what they are against to remain in office while the Liberals oppose what they are for in order to turn the Tories out. In other novels the conservatives also appear just as adept at rough and tumble politics as their opponents. Lord Lostwithiel hires Tom Hannaway to bribe Hamer Shawcross, who is standing for Parliament against Lord Lostwithiel’s son. When the attempt fails, Tom defames Hamer by asserting that he has done nothing for his mother even though he has had remarkable success. Hamer’s counterstroke is to take the night train to Manchester, pluck his mother from the happy home she shares with another widow, and exhibit her at a rally the next day to refute the charge. The whole atmosphere of English politics seems permeated by vigilance against quick marches. The wife of a cabinet minister, Nina Nimmo remembers the constant intrigues of groups within that small circle. Quite as wary are the rank and file of the House: Everything they do is meant to have some effect beyond itself. Indeed many ... had got so plotty that everything that happened somewhere was “significant” of some “development.” If you only asked them to take an ice, they looked at you knowingly as if to ask themselves what you were “starting” and why. The technique of buying off an opponent is more common in the American political novel than in the English. But the attempt to purchase Jack London’s Ernest Everhard is more subtle than that practiced on Hamer Shawcross. Everhard is offered a job as United States Commissioner of Labor. Even though this fee is more respectable than that offered Shawcross, Everhard rejects the offer in order to retain his freedom of action. The ways in which a political opponent can be embarrassed are legion. When Paul L. Ford’s Peter Stirling is called out with his militia regiment to protect six hundred strikebreakers, he is ordered to Grand Central Station, the spot where it is most likely that the militia commander will be forced to order his men to fire upon the strikers. Nick Galt in _The Voice of the People_ makes the Duke of Omnium’s error when he persists in making political appointments on merit. He earns the name of “The Man with the Conscience” but he loses important political support.