[Pg iv]

Alleged “interference” with the Heavenly Twins.

See “The Universal Conflict.”

[Pg v]

UNPARLIAMENTARY PAPERS AND OTHER DIVERSIONS

BY
REGINALD BERKELEY

Author of
“French Leave” and “Eight O’Clock”
Part Author of “The Oilskin Packet”
and “Decorations and Absurdities”

With an Introduction
By J. C. SQUIRE
And Drawings by
BOHUN LYNCH

Cecil Palmer
Forty-nine
Chandos Street
W.C.2

[Pg vi]

FIRST
EDITION
1924
COPYRIGHT

Printed in Great Britain

[Pg viii]

Certain of the papers that make up this book have appeared, either in this present or in some modified form, in the “Outlook.” Others have been published in the “Nottingham Journal,” the “Yorkshire Observer,” and other provincial dailies. Others again are hitherto unpublished. To the Editors of those journals in which his work has appeared the author wishes to express his gratitude and acknowledgments.

[Pg ix]

I happen to frequent Captain Berkeley’s company on the cricket field. When he is there, and the wicket is bumpy, it might suitably be called a stricken field. He bowls very fast and very straight.

As his publisher usually keeps wicket for him, I dare not suggest that the crooked ones go for four byes. In any event that parallel would not be necessary here; but the general characteristics of Captain Berkeley’s bowling are certainly in evidence. He goes direct at his object, and when he hits it the middle stump whirls rapidly in the air. He is all for hitting the wicket; slip catches and cunningly arranged chances to cover are not for him. This blunt going for the main point it is that gives his parodies their greatest charm. I like it when I see a reference to “Count Puffendorff Seidlitz, the Megalomanian Minister”: if we are being funny, why not laugh aloud instead of merely tittering? “Lord Miasma” pleases me as a coinage full of meaning in these days; there is a refreshing lack of compromise about the name of the Galsworthy parson, “The Rev. Hardy Heavyweight”; and how better could one name two of Sir James Barrie’s minor characters than by the twin appellations of McVittie and Price, who here take, as they elsewhere give, the biscuit? This agreeable couple appear in one of the mock plays which, to one reader at least,[Pg x] seem to be the very best part of this very miscellaneous volume. Captain Berkeley is himself a successful playwright, and dog has here very entertainingly eaten dog. Mr. Galsworthy’s passion for abstract titles; his hostile preoccupation with the normal sporting man; his agonised sympathy with maltreated women; his determination to load the dice against his heroines: all these things are made clear in language very like his own, and yet in a way that suggests (to return to our imagery) that the bowler, however fast and determined, has a respect for the batsman. I don’t know that it is quite fair to ascribe “the Manchester Drama” especially to Mr. St. John Ervine or even to Manchester; but we know the type, and if a few more blows like this will kill it, so much the better. It is well enough to be harrowed in the theatre, but not to be made to feel as though we had chronic dyspepsia. The Russian Drama is beautifully apt; and “The Slayboy of the Western World” also. They reproduce idioms and mannerisms perfectly, and exhibit limitations unanswerably.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this book is its diversity. It is an age (excluding the merely vulgarly versatile) of specialists and specialist labels. A man is not expected to see life whole, much less steadily; he is encouraged to describe himself as “poet,”[Pg xi] “parodist,” “politician,” “business man” or what not; and it is regarded as almost improper that a person who takes an interest in Synge should so much as admit a knowledge of Mr. Winston Churchill’s existence. Captain Berkeley refuses to subject himself to any such limitations. He surveys everything around him, and where he sees anything he thinks funny, he has a go at it. This should not be regarded—any more than Canning’s squibs were regarded—as militating against his trustworthiness as a politician. Rather the reverse. A knowledge of humanity and the humanities is serviceable in legislation and administration, and a sense of humour usually goes with the sense which is called common.

J. C. Squire.

[Pg 3]

NINETEEN ANYTHING—NINETEEN SOMETHING ELSE

By the Rt. Hon. Winsom Stunster Chortill

CHAPTER MXCVII

Golgotha

Scarcely had died away the reverberations of criticism, enhanced by venomous personal attacks upon myself for my so-called “interference” in the operations against the Heavenly Twins, when a new crisis of even more momentous significance was sprung upon the Cabinet. In the previous December, with the fullest concurrence of the First Air Lord and the Board of Aerial Operations, I had planned a lightning raid on the planet of Venus to be carried out by our obsolete comets. The political[Pg 4] situation has so important a bearing upon this project that I must here interpolate a memorandum which, as long before as the previous July, I had addressed to the Secretary of State for Extra Planetary Affairs and circulated to my colleagues.

At the same time, knowing his difficulties in[Pg 5] coping with the tasks of his office, I instructed the faithful Smashterton Jones to convey the following message to the Prime Minister himself:

Reverting now to the plan for an aerial raid on the planet of Venus. We had the old comets, quite ineffective for operations against the major Planets, but powerful and not at all to be despised;[Pg 6] we had a satisfactory surplus of meteors which could be employed in support; and we had in addition the newly constructed, and in all respects novel, planetary battering-ram, specially designed for jarring, or, as the technical word is, “boosting” heavenly bodies out of their orbits—the apple of the eye of old Lord Krusher and the Board of Aerial Construction. This formidable engine, unique, as we were led to believe, in the whole stellar universe, must in any case carry out her trials somewhere, and might as well be utilised in toppling a potential antagonist out of our path, instead of being sent to the Milky Way for the usual two months’ test. So much for material. Of trained personnel we had, though not an abundance, a reasonable margin. Only one thing seemed to baffle the mighty war mind of old Lord Krusher and our experts—a satisfactory jumping-off place. Accordingly, the day before the Cabinet met, I dictated the following:—

To this he replied in a characteristic letter:—

[Pg 8]

This was the kind of thoughtless criticism to which I was occasionally subjected by the old air-dog.[1] Magnificent in his courage, more often right than wrong, a splendid example of British brain-power, there were times when he made the error of estimating other people’s mental capacity by his own. Time was pressing, so I wirelessed the following reply:—

First Lord to First Air Lord:

Take Supply of Oxygen in Canisters,

which settled the matter. Alas! I was to discover later that this too speedy resolution of his difficulties was merely to succeed in antagonising the bluff old warrior against the whole project.

Meanwhile the great Council of the Allied Planets met, and it became all too apparent that the operations, as a whole, were being pursued with even more than our customary hesitation and delay. The Archangel Gabriel, an excellent First Minister in times of peace, was beginning to give unmistakable signs of being too old and slow-witted for his work. Since his well-remembered and highly successful controversy with Lucifer, some æons before, his powers had been steadily waning; and it was speedily becoming apparent that he had no longer the mental alertness[Pg 9] and vigour of body for a prolonged campaign conducted under the stress of modern conditions. At times—as, for instance, over the thunderbolt shortage—he would arouse himself to prodigious efforts, equalling, if not outstripping, his ancient prowess. And then he would fall into always increasing periods of apathy, from which there was no extracting him.

In these circumstances I wrote the following memorandum:—

On the following day, the most fateful of my life, I was unable to resist a foreboding that things were not yet destined to go right for the Allied cause. The careful records I had kept of my administration satisfied me, as I looked through them, that for all I had done I could assure myself of the approval of posterity. We had created, equipped and maintained a gigantic aerial machine. No hostile forces had so much as come within sight of our planet. My further schemes, to which I had applied every existing intellectual test, made us reasonably certain of a speedy result; and I left my room and strode across to the Council with a conviction in my[Pg 11] heart that I could carry through my proposals—and yet with a haunting fear of the unexpected. On arriving at the Council Chamber my forebodings became heavier. The proceedings were of a most perfunctory nature. All controversial business was adjourned to a later meeting, and we were informed that a crisis made it necessary for the head of the Government to demand the resignations of his entire Ministry. With a heavy heart I parted with the insignia of my office, realising, as I did so, that the struggle must now be indefinitely prolonged. The head of the Government, animated by that spirit of kindliness towards myself which he had ever shown, pressed me to accept a gilded sinecure. With every wish to avoid giving him pain I felt myself obliged to decline. Posterity, he told me, would appreciate my zeal in the public service.

Posterity, I felt to myself, as I left the building, would, thanks to my diaries, at least understand.

[Pg 12]

Some Extracts from an Essay in the Manner of a Distinguished Writer

During the latter part of the closing year of the nineteenth century, an English traveller, sojourning with his wife and daughter near the hot springs of Rotorua in New Zealand, was observed one day to dash from the verandah of his hotel, hatless, into the street, and accost a passing urchin. The lad was singularly unprepossessing; he squinted, his right shoulder was strangely deformed, and his ears were much too large for his head. Unlike most children in receipt of flattering attentions from an elderly and distinguished stranger, he snarled, spat on the ground, and hurried away muttering oaths. The astonished relatives of the traveller, hurrying out in pursuit of him—in the belief, as the wife said afterwards, that he was suddenly demented—found their husband and parent almost beside himself with excitement. “That boy,” he said, pointing towards the receding figure a hand that shook with emotion—“that boy will end as Prime Minister of England.” Convinced that his mind was wandering, they led him back with soothing words to the hotel; but his unerring judgment was once again to be confirmed by the verdict of time. The speaker was Dr. Quank[Pg 13] Brane, the eminent psychologist; the boy, soon to be known to the greater part of the universe, equally for the profundity of his wisdom and the variety of his gifts and achievements, was Erasmus Galileo McCann, philosopher, scientist, theologian, naval and military strategist, scholar, economist and some time First Minister of the Crown.

The boyhood of this monument of versatile genius, no less than his manhood, was remarkable. At the age of one, when dropped by his nurse, a fact which accounted for the deformity of his shoulder, he was distinctly heard, as if in anticipation of his interjectional habits of later life, to rip out an accusing oath; and, when the startled slattern turned up her hands and eyes in horror, he added, “Don’t stare like a fool, go and get the doctor!” At three years old his father presented him with all the volumes of Buckle’s History of Civilisation, which he had completely mastered before he was five. His dissertation of The Lesser Cists in Invertebrates, published at the age of seven, is still a standard work of this little known branch of biological science. Many years later an old friend of the family told an admiring conclave of relatives of an encounter with the young McCann, in which he himself was considerably worsted. In the course of a journey across the Warraboora plains,[Pg 14] a wild and almost uninhabited tract of country, his provisions gave out. Some friendly natives whom he encountered contrived to spare him a few dried corn cobs, but these could hardly last him indefinitely. Starvation stared him in the face. One day, however, as he was making a frugal meal of a large aboriginal lizard, that he found entangled in the undergrowth, a strange urchin dropped on his head from out of a tree fern, uttering savage whoops, tore the carcass from his astonished fingers, and devoured it without a word of apology.

“That,” said the older man with resignation, “was my last morsel of food. I must now die.”

“Je n’en vois pas la nécessité,” returned the youth (it was McCann), quoting La Rochefoucauld with the nonchalance of complete familiarity; wherewith he swung himself into the branches of a Kauri pine, and disappeared without another word. Giving himself up for lost, the lonely traveller prepared for death; but before nightfall the youth returned with a wallet of provender, and accompanied by guides who piloted them back to civilisation. The boy appeared blissfully unaware that he had done anything remarkable. “Such astonishing sang-froid,” the traveller used to conclude, “I never encountered before or since. I knew he was destined for greatness.”

[Pg 15]

His schooldays and college life were curiously uneventful. He secured the uncoveted distinction of remaining at the bottom of the bottom form of the school for three years, and of failing ignominiously in the Cambridge Junior Local. Wiseacres shook their heads and quoted scores of instances of infantile precocity. It began to look as though the early promise was after all no more than a false dawn; and then, to everyone’s astonishment, at the age of 19½ he planned, financed and brought out The People’s Piffle, a daily journal exactly corresponding to the literary appetites of the masses of the British reading public. Among other novel features of this newspaper, alternative opinions were presented in parallel columns on the leader page, the appointment of the editor was subject to confirmation or change every three months by a referendum of the readers, and, in place of the obsolete insurances against accident, continued subscription for a period of 25 years or longer conferred a pensionable right upon the subscriber.

