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DEMOCRATIC IDEALS AND REALITY

there are those who would have us say that the experts whom we have for the time being installed in some of the high offices should be succeeded henceforth by experts, and that our prejudice is antiquated. None the less even in war time Britain has returned to a Civilian Minister for War! The fact is, of course, that the inefficiencies of the normally working British Constitution are merely the obverse of the truth that democracy is incompatible with the organisation necessary for war against autocracies. When the present Chilian Minister first came to England he was entertained by some members of the House of Commons. Referring to the Mother of Parliaments, as seen from the far Pacific, and to the chronic grumbling in regard to Parliamentary government which he found on his arrival in London, he exclaimed, 'You forget that one of the chief functions of Parliaments is to prevent things being done!'

The thought of the organiser is essentially strategical, whereas that of the true democrat is ethical. The organiser is thinking how to use men; but the democrat is thinking of the rights of men, which rights are so many rocks in the way of the organiser. Undoubtedly the organiser must be a master, for, given the waywardness of human nature and the