new worshippers. Lapses from grace are not unknown in
the after-history of revivals, but we must, in charity, assume the
conversion to be genuine until experience has proved it insincere.
And to what are we to attribute it? Various answers are possible.
Perhaps, as long as it was only other people's liberty which was
imperilled, we could look on without concern. Perhaps we never
realized the value of Freedom, as the chief good of temporal life,
till the prospect of losing it, under a world-wide reign of force,
first dawned on our imagination. Perhaps--and this is the happiest
supposition--we have learnt our lesson by contemplating the effects
of a doglike submission to Authority in corrupting the morals and
wrecking the civilization of a powerful and once friendly people.

But, theorize as we may about the cause, the effect is unmistakable,
and, at least on the surface, satisfactory. To-day we all are the
friends and lovers of Liberty--and yet the very multitude of our
new comrades gives us, the veterans in the cause, some ground for
perplexity and even for concern. "He who really loves Liberty must
walk alone." In spite of all that has come and gone, I believe that
this stern dogma still holds good; and I seem to see it illustrated
afresh in the career, so lately closed amid universal respect and
regret, of Leonard, Lord Courtney.[*]

[Footnote *: Leonard, Henry Courtney (Lord Courtney of Penwith),
died May 11, 1918, in his eighty-sixth year.]

V

EDUCATION

I

_EDUCATION AND THE JUDGE_

Not long ago a Judge of the High Court (who was also a Liberal)
made what struck me as an eminently wise observation. While trying
a couple of Elementary School-teachers whose obscenity was too
gross for even an Old Bailey audience, and who themselves were
products of Elementary Schools, the Judge said: "It almost makes
one hesitate to think that elementary education is the blessing which
we had hoped it was." Of course, all the prigs of the educational
world, and they are not few, were aghast at this robust declaration
of common sense; and the Judge thought it well to explain (not,
I am thankful to say, to explain away) a remark which had been
sedulously misconstrued.

Long years ago Queen Victoria recording the conversation at her
dinner-table, said: "Lord Melbourne made us laugh very much with
his opinions about Schools and Public Education; the latter he
don't like, and when I asked him if he did he said, '