which once was not afraid to It is improbable, because labour check anarchy-ever be re- has long since lost whatever vived, Mr George might insist trust it had in Mr George, upon leading it. This would despite the energy wherewith be a calamity, and the issue years ago he preached the remains in doubt, since Mr gospel of plunder and enunGeorge will will decide which ciated the dootrine of robbing course he shall follow upon the Peter to keep Paul in idle grounds of opportunism alone. affluence: despite the adroitHe has no opinions. Any one, ness wherewith he declined to if only he show a majority of allow the railway strike to be votes, may write whatever he fought, as it should have been chooses upon the tabula rasa fought, to a disastrous finish, of the Prime Minister's mind. the egoists who impel the For Mr George is not a working classes to ask always statesman: he is merely a for higher wages than they ounning manipulator. As can earn, do not want Lord Hugh Ceoil said middle-class politician to filoh with perfect truth, "the their honours and their profits. Premier has never been able to distinguish between the art of winning an election and the art of government. He is conciliating this person and shutting the mouth of that person, and he calls that the art of government." What, then, will he call the art of government in the near future? The Liberal party declines obstinately to summon him to the leadership or to disgorge its treasure. The Coalition, which is no Coalition at all, but a frank surrender to communism and anarchy, has but a small prospect of permanence. The notorious Central Party-central in name and revolutionary in policy-was laughed out of existence long ago. And Mr George will be asked sooner or later to make his choice. Will he go to labour, and say in the words of an ununhappy monarch, "You have no leader. I will be your leader "? - It seems as if Mr George, therefore, would be driven into the arms of what used to be called the Unionist party. He has proclaimed aloud that he is a resolute opponent of nationalisation, and that he will go to the country, in the fulness of time, upon that issue, which shows that he thinks that the defence of private property may bring him a hatful of votes. But to-morrow he may range himself upon the other side, and we know no more than that the fate of Great Britain, and of Ireland too, depends solely upon the cynicism of our politicians. The truth is that all the proceedings of the House of Commons are enveloped in a cloak of unreality. The one point of agreement in those who support the Home Rule Bill, now before the country, is that it has not a dog's chance of being accepted by Ireland. Mr Bonar Law confessed its inevitable failure with perfect frankness. "We know," said he, "that we cannot settle the matter of self-determination." So far, so good. "You can only settle it," thus he went on, "by something which, I admit, Southern Ireland will not accept to-day." Then why call it a settlement? When the Bill is passed the situation of Ireland will remain unchanged, and the only excuse for the passage of the Bill is that it may give satisfaction to somebody else whom it does not concern. All the ministers who defended it kept their eyes steadily fixed upon the United States, and thus we may plumb the depth of our degradation: we are listening to the dictation of a foreign power, with whose treatment of its own citizens we have neither the wish nor the intention to interfere. But it was Mr Asquith who gave us, in the debate about Home Rule, the finest example of hypocrisy. With tears in his voice, he deplored the bad state of affairs in Ireland, unexampled even in the bad annals of Irish disorders." And he did not confess that for that bad state of affairs he, more than any other man alive, is responsible. When he came into power in 1906 Ireland enjoyed a peace and a prosperity such as it had not known for many years. Ten years of misgovernment or of no government at all, under the auspices of Messrs Asquith and Birrell, ensured the Irish Rebellion of 1916. If Mr Asquith has any doubt upon the matter, let him read the report of the committee, appointed by himself, to inquire into that disgraceful episode. However, he is not likely to read it; and even if he did read it, he would with an easy mind shift the responsibility on to somebody else. Whatever the the politicians attempt to do is marred by a lack of candour and simplicity. They are all like the man in Petronius who looked at the cabbage and stole the bacon. When they do one thing, you may be quite sure that they are keeping their eye apon something else; and it is, for instance, because