party whip’s orders, provided the leader will make their seats
safe for them by the process which was called, in derisive ref-
erence to the war rationing system, “giving them the coupon.”
Other incidents were so grotesque that I cannot mention them
without enabling the reader to identify the parties, which would
not be fair, as they were no more to blame than thousands of
others who must necessarily be nameless. The general result
was patently absurd; and the electorate, disgusted at its own
work, instantly recoiled to the opposite extreme, and cast out
all the coupon candidates at the earliest bye-elections by equally
silly majorities. But the mischief of the general election could
not be undone; and the Government had not only to pretend
to abuse its European victory as it had promised, but actually
to do it by starving the enemies who had thrown down their
arms. It had, in short, won the election by pledging itself to be
thriftlessly wicked, cruel, and vindictive; and it did not find it
as easy to escape from this pledge as it had from nobler ones.
The end, as I write, is not yet; but it is clear that this thought-
less savagery will recoil on the heads of the Allies so severely
that we shall be forced by the sternest necessity to take up our
share of healing the Europe we have wounded almost to death
instead of attempting to complete her destruction.
