have lanterns and wish us to follow their lead in one direction or another. The Americans are a cautious nation, and they do not care much for social experiment. They have attempted very little municipal trading, and very few general services are in the hands of the State, because they are not convinced that socialized industry run by their corrupt politicians will be an improvement on capitalism. They have been convinced that Prohibition will be a success, and they have adopted it completely and without compensation. The English are not like that. They enjoy social experiment, but are quite ready to pay the vested interest for the right to make it. They hate to leap to a logical conclusion, and they are hardly ever absolutely convinced convinced about anything. They always like to retain as many of the old bottles as will consent to be filled with the new wine. But though nations may differ in temperament as England and America do, all modern communities are afraid of chaos. It is not the atrocities but the economic failure of the Bolsheviks that counts against them. Civilization in the West is so advanced now that even the worst-off amongst us has got something to lose. It is easy enough to boil us up into a hatred of Mr. Woolworth, but you have got to prove to us that Mr. Tadpole and Mr. Taper will be able to build us that wonderful Tower.

V

The political chaos of our time has been largely increased by the fog of war. We can clearly discern that the outstanding effect of Armageddon must be a vast increase in the Anglo-Saxon influence upon the world. England and America combine between them all the most modern developments of that form of Government that we call Democracy. The political tendencies of those related yet diverse communities will be a pattern which the world will imitate. It is of great importance, therefore, that each of them should endeavour to clear away as far as possible everything that obscures their political vision and prevents them from discovering whither they are going and ought to go. The stranger in America is naturally more aware of the fog than those who live in it and have grown accustomed to its density. The chaotic sensation of purposeless wandering in the mist of philosophical phrases and social ignorance that overwhelms one as a visitor to America, prompts one to look with a more critical eye upon the England one has left. The same problems obscured by the same doubts and difficulties disturb the surface of English life; only a different past and a difference of outlook and temperament have created in England a superficial alteration

in the impetus and range of evolution. The problems of Democracy are more near to solution in England than in America. The English, being less revolutionary and less corrupt, are more advanced. But the very fact that we are nearer to the vortex of inevitable change makes us more liable to error. The very fact that our political decisions are of supreme importance increases the fog in which we live, and makes it more difficult to find the narrow way. The political condition of England, therefore, is of vital interest not only to us, but also to those nations, like America, who will presently approach the stage that we have reached.

The outstanding fact in English political life produced by the war is the destruction of the Liberal party. War is nearly always fatal to Liberalism, since it is the antithesis of its fundamental ideas. There is nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that this, the greatest of all wars, should have involved the temporary disappearance of Liberalism. But the new

factor in the situation is the widely propagated idea that the eclipse of Liberalism is final, and that the need for its existence has passed away. The interests of many powerful forces are concerned in the support of this fallacy. The old Conservative Party is foolishly elated at the discomfiture of its ancient rival, oblivious of

the fact that the field is thus left clear for Labour as the only alternative administration. The new Labour Party is naturally not averse to the removal of a rival that was apt to steal its thunder, and that provided an alternative method of reform to its own. Mr. Lloyd George and the secret gang that surround him were delighted at the disappearance of a party that would have made it difficult for them to upset the traditional balance of the constitution and to organize in its place government by wizards, private secretaries, bureaucrats, and business men. Mr. Lloyd George has failed to "make good," as the Americans say, and the old Conservative Party, brought face to face with Labour, has discovered its mistake. But enough still remains of these ideas to persuade the minds of many that there is no need for Liberalism, since it is synonymous with Labour. Broadly speaking, we may say that the conception is that the right wing of Liberalism may just as well fall back into the arms of what is becoming a very moderate Conservative Party, and that the left wing may just as well go forward into the ranks of Labour, since the latter is endeavouring to obtain the very changes that that left wing desires. It is the object of these pages to show that such a conception is a false reading of the tendencies of Democracy. The need for Liberalism is eternal,

and it is on the contrary the Labour Party that is an artificial and temporary structure. Its right wing may just as well adhere to Liberalism; its left, or Socialist, wing is Conservative and reactionary. It is this false conception of the relative positions in politics of Liberalism and Labour that we propose to study.