“Most of the Labour Party promised to support Proportional Representation at the last election.”
“And ran away from it. There was a tuppenny-ha’penny advantage in cheating on that, so of course they cheated. They’ll run away from everything except office. They’re just a lot of poor things who’ve spent too much money on Court clothes and in dressing up their wives and daughters fit and proper for the Garden Parties, and they want to get the wear out of it all before they go back into the shadows. Nobody in Parliament who isn’t conspicuous is going to let Parliament be altered so that it excludes second-rate people. It’s against nature. You might as soon expect Congress to scrap the American Constitution. You’ll never live to see a General Election in England or America that isn’t fought on thoroughly silly lines—on the old electoral method.”
“But think of the tasks that lie before the world!”
“What’s the good of thinking of them?” asked my friend. “It only worries you.”
“There has to be an organisation of international affairs to prevent war, there has to be disarmament with security, world transport at standard charges, the re-establishment of a workable world currency, the development of education throughout the world——”
“Things like that aren’t going to be done by Parliament,” said my friend. “They may be done behind the backs of the politicians—if there are interests and intelligences big enough to want them and organise them, but——Have you ever met the average voter?”
“I know, I suppose, as many people as you do.”
“But your head’s in the clouds....”
My friend paused, and then remarked with malignant satisfaction, “The next big question for England is Prohibition.”
“But it’s such a secondary matter!”