ambition that America's fifteen million motor-cars should swell to thirty may be realised. America may forget how to walk, as she is said to have forgotten how to sleep. How will she be the better for it? As she accelerates the speed of life, so she will decrease taste and intelligence. And the sum of her achievement will be that many thousands who once stayed at home in peace will visit places which they do not want to see, and visit them at high pressure. Steel and oil can give you pace. They cannot give you anything better, and the blind worship of pace proves that America (and England too) lacks standards. "What must one think of a country," says Mr Babbitt, quoting a foreign critic, "whose most popular orator is W. J. Bryan, whose favourite actor is Charlie Chaplin, whose most widely read novelist is Harold Bell Wright, whose best-known evangelist is Billy Sunday, and whose representative journalist is William Randolph Hearst ?" We can say very little, except that, if we allow for the greater magnitude of America and for its louder voice, we do not fall far behind her in bad taste and confused standards; and that education, the more widely it is diffused, becomes thinner and thinner on both sides the Atlantic. Mr Babbitt, rightly enough, deplores the childish sensationalism of the American Press. "The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse," says he, "is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen. Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality." Again, if we make an allowance for America's greater size, we may pass the same sentence of condemnation upon ourselves. The English Sunday paper is content with a spinney, while the American Sunday paper demands a forest. Perhaps in triviality also the American has the better of us. But if we consider the sad sheets which are destined to solace the leisure of our own citizens on what is said to be "the day of rest,' we cannot escape a feeling of shame. The worst of them are resolved, like American bishop, to give the people all the life-in other words, all the crime that it wants. Their editors, with a greedy zeal, ransack the records of the whole world for the latest news of the criminal classes. The telegraph, wired and wireless, is used to transmit the lurid details of murder and elopement, and is the best accomplice that the newspaper has yet discovered for the debauchery of the people. The least harmful of these sheets are merely imbecile. Week after week the toiling millions of Great Britain are permitted to read the discussion, conducted by experts, of such important subjects as Should women propose to men," or "Do shrimps make good mothers," or "Which has the the blonde or the brunette? and since we may assume that the editors of the Sunday papers, accurately divining the popular taste, give the people what it wants, we can measure nicely the intelligence of their readers. To these readers is entrusted the absolute government of the country! better chance of matrimony, barbarous hordes, who to-day claim the exclusive right to govern, is not easy. It went out of fashion when the people was told that what it wanted it could have, when those who wished to hold the reins of power in their nerveless hands understood that they could go only whither the team they pretended to drive carried them. No doubt the American bishop believes himself to be a leader. He is a most sedulous follower. At the bidding of of the sacred people he will suppress great books by great thinkers, " and sub Now, whenever we give the people what it wants, merely because it wants it, either at the ballot-box or in the newspaper, we travel another stage along the road of anarchy. We are making, deliberately and for a handsome profit, a race of savages, and then cynically endowing it with omnipotence. Those to whom simple truth is revealed, and who, unlike the American bishop, refuse to enrich themselves with money or power by pandering to the crazy desires of the voters, observe the approach of the catastrophe, which they cannot avert. the stitute for them what he impressively calls "life," dime novels and detective stories. Mr Ramsay MacDonald is not a leader. He is blown hither and thither by every idle wind. He may pretend to hold fast to this doctrine or that, but a single word from the extreme members of his Party is enough to make him change the chame"As I leon-like colour of his mind. And remember that there is nothing which the people, in its present state of wilful anarchy, hates so bitterly as leadership of any sort. Leadership implies restraint, and is incompatible with the deepseated desire of doing as you like. We are told that the Socialist Party intends shortly to claim for itself the choice of ministers who shall govern Great Britain. The rank and file cannot trust any Prime Minister whom their vote has not appointed; they cannot rely upon a Cabinet to give them what they want, which watch the American nation speeding gaily, with invincible optimism, down the road of destruction," writes Professor William M'Dougall, quoted by Mr Babbitt, "I seem to be contemplating the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind." How, then, shall we be saved? Only by restoring to the wise minority the control which has been stripped from it, only by teaching the obvious truth that in numbers there is neither taste nor virtue. In other words, we must bring back leadership to the world. And leadership of the has changed. Bad as these cature becomes the plaything of the Cabinet, there is an