The fundamental objection to prohibition, as it stands, lies in the cold fact that provincialism, no matter how sincere, can never compete with international common sense and cosmopolitan culture. Village residents are ignorant of the laws that govern society in the most intelligent centers of the world. What will be the result in the long run? Antagonism between the people of the cities and the people of the country. When they prohibit tobacco, a war of cuss words will be followed by a battle of cuspidors, and the very crows will cuss the crocuses. BENJAMIN DISRAELI Some Members of Parliament have lost their reason, the majority have lost their wits, all are without vision. Lloyd George presents the curious spectacle of a man of the people who observes them through the glasses of a Welsh Calvinist. He is a democrat with the demeanor of a lord, a radical who has fallen between the two stools of the middle-class and the landed aristocracy. Nonconformist sentimentality, on one hand, and titled wealth on the other, have blinded him to the imperative needs of the time and the dangers that confront the Empire. The English people of the past twenty years have suffered as much from misgovernment as the Germans and the Russians, but they cannot stop the present stream of progress by clatter in the House and appeals to patriotism. For years England has been saddled with cabinets composed of professional humorists and hum-drum moralists. Augustine Birrell was a diluted edition of Sydney Smith, and Bonar Law should have been a professor of theology in a Presbyterian seminary. Sir Edward Carson played the role of an unfrocked priest in the service of demiurgos. Earl Curzon is a political derelict whose presence in the Council Chamber prevents unity and impedes progress. History will record their acts as the most amazing in the annals of Great Britain. I see nothing for the old order but unconditional surrender. The hand-writing on the wall was visible in 1909, but no preparation was made for the change which is now sweeping the country with cyclonic force. We, from our side, can do no more than utter some words of warning for the few who have ears to hear, the tidal wave of change not being confined to particular countries or regions. I, too, when Prime Minister, was blind to the reality, having been born and reared in an atmosphere as foreign to that of the masses as the atmosphere of the Winter Palace was foreign to the peasants of Russia. We staggered under the load of a wealthy and titled upper class. They consumed the people's time and imposed infinite misery on some millions of toilers, and for these things we rewarded the men at the top with fresh titles. As you know, I led the Conservative Party in England for many years, but that Party was, and still is, avid for power.