It is unreasonable to expect the discourse and decisions of the great mother of Parliaments to match the classic purity of the building in which it meets. Its members are men, swayed by many winds of interest and influence, and if they wobble a bit it is only natural. We youngsters would settle the Irish Question and the problem of the Drink Traffic monopoly very quickly! We would fix up the Suffrage for them and bring everything up-to-date very soon! We would indeed—until we get the over-sea mail and are reminded of our own lesser problems unsolved and see our own wobbling. If we have nicer chimneys it is because our climate is more kindly; and if life seems easier with us it is because we are so young. We did not have so much hoary feudalism to dig up; neither, however, have we such golden traditions and such a storied history. Our life is free, but is it so full? Let us be very charitable to the homely chimney-pots of London. We have poured out our treasure and blood for the Empire in this great war gladly, but this one city has sent over a million of her sons to fight and given readily scores of millions of her wealth without a murmur, and is still giving out, giving out, without stint. It is the most heroic, adventurous city in the world, where men use big maps, think in millions, and build nationhood not for to-day only but for the centuries to come. To speak of lesser things, where is there a more orderly, a more good-tempered crowd than the crowd of London? Paris has its gay beauty, Edinburgh its classic lines; but here they have dug parks out of the quarries of bricks and mortar. The trees, squares, little green patches, breathing-spaces, unexpected quiet nooks—all these are a surprise to us because they have cost so much, and they represent a city of ideals which embrace the past as well as the future. Later on, when we are older and wiser, you will call us to your council-chambers. And we shall bring something with us of the freedom of the large spaces, some vaulting ambitions from new countries where life is a young man's adventure, some clearness of vision brought from the solitary places. We shall bring Home some of the sweeping perspective of a land of magnificent distances. Freighted, too, we shall be with that love for England which only those can feel who have left her shores behind to strike the long trail of Empire. But we can never bring back such gifts to the mother county as she first dowered us with when she sent us out to the great new lands with a love for freedom which she nourished through the centuries with her own blood. Ah, London of the crazy chimney-pots! what we like about you specially is your marvellous courage. London afraid, shrinking, timorous! Only madmen would think it! How you wrestled with your mighty problems!--problems of transport (you plant mighty railway systems in your heart, and dig ways underground for your people), and problems of administration greater than those of many nations!