e."

"Ah! politics!" said Ivanhoe. "You have now in England a struggle
between your House of Lords and your House of Commons, is it not so?"

I replied that I had heard something about it.

"It is civil war," said Ivanhoe, "that is, it would have been civil war
some years ago, but people are now beginning to see that it is
intolerable that everyone should not be allowed to have his own way."

"I am afraid I do not quite follow you," I said.

"Well," he explained, "it is not difficult. Your House of Commons is
composed entirely of poor men, so poor that they cannot afford to pay for
legislation. Your House of Lords is rich, and rich people are egoists
and will not pay; so the House of Commons is angry."

I did not ask where all the poor Members of the House of Commons were
found in a country that had no poor people; Ivanhoe was too full of his
subject to give me an opportunity.

"If the House of Lords still continues refusing to pay for legislation
there will be no war, but the House of Lords will be
abolished--annihilated."

"My dear Ivanhoe," I exclaimed, "what a head you have for politics!"

"Politics are quite simple if one studies the newspapers. I know all the
politics of Italy, of France, Germany, England, Argentina, Russia. Don't
you read the papers?"

"Yes, I read the papers, but I do not find our English papers--"

"Perhaps they are not so well edited as ours?"

"That may be the explanation," I agreed. "They certainly do not state
things so clearly and simply as you do."

"Surely," he continued, "you do not approve of war?"

I replied that war was a "terrible scourge."

"It is worse," said Ivanhoe. "It is a survival of barbarism that men
should make a living out of killing each other. War must be abolished."

"Will not that be rather difficult?" I objected.

"Not at all," he replied. "Soldiers are the instruments of war. If
there were no soldiers there would be no war; just as if there were no
mandolines there would be no music. And the money we now pay to the
soldiers could then be distributed among the poor--an act pleasing to God
and the saints."

But this did not suit the corporal who, being a coastguard, had no
sympathy with cutting down the pay of the army.

"It is better as it is," said the corporal. "It is better to pay the
money to soldiers, who are earning an honest living, than to pay it to
poor people and encourage them in their idleness."

"But soldiers are recei