What has been thought, and what _is_ thought of the matter, has been largely suppressed by party politicians. The War Enquiry was conducted with secrecy; Cabinet Ministers held their Councils, as it were, with locked doors. An eager desire to conceal the real state of affairs in the country, and an unfortunate tendency to “hush up” such matters as are the plain right of ratepayers to know, are the betraying signs of many of our statesmen’s inward disquiet. Because, as many people instinctively feel, the trail of finance is likely to be openly traced to an unlawful, and in some cases, dishonourable extent, over much recent political work. Honour, however, is due to those Ministers who valiantly endeavour to screen greater names than their own behind their skilful diplomacy; and one naturally admires the zeal and courage with which they fight for this cause, even as M. Maurepas and M. Necker fought a similar campaign long ago in the dark days of France, when, as Carlyle writes, it was “clearly a difficult point for Government, that of the dealing with the masses--if indeed it be not rather the sole point and problem of Government, and all other points were incidental crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For let Charter-chests, Use and Wont, Law, common and special, say what they will, the masses count to so many millions of units, made to all appearance by God, whose earth this is declared to be. Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have sinews and indignation.” At the immediate moment, the masses in our country are, rightly or wrongly, vaguely conscious of two things which they view as forms of injustice, namely, that they are asked to pay rates for an educational system which a large bulk of them do not approve, and that they are taxed for the expenses of a war, the conduct of which was discussed “secretly,” as though its methods implied some dishonour to those concerned in it. Moreover, they understand, with more or less bewilderment, that though the King is now “Supreme Lord of the Transvaal” there is no chance whatever for British subjects to make fortune there, the trades being swamped by Germans, and the mines controlled by Jews. Therefore, in their inability to follow the devious paths of reasoning by which politicians explain away what they term “ignorant and illiterate” conclusions, some of them begin to think that the blood of their sons has been shed in hard battle, not so much for the glory and good of the many, as for the private greed of the few. They are no doubt wrong; but it will take something more than “secret” enquiries to set them right.