i 54 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



who are not deflected from correct reasoning by party bigotry, 

 an overmastering conviction is now growing that we have had 

 enough, not only of party politics, but of the kind of men 

 who have been playing an amusing game of football with the 

 national interests for nearly a century. In the January number 

 of Science Progress it was argued that party politics are scarcely 

 reliable as a method of eliciting the truth in any subject ; and 

 scientific men, who are accustomed to dissect evidence in the 

 most difficult of all fields, will scarcely share Mr. Asquith's 

 sufferings at having to desert this quaint fad of the British 

 nation. People are asking throughout the nation whether 

 indeed party politics have not been very largely responsible for 

 the slaughter of our sons, brothers, and husbands ; whether the 

 party politicians did not culpably shut their eyes to the German 

 menace ; and even, when that menace was fully brought home 

 to us, whether they did more than a tithe of what they ought to 

 have done to prepare the nation to meet it. Instead of guiding 

 the nation in the paths of wisdom, they were so solicitous for 

 the welfare of their parties (that is, of themselves) that they made 

 no genuine effort to draw the British people away from an 

 attitude which many think was one of colossal stupidity accom- 

 panied by a very real indifference to the duties which every 

 person owes to the State. We have heard it said, not once nor 

 twice, that the time is come when the nation should root out this 

 particular form of imposture, which is of benefit principally to 

 those who indulge in it. A visitor from Mars might criticise 

 modern Britain by saying that it is chiefly a nation of quack 

 medicines and quack politics. But just as quack medicines are 

 abandoned when the illness is severe, so it seems that quack 

 politics are to be abandoned when the nation is in real danger. 



In these and in preceding notes and articles we have often 

 thought it right to express not a little criticism, both of our 

 methods of government and of the men who govern us and also 

 of certain intellectual, or rather non-intellectual, qualities amongst 

 our own people. Science is not only a fairy godmother to 

 humanity : she is also herself a goddess whose great religion 

 and commandment to all is to think the truth. To her and, we 

 believe, to the vast majority ol her genuine votaries, the whole 

 system of party politics is based upon a false political hypothesis 

 and is conducted by means of wilful distortion of facts and 

 prepense employment of the lying argument; and we fear that 