So momentous a development in the literary activities of the country created a profound impression. More than one well-known actress sent him her autograph unsolicited. A film star was heard to refer to him as “some guy.” The Prime Minister of the day shook hands with him in public. Lord Thundercliffe shook in his[Pg 16] shoes, and redoubled his fulminating denunciations of everything. But the day of Lord Thundercliffe was over: a new era was at hand, the era of universal genius; and McCann, its prophet and its leader, was even then poising himself on the crest of the wave that was to sweep away the wreckage of the old century, and sweep in the reforms of the new, and sweep him personally into a position of eminence hitherto unknown in our annals.

Just at about this time a resident at Claydamp-on-the-Wash was astonished, in the course of a country walk, to see a tall, thin gentleman leaning over a gate in an attitude of insupportable dejection. The enormous brogues; the ill-fitting brown suit; the high-domed forehead; the bushy brown spade beard; the huge spectacles perched on the lofty sensitive nose; the dreamy eyes looking far away into the mists, all suggested a certain literary personage. Could it be? Was it possible? Overcoming a natural hesitation at intruding upon the privacy of one who was obviously a recluse, he hesitatingly ventured to approach. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but surely I am addressing Mr. Lytton Strachey?” and without giving the stranger time to answer he added, “Is anything the matter? Can I help in any way?”

[Pg 17]

The solitary turned upon him eyes that were suffused with tears. “Oh, no,” he replied, “no. Nothing. I was born too early, that is all.” And on being pressed for a further explanation he continued, “By the ordinary processes of Nature I must inevitably predecease this monstrosity of talent; and I am excluded from the possibility of writing the only Georgian biography that offers any kind of scope for my abilities.”

He was of politics; and he was not of politics. He built up abstract theories of Government in his articles in the morning Press: and demolished them in the evening in his speeches in the House of Commons. He attracted the sympathies of simple folk by a life of Spartan discipline; and disgusted them by a profuse and shameless bestowal of peerages and honours. He angled for the votes of the mercenary and idle by a wholesale creation of state benevolences; and threw away what he had gained by an almost niggardly supervision and husbandry of the national income. As Controller and chief proprietor of the great Press Trust, he denounced the infamies and exactions of the great profiteering combines in which he himself was the principal partner: and as Prime Minister of a secular Government he disestablished the Church of which he, as[Pg 18] Cardinal Archbishop, was the protesting head. Writing at about this time Count Puffendorff Seidlitz, the Megalomanian Ambassador, reported to his Government that it was perfectly vain to cherish the slightest hope of undermining the national popularity of one who so supremely embodied in himself the qualities, and the inconsistencies, and the portentous humbug that chiefly characterised the nation of which he was the head. Nothing could be done at present. Above all there must be no haste. “But I do not despair,” he added, “for, though ignorant of music, the man has a certain coarse feeling for the arts—and that, in a country of Philistines, must in the long run betray him into our hands.”

Fatal self-complacency! At the very moment when those words were being penned, McCann was—where? He was in the anteroom of the Princess Vodkha, that luckless Ambassador’s sovereign, waiting to seal with a courtly handclasp the Trade Agreement between Megalomania and this country. Poor Count Puffendorff Seidlitz! Where Lord Thundercliffe and his brother Lord Miasma has failed, it was hardly to be supposed that he would succeed.

So ended, in a thin filmy haze, a life of service and sacrament. To the very end they thought[Pg 19] he might be saved. The general public, brought suddenly to the realisation of the approaching calamity, stood dumbly in the streets, or hurried away—hoping. But the sands were running down; the tide, long since turned, was ebbing with inexorable swiftness; the night was indeed at hand. A greater and more terrible accuser than Lord Thundercliffe hovered over the sick man’s bed; and a greater and wiser Judge than public opinion was waiting to pronounce the verdict from which there is no appeal.

“No,” I said, “as a matter of fact I’ve never been to the Derby—and to tell you the truth——” I went on.

He winced. He did not want me to tell him the truth. If the truth was (as it was) that I didn’t care two cassowary’s eggs whether I went to the Derby or not, that was the very last thing he desired to hear. He wanted to keep his opinion of me as unimpaired by such idiosyncrasies, as I would permit. These thoughts rippled over the mild surface of his features like gusts of wind across the waters of a pond. I allowed the words to die away in my throat. After all, to give pain flagrantly—

“Promise me,” he urged, “p-p-promise me you’ll take a day off and go to-morrow. It’s one of the sights of the world. The Downs black with people——”

“Black?” I murmured, “surely not in this heat?”

“Oh, well, covered with people then, stiff with people, crowded for miles and miles with millions and millions of all classes in the land——”

“Dear, dear,” I said, “first, second, and third!”

He ignored this miserable attempt at buffoonery.

[Pg 21]

“Yes,” he averred, “all classes in the land, thimble-rigging, cocoanut shying, confidence tricking, eating, drinking, laughing, cheering. Vehicles of all sorts, shapes, sizes, motive power, blocking all the roads in the neighbourhood. And the horses, my dear boy, the horses! Until you’ve seen those horses, trained to a hair, with coats like satin, ready to run for their lives, why, you simply haven’t seen anything. And the crowd in the paddock. You must see the crowd in the paddock. And the bookies. No man’s lived, till he’s been done down on the Downs. Now promise me faithfully——”

“Very well,” I said hurriedly to forestall the otherwise inevitable repetition, “I promise....”

It was rather fun, I admit. From the moment when the wheel-barrow on which, apparently, I had made the journey in the company of a Zulu chief, Lady Diana Manners, Mr. Justice Salter, and a dear little Eskimo girl aged seven, drew up at Boulter’s Lock—no, no—not Boulter’s Lock—Tattenham Corner, I knew I was in for one of the great days of my life. There, glittering in the sunlight in all its pristine colouring, stood the brand-new Tattenham Corner House, erected for the occasion by Sir Joseph Lyons himself, who, with Lord Howard de Walden on one side of him and the Prime Minister on the other,[Pg 22] stood in the doorway receiving his guests. A prodigious negro, with an unexpectedly small voice, announced me (for some reason) as “Mr. Mallaby Deeley,” and I found myself walking on a vast deep verandah, laid out with innumerable little luncheon tables, through which a long procession of horses was intricately manœuvring.

“The paddock,” murmured my Zulu companion. “It’s an idea of Sir Joseph’s. The combination of a sit-down luncheon and form at a glance. Extraordinarily convenient.”

We sat down at a table. Immediately a jockey and his horse sat down opposite to us.

“Order us a drink each, dearie,” said the jockey, “it’s a fearful business this perambulatin’ about; and you get nothing for it. Eh? Oh, gin for ’er, and I’ll take a glass o’ port.”

“And what is your young friend’s name?” enquired the judge, suddenly putting his head from under the table.

“Ah,” said the jockey, knowingly, “that ’ud be telling, that would.” He tapped his nose mysteriously and drank.

“But, my good sir,” complained the judge, “how can I back your horse if I don’t know its name?”

“By the process of elimination,” said the jockey sagely.

[Pg 23]

[Pg 25]

“Done down on the Downs.”

[Pg 24]

“Elimination,” said the judge, “what of?”

“Yourself,” said the jockey; and his mount choked coyly in her glass.

At this moment the King appeared, followed by Aristotle, Sir Thomas Beecham, and others.

“The next race is about to begin,” he said severely, “and you’ve none of you brushed your hair.”

It was a long time before I found the bookmaker. Any number of spurious ones rose up in my path and taunted me; but He always escaped. At last I thought of looking under one of the thimbles; and there he was in deep calculation.

“What price Poltergeist?” I demanded. I wanted to say Psychology, but the word somehow refused to shape itself.

“It all depends,” he replied shrewdly, “on whether you want to buy or to sell,” wherewith he crossed his legs, smiled on only one side of his face, and returned to his calculations.

“Aren’t you a bookmaker?” I faltered.

“Certainly,” he cried shrilly, “and I’m making a book now, can’t you see?” He held up a kind of primitive loose-leaf ledger, made of calico pages bound in sheepskin.

“Very durable,” he explained, and broke into a harsh chant:

[Pg 26]

He broke off abruptly and rose to his feet. The miscellany in his lap was scattered upon the ground.

“Pick up my work-basket,” he exclaimed, “and give me the kaleidoscope,” I handed him the strange black instrument at which he was pointing, and began groping on my knees among the pins and needles. He turned towards the sun, and gazed at it through the object in his hand.

“Look out,” he exclaimed suddenly, “they’re off.”

Simultaneously a voice near me said, “The King’s calling you,” and I began to run. Immediately the hounds were slipped from the leash, and the hunt settled down in my wake. The ship began to sway from side to side, and the roaring grew louder and louder. Still I ran, flashing past the booths, past upturned umbrellas with cards scattered over them, past the stewards’ enclosure, past the Royal Box. The thundering[Pg 27] grew louder and more insistent. I was flying along the track with the whole field plunging after me. Hoarse cries. I redouble my efforts. My head is going to burst. The Royal Box whizzes past again. The winning post. I’m falling....

A long time afterwards, a voice said:

“He’s quite all right. A touch of heat-stroke is nothing, really, you know. Quiet. Couple of days in bed.”

I opened my eyes.

“Sir Joseph Lyons——” I began.

“All right,” said the doctor, “you shut up.”

“I’ve promised to go to the Derby,” I protested.

“Next year,” replied the doctor. “Just drink this, will you?”

Somebody—a certain Dr. Friedenberg to be truthful—has thrown out suggestions of the dreadful possibility of indefinitely prolonging the human existence; in fact of bringing about a kind of mundane immortality. Hair is to be made to grow upon bald heads (no, mine is not bald); short men will increase in stature by several inches; and fat men will become slender and graceful. The last is perhaps an attractive prospect. Wait. Tell me this.

Who wants to live for ever? And having disposed of that pertinent question, in the affirmative if you will, who wants his neighbour to live for ever?

Who wants to stereotype the control of human affairs in the hands that find it so difficult to control them? What becomes of young ideas, new movements and general progress, in a universe of bald pates thatched, short men grown taller and corpulence made small? For in all this one hears nothing about recharging the brain; and bodily vigour does little to stave off mental paralysis of the kind that usually comes on with age. Would flowing hair and graceful figure countervail the growth of avarice, deceit and malice; or check the relentless march of stupidity? Would it not rather be the case, that from year[Pg 29] to year all the more unpleasant of human characteristics would intensify and harden?

And, by the way, think of the population of this miserable little globe in a thousand years or so. Nobody dies. We all live and multiply for eternity. It increases by geometric progression. To-day we are, let us say, a paltry thousand million of people. In a year’s time, at a conservative estimate, we should double our population. In a few hundred years—good heavens! Life would become like the platform of Piccadilly Circus at six o’clock in the evening.

Piccadilly! This subject is inextricably bound up in my mind with Piccadilly. I will explain why.

Not long ago, when musing upon Dr. Friedenberg’s discoveries, I had occasion to use the railway of that name. I boarded a crowded train, thinking deeply. I took my place (most incautiously, I admit, but there happened to be no other place to take) standing beside a forbidding military gentleman, whose arms were full of brown paper parcels. In the immediate vicinity stood a large stern woman, solidly planted near the door, who disdained the help of the strap and supported herself, with arms akimbo and legs wide apart.

The train ran smoothly enough through Dover Street and Down Street, and my line of thought, on this problem of perpetual life, developed into[Pg 30] a kind of saga to the rhythm of the movement over the rails. The whole subject went before my eyes like a glorious vision. I knew just what I was going to say in this essay....

And then the train back-jumped, and the large stern woman, in the effort to retain her balance, planted one of her feet with relentless precision, exactly on one of mine, and simultaneously drove her right elbow into my ribs. In really considerable agony I recoiled, involuntarily loosening my grip of the supporting strap. Immediately the train swerved, and threw me into the bosom of the military gentleman, whose armful of parcels burst from his control and smothered the occupants of the neighbouring seats. Muttering imprecations, he crouched on the swaying floor and began to pick them up. I stooped to help him; and our heads met with a grinding crash....

Meanwhile the woman—the—the unspeakable monster who had caused the calamity, stood entirely unmoved, gazing through the glass doors at the conductor.

Think of such a person going down through all eternity committing outrages of this kind—probably one a day. Eternal life? Penal servitude for life is more to her deserving.

