1917] on Some Guarantees of Liberty 107 



it was ill the interest of the party that the people should accept. 

 Every art of presentation and misrepresentation was employed to 

 prevent the people from forming an impartial opinion. When, in 

 these circumstances, popular representatives had been chosen, often 

 with the help of party funds, those representatives became the slaves 

 of the party machine, were compelled by all kinds of pressure to 

 forego freedom of judgment, and to vote as the party managers 

 might require. If the heads of the party happened to be in office, 

 they were concerned far more with keeping themselves in office than 

 with their guardianship of the welfare of the community. No means 

 existed of bringing them rapidly to book for mistakes or misdeeds. 

 It became a party interest to repel any attack upon them, and they 

 could always be sure of a packed party majority in a machine-made 

 Parliament. Within the departments over which they presided they 

 were in appearance supreme, but in practice their ignorance placed 

 them at the mercy of their technical advisers, the permanent officials, 

 who were irresponsible save to them. Upon the errors of permanent 

 officials there was little or no check. Public criticism or attack 

 upon those officials was resented as "bad form" since they were 

 unable publicly to defend themselves. If attack were made upor^ 

 their responsible parliamentary chiefs, the packed parliamentary 

 majority held those chiefs harmless. Between the various depart- 

 ments of State there was little cohesion. England seemed to be 

 governed by a disjointed series of administrative despotisms. 



Upon this system of concatenated political and economic interests, 

 there was but one effective check — the power of publicity exercised 

 mainly through the Press. But the bulk of the Press was also attached 

 by a hundred ties to the party system. Newspapers appeared, more- 

 over, more eager to maintain their circulations by tickling the ear of 

 the public and by giving the public " what it wanted," than to court 

 unpopularity by admonishing and educating the people. There were 

 exceptions, but they were few. 



Then came the war. The full story of the critical days that 

 preceded the entry of Great Britain and of the British Dominions 

 into the war cannot yet be publicly told. In consequence of our 

 shortcomings, of our guilt in leaving the people uninstructed as to 

 the fundamental conditions of the freedom — nay, of the very existence 

 of the community — we found ourselves, blindfolded, on the verge of 

 the abyss. We escaped by a miracle — a miracle not entirely of our 

 own working. But we resolved to do our duty, come what mighty 

 and entered with stout hearts and ignorant minds upon the greatest 

 revolution in our history. 



We now know how far that revolution has hitherto brought us. 

 We do not know how far it may still carry us. We know only that 

 there can be no turning-back, and that we must press forward to the 

 bitter, or, as we firmly believe, to the triumphant, end. But the 

 end will leave us with many new problems to face, and many an 