they confuse the art of vote-catching with the art of government that they are profoundly distrusted by the people. Happily, contrasts are not lacking to the bunglings of the politicians. There are practical men all over England who are doing the work that has to be done without fuss and fuss and without "back-thought." Among these we may count the members of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, who have brought what relief they could to our plundered Allies, and have made it possible for the farmers of France, Belgium, and Serbia to make a beginning with the work which the Germans hoped they had interrupted for many a year to come. It was, as we all know, part of the settled policy of the Boohes to destroy the farms and the orchards of the countries which they invaded. They murdered fruittrees with a peculiar zest, and they ruthlessly carried off all the cattle upon which they could lay their hands. And when they were ordered to restore the stolen goods, they pleaded with tears in their eyes that if they surrendered to the French the cows that belonged to them, the German children would laok milk. An argument, truly, which found great favour with our British philanthropists, who like to believe that charity begins in the homes of our enemies. However, the Royal Agrioultural Society saw clearly how it could best serve our Allies, and did not rest until it had made an admirable start in the reviving of agriculture throughout the devastated areas. Some £250,000 was subsoribed by the farmers of England, and gifts of beasts and seeds were distributed where most they were needed. Much had been done even before the Armistice was signed. Seed potatoes, sent by the Committee to Verdun when the attack was at its most violent, flourished exceedingly, and it is a satisfaction to think that the Boohe got nothing of the erop. Moreover, some 9000 fruit-trees have been despatched to France, to replace those wantonly destroyed by the invader, and 1000 head of dairy cattle have already gone to the district of the Somme alone. The Duke of Portland, Lord Northbrook, and Mr Adeane, among others, have done excellent work, and the distribution has been carried out with wisdom and justice. Upon the relief of the Belgian farmers, for example, the sum of £55,500 has been spent, and a cattle-show held among the ruins of Ypres gave spectacular testimony to the great work done in stricken Belgium by the Agricultural Society. At Paschendael, at Kemmel, at many other places, celebrated in the annals of the war, you may now see sheep peacefully grazing upon the battlefields, and picking up a living upon the scanty herbage. Let an expert tell the story in his own words. "Mr L. Boerebeem," says a writer in the 'Live Stock Journal,' "entrusted with the supervision of the work of agricultural reconstruction in Western Flanders, pointed out that the Yser Valley, upon which the Committee wished to concentrate their work of relief, had before the war been dairying country, and that the great need of the farmers in this area was dairy cattle, pigs, and sheep. It was agreed that 8 farmer's qualification to receive one or more head of stook had to depend upon the number he kept before the war, the lists in respect of these details being still available. Ten head of stook held before the war was fixed as the maximum number permitting any farmer to participate. As there were many more farmers qualified to receive stook than there were animals to distribute, it was realised that the recipients of the heifers could only be de- energy. New villages are termined by lot, and the name springing up upon the sites of each farmer who had ten of the old, and with confidence heifers or less before the war we may look forward to a was put into a box, sufficient restored and happy Belgium. names being drawn to meet And we shall contemplate the the number of animals allotted restoration with the greater to each village." Thus the pleasure because it has been prosperity of Western Flanders achieved by men who had no is assured, and without any other object in view, and who help from the politicians. The were not ashamed to do good peasants are returning to their to others, without a thought broken homes and wasted fields of the hustings and their with a fresh hope and a fresh intrigues. INDEX TO VOL. CCVII. THE GOLD-SEEKERS, 614. Asquith, Mr, return to Parliament of, BALFOUR, ANDREW, C.B., C.M.G.: BEFORE THE UNION: GRATTAN'S BROWN, FRANCIS YEATS: HOW WE BUCHAN, JOHN: FULLCIRCLE, 70. CARLETON, Lieut. - Colonel the Hon. CLOUSTON, J. STORER: A BRANCH OF CRESPIGNY, H. CH. DE: "THE REGULA- CROOK, THE SILVER, 101. CRUISER SQUADRON, THE NINTH: To |