Russia and Germany have joined hands; France and Belgium have banded together; Italy has made a secret treaty with the Kemalists—a fact which can hardly afford much satisfaction to the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, leave alone the Greeks! Poland and her neighbours are on much the same terms of cordiality as rival opera singers. There is Bessarabia; there is (so to call it for convenience) Germania Irridenta; there is the Burgenland; all simmering merrily away. There are heartburnings in Transylvania. I cannot think that even the Sanjak is really placid—it has always wallowed in grievances from time immemorial. Indeed (so I am told), it needs but a spark to set the whole contraption in a blaze. Only a spark!... We are sitting on a wood pile soaked in petrol; and the boys at Paris and elsewhere are out with their tinder-boxes.

Viewed from one point of view, this situation has arisen very appositely to certain investigations conducted not long ago by The Times, and provides a capital solution to the problems of how to find careers for our sons, and what to do with our[Pg 32] daughters. But there are some of us[2] to whom even the satisfaction of starting our children in (or rather out of) the world, would be but a poor recompense for the physical discomfort (it’s not the danger; we none of us mind danger; we rather like it) of resuming active hostilities ourselves. As Leggitt says[3]: “Danger I scorn; but discomfort is the parent of anxiety; and anxiety is the handmaid of despair.” That’s good enough for me.

Besides, wars are not what they were. The last war was, to a great extent, won, and the next war will be entirely won, behind the lines. “Lord Northcliffe,” says a military historian[4] in his article on war in the Encyclopædia, “Lord Northcliffe dealt heavier blows than Haig. Haig hit harder than Rawlinson, Rawlinson than Godley, and Godley (through a long string of intermediary Blenkinsops and Chislehursts) than Private Muggins. In fact, the whole lesson of the war was that Muggins didn’t matter twopennyworth of gin. The further back you were, the more you could do. If Captain Slogger, the Company Commander, stopped one—why,[Pg 33] anybody else could carry on. But if the R.T.O.’s clerk at the base went down with writer’s cramp, the repercussions might be felt all over Europe. And in the next war....” And so on.

Push this to its logical conclusion and what do you find? An entirely new conception of the theory of national service. The duty of every man, with love of country in his heart, is to fit himself to play a far-reaching, noble, and adequate part in the next war—from a distance at which brains will really tell. As Sir Cuthbert puts it, “The duty of the soldiers of the future is to consolidate the front behind the front.” No mawkish sentimental considerations should interfere with the attainment of this. “If others have to fall in the front line, drop a tear, good citizen, or if you feel so disposed, drop two tears. But for the sake of your country, and its final victory in the struggle, see to it that you are not the one who falls.”

I will. I will see to it with punctilious care. It is my duty; and I shall discharge it with the same devotion as I displayed in the last war, when I rose from assistant warehouse clerk (graded as bombardier) in the E.F.C. receiving shed, via R.T.O.’s clerk at Boulavre (graded as Staff Sergeant of Musketry), assistant press censor (graded as Squadron Leader of Cavalry with rank[Pg 34] of Captain) and Base Commandant (graded as G.S.O. 2, but with rank of colonel on the staff and pay and allowances of a Lieutenant-General) to the proud position which I occupied at the end. I have nothing to complain of.... I cannot deny that I had all kinds of obstacles to overcome. Ignorant prejudiced fools, blind to the interests of their country, were constantly endeavouring to comb me out. And so it will be in the next war. The earnest patriot will find himself thwarted and misunderstood at every turn. Nothing but a knowledge of the niceties of the medical board, will avail to defeat these busybodies. Indeed, it may at times be necessary to indulge in a little pardonable deception. Thus, a cigarette soaked in laudanum, and smoked half an hour before the doctor’s examination, will produce all the symptoms of general paralysis, heart failure, and abdominal catarrh; yet, in an hour or two at most, the smoker will have recovered most of his faculties, and the remainder will return in, at the outside, a few days. A glass of vinegar, swallowed without deglutition, produces the pallor of a ghost and the pulse and temperature of a lizard; yet the effects have rarely lasted longer than a week. And there are, of course, such well-known (but to my thinking too crude) expedients as self-inflicted wounds and even amputations.

[Pg 35]

Perhaps it is best, indeed, to make preparations in advance. It must never be forgotten that a large civilian population is necessary to carry on what are called “the essential public services.” No one should disdain to do his duty in one of these capacities. And if, as in the last war, the only sons of widowed mothers are to be given special consideration, we must not hesitate to take full advantage of such a provision. A judicious use of the knife or poison cup, or possibly a combination of the two, will place many a strapping fellow in the necessary condition of exemption.

Promptski-Buzzoff, in his elaborate, but too little known, treatise “Die Vermeidung des Kriegesdienstes”[5] lays down that “the spinal marrow of a nation is to be found in the conscience of its citizens.” This is profoundly and undeniably true. The pages of history are bespattered with the fragments of empires that have disintegrated through the decay of their moral fibre. Every good citizen, says Buzzoff, should cultivate a conscience as inflexible as Bessemer steel. A properly cultivated conscience will no more permit its owner to kill, or be killed, than a vacuum brake will let a train run away. It’s automatic. You mention the word war, and[Pg 36] there’s an instant inhibition. This kind of thing however, needs considerable preparation. It is always open to misinterpretation if your conscience doesn’t develop until the outbreak of war; although that, in itself, is not a consideration which ought to deter a man with the interests of his country at heart.

Many of us, again, are indispensable. Until late in 1917, I was indispensable myself. And next time I fully intend to be indispensable all through the war. I shall get elected to some legislative body—say the London County Council; and my devotion to duty will do the rest. But, of course, in case of mischance I shall be prepared with an alternative plan, several alternative plans in fact. And, in the last resort, I shall place my services at the disposal of the Director-General of Lines of Communication. After all, speaking as one who has already fought a campaign in that capacity, one has a sense of responsibility and power, even in the humblest posts behind the line, of which even Divisional and Corps commanders might be envious. As an R.T.O.’s assistant, one is conscious of a control over the destinies of others, that almost partakes of divinity. A motion of the hand, a word on a scrap of paper, and divisions and their baggage may be separated for ever; provisions consigned to one country may find themselves devoured in another; and Generals[Pg 37] waiting to begin a battle may awake on zero day to the fact that they have no forces, except their staffs, wherewith to fight.

It will be understood that I offer these suggestions on the understanding that we find ourselves allied to a country in which there will be some approximation, in the amenities offered to L. of C., to those enjoyed in the larger cities in France during the war. Otherwise, frankly, nothing doing! I have been studying the appendices to Splitz’s book on the Russian Army[6]; and the feeding is hardly up to what I might call a civilised war standard. Thus, on L. of C., the weekly ration allowance appears to be four gold roubles’ worth of straw soup, three poods of lycopodium seed cake, and two samovars of liquorice water, together with thirty-seven foot-calories of bonemeal and a packet of spearmint—which, although it compares favourably with the diet of Divisional and Corps Commanders in that country[7], has but little attraction for the gourmet. And in any case what about the residuum? After all, we can’t all of us expect carte blanche to[Pg 38] send trains backwards and forwards—passed to you, please, and to you, please, and so on. Even on the grander scale, there’ll never be room for more than a million or so R.T.O.’s all told (and that will include the other side). Something’s got to be done for the rest of us. Even the L. of C. troops will be up to full strength at last. They’ll absorb a number of millions; but they’ll fill up eventually. Even the essential public services at home can’t be swelled indefinitely. There will come a time when everything useful has been filled up, and there are still people left over.

Well, we can’t all be satisfied in this world. It was never intended that we should. And, so far as I can see, the overplus will have to make themselves comfortable in the trenches. It will be a galling thought to them that they’re poked away there out of everything, with no real work to do. But it doesn’t really matter, for we’ll win the war all right.

We’ll win it in spite of them.

This is the Truth about the production of first plays.

First the author, in the secrecy of his chamber, painfully gives birth to an idea, and clothes it in words—if possible of not more than one syllable. Then he shows it to his best friend, who obligingly points out that the whole conception is faulty, and that the dialogue is beneath contempt. He then reads it to his second-best friend, who wakes from his slumber greatly refreshed. By the end of a short period he has no friends left: but he has learnt a few of the more obvious imperfections of his work. In despair of ever reconciling the conflicting criticisms to which it has been subjected, he posts it defiantly to Grossmith and Malone, Sir Alfred Butt, Mr. Charles Cochran, Mr. Laurillard, Mr. de Courville, and the whole gang of impresarios. It returns from each of them accompanied by a printed slip. He then slinks to the office of a dramatic agent.

The dramatic agent is a florid man with a super-silk hat. He receives the author with the gracious condescension of royalty greeting an inferior. The author, overcome at the honour which is being conferred, gratefully deposits his[Pg 40] precious MS. in the luxurious plush-padded basket which is held out by an underling. The basket is reverently placed upon the table; mutual expressions of goodwill are exchanged; the author is bowed out.

Then the dramatic agent shakes the MS. out of the basket, as though it were verminous; pitchforks it into the recesses of a safe; locks the safe with a loud clang, and loses the key for two years.

At the end of two years Cyrus K. Bimetaller, the celebrated “Stunt” King, visits the dramatic agent to throw in his teeth the forty-seven separate scripts of forty-seven separate plays—but why go into this? He says that all dealings between them are at an end, and demands his account. The dramatic agent mechanically opens the safe to get out his books—and there lies the neglected MS. As a last bid for fortune he places it eloquently in the hands of Cyrus K. The latter grunts, and sprawls on the sofa to “size it up.” This process occupies five minutes. At the end of that time he remarks laconically, “This is the goods.”

The author is now summoned from Kilimanjaro, where he is growing grape-fruit, in order to give his assistance at rehearsals. He arrives, however, only just in time for the first night, when scores of hands drag him on to a prodigiously vast stage to abase himself before a jeering[Pg 41] audience. His spasmodic efforts to speak merely confirm the impression that he is a congenital epileptic.

Next day the newspapers, after a flattering reference to his personal appearance, unite in denouncing the play as the work of a man with the intelligence of a crossing-sweeper and the originality of a jackass. These comments are judiciously edited and made up as posters. The effect is stupendous, and the public flocks to the theatre. The author is a made man.

At least, he hopes he is.

Letters pour in upon him from all quarters demanding more plays from his pen. Actresses lie in wait for him at garden parties, and say, archly, “Oh, Mr. Blotto, when are you going to write a play for me?” Actor-managers call him “old boy”; and allow themselves to be seen shaking hands with him. The gifted gods and goddesses who are performing his play make no secret of his acquaintance. The great Cyrus K. Bimetaller strokes a mighty stomach in silence. The dramatic agent grunts, “I told you so,” and gives another polish to the super-silk hat. Melisande, writing her customary column in the Evening Quacker, observes: “Last night, at Mr. Blotto’s delightful play which is charming London, I saw the Duchess of Dripp, Count Sforzando, Mr. and Miss Mossop, and the Hon. ‘Toothy’[Pg 42] Badger. The house was crowded, of course. Mr. Blotto himself looked in during the evening, but hurried away on being recognised. He is so retiring.”

In the middle of this chorus of enthusiasm the author bashfully brings forward another play. Everyone scrambles to read it. Each points out a separate defect. All unite in pronouncing it “essentially undramatic.” It finds its way into that limbo of lost manuscripts, the safe of the silk-hatted agent. Setting his teeth, the author completes another play. It passes from hand to hand, becoming dog-eared in the journey, and finally returns to him, in silence and tatters. It seems hardly worthwhile adding it to the mountains of paper on the Agent’s shelves, so somebody tosses it behind a book-case, where it is treated with the scorn it merits by mice and insects. By now the first play has been supplanted by a Bessarabian allegory, and the author’s name has long been forgotten. Still buoyed up with hope, he plans a chef d’œuvre—a drama. “Something Shakespearian,” he modestly proclaims. Very few people, however, even bother to read this, all eyes being fixed on a genius from Kurdistan, who is taking away the breath of theatrical London in a play written entirely in Esperanto. The author spends his last few shillings on a ticket to the Argentine, and begins a fresh life as a herdsman.

