ho treated Queen Victoria 'like a
woman,' and Gladstone, with the Oxford training from which he never
fully recovered, who treated her 'like a public meeting.'

[54] _Coningsby_, ch. xiii.

In spite of Disraeli's essentially kindly spirit, his calculated play
upon the instincts of the nation which he governed seemed to many in his
time to introduce a cold and ruthless element into politics, which
seemed colder and more ruthless when it appeared in the less kindly
character of his disciple Lord Randolph Churchill. But the same
ruthlessness is often found now, and may perhaps be more often found in
the future, whenever any one is sufficiently concentrated on some
political end to break through all intellectual or ethical conventions
that stand in his way. I remember a long talk, a good many years ago,
with one of the leaders of the Russian terrorist movement. He said, 'It
is no use arguing with the peasants even if we were permitted to do so.
They are influenced by events not words. If we kill a Tzar, or a Grand
Duke, or a minister, our movement becomes something which exists and
counts with them, otherwise, as far as they are concerned, it does not
exist at all.'

In war, the vague political tradition that there is something unfair in
influencing the will of one's fellow-men otherwise than by argument
does not exist. This was what Napoleon meant when he said, 'A la
guerre, tout est moral, et le moral et l'opinion font plus de la
moitie de la realite.'[55] And it is curious to observe that when men
are consciously or half-consciously determining to ignore that tradition
they drop into the language of warfare. Twenty years ago, the expression
'Class-war' was constantly used among English Socialists to justify the
proposal that a Socialist party should adopt those methods of
parliamentary terrorism (as opposed to parliamentary argument) which had
been invented by Parnell. When Lord Lansdowne in 1906 proposed to the
House of Lords that they should abandon any calculation of the good or
bad administrative effect of measures sent to them from the Liberal
House of Commons, and consider only the psychological effect of their
acceptance or rejection on the voters at the next general election, he
dropped at once into military metaphor. 'Let us' he said, 'be sure that
if we join issue we do so upon ground which is as favourable as possible
to ourselves. In this case I believe the ground would be unfavourable to
this House, and I