loneliness and liberty, must speak and pronounce judgment. Yet this
might not be exactly true. England herself, lifting her head in awful
loneliness and liberty, might really wish Mr. Asquith to be pale blue.
The democracy of England in the abstract, if it had been allowed to make
up a policy for itself, might have desired him to be black with pink spots.
It might even have liked him as he is now. But a huge apparatus of
wealth, power, and printed matter has made it practically impossible for
them to bring home these other proposals, even if they would really prefer
them. No candidates will stand in the spotted interest; for candidates
commonly have to produce money either from their own pockets or the
pasty's; and in such circles spots are not worn. No man in the social
position of a Cabinet Minister, perhaps, will commit himself to the
pale-blue theory of Mr. Asquith; therefore it cannot be a Government
measure, therefore it cannot pass.

Nearly all the great newspapers, both pompous and frivolous, will declare
dogmatically day after day, until every one half believes it, that red and
green are the only two colours in the paint-box. THE OBSERVER will say:
"No one who knows the solid framework of politics or the emphatic first
principles of an Imperial people can suppose for a moment that there is
any possible compromise to be made in such a matter; we must either fulfill
our manifest racial destiny and crown the edifice of ages with the august
figure of a Green Premier, or we must abandon our heritage, break our
promise to the Empire, fling ourselves into final anarchy, and allow the
flaming and demoniac image of a Red Premier to hover over our dissolution
and our doom." The DAILY MAIL would say: "There is no halfway house in
this matter; it must be green or red. We wish to see every honest
Englishman one colour or the other." And then some funny man in the
popular Press would star the sentence with a pun, and say that the DAILY
MAIL liked its readers to be green and its paper to be read. But no one