h system as this is put to work in Ireland, I shall envy every
physician in Ireland, for he will live in a joyous round of farces
such as the world has never provided before for the lovers of the
humorous. Already Ireland, with only 701,620 electors, out of a total
of 8,058,025 in the United Kingdom, is represented in the House of
Commons by 103 members out of the total of 670; and out of the 935,000
old-age pensioners on the lists at the beginning of 1912, Ireland had
202,810, and was drawing $12,943,000 out of the total paid of
$59,445,500, while the total population of Ireland was 4,368,599, and
of the rest of the United Kingdom 40,533,557! Further, as an example
of the slight value of education in the game of politics, out of the
41,710 illiterate voters in the United Kingdom, Ireland has 22,515.
Long life to Ireland for her gallant attack upon humbuggery with
humbuggery! And this is, too, the little island that sent the
Wellesleys, the Pallisers, the Moores, the Eyres, the Cootes, the
Napiers, the Wolseleys, and Roberts to fight England's battles, and
half the officers and privates who conquered India; which in the Seven
Years' War furnished Austria with her best generals (Brown, Lacy,
O'Donnell), and whose exiles, called the "Wild Geese," flocked to the
standard of Washington in 1776. This is proof positive that they are
not naturally a parasitic race.

Even in Germany, where there is not a
tithe of the impish humour that exists in Ireland, the Socialists have
so misused the immense bureaucracy that must carry on the mere
clerical work of insurance, that a new law passed the Reichstag in
June, 1911, containing several hundred amendments. Employers must now
pay one-half instead of one-third of the sickness insurance premiums,
which gives them one-half instead of one-third of the management
authority.

The management had degenerated into a mere game of politics, with the
Socialists in such disproportionate control that they were rapidly
turning the insurance machinery into a well-organized body for the
exploitation of their own political doctrines; and the employer and
the state were helpless. It is, therefore, amusing to the man on the
spot to find certain English writers offering as proof of the success
of the insurance laws the fact that the Socialists, who once opposed,
are now satisfied with them. Of course they are satisfied with them.
They have had a war-chest and weapons put into their hands such as
they