In this most intellectually belligerent of neutral countries the political mind has become realistic and critical, just when the combatant nations have taken refuge in an uncritical and remote idealism from the sordid and dreadful realities of war. Amongst the belligerents, it is true, there is talk of imposing ideals which, if ill-defined, have nevertheless called forth generous sacrifices from the inarticulate, plain people, who accept the formulae officially or officiously provided for their guidance. But the mere fact of mobilization tends to emphasize the abstract quality of the formulae in which the combatants have summed up, in almost identical words, their allegedly conflicting purposes. The individual is obscured by the anonymity of the device emblazoned upon the banner under which he is engaged. The mind is mobilized no less than the body, so that it is difficult to discern the personal emotion which must lie behind the self-immolation of so much bravery. Indeed, when collectively expressed in official utterances, the motives seem so abstract that President Wilson once confessed his inability to distinguish between them. It was not until he ceased to be a spectator of the conflict that he himself coined a phrase almost cynical in its bland inhumanity, coming from a country where the rudiments of real democracy are scarcely perceptible. In so far, however, as it is possible to read any intelligible meaning into the word "democracy," as currently employed, it must be prefixed by "political." The world must be made safe for the political democracies, that is to say, those countries which have provided themselves with the "democratic institution" of parliamentary government. A couple of centuries ago the blessings of political freedom preoccupied the minds of those countries which have ever since accepted the attainment of that end as a substitute for the liberty of which it seemed the simulacrum. Those were the happy days when the discovery had not yet been made that political power is determined and conditioned by economic power, the former being useless without the latter. The gradual realization of this has been accompanied by a widespread disillusionment with party politics, popularly summed up by Mr. Belloc in his book, _The Party System_, which put before the general reader criticisms heretofore confined to Socialist literature. The domination of politics by capitalism became an accepted truism, and it was no longer possible for intelligent men to consider their "representative assemblies" with that seriousness so necessary to the dignity and comfort of the political mountebanks. In short, without prejudice to the theoretical virtues of parliamentary government, the conviction was established that, under the regime of profiteering industrialism, political democracy is an impolite fiction, and that the politics of capitalism must be party politics, with all its inherent corruption and dishonesty.