492 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



It may be a different matter with very small committees, 

 say of three or four persons, all experts in the subject discussed, 

 and all bound by personal interest to find a correct solution 

 regardless of visions of tea and cigarettes. But even with them 

 things are apt to go wrong in a second by some chance humour 

 of the moment. 



Such considerations apply especially to the case of demo- 

 cratic governments. Parliaments are nothing but enormous 

 committees. If they have to sit for long hours on the one hand, 

 on the other hand their work covers a larger field than with 

 most committees, and the disadvantages of committee govern- 

 ment belong to them as much as to smaller bodies. And these 

 disadvantages are emphasised by the fact that members of 

 parliament are by no means always personally interested in the 

 Tightness of a decision — often indeed quite the reverse ; while 

 they must always spread the plumes of their eloquence and the 

 tails of their wisdom before their admiring harem of con- 

 stituents. Lastly parliaments consist very largely indeed of 

 professional talkers, all dominated by the sentiments of Mr. 

 Tapper Tongue on committees. That is why (and it is an old 

 observation) democracies mismanage so many things, in war, 

 law, education, sanitation, down to the smallest social details. 



What remedy is there ? First and foremost to reduce the 

 number of members. This will tend automatically to exclude 

 the shallow talkers and the local jobbers because each member 

 must be elected by a much larger constituency, so that the 

 parliament is likely to consist chiefly of approved men of a 

 higher type. Of course, even this will not exclude Mr. 

 Tongue ; but it will tend to exclude the Heavisides who are 

 his principal support. 



This war has shown that modern methods of government, 

 autocratic and democratic, are complete failures. The war has 

 been sprung upon a public which had no desire for it, simply 

 by mismanagement — chiefly by the brigands of Potsdam, but 

 also not a little by the demagogues of Westminster and Paris. 

 It is worth while studying why the modern methods of govern- 

 ment have failed and where exactly a remedy may lie. But 

 this is a subject upon which a book could be written. Un- 

 fortunately few would read it. 



