NOTES 665 



government by the people, but are a disease of government by 

 the people. When the French poets and philosophers inspired 

 the first and better part of the French Revolution and formally 

 established the fundamental principles of government by the 

 people, their chief argument was that, whereas despotism often 

 placed noncompetent princes and their favourites at the head 

 of affairs, government by the people should result in govern- 

 ment by the best people. The principal complaint against 

 party politics is that they have destroyed this ideal by sub- 

 stituting an oligarchic wire-pulled machine for government by 

 the best people. Britain is ruled to-day by carefully organised, 

 subsidised, paid, and, we believe, wholly vicious party caucuses 

 which return to Parliament persons of their own order, and 

 thus exclude the best brains in the country. Our argument 

 is that a man who consents to belong to a political party 

 thereby abdicates his right of free judgment, and at the same 

 time shows that he is not intellectually or morally a man fit 

 to rule a great Empire. This may seem to be a severe criticism, 

 but careful reflection will prove the justice of it ; and we propose 

 to return to the subject at greater length another time. In 

 answer to the second question mentioned above, namely what 

 do we suggest in place of party government, we say that this 

 question will answer itself on removal of the disease — the first 

 thing to do is to excise the monstrous tumour. All party 

 organisations whatsoever, all subscriptions to party funds, 

 all personal canvassing for votes, all election expenses, 

 and indeed all legalised explicit division into parties should 

 be prohibited by law, just as bribery is now prohibited ; and 

 a great reduction in the number of members of both Houses 

 would automatically raise the standard of ability in them by 

 excluding many of the local wire-pullers and other unsuitable 

 persons who now find sufficient numbers of dull voters to elect 

 or allow them to manage affairs which are evidently beyond 

 their ability to deal with. 



Retaliation 



We must really object in the interests of the nation to the monstrous namby- 

 pambyism prevalent in this country. On January 18 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

 wrote a letter to the Times in which he argued that, if we could not otherwise 

 check the destruction of our civil population by German air-raids, we should 

 retaliate in kind in Germany. Immediately a number of persons raised an outcry 

 that retaliation is wicked— just as similar people argue that experiments on animals 



