ng of the executive
of _The Citizens_:

"Our party government, party conflict, here in England, have sapped the
vitality of the British Empire long enough. I believe the invasion has
scotched the thing, and we must be very careful to do nothing that might
help to bring it to life again. A Radical, as such, is neither better
nor worse than a Conservative. It does not matter two pins what becomes
of the Conservative organization, or the Liberal party, as parties. I
should be delighted never to hear of either again. Our business is the
Empire's business; and we want the people of the Empire with us--the
whole lot of them--as one solid party."

Accordingly, no mention of any political party was ever heard at our
meetings. We made no appeal to any given section of the community, but
only to the British public as a whole. We aimed at showing that there
could be no division in national affairs, save the division which
separates citizens and patriots from men worthy of neither name. And
that is why Maurice Hall, in his famous _British Renaissance_, was able
to write that:

"The General Elections of the invasion year were practically directed
and decided by two forces: the influence of _The Citizens_ and the
influence of the Canadian preachers' Duty teaching. Political opinions
and traditions, as previously understood, played no part whatever."

Of course, it seems natural enough now that the British public should be
united in matters of national and imperial import; but those whose
memories are long enough will bear me out in saying that in previous
elections nine voters in ten had been guided, not by any question of the
needs of the country or the Empire, but by their support of this party
or of that, of this colour or of that. Our politicians had strenuously
supported the preposterous faction system, and fanned party rivalry in
every way, because they recognized that it gave them personal power and
aggrandizement, which they had long placed before any consideration of
the common weal. By this they had brought shame and disaster upon the
nation, in precisely the same manner that the same results had been
produced by the same means, when these were used by the oligarchs of the
Dutch Republic, prior to the downfall of the Netherlands.

Indeed, for some time before the invasion our politicians might have
been supposed to be modelling their lives and policy entirely upon those
of the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century;