And what were the causes—immediate and remote—which have led up to this very important and desirable result? It was not effected by any systematic preaching of a propaganda. Moral and social reforms are not secured in that way. Politicians, keen to observe the tendency of public taste, sometimes attempt to run with it, and then accept the honour of having created it. Perhaps in the whole history of legislation no more delightful instance of this has been afforded than in some of the enactments of the Administration. They brought in a measure of spoliation called a Licensing Bill, and they included in their Finance Bill a crushing tax on spirits. The avowed object of both measures was declared by their authors to be to stamp out the curse of drink. Chadband himself never rose to such heights of hypocrisy, or uttered, with Puritan unction, such atrocious cant. The moment selected by Mr. Asquith and his friends for making Great Britain sober was the moment when it had become patent to the world that Great Britain had grown sober on its own account! The efforts of the Sunday League must not be omitted in any attempt to assign their places to the influences at work in the emancipation of the English from the slavery of the Puritan Sabbath. The League came forward at what is called “the psychological moment” to supply a demand which the growing intelligence of the people had created. The first great impetus given to the rational observance of a seventh day was given by the general adoption of the bike by the youth of both sexes. This easy, safe, quick, and inexpensive mode of transit gave almost immediate pretext for revolt against the ancient domestic enactments. The call of the long white roads sounded in the ears of the boys and girls. Wider vistas opened up before them. Inaccessible places were brought near. Even the attractions of the Sunday dinner of roast beef no longer allured those who wished to be early afield. The roadster triumphed. The old restrictions were swept away like cobwebs. Another factor in the silent revolution was the lure of the Thames. This, indeed, began to call to the jaded senses of the overworked Londoner at an earlier date than that of the invitation of the bike. In the early seventies I have sculled from Kingston up to Sunbury Lock on a Sunday afternoon without meeting more than a dozen other craft. And during those same years I have idled between Marlow Bridge and Temple Lock without encountering a skiff on the whole reach. The fatuous fisherman, indeed, attached his unwieldy punt to the ripecks stuck in the river-bed, and invented fish stories while he waited for the infrequent bite. Save for him the upper reaches were deserted. The beauties of the river discovered themselves for him and for the swans.