s of propriety as laid down by Confucius. The
Conservative newspapers of England bewail the fact that there has been a
lamentable change since the present Government came in. The arch
offender is "that political Mahdi, Lloyd George, whose false prophecies
have made deluded dervishes of hosts of British workmen, and who has
corrupted the manners of Parliament itself."

This wicked Mahdi, by his appeals to the passions of the populace, has
destroyed the old English reverence for Law.

I do not know what may be the cause, but the American visitor does
notice that the English attitude towards the laws of the realm is not so
devout as he had been led to expect. We have from our earliest youth
been taught to believe that the law-abidingness of the Englishman was
innate and impeccable. It was not that, like the good man of whom the
Psalmist speaks, he meditated on the law day and night. He didn't need
to. Decent respect for the law was in his blood. He simply could not
help conforming to it.

And this impression is confirmed by the things which the tourist goes to
see. The stately mansions embowered in green and guarded by immemorial
oaks are accepted as symbolic of an ordered life. The multitudinous
rooks suggest security which comes from triumphant legality. No
irresponsible person shoots them. When one enters a cathedral close he
feels that he is in a land that frowns on the crudity of change. Here
everything is a "thousand years the same." And how decent is the
demeanor of a verger!

When the pilgrim from Kansas arrives at an ancient English inn he feels
that he must be on his good behavior. Boots in his green apron is a
lesson to him. He is not like a Western hotel bell-boy on the way to
becoming something else. He knows his place. Everybody, he imagines, in
this country knows his place, and there is no unseemly crowding and
pushing. And what stronger proof can there be that this is a land where
law is reverenced than the demeanor of a London policeman. There is no
truculence about him, no show of physical force. He is so mild-eyed and
soft of speech that one feels that he has been shielded from rude
contact with the world. He represents the Law in a land where law is
sacred. He is instinctively obeyed. He has but to wave his hand and
traffic stops.

When the traveler is told that in the vicinity of the House of Commons
traffic is stopped to allow a Member to cross the street, his admiration
increases. Fancy a Congr