These, however, are not the only grounds for the increasing scepticism of the validity of democratic institutions. The democratic state, like its predecessors, has proved itself to be voracious of authority; and in the exercise of its presumed omnicompetency it has increasingly occupied itself with matters, which—both in respect of extent and content—it is incapable of handling adequately. It has become palpably impossible to submit all the concerns of government to parliamentary discussion; and in consequence there has been a tendency on the one hand to invest administrative departments with virtual legislative power, and on the other to convert representative assemblies into mere instruments for registering the decisions of the executive government. The recent proposal for the establishment of a permanent statutory National Industrial Council in England has been evoked by the palpable inability of Parliament to deal effectually with the problems of industrial production. Even before the War, it was becoming plain that the congestion of parliamentary business in England called for some drastic remedy if parliament was to be saved from futility and discredit. But here again, the failure has been due to no inherent defect in the democratic principle but rather to the fact that the unitary and absolutist doctrine and practice of the state has hindered the proper development of democracy. In a word, the trouble with democracy is that there is not enough of it. The remedy for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Politically, it is still incomplete; its economic applications have yet to be made; and while we do lip service to its ethical presuppositions, they are far from being a rule of life. Yet lacking these things, democracy is condemned to arrest, and through arrest to decay. Meantime the dynastic principle has fallen—has indeed fallen under circumstances which make its revival seem exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, if democracy suffers arrest at this point in its history, if the peoples fail to work out its logic, society may lapse into an anarchy out of which dynasticism or something like it may once more emerge. It is no hyperbole to speak of the crisis of democracy; and it is only to be saved as the democratic peoples set themselves earnestly to the business of strengthening its stakes and lengthening its cords. I