that, having
studied thoroughly all the questions at issue, you could give cogent
reasons for all the burning faith that is in you. But how about your
friends and acquaintances? How many of them can cope with you in
discussion? How many of them show even a desire to cope with you?
Travel, I beg you, on the Underground Railway, or in a Tube. Such
places are supposed to engender in their passengers a taste for
political controversy. Yet how very elementary are such arguments as
you will hear there! It is obvious that these gentlemen know and care
very little about 'burning questions.' What they do know and care about
is the purely personal side of politics. They have their likes and
their dislikes for a few picturesque and outstanding figures. These
they will attack or defend with fervour. But you will be lucky if you
overhear any serious discussion of policy. Emerge from the nether
world. Range over the whole community--from the costermonger who says
'Good Old Winston!' to the fashionable woman who says 'I do think Mr.
Balfour is rather wonderful!'--and you will find the same plentiful
lack of interest in the impersonal side of polities. You will find that
almost every one is interested in politics only as a personal conflict
between certain interesting men--as a drama, in fact. Frown not, then,
on me alone.

Whenever a General Election occurs, the conflict becomes sharper and
more obvious--the play more exciting--the audience more tense. The
stage is crowded with supernumeraries, not interesting in themselves,
but adding a new interest to the merely personal interest. There is the
stronger 'side,' here the weaker, ranged against each other. Which will
be vanquished? It rests with the audience to decide. And, as human
nature is human nature, of course the audience decides that the weaker
side shall be victorious. That is what politicians call 'the swing of
the pendulum.' They believe that the country is alienated by the
blunders of the Government, and is disappointed by the unfulfilment of
promises, and is anxious for other methods of policy. Bless them! the
country hardly noticed their blunders, has quite forgotten their
promises, and cannot distinguish between one set of methods and
another. When the man in the street sees two other men in the street
fighting, he doesn't care to know the cause of the combat: he simply
wants the smaller man to punish the bigger, and to punish him with all
possible severity. When a par