ent of
the people. And this ambition has carried him far, and may carry him
farther. With the industry and persistence that are common to his race, Mr.
MacDonald has taken every means available to educate himself on all
political questions; with the result that he is accepted to-day as one of
the best informed members of the House of Commons. He taught himself to
speak, and his speeches are appreciated. He taught himself to write, and
his articles on political questions have long been welcome in the monthly
reviews, and his books on Socialism are widely read. Twenty years ago the
Liberal Party promised no political career to earnest men like Mr.
MacDonald, men anxious for social reform. The future seemed to be with the
Socialists, and with the Independent Labour Party. When the Liberal
downfall came in 1895, it was thought that the fortunes of Liberalism were
ended. Native prudence has restrained Mr. Ramsay MacDonald from pioneering,
but once the Independent Labour Party, of Mr. Keir Hardie's desire, was set
going, and promised an effectual means for political work, Mr. MacDonald
joined it, and did well to do so. As an ordinary Liberal or Radical Member
of Parliament, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald would never have had the opportunities
the Labour Party has given him. He only entered the House of Commons in
1906--at the age of forty--and already as leader of the Labour Party he is
a distinguished Parliamentary figure, of whose future great things are
foretold.

Mr. MacDonald has studied politics as other people study art or science. He
has trained himself to become a statesman as men and women train themselves
to become painters and musicians. He has learnt the rules of the game,
marked the way of failure and the road to success, and his career may be
pondered as an example to the young. No generous outburst of wrath
disfigures Mr. MacDonald's speeches, no rash utterance is ever to be
apologised for, no hasty impulse to be regretted. In the Labour movement
Mr. MacDonald won success over older men by an indefatigable industry, a
marked aptitude for politics, and by an obvious prosperity. Other things
being equal, it is inevitable that in politics, as in commerce, the needy,
impecunious man will be rejected in favour of the man with an assured
balance at the bank, and the man of regular habits preferred before a
gifted but uncertain genius. The Socialist and Labour movements of our time
have claimed the services of many gifted men a