the contrary view that our judicial machinery XV and our juridical conceptions differ essentially from those of continental nations. A system in which the judicature is a branch of the Civil Service, and in which there prevails the idea of administrative law, may suit well, indeed may require, arrangements for control which differ from ours. But essentially the distinction is between a country where a statute operates upon a body of common or customary law, and one in which at a comparatively recent time a code has been set in the place of everything which preexisted and remains, in theory at least, rigid and inflexible except by direct amendment by the legislature.

XVIII

A NEW PARTY

I. THE BYE-ELECTIONS AND AFTER

XVIII. THE recent bye-election at Spen Valley has attracted great attention, but all the comments upon it have not been equally intelligent.

It is acclaimed by one as an immense triumph for Labour, by another as a supreme blow to the Coalition.

Rightly analysed it is neither.

It is not a triumph for Labour, for it will not be disputed that if the supporters of Colonel Fairfax and Sir John Simon had combined they could have defeated Mr. Myers.

It is not a supreme blow at the Coalition, because it has asserted, with a degree of emphasis which cannot be over-estimated, the final decease of the Liberal candidates for Parliament who withhold allegiance from Mr. Lloyd George.

Of such candidates Sir John Simon, with the exception of Mr. Asquith, was the strongest.

Of promising constituencies for such candidates Spen Valley was the most promising.

Sir John Simon was the first in the field by many days. He completely captured the whole

of the extraordinarily efficient local organisation XVIII. which the late Sir Thomas Whittaker left behind

him.

Yet he altogether failed to defeat Labour, and did not very greatly exceed the total of votes recorded in favour of Colonel Fairfax-a stranger to the constituency and a novice in the arts of electioneering.

Spen Valley has many messages which are not encouraging to those who wish well to the Coalition; but it brings a knell of despair to those who dreamed that a future in English political life still awaited Mr. Asquith and his followers.

To-day this simple truth is unchallengeable. For a year after the election which swept them away not a single one of the leaders of that Party can offer himself for election to one constituency in these islands with the faintest prospect of success. One and all they must either join the Labour Party or join Mr. Lloyd George.

Some will do one, some will do the other, but in any event the result of Spen Valley may be expected to give ground for hesitation to those Coalition Liberals in the House of Commons who were faltering in their allegiance to the Prime Minister.

They may think that his umbrella is leaky, but they will not fail to observe that its shelter is dryer than the shower which is in progress

without.

The Labour Party has much more legitimate grounds for elation than Spen Valley.

Bromley was important and full of warning to all who are not Communists. In its way, the

VOL. II

XVIII. Hertfordshire election was only a little less startling.

No one who is not wholly inattentive to the signs of the times will deny that there is a reasonable prospect that a Labour Government may be formed in this country within the next few years.

I by no means predict that it will. I merely point out that no one can dismiss the possibility. A caution is very necessary, for many supporters of the Labour Party are talking as if the luggage of their leaders was already on its way to Downing Street.

Such is by no means the case. The Labour Party has up to the present made progress largely -though not exclusively-because no organised and powerful Party has been engaged in calling attention to its deficiencies.

First the War, and secondly the preoccupations which followed the Armistice, and thirdly the comparative unimportance up to the present of the leaders of the Labour Party, have prevented any detailed exposure of the innumerable weak points in their armour.

We hear, for instance, much of "Labour," little of "the Labour Party."

They can, if they choose, call themselves the Labour Party, but who gave them the right to talk as if they and they alone represented Labour?

Do they represent the millions of unorganised labourers who are not members of any trade union ?

Do they represent the new women voters whom, with almost ill-concealed antagonism, they

are attempting to exclude from an equal industrial xvi position with male trade unionists?

Do they represent the discharged soldiers and sailors to whom to-day, in hundreds of cases, as an act of deliberate policy, they deny the opportunity of assimilating themselves among many of the most highly-skilled trade unions?

And when we are asked to shiver at the prospect of an omnipotent Labour Party we shall not fail to ask the question, "Under whose banner are our new leaders to rally?"

Will they be assembled in the respectable but somewhat drab tabernacle over which Mr. Arthur Henderson presides, or will they be found with red banners proclaiming our first Soviet beneath the statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square?

All these questions will be asked in the near future, and all will require an answer.

I am not among the number of those who believe that the Labour Party can be permanently excluded or even for a long time be excludedfrom its share in the Government of this country. Nor do I desire its exclusion.

But those of its leaders who think that the battle is already won are living in a fool's paradise.

The first elementary truth which they will do well to grasp is that with which I have already dealt that they do not represent Labour as a whole, and that they never will represent Labour as a whole.

I can tell them that Mr. Winston Churchill, for instance, has won more elections than Mr. Smillie has lost in Labour constituencies. And the claim is no inconsiderable one.