But it is not this sixth but the half that the vote-hunting politician need consider. And it is not the half but some sections of the sixth which may presently resort to illegal methods to achieve its ends. Are we so remote and secure from the violent phase in Britain as people are apt to suppose? Can Britain go on indefinitely with a crazy electoral method that leaves masses of people thwarted and masses indifferent, and that leaves the mandate of any Government ambiguous? The present Government picks its precarious way amidst issues of the most inflammatory sort. The financial difficulty is not tackled; the Capital Levy is shelved for the time, and we do not know whether the method of taxing and more or less expropriating large bulks of property only, or the method of taxing every creditor, great or small, down to the penny of credit in the beggar woman’s hand, is to be followed. One or other it must be. The first course will evoke the prompt resistance of the Fascist element in the Tory Party. Since the great days of the gun-running by Carson and F. E. in Ulster and the Curragh Pronunciamento, the Tories have been infected with dreams of reactionary illegalities. Army people and so forth are drenched with such stuff. They lost Ireland by it, but they are quite capable of setting about to lose England by the same methods. But though the Tory elements in British life might easily attempt forcible resistance to parliamentary socialisation, they are far too unintelligent to face the alternative of inflation, which will certainly produce just such conditions as will promote a drift towards revolution from the Communist end.... Violence from either side means ultimately dictatorship and the opening phase of a process of disorder and collapse for the entire British system. Between the horns of this dilemma the existing British system has still a few years left in which to modernise, enlarge, and clean its parliamentary methods and to educate its masses to political efficiency. XXIX YOUTH AND THE VOTE: THE REJUVENESCENCE OF THE WORLD 29.3.24