House as a whole shares that respect. The straits he has been put to, the contortions he has had to go through, have inevitably caused it to see in his character a quality feline, furtive, oblique. Even when he is fighting most ardently for his ideals-and Mr MacDonald is by nature a passionate idealist-he seems to fight, as a cat fights, with claws and teeth. And the House of Commons profoundly distrusts both his ethical and his logical processes. Even his speech has suffered from the work he has had to do. Only now and then, when he can speak freely, does he give Parliament a taste of his true quality. Otherwise he is sombre, lowering, clouded, hiding his real thoughts under a loud, empty, and bombastic oratory. As a result, the House of Commons receives from his personality an impact rasping and exhausting. Once and again comes a moment when he is formidable; it passes and ennui succeeds.

Had Mr Ramsay MacDonald been a member of a real party, he might have been a great leader and a great statesman. But the construction and maintenance of a political machine is, in truth, no school for statesmanship. This brilliant and gifted man, with his touch of high intellectual quality, his practical capacity, his wide range of culture, of imagination, his obvious goût des grandes choses, has lavished upon his creation all his powers, his qualities, his resources, physical, intellectual, spiritual. In return, it has developed everything that is worst in him. It is the inevitable nemesis of self-delusion: the price which the mechanical conception of politics exacts from those who bargain with it.

But if Mr Ramsay MacDonald were to find unendurable the strain of controlling the machine he has made, who would succeed him? Of the two first-rate men available, Mr Snowden and Mr Thomas, which would be chosen? Mr Snowden, though he has been present throughout the assembling of the machine, was there, in a sense, as a spectator only. He, of course, is a lineal descendant of Victorian Liberalism, an intense individualist, dressed in the uniform of Socialism. To him the clothes seem to make little difference, though, perhaps, they are becoming a hair-shirt now. However, Mr Snowden is a natural ascetic. The clearest, brightest, coldest, most highly-tempered intellect on the Labour Benches

possibly in the House-his bitter and searching words, his dialectical skill, make him a formidable Parliamentary figure, and the snap of his sharp teeth has left a mark on many a fleshy leg on the Conservative Benches. He treats his followers with contempt; his leader with coldness. Behind him, as he follows hotfoot on the scent of a financial heresy, trots his henchman, Mr William Graham. It seems impossible that these inseparables should be members of the Labour Party. But for both, Socialism means an intellectual bureaucracy and nothing more. They spent nine months in the Treasury during 1924 as high priest and acolyte. That was enough. They are practising Socialists no longer. They are Treasury men now for ever and ever --so much so indeed that sometimes it seems impossible that they are not still its accredited representatives in Parliament and Mr Winston Churchill and Mr McNeill mere squatters. So far as any advocacy or exposition of or any real communion with the Labour Party and its views are concerned, they are like these 'bright and ancient snakes, that once were Cadmus and Harmonia,' for like them they have been rapt far away':

'Placed safely in changed forms, the pair
Wholly forget their first sad life, and home
And all that Theban woe and stray

For ever through the glens, happy and dumb.'

And there with his alter ego the machine will gladly leave Mr Snowden.

Nor would Mr Thomas prove more acceptable. He is the ablest example of the old Trades Union representatives, except that where they were content to be Liberals, Mr Thomas is at heart a Tory. In any case, he does not even pretend to wear the Socialist garment. zeal for nationalising the railways is, perhaps, as great as is, say, Mr Adamson's for nationalising the mines. If he became leader of the Labour Party, the Socialists would have to form a new one. Therefore, his realism, his common sense, his power of dealing with men, will never be called into play to save the Labour Party. Yet he is eminently well-fitted to be a political leader. He has spent his apprenticeship in dealing with affairs, in

negotiating on important practical topics, in furthering the real and industrial interest of his Union followers. He has done a man's not a manipulator's work. And he possesses Parliamentary and public gifts of a high order. Quick-witted, flexible, clear-headed, he is of infinite resource and dexterity both in affairs and in debate. Withal, he never is greatly deflected from his main objects. He is conscious of his ability to ride the storm; for this Mr Pliable has a steel centre.

