The war has not begotten simplicity and austerity in this respect. On the contrary, it has made what used to be a comedy a screaming farce. There was a time when the Birthday Honours List could be printed on one day, but it is now a serial novel. The first chapter of the latest Birthday list was long, but the _Times_ warned us that it was only “the first of a series which already threatens to outlast the week--quite apart from the gigantic Order of the British Empire.” Chicago’s great Professor of History, Mr. McLaughlin, made the statement at the Kingsway Hall, in his address to British teachers, that now the United States have over 100 millions of people, and fifty years from now they may well have 200 millions--a great Atlantic and Pacific Power. The Professor added that this great War was “_to protect Democracy against the greatest menace it has ever had_” (in the present rule of Kings and Secret Treaties, etc., etc.). Another points out as a striking example of present old-time conditions (so pernicious to freedom and efficiency) the positive fact now existing that our Military Leaders, by a class distinction, were only selected from one twenty-fifth of the ore which we have at our disposal though we had brought five million men under arms, as all our generals commanding armies, army corps, divisions, and in most cases brigades, were drawn from among the Regular Forces who handled our small pre-War Army of two hundred thousand men. And the writer adds: “If considered purely from the standpoint of the law of averages, one would expect to find more good brains if one searched the entire Army than in merely looking for material in one twenty-fifth of it.” General Currie, who so ably commands all the Canadian Forces, was a Land Agent before the War. Neither Napoleon nor Wellington ever commanded a regiment. Marlborough never handled an army till he was fifty-two years of age. Clive was a Bank Clerk. Napoleon’s maxim was “_La carrière ouverte aux talents_.” Are we ever going to adopt it? PEACE This truth is (_and ever will be_) the fact that the only pact that ever holds, and the only treaty that ever lasts is: “_COMMUNITY OF INTEREST!_” and we can only have Community of Interest in the masses of a People always being on the side of Peace, because it’s the masses who are massacred, not the Kings and Generals and Politicians (they are plentifully fed and comfortably housed, and have the best white bread--_vide_ the American Dentist, Davies, when he stayed with the German Emperor). Well! the only way the masses of the People can act effectively is by means of Republics. Because then no secret diplomacy ever answers, and no one man can make war, or no coterie of men. In a Republic we get “Government of the People, by the People, for the People.”