was making its way steadily enough through the House of Commons, and every one was beginning to see that in Campbell-Bannerman the country had found an administrator of a very high order. Suddenly, however, the progress of the measure was interrupted by what seemed to be at first only a trivial accident, of which the public in general were inclined to take but little account. The army reform scheme had arrived at what is known as the committee stage of its progress. I do not desire to occupy the attention of my readers more than is actually necessary with the mere technical details of Parliamentary procedure, and I shall only explain that when a Bill reaches the committee stage its general principle must have been already accepted by the majority in the House, and the House then forms itself into Committee for the purpose of discussing the mere details of the proposed arrangements. During one of the sittings a Conservative member proposed a motion declaring that the Government, or at least the War Office, had not made proper provision for the supply of the material of cordite to the army. This was so purely a technical question, concerning which only soldiers and scientific men could be supposed to have had any means of forming an opinion, that the House troubled itself very little about the whole discussion. But when the House came to take a division on the proposal, the Government was defeated by a majority of seven. This defeat produced at first only a very slight effect on the House in general. During the committee stage of a measure it is quite a matter of ordinary occurrence that a Ministry should be defeated on some question of mere arrangement and detail, and very few in the House of Commons suspected on that occasion that such a vote was likely to bring with it an important Parliamentary crisis. Campbell-Bannerman, however, took a very different view of the event. He appears to have made up his mind that the decision of the House was a distinct vote of censure on his administration, and that he could not continue to hold office after so marked a declaration of disapproval. Now, it may be taken for granted that Campbell-Bannerman was not merely actuated by any personal feeling, by any sense of mere grievance to himself, when he made up his mind to this resolve. He saw clearly that the Government had lost the confidence and the support of the country, and that the sooner the whole futile attempt at administration under such conditions came to an end the better it would be for the business of the State. He knew perfectly well that the Liberal administration was falling to pieces, that its leading members were no longer inspired alike by one great policy, that some of its leaders had ceased to be Liberals in the traditional meaning of the word, and that sooner or later the catastrophe must come. Those of Campbell-Bannerman's colleagues who were as genuine and stanch Liberals