IV

POLITICS

33 1

risks to assume the form of an undertaking tomake war in various hypothetical circumstances.I am against Pacts. To pledge the whole ofour armed forces to defend disarmed Germany against an attack by France in the plenitude ofthe latter’s military power is foolish; and toassume that we shall take part in every futurewar in Western Europe is unnecessary. But Iam in favour of giving a very good example,even at the risk of being weak, in the directionof Arbitration and of Disarmament.

I turn next to questions of Government—adull but important matter. I believe that in thefuture the Government will have to take onmany duties which it has avoided in the past.For these purposes Ministers and Parliamentwill be unserviceable. Our task must be to de-centralise and devolve wherever we can, and inparticular to establish semi-independent cor-porations and organs of administration to whichduties of government, new and old, will beentrusted;—without, however, impairing thedemocratic principle or the ultimate sovereigntyof Parliament. These questions will be as im-portant and difficult in the future as the Fran-chise and the relations of the two Houseshave been in the past.

The questions which I group together as SexQuestions have not been party questions in thepast. But that was because they were never, orseldom, the subject of public discussion. Allthis is changed now. There are no subjectsabout which the big general public is more in-