[Pg 43]

Years pass. The author is far from unsuccessful in his new venture. In fact, he becomes extremely wealthy. He buys up his employer’s hacienda. He buys up several other people’s haciendas. He buys up the greater part of the Argentine Republic. He has serious thoughts of buying up South America and selling it to the United States. But his better nature prevails, and he returns to England and buys a peerage instead. On the day appointed for him to be introduced to the House of Lords, his eye happens to see the poster of a new play—The Dusky Child. The name touches a chord. He recognises it as his own work. He forgets his engagement with the Peers of the Realm, and hurries off once again in pursuit of literary reputation.

His old friend the dramatic agent is comparatively unchanged. He is a little more silk-hatted, a little more rotund, and a little more contemptuous of every one else. He recognises the author at once, ejaculates laconically: “I told you so,” and takes him to meet Erasmus W. Bogg, the new impresario who is producing the play. They hurriedly prepare for the first night. The Lord Chancellor is very annoyed. The author snaps his fingers. At last literary fame is in his grasp. It seems an extraordinarily cold winter, but that doesn’t really matter. He hurries on the rehearsals, snapping his fingers.

[Pg 44]

How amazingly chilly it has become.

The House of Lords are sending the Lieutenant of the Tower to arrest him. Ha, ha, let them. He snaps his fingers.

Really, this weather, after the climate of the Argentine, is beyond a joke. For goodness sake hurry up with that scenery. What’s that about the Lord Chancellor? Mr. Ramsay MacDonald—what? The who?

Eh?

He wakes up to find his cherished first play still unperformed—still, indeed, uncompleted. Kilimanjaro, a dream. The Argentine, a dream. The peerage—a dream, too. He shudders at that escape.

Brr! Why, dammit, the fire’s out!

The hat, says my copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is “man’s, woman’s outdoor headcovering, usually with brim.” Not unto me the glory of writing about woman’s outdoor headcovering. These mysteries are too sacred to be profaned. But man’s hats are another thing. I have a number of my own. There is none of which I am not, in secret, ashamed.

Some men have the faculty of knowing what hats they can wear with credit—or, if not with credit, at least without sacrifice of self-respect. They go to the hatter, pick out a perfectly ordinary “headcovering” (usually “with brim”), and leave the shop gorgeously transformed. Their very discards can be reblocked and made to look, if anything, better than new. And I? I go from one hatter to another in an endless pilgrimage in search of something in which I shall look less ridiculous (observe I say “less ridiculous”—I am easy to please), and find it never. I follow my friends into the places where they hat themselves; I allow myself to be persuaded into buying some hateful contrivance—“a perfect fit, sir”; and in three days the damn thing shrinks so that I can’t get it on my head. Or again, I try to allow for this by ordering a larger size, whereafter, either I spend the whole of my spare[Pg 46] time stuffing the lining with paper or else it gradually but relentlessly sinks, and settles on the bridge of my nose.

The very brims play tricks with me. I have a bowler. I bought it, I distinctly remember, on account of the width of its brim. I have always liked a wide brim. Not that it ever keeps off the sun or rain, but somehow it gives confidence. There is something spacious about a wide brim. Something suggestive of an opulence to which I have in no other way ever pretended.

Well. Anyhow. I gave up wearing my bowler, because it insisted on shrinking. It perched itself higher and higher on my head, until I began to think it really wasn’t safe. It might fall off and get run over. Nobody wants to expose even a rebellious hat to the dangers of London traffic. I went to my hatter (why I say my hatter I can’t think. Nobody is my hatter. Many have tried, none has succeeded). I went to a hatter; bought a large brown felt hat, wore it away (like a bride setting out for the honeymoon); and arranged for the bowler to be safely conveyed to my home, hoping that all would be well.

Well? Not a bit of it. The brown hat swelled and swelled. All the newspapers in London contributed in their turn to keeping us from parting. In vain. That hat had a craving for adventure; it wanted to make its way in the[Pg 49] world alone; and a gust of east wind carried it (together with so much of the “Evening News” as had enabled it to maintain a precarious balance on my brow) under a passing bus. I hurried home with feelings almost of friendship for my erring bowler. I said magnanimously that forgiveness——

“In which I shall not look so ridiculous.”

Somehow it didn’t look the same. I was prepared to swear that when I handed it over to the hatter (my hatter, very well) it did in some sort cover my head. But now—it had diminished to the size of a child’s toy. And the brim—the brim had shrunk to the merest shadow.

I have at last given up the struggle. I wear anything that comes along. Not that it matters. People have survived their hats before now. These, after all, are the merest idiosyncrasies of head-covering. Observe, for instance, the hats of the great. There you find something of real distinction.

It is one of the curious things about really great men that they are unable to resist the bizarre in hats. They don’t turn out in strange trousers, or curiously contrived coats. You don’t see them walking about in sandals, or veldtschoons. They don’t tie up their beards with ribbon; or shave their eyebrows; or put caste-marks on their faces. Right up to their head-coverings they are[Pg 50] indistinguishable from you and me. I don’t wish to flatter us, but very often they are less pleasant to look at ... and then their greatness declares itself, or their originality breaks loose, or some other eerie characteristic finds its appropriate expression, in the form of an article of apparel about as distinctive and ugly as Britannia’s helmet.

Not long ago I met a noble Viscount, a man who might easily become Prime Minister—I saw him, I mean; I encountered him in the street. He was wearing a hat that suggested a bowler, but was not a bowler—that might have been a “Daily Mail” hat, only it was black with a dull surface, and, if I may so put it, had soft rounded lines in place of sharp ones—that—that in fact was indescribable. The rest of his garments were those of a normal citizen. There were no unfamiliar excrescences on his coat. His collar and tie were much like my own.

Later in the day I saw in front of me a tall, hurrying figure striding towards the House of Commons. The stooping gait and sombre clothing might easily have been those of a mere scholar or clergyman. But the figure bore upon its head a shapeless contrivance of purple velvet; and by that I knew it was—(well, you know who it was as well as I do).

Look at Mr. Winston Churchill. Look at[Pg 51] Admiral Beatty. Whoever saw a service hat quite like Admiral Beatty’s? Though I admit, in his case, the oddity is accentuated by his way of wearing it. Look at the hats of foreign potentates. Look at——

Look at Mr. Lloyd George. I have never actually seen him in one of his “family” hats—but I know his hatted appearance intimately through a picture. It is a photograph representing “the man who won the war,” as a vigorous smiling personage in a grey tweed suit. It seems to be very much the kind of suit that you or I might select for golf. But—here distinction creeps in—the upper part of his body is swathed in something that resembles a horse blanket ... and he is crowned with the headdress of a Tyrolean brigand.

I am going to be a great man. I know it by my hats.

GRAND (TRUNK) FEATURE SERIAL.
CANADIAN FILMS LIMITED.

We are in the Wild West of Canada—a land full of mustangs and moccasins. People with hard faces are riding about in strange clothes. Gently nurtured maidens are scrubbing out the cowshed, or digging up the manure heap. The hired-woman is sitting in the sunlight with a book. It is a typical scene in a British Dominion; we know it is Canada, however, because there’s a flick, and the screen says:

THIS IS THE CITY OF BISON SNOUT,
FED BY THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY,
CANADA’S PREMIER RAILROAD.

Then there’s another flick, and, lo! a magnificent train, racing across the prairie, gives us a hint that we are watching Canada’s premier railroad in operation. The screen obligingly confirms this impression by—Flick:

LUXURY, SPEED, AND SECURITY.
THE GRAND TRUNK MILLIONAIRES’
LIMITED THUNDERING ACROSS THE
CONTINENT
ON ITS JOURNEY TO BISON SNOUT.

[Pg 53]

The scene changes, now, to a precipitous hill overlooking the smiling valley through which the train is thundering. Far away you can see her plume of smoke, racing across the sky. And here, in the foreground, are two sinister figures, mounted on the inevitable mustangs, masked and visored, grim and silent. Oo! They look like Irish gunmen; and as soon as they espy the train they turn simultaneously to each other and exclaim with sinister emphasis—Snick:

THERE’S BOODLE IN THIS.

Click—and we’re back again with our two desperadoes, galloping like mad from their point of vantage towards their luckless prey. (Noise off—cloppety, cloppety, cloppety, clop.)

Next we have a close-up of the train as it speeds over the landscape. The passengers are sitting back in their places, wreathed in smiles. They like their train. They think it particularly safe; and behind it all there is the feeling of immense security derived from the thought that they are travelling in a British Dominion of the British Empire under the waving protection of the Union Jack on which the sun never sets. The orchestra interprets their thoughts, and ours, by playing a selection of patriotic melodies.

[Pg 54]

Now we are shown something really out of the way. Thus: Snick:

ON THE FOOTPLATE.

Flick:

SWAYING ALONG AT HUNDREDS OF
MILES AN HOUR, THE JOVIAL
ENGINEER AND HIS MERRY COLLABORATORS
PASS THE TIME WITH
DANCE AND SONG.

Click: And there they are, swaying like dipsomaniacs, dancing like dervishes, and opening their mouths like bullfrogs in a drought. Of course, you can’t hear what they’re singing, but a gramophone (off) obligingly strikes up at this moment:

and so on. A little inappropriate to the setting perhaps; but, oh, how apposite to what follows!

Suddenly the face of the jovial engineer clouds over. He shades his eyes with his hands. Rushing to the eyeholes, he peers out into the day. His collaborators copy him. We know something is coming. We stir uneasily in our seats. Somehow we can’t help associating this action with the two sinister——What’s that? He’s beckoning[Pg 55] to the chief mate (or whatever the fellow’s called). The chief mate’s beckoning to him. Neither dares leave the eyeholes. How can they communicate with each other? Still the train speeds on. Oh! the engineer’s drawing his revolver. Ah! it’s empty! So is the chief mate’s. So is everybody’s. He flings it down with a curse. He’s going to speak to the chief mate. He’s speaking: Snick:

SAY, YOU GUYS, IT’S HELL OR HOME.
AND ME FOR HOME!

Flick:

STOKE UP YOUR BOILERS, YOU BLEAR-EYED
SKUNKS!

An underling flings open the door of the furnace. He staggers back. Empty! He rushes with a shovel to the coal bunkers. The others rush after him. Oh, there’s no coal! The train’s slowing down every minute. The desperadoes are riding nearer and nearer. We can hear the thunder of their hoofs—I mean their horses’ hoofs. (Noise off—cloppety, cloppety, cloppety, clop.)

Ah! what are they doing now? They’re going to throw one of the underlings into the furnace to keep the train going. They’re going to burn the engineer and the chief mate. They’re going[Pg 56] to pull the engine to pieces and burn that. Anything to escape. Anything to escape....

Suddenly the chief mate, who’s looking through the eyehole, gives a great shout. He’s very excited and relieved. He’s speaking—listen, look, I mean.

Flick:

WHY IT’S ONLY THE SHERIFF’S BOYS
HAVING A GAME WITH US!

The others do not agree with him. They point rudely at him, and curse him for a fool. But he only smiles and says through his smile:

Click:

SURE—IT’S THE SHERIFF RIGHT
ENOUGH. I SEEN HIS LIL’ BUTTON.
HIS DEPUTY’S WITH HIM.
I DONE SEE HIS BUTTON, TOO.

They rush to the eyeholes again. There’s no doubt this time. They throw up their hats and cheer. They are beside themselves. They even go so far as to pull up the train. The passengers crowd to the windows. At first they are alarmed. They shrink back. They mutter among themselves. Click:

IT’S A HOLD-UP.

BUSH-RANGERS.

and so on. But the engineer puts all that right.[Pg 57] He descends royally from the footplate and walks along the train reassuring them. Flick:

IT’S ALL RIGHT, LADIES AND GENTS.
IT’S ONLY THE SHERIFF OF THE
DOMINION COME TO PAY US A SURPRISE
VISIT.

What a joke! How they laugh! And cheer! They crowd to the window. They swarm out on to the line. They offer expensive drinks to the engineer and his collaborators, which are accepted. They pass round the hat.

And then the sheriff approaches. He asks them to line up. They are delighted. Another priceless joke. Ha! Ha! Ha! What a wit the man has, to be sure! He suggests they should produce their valuables. Only too delighted. Their stocks and shares, jewellery—everything, in fact, they have with them.

THEY’RE “OF NO VALUE” TO YOU
NOW.

Ha! Ha! Ha! They’re doubled up with laughter. They’re holding their sides. What a funny man. What a very fun——Eh? He’s speaking again.

GET A MOVE ON IF YOU DON’T WANT
A DOSE OF LEAD!

