But if, on the contrary, the Government merely exists for the country, then in times of emergency it is the bounden duty of everybody, and particularly is it the duty of those who are really competent to do so, to help the Government and to keep it out of trouble if they can. One feels cold inside conjuring up the spectacle of a pack of experts who have been called in to be present at a meeting of the War Council or the Cabinet, sitting there mute and inarticulate like cataleptics while the members of the Government taking part in the colloquy embark on some course that is fraught with danger to the State. _Salus populi suprema lex_. Surely the security of the commonwealth is of infinitely greater moment than any doctrine of responsibility of Ministers, mortals who are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Indeed--one says it with all respect for a distinguished representative of one of the great British dominions overseas--it looks as though Mr. Fisher did not quite realize the position of the expert, and assumed that if the expert gave his advice when asked it made him responsible to the country. The expert is present, not in an executive, but in a consultative capacity. He decides nothing. The Ministers present decide, following his advice, ignoring his advice, failing to ask for his advice, or mistakenly imagining that the expert concurs with them as he keeps silence, according to the circumstances of the case. Naturally, the expert should try to induce the head of his department to listen to his views on the subject before the subject ever comes before the Cabinet or the War Council. But if the Minister takes a contrary view, if the matter is one of importance and if the Minister at the meeting fails to acquaint his colleagues that he is at variance with the expert, or again if the question crops up unexpectedly and the expert has had no opportunity of expressing an opinion, then the duty of the expert to the country comes first and he should say his say. It may be suggested that he ought to resign. Perhaps he ought to--afterwards. But the matter of vital importance is not whether he resigns, but whether he warns the Government of the danger. The country is the first consideration, not the Government nor yet the expert. One great advantage of the War Cabinet system introduced by Mr. Lloyd George was that there was none of this sort of flapdoodle. At a War Cabinet meeting the expert never hesitated to express his opinion, whether he was asked for it or not. The work that I was doing in the later stages of the war did not involve me in problems of major importance, but when summoned to a War Cabinet meeting I never boggled over giving my views as to what concerned my own job. I have heard Sir W. Robertson, when he thought it necessary to do so, giving his opinion similarly concerning questions of great moment, and nobody dreamt of objecting to the intervention.