people has a great deal to recommend it. One can use beautiful phrases,
can idealise with a certain amount of logic, and can actually achieve
things."

Julian shrugged his shoulders.

"I think we are all a little blind," he remarked, "to the danger in
which we stand through the great prosperity of Labour to-day."

The Bishop leaned across the table.

"You have been reading Fiske this week."

"Did I quote?" Julian asked carelessly. "I have a wretched memory. I
should never dare to become a politician. I should always be passing off
other people's phrases as my own."

"Fiske is quite right in his main contention," Mr. Stenson interposed.
"The war is rapidly creating a new class of bourgeoisie. The very
differences in the earning of skilled labourers will bring trouble
before long--the miner with his fifty or sixty shillings, and the
munition worker with his seven or eight pounds--men drawn from the same
class."

"England," declared the Earl, indulging in his favourite speech, "was
never so contented as when wages were at their lowest."

"Those days will never come again," Mr. Hannaway Wells foretold grimly.
"The working man has tasted blood. He has begun to understand his power.
Our Ministers have been asleep for a generation. The first of these
modern trades unions should have been treated like a secret society in
Italy. Look at them now, and what they represent! Fancy what it will
mean when they have all learnt to combine!--when Labour produces real
leaders!"

"Can any one explain the German democracy?" Lord Shervinton enquired.

"The ubiquitous Fiske was trying to last week in one of the Reviews,"
Mr. Stenson replied. "His argument was that Germany alone, of all the
nations in the world, possessed an extra quality or an extra sense--I
forget which he called it--the sense of discipline. It's born in
their blood. Generations of military service are responsible for it.
Discipline and combination--that might be their motto. Individual
thought has been drilled into grooves, just as all individual effort is
specialised. The Germans obey because it is their nature to obey. The
only question is whether they will stand this, the roughest test they
have ever had--whether they'll see the thing through."

"Personally, I think they will," Hannaway Wells pronounced, "but if I
should be wrong--if they shouldn't--the French Revolution would be a
picnic compared with the German one. It takes a great deal to drive a
natio