[Pg 58]

Oh, of course, very subtle. It’s all part of the joke. He’s acting so well, isn’t he?

What’s he doing? He’s putting all their valuables into a bag. He’s taking them away. He’s a——He’s a robber! Oh, no! Oh, not that! But he is. Old men are weeping over the loss of their life’s savings. Old women——Oh, this isn’t funny at all!

A handsome young woman is speaking to him. She’s pleading, she’s on her knees.

Click:

IF YOU TAKE THAT IT MEANS I
CAN’T GET MARRIED. WE WERE
GOING TO START HOUSEKEEPING
ON MY FIRST PREFERENCE STOCK.

She’s broken down. He’s laughing, the brute! He’s roaring with laughter. So’s his fellow desperado.

Who’s this? What a funny fat man! Oh, it’s going to end happily after all. He’s a policeman, I suppose, but his hat looks a bit queer. Oh, an American hat—I see. He’s very angry with the brigands—the sheriffs, I mean. He’s speaking.

Click:

THIS OUTFIT’S WORTH AT PAR
£37,073,492.

[Pg 59]

Flick:

“THIS WOULD MAKE MY APPRAISEMENT
OF ALL THE STOCK, THE VALUE
OF WHICH IS HERE IN ISSUE, NOT
LESS THAN $48,000,000.”

Oh, it’s too bad! They’re laughing at him, too.

Plick:

GET AWAY HOME, YOU FAT OLD GUY,
BACK TO THE STATES WHERE YOU
BELONG.

He’s very angry indeed. He’s turning away in high dudgeon. He makes a last appeal.

Flick:

BUT AIN’T YOU THE SHERIFF?

Blick:

WHY, YES; BUT WHAT’S THAT GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Snick:

WELL, I MEAN TO SAY——

Click:

A MAN’S GOTTER LIVE, AIN’T HE,
EVEN IF HE IS A SHERIFF? AND
THEY’RE ONLY DURNED ENGLISH
GUYS, ANYWAY.

The big events of the world, the things so remote from most of us, float serenely down the midstream of the day’s news, little heeded, I confess, by me; but the flotsam of life is brought to one’s very feet by the undercurrents and eddies of the Personal Column.

The news headings of one’s morning paper deal with subjects whole worlds away from one’s own humble existence. The movements of Marshal Foch; the Japanese Earthquake; the Recognition of Russia. Even (long since) when the “Date of the Peace Celebrations” was announced, it was a comparatively lifeless statement. To vitalise it, to humanise it, one had to go to the neighbourhood of the Personal Column. Thus:—

Here at last we were in the heart of things. “Stocks of the best known brands of champagne.” This unlocked the tongue, set speculation working. What brands? What is your favourite brand? One reviewed a pageant of sparkling[Pg 61] names such as Ayala, Irroy, Heidsieck, Mumm, Moet, Pommery, Roederer and the Widow, the dainty Clicquot.... And then arose the question what to do on Peace Night—Jazz? Theatre? Opera? Or should it be a quiet dinner (preferably at home) with Jones, who shared one’s last Xmas in the Salient, and Smith the Silent, who never let one down, and Robinson?... I seem to remember that I wrote to “Benefactor.”

Actually “Benefactor” was not, so to speak, a Member of the Personal Column, though he dwelt very near to it. His announcement abutted on a poignant appeal for a “Suitable Place to Stop” from a young minesweeping lieutenant who, having exhausted his patience in ransacking London for a bed, had lit upon the discovery that a large part of the hotel accommodation in this city was still in the clutches of Sir Alfred Mond and his Merry Men; but it was published (wrongly, of course) under the heading: “Business Opportunities.” What creature would sink so low as to make a business opportunity out of the sale of that golden drink, of those “best brands of Champagne”—and in the Peace season, too? Perish the thought! To the Personal Column let “Benefactor” be admitted.

The Personal Column is the quintessence of[Pg 62] journalism, an inexhaustible lucky-bag of strange communications and curious announcements. Do you want a furnished caravan? Napoleon relics? Are you a philatelist? Would you like a summer outing in Kew Gardens? Have you a haunted house? These, after all, are things that touch one’s daily life. Marshal Foch might go to the Sandwich Islands, and the philatelist and I would wish him God-speed, and think of it no more; but a haunted house (even if it be only haunted by mice) brings one “up against it!” Are you bored with your life? The Personal Column is a constant provocation to plunge into the whirlpool of the unknown. Thus at random: An officer, aged 20, of cheerful artistic and musical tastes, wishes to correspond with somebody with a view to “real friendship.” There’s your chance. And what dark story, think you, is concealed behind the following:

“The Black Cat is watching: green eyes. S?”

What tale of a temptation spurned lurks in:

“Scalo: I may be poor but I love truth far better than gold—Misk?”

Under the influence of what jealous pangs came this to be penned:

“Ralph—Who is BABS—Remember Olga?” (The following, in a happier vein, tells presumably of a lovers’ quarrel made up:

[Pg 63]

“Whitewings. Darling you know really you are the only thing on earth I love. Snowdrop.”)

The big news columns tell us what our intellectuals consider it good for us to know, in the manner in which they consider it good for us to be told. The Ruhr Occupation, denounced by Mr. Garvin, upheld by Lord Rothermere—The Betrayal of the Country to Labour (in the Gospel according to Mr. Churchill)—The League of Nations—Bootlegging and Prohibition. But the Personal Column—ah!—the Personal Column gives us a peep into the throbbing lives of our neighbours; we become partakers in the bliss of Whitewings and Snowdrop, we share “S’s” apprehension of the Black Cat, and our hearts go out to Misk and Olga—poor forgotten Olga. Here are no world politics dished up by statesmen manqué, or camouflaged by great journalists, no subjects to be discussed in catchwords and manufactured phrases, but the myriad voices, from the streets around, crying out at the impulse of the eternal verities.

Extracted from the Private Diary of the Hon. “Toothy” Badger

Dined at the House last night. Ridiculous party given by “Bulgy” Gobblespoon to celebrate his wife’s election: the first husband and wife to sit together. To everyone’s dismay, it proved that she had only scraped in by the Prohibitionist vote, to win which she had to pledge herself never to allow any form of alcohol on any table at which she sat. Very restrictive of her dining out, I should imagine, and utterly destructive of her own dinners, which used to be rather fun. Impossible to imagine the gloom of that gathering! Even old Bitters, who was wheedled off the Front Bench to come down and say something amusing, was quite unable to sparkle on Schweppes’ ginger ale. Hurried away with little “Squeaky” Paddington (old Ponto’s new wife) to sample a drink and a spot of foot shuffling at Sheep’s. Very stuffy and a lot of ghastly people.

Somebody, turning out their lumber-room, has presented a whole shoot of pictures to the National Gallery; so I went to see who was looking at them. What that place exists for I[Pg 65] can never understand. Hardly anyone there except a herd of frowsy old women, with paint-boxes, who took jolly good care that nobody should come within a mile of anything worth looking at. One rather jolly girl—but very severe. The rest awful. A couple of anxious-looking people walking up and down, looking intense and making speeches about Ghirlandajo or Cimabue to an audience of yokels that doesn’t know either from cream cheese; and the remainder of London seems to use the portico as a convenient meeting-place, and never goes inside at all.

Broke my rule against large parties last night in order to go and stare at the women Members of Parliament, who allowed themselves to be shown off by old Lady Paramount Nectar at Ambrosia House. Never again. The rooms are big enough Heaven knows; but they seemed to have invited everyone in London, who had a dress-suit. Lady Biltong, whose figure needs to be put under restraint, was carried out fainting. Poor Bottisford had two ribs stove in going up the staircase and didn’t know it till he got home—kept murmuring that he must have got a touch of pleurisy in the fog. And old Sir William Bylge trod on a lady’s train and brought it clean away from the gathers (whatever those may be). Needless to[Pg 66] say, it proved to be a Royalty, but only a minor one. Never saw so many foreign potentates and creatures gathered together in my life before: the Duca di Corona Largo, Count Papryka da Chili, the Prince and Princess of Asta Mañana, a woman from New York, the Gizzawd of Abbyssinia, old Ramon Allones, looking younger than ever, and heaps of others. Nothing to eat, of course, and sickly sherbetty stuff masquerading as champagne. Hurried away to Stag’s with George Mossop to wash the taste out of our mouths. If old Paramount Nectar had lived, how different that supper would have been! As it is, if they took a bottle out of his cellar now, and poured it on his tomb, I believe he’d rise from the dead in very shame. Seems a bit too low to accept old Lady P.’s hospitality, and then slang the food; but, after all, he was my father’s cousin, and one feels it reflects on one’s own palate that a relation by marriage should give inferior wine.

Country house parties nowadays are becoming absurd. In the old days there was a lot to be said for country house visits. Even quite recently they could be profitably undertaken. But now! Nous avons changê tout cela. The advent of a Labour Government has put the final kybosh on even the limited hospitality one enjoyed last year. Three invitations this morning. One from Ditchwater Abbey—a place I loathe; one from[Pg 67] Hugo Hamstringer, the fellow that made a fortune out of glue in the war, bought everything, lost the whole boiling in multiple eggshops during the slump, and is now trying to make two ends meet in that awful barrack of a place, Dundahead Hall, that he took over from “Wacker” with a block of dud oil shares in payment for his “calls” in Hamstringer, Limited, before the Company went bust—(nothing would induce me to go near him); and one from dear little Phyllis Biddiker, whose husband has lost everything in Southern Ireland, and who is scraping along somehow by letting off apartments at the Weir House (their place in Berkshire) to wealthy Colonials over here for the British Empire Exhibition. None asked me for more than a week-end. All say “Bring your own whisky if you want any.” Phyllis has had a present of Australian Burgundy from one of her lodgers, and offers to share it. I shall stay at home.

Because my brother Henry chose to marry, why should his almost-a-flapper daughter be motted on me to cart about London? A jade, a sly boots and a minx, she makes my life a burden. She makes me give her expensive meals, which I rather like; but I draw the line at being a decoy duck. Last night, having bled me of my entire[Pg 68] income at Mah Jongg—a game I shall never hope to learn—she demanded to be taken to an unintelligibly highbrow play, knowing, I suppose, that, after the agony of listening to it, I should be as wax in her hands. Then she led me by easy stages to Sheep’s Club, by pretending she wanted to dance with me. There (by the merest accident, of course) we found young Geoffrey Bannister, the one young man in London I was cautioned against allowing her to meet—as if an uncle has any control whatever—and the whole plot stood revealed. Before I could contort my features into a frown, they were dancing in the middle of the room, where they seemed to spend the remainder of the evening. I was allowed to give them supper; they allowed me to take them away at two a.m. They were almost too good to be true till we got home—driving back in Geoffrey’s car; and then they suddenly insisted on starting off to “be in at the death” at the Hunt Ball at Hillsbury, looking in at Bridget Hanover’s dance in Brook Street on the way. Told them to go to the Hunt Ball at another place beginning with the same initial, sent Geoffrey home, and packed her off to bed. No more nieces for me.

They call them “winter sports.” You cram yourself, with everybody you dislike most, into[Pg 69] the same train; stamp round the decks of the boat in a blizzard, swearing and trying to keep warm; ruin your digestion with the beastly food in the Train de Luxe; scrimmage with thirty other people for the sleeping berth you all booked six months before; turn out at the frontier to be browbeaten by hordes of douaniers; and arrive in the early morning feeling and looking like the Ancient Mariner, and discover that your rooms at the hotel have been swiped by somebody else. You turn out the manager, who shrugs his shoulders, and, after a fearful row, condescends to offer you sleeping room in an attic, on terms for which you could buy a large mansion in most countries. But your spirit is broken, and, rather than face the journey back, you accept with resignation, and crawl into the hovel allotted to you. You unpack your traps, and find that one of your skates is missing, or else that the straps have disappeared from your skis. But you are desperate now; you bind them on your feet with string, and rush out into the snow. You are immediately knocked down by some confounded beginner who has lost control and is flying down the hill at the rate of knots. You stagger to your feet gasping, with snow down your neck and both your skis adrift. While you are readjusting them, a bob-sleigh whizzes into you, sweeps you off your feet on top of its crew, and obligingly[Pg 70] overturns down an embankment. The occupants of the sleigh are people you’ve been trying to avoid for years; and, instead of cursing you for being in the way, they fall on your neck and invite you to dinner. You are in such pain from broken arms and legs, that you can’t think of an excuse, so you have to accept. After dinner they rob you at bridge, and, as a crowning blow, the man of the party borrows money from you. At last you break away, hurry back—and find the interesting girl you were hoping to talk to, deeply engaged with some wretched subaltern. And then the Lord Chancellor or some other fearful bore insists on talking about home politics—the one thing you were dying to forget. You mutter excuses and stumble off to turn in—still nursing your wounds. Some idiot has left the window open, and there are icicles hanging from the ceiling and a pile of snow in the middle of your bed. Next day you repeat the performance, which goes on for a fortnight at least. Winter “sports”! It must refer to the people, and not to the pastimes.

