But if one stops to think, that is not a
very alluring picture. " X " might indeed be pardoned if he declared that if his supporters had nothing better to say of him than this, they had better cut out the eulogy " stunt " altogether. We admit that at the first thought the idea of the new Chatham is most attractive, but when one reaches the pis alter argument—" No change could possibly be for the worse "—we grow a little depressed, and feel that after all it may be wiser and better to potter on with the present Cabinet than to show our confidence in the unknown and unnamed gentleman introduced to us by the anti-Coalition Press—a person whom, we are told, we ought to entrust with our lives and properties as a proof that we have as much confidence in him and his backers as he apparently has in us and in our ability to win the war if we will only take him at the valuation of the yellow Press. Speaking quite seriously, we think that Mr. Asquith and Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. Runeiman and Lord Lansdowne, and the rest of the Ministry, Liberal and Unionist,even if not Heaven-born statesmen, are less likely to upset - he coach than this unknown confidence man. Suppose too that, after all, he does not really exist, but is only the joint fiction of a newspaper syndicate ? In that case we should look a little foolish if we had put out the present Ministry on the bare assurance that "some one" would be ready and willing to act "when called to power by the unanimous voice of a justly angered nation."
