nation if the college that had to appoint them is elected at a special election.  I suppose that the great British common-weals over-seas, at present not represented in Parliament, would also and separately at the same time elect colleges to appoint their representatives.  I suppose there would be at least one Indian representative elected, perhaps by some special electoral conference of Indian princes and leading men.  The chief defect of the American Presidential election is that as the old single vote method of election is employed it has to be fought on purely party lines.  He is the select man of the Democratic half, or of the Republican half of the nation.  He is not the select man of the whole nation.  It would give a far more representative character to the electoral college if it could be elected by fair modern methods, if for this particular purpose parliamentary constituencies could be grouped and the clean scientific method of proportional representation could be used.  But I suppose the party politician in this, as in most of our affairs, must still have his pound of our flesh—­and we must reckon with him later for the bloodshed.

These are all, however, secondary considerations.  The above paragraph is, so to speak, in the nature of a footnote.  The fundamental matter, if we are to get towards any realization of this ideal of a world peace sustained by a League of Nations, is to get straight away to the conception of direct special electoral mandates in this matter.  At present all the political luncheon and dinner parties in London are busy with smirking discussions of “Who is to go?” The titled ladies are particularly busy.  They are talking about it as if we poor, ignorant, tax-paying, blood-paying common people did not exist.  “L.  G.,” they say, will of course “insist on going,” but there is much talk of the “Old Man.”  People are getting quite nice again about “the Old Man’s feelings.”  It would be such a pretty thing to send him.  But if “L.  G.” goes we want him to go with something more than a backing of intrigues and snatched authority.  And I do not think the mass of people have any enthusiasm for the Old Man.  It is difficult again—­by the dinner-party standards—­to know how Lord Curzon can be restrained.  But we common people do not care if he is restrained to the point of extinction.  Probably there will be nobody who talks or understands Russian among the British representatives.  But, of course, the British governing class has washed its hands of the Russians.  They were always very difficult, and now they are “impossible, my dear, perfectly impossible.”