st your neighbour giveth you "that he will not betray
or over-reach you."

In the case of the chartered accountant, or the stockbroker, or the
pedlar, this special knowledge is not so damning a thing. No
accountant, be he ever so limited, can be wholly contented with
accountancy as an explanation or sum-total of life; nor can the
broker, however absorbed in his business, admit to his friends that
the manipulating of stocks and shares is the only matter which should
consume the interest of mortals. It is otherwise with the politician,
the priest, the man of letters, the professional philosopher, and even
the lawyer and the soldier. There is nothing human which may not enter
into politics, religion or philosophy, or become the subject of
literature; the human complexion of the State may be transformed by
the professional prejudice of the lawyer or the soldier.

Consider how, for democratic purposes, the Member of Parliament is
made. There is no need to pay undue attention to the amusing
exaggerations and distortions of Mr. Belloc and Mr. Cecil Chesterton.
The Member of Parliament has been supported in his constituency by a
group of local politicals who have a healthy enthusiasm for the party
war-cry. The serious candidate is too experienced, too professional,
to share those enthusiasms in precisely that form which they assume,
at election time, in the minds of his supporters. I do not mean that
he is less enthusiastic than they, a less whole-hearted backer of his
party, but that, from the nature of his political experience, politics
presents itself to him under a perspective which cannot be theirs. He
leaves his constituency a specially ordained champion of political
truth; he arrives at Westminster a unit in the crowd.

If we follow our member to Westminster we shall soon find that he has
fallen into the Parliamentary manner; that his ideas are grouped around
the ideas familiar to the House of Commons; that he has taken its tone,
and that his habits are becoming gradually assimilated to the habits of
those few with whom he especially associates himself. Let us attend a
meeting of some propagandist committee comprising a number of expert
politicians--Members of Parliament, or others. We shall find there the
bond of a common knowledge, a common sympathy, a common approach
towards a given subject, a common jargon. We shall be aware of the fact
that we have come into a particular, highly-specialised atmosphere,
where the