Both Mr Snowden and Mr Thomas have in fact the same insuperable disadvantage. They are statesmen and 'Parliament-men' first, mechanics only second. Therefore, the choice would fall upon a very different figure. Mr Arthur Henderson is a public nonentity. His interventions in debate are as rare as they are ridiculous. Facing the electorate, he wins seats only to lose them. Blustering, pompous, wooden, he could only be the reductio ad absurdum of a party leader. But he is past-master of the arts of the organiser, the manipulator, the boss. Although he was Secretary of State for Home Affairs in the Labour Government, he is now hardly ever in his place on the front opposition bench: he has already been seconded for the duty of greasing the machine. He is the only man who can make it run, except his leader. It is, therefore, he who would be his successor; for come what may, a machine must be under the control of a skilled mechanic.

The truth probably is that the Labour Party will never have any leader but Mr Ramsay MacDonald. The machine will fall to pieces when the hand that constructed it is removed. Yet while it remains-and the protest it embodies has by no means reached its climaxthe influence of the Labour Party upon the structure of British politics is almost wholly bad. But it can be fought and the organic conception of politics and parties restored to its proper place in the minds of great masses of the population only by infinite patience, great coolness, and, above all, by a steady faith that the British instinct for self-government will prevail. Direct attacks upon the machine would be fatal; nor is it of any avail to try to break it up from without. It is for this reason that any attempt by the Conservative Party to amend,

for instance, the law with regard to the political levy of Trades Unions would be a lamentable step. No doubt the Labour Party finances would be crippled. But there is inevitably involved the risk that the country would be convinced that for every party politics is a mere affair of machinery, a battle of caucuses, a duel of Robots. The electors who at this moment are under the control of the Labour machine must learn for themselves all that this control implies. The organic conception of politics will beat the mechanical, if only it does not imitate the tricks of its rival: if it will but be true to itself. Its sole defender to-day is the Conservative Party. Conservatism, indeed, has more to defend than any policy. At a time when Liberalism hawks its money bags and Labour, after more than a generation's stealthy approach, is about to make the last rush and spring upon the Co-operative flock, only Conservatism is left to justify the instinctive belief of the English people that the political life of a nation is the expression of the best and not the worst characteristics of the individuals of whom the body-politic is composed.

NOEL SKELTON.

SOME RECENT BOOKS.

Reality and the Ascent of Man-The Legacy of the Middle Ages-The Stone Age and the Regency-Lady Augusta Stanley-School Health-Epicurus-The Dying Peasant -English Character-The Frozen North-The Galtees— Moral Evil in London-Sienkiewicz-Admiral Mark Kerr-Mr Yeats and Dr Barry-Goodbye Stranger'— Epigrams.

Ir anything is to cure the troubles and infirmities of these dishevelled times it is spiritual courage. Life just now is full of problems difficult and often dangerous; and whether it be in social or political or religious concerns, a frank recognition of truths, a broad-minded resolution in dealing with the issues involved, are equally required. In religion, especially, it seems at present that vision and courage are needed; for the voices of controversy again are noisy, and it would be easy in the discussions over details, alternative forms, and so on, to lose sight of the ultimate essentials. Canon Streeter's work on 'Reality' (Macmillan) comes, therefore, with a particular helpfulness; for he has done what has been required for years past; has boldly faced the consequences upon what he calls popular theology of the recent developments of exact and metaphysical science, and shown that they are compatible with-nay, that even they emphasise and strengthen-the inward force and truth of religion. It is a point of view and of reasoning which makes appeal to the intelligent many who, having found the old insistencies of 'supralapsarian preachers' impossible, at the same time were unable to surrender their faith in Christ, because they needed its comfort. Caught in two opposing ways they were unhappy. Canon Streeter in this brave work bridges the divergencies. He recognises that much of the old dogma, an especial basis of past intolerance, was merely a poem'; insists that 'the personality of the religious man is the only real expression of Religion'; and while confronting the difficult problems of evil and pain, finds them not incompatible with the Love which is the Power behind the Universe and the mission of Christ who also, in an unique degree, represented