end of decent life and honourable conduct. To recall those judges who do not do the behest of the Prime Minister, to suppress any charge which the Cabinet prefers should not be brought, is to leave the law-abiding citizen without safety or defence. No country can survive this open interested contempt for the law, and it is to be hoped that Mr Ramsay MacDonald's Government will pay dearly for its temerity. One law for the poor and another for the rich-a law in which the advantage is always with the poor-would endanger the nation's security. And especially at this time is it necessary to safeguard the law. We live under a broken constitution; we "enjoy" the perils of universal suffrage. The law alone stands between us and destruction, and if the law becomes the puppet of the executive, if charges are withdrawn at will, if judges are dismissed for doing their duty, then we shall sink into anarchy, and arrive at last at the bishop's millennium, when everybody gets what he wants, so long as he belongs to the majority, and when the dime novel is believed to embody and to express the whole duty of man. things are, he and his colleagues have done one thing that is far worse. They have attempted to undermine the foundations of justice. The Courts always appear inconvenient to those who think that they have a right to do what they want, and Mr MacDonald's friends have an eager hatred of the law. They have in their mind a future policy of confiscation, and the law punishes robbery. They have some of them—a natural love of sedition, and the law is (or should be) obliged to suppress sedition. As Mr MacDonald's friends grow in confidence, they may follow the blood-stained example of Russia, and put to death all those who are not in political agreement with him, and the law exists to punish murder. So that the worthy citizens, who call themselves Communists, intent upon doing as they like, have come within the reach of the law. It is their pleasant desire to promote mutiny in the Army, and not long since they overstepped the boundary which separates legal right from legal wrong. They were duly prosecuted, and then the charge was withdrawn by the Government. Not merely did the Government wish to protect its supporters, but, we are told, it was nervous lest certain of its members, called on a subpoena, would be embarrassed in the witness-box. Whatever the reason for the Government's interference was, its result was deplorable. If once the judi Only by leadership, then, can we be saved from the perils that environ us. It is waste of time to hope that the Socialists will develop suddenly a care for justice or a political wisdom of their own. And leadership is hardly to be understood by those who, He will beware of what is like Mr MacDonald, believe that 'administration and legislation must be 'pursued in the same way as the chemist works in his laboratory." This is nonsense. Government is a difficult art, which has nothing whatever to do with chemistry or any other of the sciences. To attempt to bring it within the range of science is a mere piece of flattery offered to the professors, already too arrogant, of what used to be called 'natural philosophy." The leader, when he arrives, will deal with the facts of life and with the varying characters of men, with facts and characters which he can not express in a formula. And his first task will be to say "No." Instead of giving the people what it wants, as is the habit of the demagogue, he will be resolute in refusal when he believes that what the people wants is bad for the country. He will surrender to no majorities; he will listen to no catchwords; and he will know that he has succeeded only when he has restored peace and prosperity to the State. Until they are achieved, the wise leader will advocate a policy of negation. called insidiously a constructive policy, most often a short cut to yielding to the people's desires. When we hear of a Conservative leader in search of progressive legislation, we know well that he is hunting for votes, that he is professing that faith in Tory men and Liberal measures which has again and again destroyed us. Now, the leader must, above all, avoid that facile idealism which puts phrases in the place of deeds, and attempts to convince the people, already drunk with words, that they can be saved by a display of false sentiments. It is his present business to bring England back to the sane tradition of her ancient life, and not to affect a love of what the Americans call "uplift." The people must learn again to walk in the paths of justice and honour before it tries to scale the slippery hillside of emotional politics. All the rhetoric in the world cannot put a gloss of honesty or right dealing upon the man who is not ashamed to tamper with the course of justice. Here, indeed, is the real danger of "uplift": words are substituted for actions, and crime flourishes to the tune of a noisy eloquence.1 And we There is no country in which there is a louder talk of "uplift" than America. And here are a few resulting statistics, given by Mr Babbitt in his book: "In 1885 there were 1808 homicides in the United States, with 108 executions; in 1910, 8975 homicides, with 104 executions." Worse still: "In 1918 Chicago had 22 robberies for every one robbery in London, and 14 robberies for every one robbery in England and Wales. Cities like St Louis and Detroit, in their statistics of robbery and assault with attempt to rob, frequently show annual totals varying from three to five times greater than the number of |