[Pg 71]

“And obligingly overturns down an embankment.”

[Pg 73]

(In the manner of John Galsworthy.)

ACT I

Diggers (adding up as he goes along): And three and sixpence is four pound two and a penny ’a’penny, and five shillin’ is four seven one a half; and there’s that cheque from Mr. Selvidge.

Heavyweight (comparing each item in the bank book): That’s not entered here.

Diggers: Paid in later, per’aps. The cheque——

Heavyweight: Yes—it will be in the pocket of the book. (He gropes for it.) There seem to be a lot of papers here. (He pulls them out.) Why, good heavens!

Diggers: What’s matter, Sir?

Heavyweight (in a changed voice that belies his words): Nothing, Diggers, nothing.... Here’s the cheque (he holds it up).... Who had charge of this book?

[Pg 76]

Diggers (mildly surprised): Miss Agatha, Sir.

Heavyweight (mechanically—he is thinking hard of something else): You’ve never seemed to get accustomed to calling her Mrs. Foxglove, Diggers.

Diggers (heartily): No, Sir, that I ’aven’t. An’ when them ’orrible divorce proceedings is finished an’ she’s quit o’ that thing of a ’usband, she will be Miss Agatha again, to all intents an’ purposes.

Heavyweight (pained): I think we mustn’t talk about that, Diggers. The club accounts are all right?

Diggers (disappointed): Yes, Sir.

Heavyweight: Thank you for helping me. Would you ask Mrs. Foxglove to come?

Diggers: Miss Agatha, Sir? Certainly. (He goes. The rector leans back in his chair, with his face drawn with anxiety. He toys with the papers he has abstracted from the pocket of the bank book. He shakes his head sadly as he reads. Suddenly Agatha Foxglove, a charming and vital creature, bursts in on him.)

Agatha: Hello, papa—what’s up?

Heavyweight (looking away from her): Agatha, dear, these letters—(he holds them up)—these letters from a man called Jim, they’re yours, are they?

Agatha (taken aback): Ye—yes. I....

[Pg 77]

Heavyweight: (appealingly): I’m sure there’s an explanation, dear. Won’t you tell me?

Agatha (laughing uneasily): Well, er, I suppose ... where did you find them? (He silently points to the book.) I don’t know. I suppose I must have put them there accidentally, from my table.... It comes of keeping those horrible accounts for you.

Heavyweight (sadly): But the contents, Agatha, dear.

Agatha (sharply): You’ve read them?

Heavyweight: I was unable to help reading them. They were lying open among the cheques. (Tenderly): Won’t you explain?

Agatha (with the modern mixture of frankness and impatience): Of course, there’s an explanation, papa. You surely don’t suppose that, with a drunken imbecile for a husband, I could do entirely without sympathy and affection?

Heavyweight (apprehensively): Then—you were—unfaithful?

Agatha (swiftly): But we’re going to be married, as soon as the decree is made absolute.

Heavyweight (pitifully): I’m sure, my dear, that that was your intention; but, as a clergyman——

Agatha (anxious): You won’t tell anyone——?

[Pg 78]

Heavyweight: My child, can’t you see? can’t you feel for me? As a clergyman I believe—I am bound to believe—that marriage is an irrevocable tie. Divorce on proper grounds I have to recognise, as a servant of the State; but when I see the procedure abused by those who have forfeited their right to invoke it, how can I, as a conscientious minister of God—how can I stand aside because the culprit is my own adopted daughter and ward? I am morally bound to inform the King’s Proctor.

Agatha: But father—father. Oh, for God’s sake—(she becomes incoherent.)

Heavyweight: Ah, my child, my child. Morality demands—(His voice breaks. There is a terrible pause. He goes to the bookshelf.)

Agatha (agonised): Oh—what are you doing?

Heavyweight (in a dead, mirthless voice): Looking out my train to London.

The Curtain Falls.

Mr. Whassit (Agatha’s Counsel):—a temptation which, please God, I shall never encounter myself. And further——

[Pg 79]

The Judge (testily): Mr. Whassit, is it necessary to prolong this?

Mr. Whassit (firmly): My Lord, I have a duty to my client, and——

The Judge: Yes, yes, I know, Mr. Whassit. Your conduct of the case has been very proper; and, of course, if you wish to proceed, I shall say no more. But you’ve not traversed a single fact——

Mr. Whassit (sitting down at last): I will leave the matter in your Lordship’s hands.

The Judge: That is well.... This is an application to make absolute a decree nisi pronounced in October last. The King’s Proctor has intervened, alleging misconduct on the part of petitioner, such as would have invalidated her plea; and he has amply and abundantly proved his case. The application therefore fails, and the petitioner will pay the costs of the intervention.

But that is not all. In the course of the proceedings, which were defended, the cross-examination of the petitioner was directed towards establishing these very adulteries, which have now been proved. She denied them with vehemence, and went so far as to comment, from the witness-box, upon the propriety of counsel raising issues of the kind. Now this is a serious matter. It is[Pg 80] one thing to make what I might call a formal denial of adultery, in an undefended case, though technically it might be perjury, and I myself should view even that with gravity; it is quite another thing in a defended case, where the matter has definitely been put in issue, to make a denial of the kind; and I cannot see how the situation differs from that of a plaintiff who comes before the court seeking relief, let us say, on a Bill of Exchange, and falsely denies an allegation of fraud, or some other invalidating factor. In both cases there may result a serious miscarriage of justice, which at least cannot be so in an undefended divorce suit, where it is to be imagined that the respondent is indifferent to the consequences.

(Addressing Agatha at the solicitor’s table): It has been urged most eloquently by your counsel that you had much to endure, and many temptations to the course upon which you ultimately embarked with so much recklessness. That may be so; or, again, it may not. It might be taken into account by another court, as a mitigating circumstance. But the Law, which I am here to administer, gives me, as I see it, no choice. Public morality must be vindicated; and a flagrant perjury of a kind that has become[Pg 81] all too prevalent of late, is more than I can pass unchallenged. The papers in this case will therefore be forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Agatha (hysterically): My Lord. We—I—Oh God——

The Usher (sternly): Silence.

Diggers (patting her hand): There, there, Miss Agatha. Don’t take on.

Heavyweight (on the other side): My dear—don’t let’s have a scene.

Her Solicitor (kindly): Hush! You mustn’t interrupt his Lordship, you know.

Agatha (wildly): But if I don’t, they’ll prosecute me!

The Usher (to the Serjeant of Police): Get ’er solicitor to take ’er quietly outside. (The Serjeant complies.)

Diggers (following and moaning as he goes): Why did you go an’ do it, Mr. ’Eavyweight, Sir? (Wringing his hands more than ever): Oh, Miss Agatha, Miss Agatha.

Heavyweight (trying hard to be brave): Hush, Diggers, be a man. Bear up. Courage.

Diggers (bursting into tears): Oh, Mr. ’Eavyweight, Sir, ’ow could you?

Heavyweight (who has only done his duty): You don’t understand, my poor fellow....[Pg 82] Morality demands——(His voice breaks. They vanish in the wake of the Serjeant.)

The Registrar (calling the next case): Boggs versus Boggs and Boggs, Boggs intervening. (He hands up a bundle of papers to the judge.)

A Counsel (rising): This is an application for administration de bonis non, my Lord. I understand——

The Curtain Falls.

First Visiting Justice: Well, what’s this one?

The Governor (curtly): Perjury. Five years’ penal servitude. Last Assizes.

The Woman Superintendent: Sulky little fiend. Won’t speak; and throws her food at the warders.

Second Visiting Justice (addressing Agatha): Come, come, my girl, you’re doing yourself no good by this kind of thing. (Addressing the Governor): Can’t your doctor do anything—or the chaplain?

[Pg 83]

The Doctor (in a dry staccato voice): She’s perfectly healthy—not losing weight—organs in good condition. I can’t do more than keep her fit.

First Justice: Well, the chaplain, then?

The Chaplain: She’s very hard and unrepentant.

Second Justice: Can’t you make her repent?

The Chaplain (decidedly): No. Nor can anyone else.

Both Justices (uneasily): I see. Yes. (Addressing the Governor): Can nothing be done?

The Governor: Nothing more. She’s under constant supervision.... There’s a visitor for her with our party; where is he?

Diggers (coming forward): Here, Sir?

The Governor: See if you can persuade her to speak to you.

Diggers (approaching her timidly): Miss Agatha, Miss Agatha ... won’t you speak to me, old Diggers? (She pays no attention.) Miss Agatha, I’ve brought you some cowslips from the old glebe be’ind the church. (Anxiously, to the Governor): May she ’ave them, Sir?

The Governor (blowing his nose): Of course. Of course. (Diggers produces a sorry mess of yellow blossoms.)

[Pg 84]

Diggers: They’re faded, but they’re from the old ’ome.... Won’t you ’ave them, Miss? (She makes no sign. One of the justices breaks down.)

The Woman Superintendent: Now, dearie, take the nice flowers. (But Agatha pays no attention.)

The Second Justice: Dear, dear, how sad. (Making a final effort): My poor young woman, you mustn’t take it so to heart. Your sentence, with good conduct remission, which I presume you mean to earn—though you won’t do so by throwing good food about—your sentence is really quite trivial. (She suddenly turns her eyes on him, with a baleful glare in them. He stumbles over his words and dries up): Yes, er, exactly.

The First Justice (who is bored): Well, let’s be getting on. (They troop out.) It’s a sad case; but of course, Morality—(his voice dies away.)

Agatha (when they have gone): Stupid, sentimental humbugs! (Viciously): Slugs, worms, uncomprehending BEASTS! (In impotent fury she whirls round the cell like a dervish, finally throwing herself panting on her mattress.) Morality, indeed! (She bites a large piece out of the floor.)

The Curtain Falls.

Heavyweight: God! It’s you, Agatha, at last.... Have you come to this?

Agatha (unsteadily): Don’t interfere with me. I’m looking after myself. What I do is my affair.

Diggers (incoherently): Oh, Miss Agatha, Miss Agatha. (He strokes her hand.)

Heavyweight (tenderly): My dear. You’re worn out, thin, hungry. Wait. We’ll buy some food and wine and take you back. Come, Diggers. (They enter a shop. She leans against a lamp-post. A detective appears suddenly beside her.)

The Detective (addressing her sharply): Solicitin’, you was.... You come along o’ me.

Agatha (furiously): I won’t, I won’t! It’s a lie.

The Detective: Now, then, be civil.... Ticket o’ leave, ain’t you?

Agatha: Oh, what’s that to do with you? I’ve served my time. You’ve no further claim on me.

[Pg 86]

The Detective (grimly): ’Aven’t we? You just come along. (He takes her arm. Maddened, she deals him a vicious backhander in the mouth and escapes from his grasp, fleeing along the pavement.) That won’t do you no good, my girl. (He starts in pursuit. Heavyweight reappears, followed by the faithful Diggers.)

Heavyweight (anxiously): Agatha, Agatha.... My God! (Realising what has happened, he rushes in pursuit.)

Diggers: Oh, Miss Agatha, Miss Agatha. (He walks unsteadily after them, wringing his hands. There is a hoarse shout, off, then a horrible crash and a sharp, sickening scream. The detective and Heavyweight reappear, carrying a lifeless form.)

Diggers (in an agony): What’s happened? Oh, what’s happened to Miss Agatha?

The Detective (huskily): Run over. (Addressing Heavyweight): Not my fault, Sir. I couldn’t let ’er ’op it like that.

