Unlike ours, English politics,--one hears it on every
hand,--are pure. Ours unfortunately are known to be not so. The
difference seems to be that our politicians will do anything for
money and the English politicians won't; they just take the money
and won't do a thing for it.
Somehow there always seems to be a peculiar interest about English
political questions that we don't find elsewhere. At home in Canada
our politics turn on such things as how much money the Canadian
National Railways lose as compared with how much they could lose
if they really tried; on whether the Grain Growers of Manitoba
should be allowed to import ploughs without paying a duty or to
pay a duty without importing the ploughs. Our members at Ottawa
discuss such things as highway subsidies, dry farming, the Bank
Act, and the tariff on hardware. These things leave me absolutely
cold. To be quite candid there is something terribly plebeian about
them. In short, our politics are what we call in French "peuple."
But when one turns to England, what a striking difference! The
English, with the whole huge British Empire to fish in and the
European system to draw upon, can always dig up some kind of
political topic of discussion that has a real charm about it. One
month you find English politics turning on the Oasis of Merv and the
next on the hinterland of Albania; or a member rises in the Commons
with a little bit of paper in his hand and desires to ask the foreign
secretary if he is aware that the Ahkoond of Swat is dead.
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