capitalists was sufficient to
prevent any serious reform being passed in that House which is
supposed to be the people's representative?

As for the recent anti-German riots, they seem to me to have been
organised by those slack loafing elements of the population who
lounge about refusing to enlist. Still, I suppose this is a
necessary product of our type of national civilisation. Yet that
system--the English or insular, I call it--has done, as it will
do, marvels. So perhaps all is for the best, but I am grieved
beyond measure at the collapse of L. G.'s scheme for drastic
treatment of the drink evil. He at least is a man.

Do you realise what a fine part amateur sportsmen are playing in
this war? I really doubt if there will be many great athletes
left if things go on as they are doing. On the same day I read
that Poulton-Palmer and R. A. Lloyd are gone. Only last year, I
remember seeing those two as Captains of England and Ireland
respectively, shaking hands with each other and with the King at
the great Rugby Football match at Twickenham. I see news is to
hand also of the death in action of A. F. Wilding, a great
athlete who neither drank nor smoked. So in three days we have
lost the most brilliant and versatile centre three-quarter in
Poulton, the cleverest drop-kick in the world in Lloyd, and the
world's champion tennis-player in Wilding!

_June 6th, 1915._

Lloyd George in his two last speeches has said more than anyone
else during the war. He is an extraordinary man, and at his
greatest when rallying the workers. I see that the Tory Press is
enthusiastic about him, and also about Winston Churchill's speech
of yesterday. L. G.'s remark that "conscription is not
undemocratic" has set a new train of thought stirring in this
country. Up to now, in the view of the average Englishman,
democracy and conscription had been set at opposite poles.
Personally I am not exactly a democrat, an aristocrat, a
monarchist, a socialist, or a constitutionalist, but a sort of
combination of them all, and a firm believer in the Will to Power
and in the Strong Man. But the point is that England certainly
inclines to democracy--meaning by democracy _laissez-faire_.
Hence what is needed in a crisis like this