e break-up of the old manners of servility and the
inauguration of the new manners of service, this beast is going to be
more voracious than ever. This may from some points of view be a good
thing. It will be an announcement, at least, of new forces struggling
to become politically articulate. On the other hand from the
politician's point of view, it will be not only deplorable, but
terrifying. It will be worse than having to fight wild beasts in the
arena. Politics, it is safe to prophesy, will before long call for as
cool a nerve, as determined a heroism, as aviation.

It may be that things have always been like this--that base motives
have been imputed to politicians ever since politics began--that one's
political enemies always charged one with a dishonest greed for the
spoils of office and all the rest of it. But the terror of the
politics of the future is likely to be, not that one will be abused by
one's enemies, but that one will be abused by one's friends. That is
the tendency in a democracy which has not yet found itself. It is a
tendency which one sees occasionally at work to-day at labour
conventions. The unofficial leaders denounce the official leaders; the
official leaders retort in kind; and the hosts of Labour set out to
face the enemy tugging at each other's ears. There is no job on earth
less enviable than the job of a Labour leader. The Tory and Radical
leaders are supported at least in public by their respective parties;
but the Labour leader at home among his followers is commonly regarded
as a cross between a skunk and a whited sepulchre. As a rule, it may
be, he deserves all he gets, but the point is that he would get it
just the same whether he deserved it or not. The light that beats upon
a Labour M.P.'s seat on the platform is a thousand times fiercer and
more devouring than any that ever beat upon a throne. This partly
arises from the fact that the working classes are less practised than
others in concealing what passes through their minds. If they suspect
the worst they say so instead of passing a vote of thanks to the
object of their suspicions. Further, they are still fresh enough to
politics to be very exacting in their demands upon politicians. Other
people have got accustomed to the idea that lawyers, whether Liberal
or Tory, do not go into the House of Commons, as the Americans say,
for their health. They have settled down comfortably to regard
politics as a field of personal ambition e