Who are they, these silent voters, who constitute so unknown a quantity, so sore a puzzle, to the Party managers, and sometimes confound their nicest calculations? A man’s politics depends upon his individual temperament and point of view, but, like his religion, it is largely the accident of his birth and home environment or early education. I have seen an election address in which the candidate said: “I was born a Conservative on August 29, 1848.” Another man is a Liberal because of the chance that it was Liberalism and not Conservatism which he unconsciously imbibed at his father’s knee. In fact, the sentry in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera was not far wrong in singing that every little boy or girl who’s born into the world alive— Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative. But the silent voter seems to have disdained to adopt fixed and settled political opinions—like the generality of mankind—either by inheritance or by an effort of thought. It may be that he is ignorant of the object of politics, in the general sense of the word; it may be that he knows what it implies, but thinks it unimportant. At any rate, the cries of Party make no appeal to him. He owes allegiance to none of the three great political organizations, nor to any of the many smaller groups formed for the advancement of particular purposes. He is scornful of the mere Party man. “Hack,” indeed, is the word he contemptuously uses. In his opinion ordinary politicians are but gramophones which mechanically grind out echoes of the catch cries that emanate from the Party headquarters or the Party newspapers. Indeed, the Party system appears to him a thing eminently absurd. He sees nothing in it but three scolding political organizations condemning each other’s methods and belittling each other’s achievements, bent solely on the possession of office with its attendant prestige and benefits. In his self-righteousness he accounts himself the ideal elector who, animated by a high sense of public duty, refuses to espouse any side in the Party struggle, and, taking the welfare of the Nation as his guiding light, brings free and reasoned judgment to bear upon the rival political policies at issue in the General Election. On the other hand, the staunch Party adherent calls him a “wobbler”—a sort of backboneless creature who cannot stand steadily upon his legs, much less four square to all the winds that blow, and who, when he votes, is influenced by some petty mood of the moment.