Heavyweight (brokenly): My poor fellow, I know. You only did your duty.... The social code must be upheld. Morality demands——(His voice breaks for the last time, and the curtain descends on his tears.)

The End of the Play.

(An endless Tone-Drama in the Shavian manner.)

Mrs. Lazyboy: Oh, dear! What is it now, Nursey?

Nurse: Oh, Im sure I beg pardon, Maam, but heres Miss Mercias young man—(suddenly observing Hashovit)—Oh, Im sure I beg pardon, sir, I didn’t see you. I meant to say——

Hashovit (heavily): You meant that popinjay Eustace Brill. You needn’t make a mystery about it, Nurse. Everyone knows hes my wifes young man.

Nurse (shocked): Oh, that Im sure they dont, sir.

The Colonel (pained): Harmodius, my dear fellow, er——Allsopp, tell Mr. Brill were not at home.

Mercia (bouncing up): Certainly not! Send Youstee away because Harmys jealous. Ill go and let him in myself.

Hashovit (sneering): So that you can kiss him in the passage without anyone seeing you——

Mercia (proudly): Ill kiss him before you all. (A terrific crash and splintering of glass heralds the arrival of Eustace by the skylight. He lands on the table, which collapses under him; recovers his feet, and smiles genially around.)

[Pg 89]

“The influence of that man Shaw.”

[Pg 91]

Mercia (crooning): Yousteeee!

The Colonel (testily): Confound it all, Brill, I wish you wouldn’t tear the place to pieces like that.... And you’ve shot a great fid of glass into my eye. Damn the thing. (He gropes, and finally extracts it.) There, now itll bleed for the rest of the day!

Eustace (surprised): I thought you prided yourself on keeping up active service conditions.

The Colonel: So I do.

Eustace: Then why make all this fuss about a trifling wound? You ought to be grateful. It adds a touch of reality to your life.

The Colonel: Id rather you left me to supply the reality myself, Brill. However—(Mercia, true to her threat, embraces Eustace with fervour).... Now really, Mercia, upon my soul.... (He clicks his tongue with vexation.)

Eustace (taken aback): Mercia, dear. I know you mean it awfully nicely. But really, in public——

Hashovit (glowering): You see—you degrade yourself to no purpose.

The Colonel (warmly): Degrade? Nonsense!... I, of course, dont mean to imply——

Hashovit: But damn it all, Colonel——

[Pg 92]

Mercia (screaming): Dont shout, Harmodius.

The wrangle proceeds on the familiar Shavian lines, the party being reinforced for no apparent reason by the arrival of Dan Bigby, an old sea-captain, and Michael John O’Sullivan.

Eustace (at long last): Look here, Im getting sick of this. Its all too much like a play by Bernard Shaw.

Hashovit (growling): Everyone is at heart a Shavian.

The Colonel (hastily): No, really, Harmodius.... O’Sullivan, Brill, we cant have that——

The Colonel (in his parade voice): Silence. Youre on parade. Behave accordingly.

Captain Dan: Avast there. Belay.

Mercia (stamping): I wont belay. I object——

Eustace: But whats this to do with Shaw? And whats the use of objecting when cosmic forces grip people by the throat? Ive no wish whatever to do anything thats not A1 at Lloyds and all that. But——

[Pg 93]

Hashovit: Cosmic fiddlesticks. Its lust, Brill, and you know it. You and Mercia want to misconduct yourselves, and its no good your trying to draw a red herring of formulas and psycho-analytic bosh across the track. It wont wash. In my young days——

Mercia (icily): I dont think were greatly interested in your young days, Harmodius.

Hashovit: Be quiet, Mercia. I will speak my mind, so youd better make up your minds to listen. In my young days if a man and a girl wanted to behave improperly they just did so and said no more about it. But youve no decency. Youre not content with forbidden fruit, you go and flaunt your liaison in the husband’s face, and make a parade of it before all his and your friends. I wonder you dont advertise it in the papers. Upon my soul, its what were coming to——

Eustace: But——

Hashovit (yelling): Dont you interrupt me, sir. I dont care a swizzle stick about your stealing my wifes affections. As a matter of fact, she hasnt got any, as youll jolly soon discover when the noveltys worn off——

Mercia: Oh, Harmy. (She weeps.)

Hashovit: I dont care if you take her to Brighton or Nijni Novgorod—if youre such a blasted[Pg 94] fool as to spend so much money on her. I dont care if you sit all day squeezing her hand, looking into her eyes till you both squint, pawing her about, and talking that horrible sickly twaddle I couldn’t help overhearing last night (he shudders at the recollection).... But—(rising to his feet)—but I will not have all your friends and my friends whispering and talking about me as though I were something to be pitied. (His voice rising to a scream.) If you want to know, I think Im just about the damn luckiest fellow alive to have unloaded this viperish, discontented, addle-headed, empty-hearted baggage on the most crass and pitiable fool Ive ever met—and if you want to say any more—(his poor, overstrained voice cracks and dies away in his throat with a mouse’s squeak; whereat he expresses his feelings by tearing the cushions to pieces and scattering the bits on the floor.)

The Colonel: Come, come, my dear fellow—pull yourself together.

Mercia (crisply): What I like about Harmodius is his obvious self-control.

Hashovit (his eyes bulging; he speaks in a hoarse whisper): Shut up, you she-porcupine, you hateful female skunk, you—(his vocal chords snap and his voice goes for ever.)

[Pg 95]

Mercia: His manners are so perfect, too: and hes so brave.... Cry-baby!

Hashovit (inarticulately): o o o o o o o b b—(or some similar noise. Blood gushes from his mouth.)

Nurse Allsopp: There, my poddle-poodkins, come with nursey-wursey. (Addressing the others sharply): And if you want any lunch go and wash your hands, all of you. (She leads Harmodius out by the hand. The others, except Eustace and Mercia, follow her meekly.)

Eustace (uneasily): You expect me to admire all that, I suppose.

Mercia (fixing him with vampire eyes): I expect you to admire nothing except me.

Eustace: Admire you. I loathe you. I struggle to escape from you. Youre like some awful drug, the same odious intoxication, the same irresistible fascination, and the same deadly remorse when its all over. You steal away my senses, and make me a slave.

Mercia: I make you a priest, not a slave.

Eustace: No, its slavery.

Mercia: Priesthood. High Priesthood to the divine desire in all of us.

Eustace (retreating): Im afraid of that.

Mercia (snaring him with her eyes): Afraid! Afraid of worshipping love?

[Pg 96]

Eustace: Yes. Ive no vocation.

Mercia (dangerously): Does that mean youve no inclination?

Eustace: No. It means what it says.... You talk about priesthood of love. You seem to think no vocation is necessary, though I suppose youd admit it in the case of a priest of Buddhism. Religion is a dedication of the spirit; Love, a dedication of the heart. You cant dedicate your spirit till its broken; nor can you your heart; and hearts dont break as easily as crockery, let me tell you. (Espying Michael John in the passage): O’Sullivan.

Michael John (entering and curling himself up in the coal-scuttle): Speak.

Eustace: Tell her how long a mans heart must beat against that of a woman before it will break.

Michael John: Four years and ninety minutes exactly. On the tick of the ninetieth minute the heart cracks, and the imprisoned soul passes from its bondage into the numbing bliss of everlasting heartache——

Captain Dan (entering unobserved and taking up the tale): And in the fifth year he shall be exalted above human understanding.... In the dog watches and under the dog stars[Pg 97] Ive looked upon the ways of mankind, and held my hand from destroying them in sheer——

Eustace: Pity?

Captain Dan: Pity. No! Indifference.

Mercia (fixing him with her eyes): Danny, I make you mine. The priesthood of love——

Captain Dan (uneasily): Avast there.

Mercia (triumphantly): There’s no avasting where Ill take you. (Breaking into a chant)

The Curtain Falls.

[Pg 127]

Hooker: Life’s very hard.

The Doctor (curtly): She can’t live. It’s only a matter of days, perhaps hours. I must go.

Bloggs: Can nothing be done?

The Doctor: Can you send her to the Riviera?

Bloggs: No. Would that cure her?

The Doctor: It might.... I’m sorry. Good-day. (He goes.)

Jemima (in a shaking voice): I’ll get your tea, Joseph. (She begins taking down the cups and laying the table.)

Bloggs (as if in a trance): The Riviera might save her. (He takes his hat.)

Jemima: Won’t you wait for tea before you go?

Bloggs: I don’t want any tea. (He slouches miserably out.)

Hooker: The fog’s very thick.

Jemima: Yes.

Hooker: It’s still raining. (He takes his hat and coat.)

Jemima: Won’t you stay for tea, Mr. Hooker?

Hooker: I don’t feel equal to tea. (He goes out unsteadily. Jemima sits wretchedly by the smouldering hearth. The child cries out in its delirium. The fog steals into the room obscuring everything.)

The Curtain Falls.

[Pg 130]

The Hard-Faced Man (grimly): I’ve brought you back your husband, ma’am. You may as well know he’s discharged from my employment.

Jemima (tonelessly): Oh?

The H.F.M.: And lucky he’s not prosecuted.

Jemima (as before): Oh?

The H.F.M.: Embezzlement’s a serious thing.

Jemima: Yes.... Starvation’s serious too.

The H.F.M.: That’s your affair.... I don’t want thanks. I don’t intend to prosecute, because it’s a nuisance. That’s all.

Jemima: Yes.

Bloggs (inadvertently stepping out of the picture): I tell you I did it to save my little girl. She’s dying. I must have money to save her—to send her abroad. Oh, Amy, Amy, my child. (He tries in vain to sob.)

The H.F.M. (chillingly): No sentiment, please! This is not the Lyceum.... Now, I’m going. I hope I never see either of you again. I don’t care two straws whether the girl dies or not. And I won’t wish you luck, because I don’t specially want you to have[Pg 131] it, and anyway you wouldn’t get it. (But they are paying no attention, and he goes.)

Jemima (listlessly): Doctor’s been again.

Bloggs (the same): Oh yes?

Jemima: Says she’s getting better.

Bloggs: Is she? (He sits by the fire in his hat and coat. The inevitable Hooker slouches in, similarly clad, and takes his place on the other side. A melancholy silence reigns.)

Hooker (at last): It’s raining again.

Jemima (bringing in the milk-jug): The thunder’s turned the milk sour.

Bloggs (dismally): I thought it would.

Hooker (shivering, and hugging himself in his coat): There’s a thick fog, and it’s very damp.

Bloggs (gloomily): There always is.

Hooker: Yes. (The fire contributes to the general depression by a shower of soot, and a sudden belch of acrid yellow fumes.)

Bloggs: Jemima, the fire’s smoking.

Jemima (wearily): I’ll make it up in a minute. (She worries it with various implements. More soot falls and the smoke increases. She stirs it aimlessly with the poker. It flickers and goes out for the last time. They, and the audience, are too depressed to care. They sit staring blankly at the grate as the cold and fog gradually invade the room.)

The Curtain Falls very slowly.[Pg 132]

(A Romantic Drama suitable for performance at His Majesty’s Theatre.)

Ali Baba (in a wailing shriek): Inshallah, wullahy, eywallah.

Shibli Bagarag (lamenting): Eywah! Traadisveribadahii! (He beats his breast).

A Passer-by (indignantly addressing a stolid camel-driver): Bismillah, O Son of my Uncle, have thy camels, on whom be peace, acquired a firman investing in them the sole use of this highway?

[Pg 133]

The Outraged Camel-driver (forgetting his part and falling back on the language of Regent’s Park): ’Ere. Look ’ere——

Another Passer-by (hastily interrupting, and turning upon the first with contumely): Hence, brother of a baboon. Mock not dumb beasts, as it is written.

A Goat: M-a-a-a-a.

A Goatwoman: Aie, little one, muzzle thy tongue ... (resuming her conversation). In sooth, O my father, as thou dost say——

The Goat (rebelliously): M-a-a-a-a-a.

The Goatwoman: Arree, be silent, child of misfortune, or thou shalt see the inside of a stewpan. (The goat thinks better of it.)

The Hajji Oskarashi Ben Daoud Ben Ismail (a holy and very dirty man of enormous size, sinister appearance and awe-inspiring voice, appearing from a hovel): Alms. Alms for the love of Allah. (People give him money. He takes it nonchalantly and without thanks.) Alms in the name of the Compassionate. (He moves majestically on, until he meets a disreputable-looking being who has just emerged from a side street. Aside to this apparition.) Is all arranged?

