They have no taste for the platform, the very spirit of the political game is repellent to them, and they recoil from the self-assertion which appears to be necessary to political advancement in the House of Commons.

No doubt the intelligence of men like Mr.J.H.Thomas or Mr.William Brace, certainly of Mr.Clynes, is sufficient for the crudest of our home needs, sufficient for the daily bread of our political life; but who can doubt that English politics would be lifted into a higher and altogether purer region if men like Lord Carnock were at the head of things, to provide for the spirit of man as well as for his stomach?
More and more, I think, gentlemen will stand aloof from politics--I mean, gentlemen who have received in their blood and in their training those notions of graciousness, sweetness, and nobleness which flow from centuries of piety and learning.

Only here and there will such a man accept the odious conditions of our public life, inspired by a sense of duty, and prepared to endure the intolerable ugliness and dishonesty of politics for the sake of a cause which moves him with all the force of a great affection.

But on the whole it is probable that the political fortunes of this great and beautiful country are committed for many years to hands which are not merely over-rough for so precious a charge, but not near clean enough for the sacredness of the English cause.
Only by indirect action, only by a much more faithful energy on the part of Aristocracy and the Church, and a far nobler realization of its responsibilities by the Press, can the ancient spirit of England make itself felt in the sordid lists of Westminster.

Till then he who crows loudest will rule the roost.
FOOTNOTE: [1] Croker writes from Paris of a visit to St.Cloud, where he found Bluecher and his staff in possession: "The great hall was a common guard-house, in which the Prussians were drinking, spitting, smoking, and sleeping in all directions." Denon complained greatly of the Prussians and said he was "malheureux to have to do with a bete feroce, un animal indecrottable, le Prince Bluecher." LORD FISHER BARON FISHER, ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET (JOHN ARBUTHNOT FISHER) Born, 1841; entered Navy, 1854; took part in 1860 in the Capture of Canton and the Peiho Forts; Crimean War, 1855; China War, 1859-60; Egyptian War and Bombardment of Alexandria, 1882; Lord of the Admiralty, 1892-97; Commander-in-Chief, North American Station, 1897-99; Mediterranean Station, 1899-02; Commander-in-Chief, 1903-1904; 1st Sea Lord, 1904-10; 1914-15; died, 1920.
[Illustration: BARON FISHER].