x6 
L A N D & WATER 
June 15, 1916 
the interests of the conimuiiity arc; exposed to,; death, 
mutilation, capture or a precarious syr/iyal ^fci^sding as 
tlie fortunes of parUamentary warfare sway "to one side or 
the other. By means of certain well-estabhshed fictions 
the pubUc has persuaded itself that this orgy of debating 
is " government." and even comes to believe in course of 
time that this is the only way in which a people can govern 
itself. The fiction is maintained by the fact that, at the 
long last, something dehnite usually emerges from the 
orgy, which may be either a positive measure or the 
destruction of one. This result, which is held up as 
representing the will of the people, does not represent 
even the will of tlie majoritv in power, but only so much 
of their will as their opponents have not succeeded in 
thwarting. Home Rule is a case in point. There are 
many others, and history has nothing more pathetic to 
show than the readiness of the British public to accept 
these by-products of debating, these survivals of the 
parliamentary war of minds, as corresponding to the will 
of the people. They are not what we want, but what we 
have accustomed ourselves to put up with. 
Now and then, however, a situation arises which 
reveals to us. with a kind of shock, that the issue of great 
affairs cannot be left to dance attendance on the fortunes 
of a Debating Society. How often since the outbreak of 
the present war has the formula been spoken in the 
House of Commons — " The interests of the nation render 
it undesirable to discuss the question raised by the Honour- 
able Member." Sometimes no doubt the motive of the 
answer is the need of secrecy ; but more often it is the 
need of effectiveness and promptitude, qualities for which 
(iovcmment by Debating Society does not provide the 
favourable conditions. To teach us this is one of the 
beneficent functions of a great war. During the last two 
years we have been learning that a great Empire docs not 
exist for the purpose of providing seven hundred game- 
some debaters with subjects for a series of lively evenings. 
It is important, no doubt, that speeches should be made ; 
but it is more important that the Empire should be 
maintained ; and the two are not always compatible. 
Time, A Doubtful Ally 
Mr. Lloyd George has recently informed us that time 
is a doubtful ally. He was thinking of the conditions a 
government has to face under a state of war. But is not 
the saying equally applicable to a state of peace ? Is 
not time a doubtful ally, nay, often a clearly treacherous 
ally, when social reforms are in question — education, 
public health, housing, poverty, hunger, race-suicide. 
These things do not stand still, like Joshua's sun over the 
Valley of Ajalon, patiently waiting without change until 
a factious assembly has made up its qiind what to do 
with them, and submitted its proposal to the House of 
Lords. They are going from bad to worse all the time ! 
Indeed, when the final measure comes out, as " amended 
in Committee and modified by the House of Lords." 
it is not infrequently found applicable only to a state of 
things which has passed away, and to be inadequate to 
the new and worse form whicla the problem had taken in 
the meantime. Ireland once more ! 
If you tell me that these things cannot be decided in a 
moment and that time is required for their solution. I 
assent : but I assent on the principle which dictated the 
sapient remark of the Shah about the Derby. I know 
that all problems require time for their solution, and that 
some require more than others. The question is how 
much time do these require. Will they tolerate the delays 
involved in a whole epoch of speechmaking. wire-pulling, 
caucus-mongering, and parliamentary antics ? Can they 
be safely left to wait until all the secondary interests which 
have gathered round the macliincry of "popular govern- 
ment have adjusted their chaos of differences, until the 
newspaper press has exhausted its controversies and its 
venom, until every one of the lighting factions has been 
given the time it needs to accomplish its supreme desire 
— that of dishing its opponents, under the pretence of 
promoting the popular will? Even if the popular will 
be allowed to have a definite form of existence — a point 
on which I coiifess to having doubts — it is to me incon- 
ceivable that it should ever get itself expressed by a 
process such as this. 
There is a party at the present moment which is 
contending that ail questions of foreign policy should be 
frantly submit ttjl' to Parliament and so made the subjects 
' ; of democratii* contr|l. I am doubtful in the first instance 
whether a "'democracy " is really competent to manage 
, it J relations with foreign states. It would be, no doubt, 
if the people always clearly knew what they wanted and 
were in one mind about the matter. But there is nothing 
about which a people is in so many minds as about its 
foreign policy — a fatal state of things for effective control 
of any great question affecting peace and war. However 
that may be, we should not get democratic control by 
submitting these things to Parliament. We should get 
control by Debating Society — a different thing alto- 
gether. Were such a course adopted wc might predict, 
with confidence, the speedy downfall of the Euipirc. 
New Order of Statesmen 
The present war has revealed, both by its inception 
and its progress, that what the government of a great 
empire needs most urgently is an order of statesmen who 
combine far-seeing vision with an aptitude for prompt, 
decisive, silent and even masterful action. How to find 
such statesmen is a problem which can only be solved 
through great changes in our whole national ethos, 
through a reformed education and indeed through a 
reformed morality. But the first step to its solution is to 
realise that our Parliamentary system neither produces 
such men nor trains them. Parliament may be a good 
school for politicians but it is a bad one for statesmen. 
The kind of political wisdom it fosters is the kind which is 
skilful in handling majorities, in guiding debate, in counter- 
ing intrigue, in dishing opponents, and above all in re- 
ducing a number of factious interests to their lowest 
common measure — which is seldom the measure of the 
nation's needs or its dangers. 
All this may have its uses. It certainly requires enor- 
mous ability in the men from whom it is daily demanded. 
But the ability so developed is not statesmanship. Nay 
more ; it is a kind of ablility with which, for obvious 
psychological reasons, statesmanship rarely co-exists. In 
the turmoil of parliamentary warfare " vision " is lost, 
the near usurps the place of the distant, and the great 
currents of history, on which the fate of empires depends, 
become invisible. Worst of all the habit of liailing 
until controversy has exhausted itself and faction grown 
tired unfits men, both temperamentally and niorally, 
for swift decisions in matters which admit not of "a 
moment's delay. In Parliament the argumentative habit 
is developed at the expense of insight and promptitude, 
which are the statesman's gifts. The consequence is 
that our great Ministers become not rulers of the nation 
or its destinies, but riders of Parliament— a very different 
thing. 
For Parliament is an institution with an independent 
life of its own — a life most imperfectly co-ordinated, some 
might say not co-ordinated at all. with the essential in- 
terests of the State. The very perfection of the Parlia- 
mentary machine largely defeats the purpose for which 
Parliaments were originally created. It becomes an 
end unto itself. Its political energies, its intelligence, its 
wisdom are used up in maintaining its own balance. The 
interests on which its vision arc concentrated arc 
primarily its own. Immersed in its atmosphere states- 
men become, and can hardly help becoming, myopic. 
They acquire that blindness to "things as they are " 
which suffered them two years ago, and the nation which 
blindly followed them, to drift unprepared into the 
greatest crisis of the world's history. What else indeed 
was to be expected from men whose training had been 
in the narrow cockpit of British politics— of men wiiosc. 
wits had been kept at the stretch for years in mastering 
an endless series of fierce but petty storms — strikes. 
Ireland, suffragettes, trades unions, tariff reform and all 
that devil's dance of concessions, compromises, sops. 
bribes, manipulations and adjustments, with its wild 
accompaniment of speechmaking in Parliament and 
dt monstrations outside, which, in normal times, does duty 
as our " political life." A worse school for statesmen 
it would be impossible to imagine. 
The fault is not theirs. It lies with the public which 
creates, maintains and applauds the school, and then 
complains because its atmosphere has failed to produce 
the men who foresee the hour of destiny and act swiftly 
when it strikes. 
