,' takes the heart out of the Senate as a moderating power and would make it a hollow echo of the People's House. In admirable words of mature wisdom Lord Bryce in Section 1 of his report urges that a Second Chamber should be 'different in type and composition from the popular Assembly,' that it should have 'strength sufficient to act as a moderating influence in the conduct of national affairs.' What 'difference in type,' what 'moderating influence' would be left to a Chamber which at every stage is elected more or less by the other House? The House of Commons is to choose threefourths; the other fourth is to be chosen by joint committees; differences are to be settled by joint conferences, and finally by the House of Commons. What freedom, what

ciency would be left to a House so controlled by its great neighbor, as a Russian Rada or a Rumanian monarchy is under the heel of a German General?

All this is the one-chamber plan, saving the face of the historic House. Was it not Lord Grey who said that 'single-chamber was damnation'? In less vigorous language I venture to put in a plea for the one plank of conservative force left in the wreck of our ancient constitution. My canons in 1910 were:

1. That hereditary legislation is effete.

2. That a real and strong Senate is a sine qua non of legislation and of government.

3. That its title must be personal merit and elective choice.

Above all, it must be chosen by a body different from the House of Commons, and I proposed election by the County Councils in proportion to their constituencies. The essence of a Senate is to bring a moderating and critical judgment on the measures of a democratic House. In order to be a revising force at all it must have different men, of a different order, chosen by a different order of electors. And so some of the ablest members of the conference seem to think. The good sense of Englishmen will hold to the principle of a Second Chamber differing from the first in origin and in constitution, with real power, not only to delay, but to moderate the legislation of the First Chamber.

But at present the discussion is purely academic, and this masterly report of a great jurist and diplomat will sink, we fear, into the lethal limbo of Parliamentary papers. In the revolutionary wave that is sweeping over Britain, there seems little prospect of a reformed Second Chamber

on this or any other plan. The still calm voice of reason will not be heard amid the roar of millions of voices of men and women adoring omnipotent Democracy in unison. All the signs now point to this: that the new House of Commons, with twenty millions of voters, half of them untried and ignorant in politics, will suffer nothing to come between the wind and their autocracy. Why should a House of Commons be 'the People' - the sole representative of Democracy - and a Chamber, equally elected on the score of merit by popular representa

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tives, be treated as an antique incubus? While a House of Lords remains that might be so. But when the hereditary Chamber is superannuated by common consent, as all serious reformers agree, a true Senate, elected by chosen representatives of the people, would be no less really the voice of the nation — indeed, as we see in America and in France, might be the more mature and considered voice of the nation. Democracy! What sophisms, what follies, what crimes are committed in thy hallowed name!

IN the play of that destiny in whose grasp is the human race we stand like children at the door of a theatre, filled with eagerness, and consumed indeed with an unchildish anxiety, but ignorant as infants of the scenes which we are about to witness.

Yet amidst all uncertainties, certain points of crucial moment stand out, points which must be as pivots of our reasoning and of our preparation in regard to the future. Of these the first is that to make peace with Germany, as Germany is now, is impossible. Why impossible? Because it is beyond our power. We could indeed arrange, by abandoning all the main aims for which our men have fought and died, a momentary cessation of hostilities, which, if we liked, we might term a peace. But as you cannot change a black beetle into a grand

piano by calling it one, so you cannot convert a very brief interlude in a prodigious process of strife into a real peace by giving it that appellation.

The motives animating the military rulers of Germany have now been fully revealed to the world. Those rulers are seen to be definitely bent on the conquest of mankind. As they view the future of the inhabitants of this planet, the freedom of nations and, in a sense, nations themselves are to cease to exist. There is to be but one independent and governing entity, namely, Germany. All peoples other than the German are to be either her satellites or her slaves. This is at once a prodigious conception and yet one of a nature essentially sordid, squalid, and groveling. It is like a body without a soul. It is like a German. Yet as acts show thoughts, we