The Progress of the World. 



60 1 



These unexpected changes 



Why Roosevelt cannot be set down to a 

 is 

 Rising-. sudden outburst of hero- 



worship for tlie personality 

 of the old Rough Rider. That personahty 

 undoubtedly counts for a great deal. But 

 it is not enough to explain the present 

 transformation scene. The ex-President 

 has been swept to the front, so far as can be 

 discerned from this side of the Atlantic, by 

 two waves of popidar feeling, either strong, 

 both almost irresistible. One is economic^ 

 the universal resentment against the rise in 

 prices : a rise which Mr. Taft's failure to 

 reduce the tariffs and his apparent alliance 

 with the "special interests" are taken to have 

 aggravated. The other is moral — the 

 general revolt of the popular conscience 

 against the dominance of the " machine " 

 in politics, and against the tyranny of party 

 " bosses." What would be described in 

 this country as the Nonconformist con- 

 science has evidently been captured by 

 Mr. Roosevelt. From the seclusion of an 

 American theological seminary comes this 

 account of the struggle :— 



Belli llic two yrcat I'arliL'S arc ilivided bclween the Con- 

 icn'alivcs and the Progressives. And, again, the issue is sharply 

 drawn bclwccn the interests of men and the interests of privilege 

 and property. Mr. Roosevelt, with all his extravagances, is a 

 moJern profhet, -xnA is fighting the battle of the people. lie 

 may not win. l!ut the cause is bound to win in the end. 



Against the conviction expressed in the 

 words which we have put in italics — once 

 it seizes the popular conscience — |)arty 

 machinations are powerless. Similar move- 

 ments are at work in tiic Democratic Party. 



,, „ ,, When Mr. Balfour re- 



Mr. Balfour - _ 



"Thinker signed the leadership ol 



'Of the Unionist Party there 



the Empire." , ^ , 



was a universal regret tiuu 

 one whose intellectual and political gifts 

 were so many and so imdoulned should 

 be lost to the nation. All the mmr sn 



because politics are now in that transition 

 stage where class distinctions are more 

 unpleasantly apparent, and the gentle- 

 manliness which results from centuries of 

 noblesse ol-Zige, formerly so distinctive a 

 feature of England's Parliament, begins to 

 be singularly lacking. The old ideas of 

 Whig and Tory, when the leaders of one 

 party sat at dinner, hunted and shot to- 

 gether in the intervals of Parliamentary 

 debate, have gone, and the various leaders, 

 as well as the varying rank and file, no 

 longer understand each other or instinc- 

 tively know each other's motives and 

 methods. Where formerly was mutual 

 confidence there is now almost universal 

 mistrust, if not worse. And so it was in- 

 evitable that Mr. Balfour should give up a 

 leadership which must ha\ e become singu- 

 larly distasteful to him, and which offered 

 him only a certainty of further changes for 

 the worse. Happily what was the partv's 

 loss has shown itself to be the Empire's 

 gain. Since his retirement Mr. Balfour 

 has not onh' been able to think out manv 

 vital topics of national and imperial im- 

 portance, but has now libertv to express 

 the results of his thoughts. And what the 

 Emi)irc needs is just such philosophic, 

 objective thought, shar|)cned bv actual 

 past experience of national life and doings. 

 A race pre-eminently made for action, 

 whose education tends too little towards 

 concentrated thought, we need more than 

 we can realise such men as Mr. Balfour to 

 think out our problems and to crystallise 

 into plain and uncoloured phrase our 

 nel>ulous yearnings, convictions, ami Ix- 

 lieis. By his speeches on Im|)erial ideals, 

 on syndicalism, and his summing up of 

 the Anglo-CJerman situation, Mr. Balfour 

 has in one small month done yeoman 

 work tor the niitidti. \n<l tlii> is only the 



