greater degree where force “settles” the matters in dispute, where the bullet replaces the ballot, and where bayonets are resorted to instead of brains.  For Devonshire is better than Nicaragua.  Really it is.  And it would get us out of none of our troubles for one group to impose its views simply by preponderant physical force, for Mr. Asquith, for instance, in the true Castro or Zuyala manner, to announce that henceforth all critics of the Insurance Act are to be shot, and that the present Cabinet will hold office as long as it can depend upon the support of the Army.  For, even if the country rose in rebellion, and fought it out and won, the successful party would (if they also believed in force) do exactly the same thing to their opponents; and so it would go on never-endingly (as it has gone on during weary centuries throughout the larger part of South America), until the two parties came once more to their senses, and agreed not to use force when they happened to be able to do so; which is our present condition.  But it is the condition of England merely because the English, as a whole, have ceased to believe in Mr. Chesterton’s principles; it is not yet the condition of Venezuela because the Venezuelans have not yet ceased to believe those principles, though even they are beginning to.

Mr. Chesterton says:  “Men do judge, and always will judge, by the ultimate test of how they fight.”  The pirate who gives his blood has a better right, therefore, to the ship than the merchant (who may be a usurer!) who only gives his money.  Well, that is the view which was all but universal well into the period of what, for want of a better word, we call civilisation.  Not only was it the basis of all such institutions as the ordeal and duel; not only did it justify (and in the opinion of some still justifies) the wars of religion and the use of force in religious matters generally; not only was it the accepted national polity of such communities as the Vikings, the Barbary States, and the Red Indians; but it is still, unfortunately, the polity of certain European states.  But the idea is a survival and—­and this is the important point—­an admission of failure to understand where right lies:  to “fight it out” is the remedy of the boy who for the life of him cannot see who is right and who is wrong.

At ten years of age we are all quite sure that piracy is a finer calling than trade, and the pirate a finer fellow than the Shylock who owns the ship—­which, indeed, he may well be.  But as we grow up (which some of the best of us never do) we realise that piracy is not the best way to establish the ownership of cargoes, any more than the ordeal is the way to settle cases at law, or the rack of proving a dogma, or the Spanish American method the way to settle differences between Liberals and Conservatives.

And just as civil adjustments are made most efficiently, as they are in England (say),