e odd thing about this corruption is that exactly the same idea is
held on the other side of the water. It is a known fact that if a young
English Lord comes to an American town he puts it to the bad in one
week. Socially the whole place goes to pieces. Girls whose parents are
in the hardware business and who used to call their father "pop" begin
to talk of precedence and whether a Duchess Dowager goes in to dinner
ahead of or behind a countess scavenger. After the young Lord has
attended two dances and one tea-social in the Methodist Church Sunday
School Building (Adults 25 cents, children 10 cents--all welcome.) there
is nothing for the young men of the town to do except to drive him out
or go further west.

One can hardly wonder then that this general corruption has extended
even to the policemen who guard the Houses of Parliament. On the other
hand this vein of corruption has not extended to English politics.
Unlike ours, English politics,--one hears it on every hand,--are pure.
Ours unfortunately are known to be not so. The difference seems to
be that our politicians will do anything for money and the English
politicians won't; they just take the money and won't do a thing for it.

Somehow there always seems to be a peculiar interest about English
political questions that we don't find elsewhere. At home in Canada our
politics turn on such things as how much money the Canadian National
Railways lose as compared with how much they could lose if they really
tried; on whether the Grain Growers of Manitoba should be allowed to
import ploughs without paying a duty or to pay a duty without importing
the ploughs. Our members at Ottawa discuss such things as highway
subsidies, dry farming, the Bank Act, and the tariff on hardware. These
things leave me absolutely cold. To be quite candid there is something
terribly plebeian about them. In short, our politics are what we call in
French "peuple."

But when one turns to England, what a striking difference! The English,
with the whole huge British Empire to fish in and the European system to
draw upon, can always dig up some kind of political topic of discussion
that has a real charm about it. One month you find English politics
turning on the Oasis of Merv and the next on the hinterland of Albania;
or a member rises in the Commons with a little bit of paper in his hand
and desires to ask the foreign secretary if he is aware that the Ahkoond
of Swat is dead. The foreign secr