They brandish their spears before the idol and talk of shedding their blood in its defence. They are at times “Balliol Scholars,” or something of that kind, yet one would suppose that they were quite unaware how our Constitution arose, and what plain and indisputable right we have to revise and improve it. It is a sort of ancient mansion to which a modern owner has added billiard-rooms and workshops and a garage. But it has assuredly not the aesthetic charm of a medieval building, and this age of ours needs to reconsider, if not reconstruct, it. It will be a fine day for England when we have a Royal Commission sitting in judgment on our Constitution: calmly discussing, amongst other matters, the expediency of asking the throne to retire on half-pay, and all its parasites to retire on no pay.
I have already described the changes which are likely to occur in that large political structure, the Empire. The various regions of the earth which constitute it cling together on the understanding that we are quite insincere when we talk of them as our “possessions.” It is a federation of free nations, bound together by thinning ties of blood and by the advantage of a collective defence. When the military system is abandoned there will merely be a somewhat faded and amiable sentiment uniting the imperial fragments to each other more closely than to their nearer neighbours. One may hope that they will remain united, for a large empire is a good thing, if it has large ideals: it is a university of civilisation. But unless we purge our
