Facts brought to light in the sphere of industry have an application in politics, so to politics and the arts of government let us turn. Let politicians consider, for example, the discovery that the incidence of shell-shock in war, and of nervous disorders in peace, is highest in the dangerous occupations which are also the occupations most liable to industrial unrest. Such facts prevent us from viewing the discontented worker either as a martyred idealist, or as a mere criminal. The case is paralleled by the suggestion that desertion and malingering in exhausted armies are symptoms or ‘defence reactions’ in incipient shell-shock. They force upon us a more dispassionate and a more therapeutic point of view. The criminal in general is coming to be regarded in this light. Turn now to the anarchist, and the psycho-analyst explains to you that his activities are minor symptoms of his ‘father complex’, which imprisonment, for example, will merely intensify. From knowledge of the conditions of these things proceeds control. Possibly punitive measures may be genuinely counteracting causes. Perhaps, however, empirical science may declare that the best treatment for an anarchist is to make him a Lord Mayor, and the best remedy for a militant labour party is a term of office judiciously supervised by our permanent officials. The future student of social affairs will be preoccupied with the scientific investigation of the sources of power and its social reservoirs. The ‘party in power’, as it is charitably called, has not much of it. Public opinion seems to have much more. In fact, the chief function of a government, now-a-days, seems to be that of carrying out the programme of the opposition.[6] The opposition is relatively free from criticism; the Government moves in dread of it, being threatened by attrition in its bye-elections and by a general landslide at any appeal to the country. [6] We have recently witnessed a paralysed Labour Government incapable of carrying out its projected remedies for industrial ills, and a Conservative Government maintaining a system of Free Trade. Under such conditions the essential tasks of government are very much the same of whatever political colour the party in power may be. First and foremost it has to deal with emergencies, whether spontaneously arising or organized by the opposition, in such a way as to preserve its popularity with the public. It has also to carry out more or less efficiently the routine work of government, and it has to prepare for the next election by enshrining its most permanent tactical advantages within the framework of the Constitution. Any time and energy that may be left can be devoted to carrying out its ‘programme’ and in dealing with what it conceives to be the fundamental disorders of society.