His Confederate (in a low tone): Ya, holy one. (At the top of his voice in order to deceive[Pg 134] everyone except the audience.) Nay, I have nothing for thee, thou evil-smelling and consummate old humbug.

Oskarashi (whining): Deny not of thy plenty, O gracious benefactor, as it is written. (Aside) What is the signal?

His Confederate (giving money with bad grace): Veialeikum a-salaam, O holy one. (Aside) Three raps on the outer postern gate: and then——

Oskarashi (showing his teeth in a terrible smile): And then—blood and much booty (passing on). Alms in the name of Allah.

The Goat (unable to contain itself): M-a-a-a-a-a!

The Camels and Giraffes: M-o-o-o-o-o!

The Elephant—But no, we cannot describe the cry of the elephant.

A Muezzin (appearing on his minaret): La Allah il Allah (a bell tolls. The faithful prostrate themselves towards the East).

The Glee Party (bursting into the well-known Eastern ditty):

Oskarashi: Enough. Let them be dispatched. (Black slaves hurl them into the Tigris, which obligingly flows near by.) Let the feast[Pg 136] proceed. (An obsequious conjurer appears; nobody, however, pays any attention, except the junior members of the audience, who are properly fascinated.)

One of the Acrobats (drawing aside his disguise and revealing himself as the terrible Aswarak—whom we forgot to mention in Scene I, but who plays an important part in the proceedings. He addresses one of the attendants, who draws aside his disguise and reveals the features of the dreaded Boo Boo): All is ready?

Boo Boo (grimly): Ya Aswarak. Allah hath favoured us. Every door is stopped and the black guards have received their price.

Aswarak: It is well.... Remember she is to be mine.

Boo Boo: Whom—I mean who?

Aswarak (rapturously): The Bulbul of the night, the reward of the favoured of Islam.

Boo Boo: Have a care, Holy One, we may be overheard.

Aswarak: And the signal?

Boo Boo: Thy song. (The conjurer concludes his entertainment.)

Aswarak: I will now sing.

Everyone: Oh, Allah, must this be?

Oskarashi (grimly): Let him sing. Guards be at hand to do my bidding.

Aswarak (aside): Thy last bidding in this world,[Pg 137] O corpulent Father of Obscenity. (Aloud) As thou sayest, O Protector of the Poor. (He takes his lute and sings, gazing ardently—almost too ardently—at Zobeide):

All:

Aswarak:

All:

Oskarashi (who has no intention of allowing this kind of thing to go on): Enough! Well sung, Minstrel. (Darkly) Thy reward?

Aswarak (throwing off his disguise): Thy head, Father of Abomination. (Tumult. He draws a sword and rushes at the divan. The wives scuttle wailing, pursued by the guards, who pour into the chamber. Everyone runs shouting after someone else. Oskarashi strikes his[Pg 138] assailants into a heap, and hurls himself roaring into the Tigris. The curtain falls upon a writhing mass of humanity.)

First Stroller (accosting the other with all the honeyed courtesy of the Celestial Empire): Honourable Dweller in a foreign land, deign[Pg 139] to accept of my accursed superfluity. (Gives money and continues in an undertone) The detested of Islam has been discovered.

Second Stroller (performing the ceremonies, observances and obeisances prescribed in the canons of Celestial etiquette): May the shadow of this undeserving one diminish and disappear, if he should unworthily be found wanting in gratitude to your honourable and beatific and excellent self. (Pouches the coins and continues also in an undertone) Where, O Father of Procrastination?

First Stroller: As Confucius justly remarks, charity—(dropping his voice). In a certain hovel in the back street beyond the wall, he conceals himself, plying the disreputable calling—may his porkers perish—of a seller of swine’s flesh—the curse of the prophet’s beard be upon him. Everything is arranged. To-night we surround the house: rush in at the appointed hour: and nail him to the counter in the midst of his abominable merchandise. Bismillah.

Second Stroller (fiercely): Inshallah! (Louder) The honourable greeting of your illustrious Excellency has brought sunshine and hope into the miserable existence of this one.

First Stroller: Your honourable praise is sweeter in the ears of this obsequious[Pg 140] rubbish-heap, than the music of the Celestial stars. Peace be with you.

The Baboo (addressing his audience collectively): And—here—we—have—a—typical—example—of—the—ar—chitecture—of old—Pekin—dating—to—a—time—co—eval—with—Ginghis Khan—in—my—country.

A Tourist: My, Sally. Look at here! (To the guide) Say, cutey, what you callum this?[Pg 141] (She points to a procession forming up among the houses.)

The Baboo: This—is—a very—fortunate—circumstance. Ladies—and—gentlemen—we—are—about—to—witness—a—Manchu—funeral.

Another Tourist: Some guy pegged out, I guess.

The Baboo: We must—withdraw—to—one—side. (They do so.)

Aswarak (or Boo Boo): A thousand curses. We must delay the assault until this pig of an unbeliever has been taken away. (They confer.)

The Mourners (dolefully):

[Pg 142]

The Baboo: We—will—now—return—in time—for—the—especial—dance—for—ladies—and gentlemen—at—the—Nautical—Club. (He takes his tribe away.)

The Mourners (returning):

Aswarak (foaming at the mouth): Halt, evil-tongued progeny of obscene mothers!

The Mourners (tearing off their disguises): What? Offal-eating scum of the bazaar! (They fall on each other. The curtain falls on the familiar spectacle of writhing humanity.)

The last scene we are not sure about. It depends largely on the temperamental judgment of Mr. Gloomy Bishop. It was originally planned to be the courtyard of the Dalai Lamasery of[Pg 143] Thibet. Mr. Bishop, however, leans in favour of a Patagonian village or alternatively a street scene in Tristan d’Acunha. He thinks the latter might enable him to introduce a talking penguin as a counterweight to Mr. Charles Cochran’s singing duck. And he is not absolutely certain that he wouldn’t like a Honolulu surf scene, or perhaps a salt mining camp on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Mr. Bishop is not sure; and he must have time to think it over.

Things, therefore, are held up until the producer and author can come to an agreement. But on one thing the author is adamant. Oskarashi has got to come to a sticky end. The author absolutely refuses to allow the fellow to be perpetuated in another play.

(A Play of Russian Life in the manner of Anton Tchekov.)

Bougárov (sniffing the glass): It’s strong enough, I think.... Brr, what a filthy stench!... Where are the directions? (He gropes for a piece of paper.) Here they are. Sprinkle it on toasted cheese, and leave it lying about in the vicinity of their holes. (Examining the bottle.) That ought to be sufficient for all the rats in Little Russia as the saying is. (Enter Stepan Stepanovitch Rumbunkski.)

Rumbunkski: Good morning, honoured Ivan Ivanovitch.

Bougárov: Little Fathers, Stepan Stepanovitch, how you startled me.

Rumbunkski: Your nerves are upset, my darling. You must give up the vodka, and all that.

Bougárov: But my dear little Stepan Stepanovitch, you are wrong; because you see, my dearest little Stepan Stepanovitch, I don’t drink vodka now, and so it can’t be vodka.

Rumbunkski: Don’t drink vodka?

[Pg 145]

Bougárov: No, my precious, I don’t drink it any more; so you see you must be wrong, my little woodchuck.

Rumbunkski: But, Ivan Ivanovitch, my dear fellow, don’t try to stuff my head, as the French say. You must drink vodka, because there’s a bottle and glass on the table before you. I don’t say you drink to excess, my dearest little love-bird, but you must drink it sometimes—or you wouldn’t have it always on the table in front of you, and so on.

Bougárov: Stepan Stepanovitch, be careful how you contradict me, because I can’t stand it, my dear little flying-fish, and that’s a fact. You ought to know better than to come into a brother landowner’s house and accuse him of drunkenness to his face. It’s mean; it’s beastly; it’s not worthy of you, my little alligator.

Rumbunkski: I didn’t accuse you of anything of the kind. I only said——

Bougárov: Well, well, you withdraw. That’s all right. We’ll say no more about it.

Rumbunkski: But excuse me, my dear Ivan Ivanovitch, I don’t withdraw, because I have said nothing that calls for withdrawal. I didn’t make any beastly accusation and all that. All I said——

Bougárov: Oh, little God Almighty, won’t you[Pg 146] stop talking! I can’t stand it, I tell you. My head’s bursting, and I’ve got a terrible pain in my shoulder blades. And both my ears are burning.

Rumbunkski: All I said was that vodka didn’t agree with you, and you know it doesn’t. Why everyone knows perfectly well that one night, at Roobikov’s, you——

Bougárov: Excuse me, Stepan Stepanovitch, but you’d better go. Yes, you had better go. I might do you a mischief, and so on; and I shall be sorry afterwards. That night at Roobikov’s, let me tell you, you were in a disgusting state yourself, and unfit to pass an opinion on anybody.

Rumbunkski: That’s a lie, Ivan Ivanovitch: you were always a liar and an intriguer. And as for doing me a mischief, come and try, that’s all!

Bougárov: Oh, little Mothers, help me to be patient. You’re a skunk and a coward, Stepan Stepanovitch. A skunk. You know you’re safe in threatening me, because I’m on my last legs with disease, and dying out, and all that, and so you think you can insult me with impunity. But when Dmitri Dmitriov thrashed you with a cane——

Rumbunkski: What’s this? What’s this lie about Dmitri Dmitriov. Oh, Little Uncles and Aunts, this is a bit too much!

[Pg 147]

Bougárov: Yes. Dmitri Dmitriov thrashed you, didn’t he? And you ran squealing about the room, trying to hide under the furniture——

Rumbunkski: Ivan Ivanovitch, how can you tell such falsehoods? I was wounded at the time and couldn’t put up a fight. But I settled him afterwards.

Bougárov: Yes. By having him waylaid and thrashed by Yats, the blacksmith.

Rumbunkski: Ivan Ivanovitch, you impugn my honour. You insult me. If you weren’t an old infirm vodka drunkard I’d smash you into a jelly. I’d stamp on your face. But please don’t imagine I shall marry your daughter now. I say, please don’t. That’s finished. You don’t marry into a family that insults you. No. Never.

Bougárov: Now, my dear Stepan Stepanovitch, do be reasonable. Anything harsh that I may have said you brought on yourself, my darling. You shouldn’t have begun about the vodka, my dearest little duck-billed platypus.

Rumbunkski: So I’m a coward, am I? Just wait. I’ll get my breath, and then you’ll see.... I’m sick. I must have a drink. (Seizes the vodka bottle.)

Bougárov (trying to take it away): Not that, my dear fellow. Give it back, I implore you.

[Pg 148]

Rumbunkski: I must have a drink, I tell you... I’m seeing stars ... bats are flying round my head ... I’m falling—(drinks from the bottle). T’shoo! Pfui!! What disgusting liquor.

Bougárov (protesting): It isn’t liquor at all, honoured Stepan Stepanovitch. It’s poison, my dearest little frog. I told you it wasn’t vodka, and you wouldn’t believe me.

Rumbunkski (in wild horror): Poison. Where’s an emetic?... I can’t see.... My head’s going to burst.... Now my heart’s come to pieces. My nose is twitching. Both my eyes are falling out. Ah—h——(falls into a chair sobbing hysterically).

Bougárov (yelling): He’s poisoned. I’m a rat-catcher ... we’re all murderers.... Little Fathers, have pity! (Enter Irena Ivanovna, Bougárov’s daughter.) There. Your husband to be. I’ve murdered him. Lock me up. Suffocate yourself. Tickle his throat. Give him mustard and water. A drink. I’m fainting. Quick. (She gives him the glass from the desk. He drains it.) Pouagh! Now I’m poisoned too.... My ears have gone to sleep.... All my teeth are aching. I’m agony all over (collapses on the sofa screaming).

Irena Ivanovna (wildly): Vodka—Champagne—Mustard[Pg 149] and Water. (She plies them with assorted liquors, which they drink gratefully. They are shaken by internal tempests. They recover slowly.)

Bougárov (faintly): Give thanks to Irena Ivanovna, my dear Stepan Stepanovitch. Without the presence of mind of your wife-to-be you’d be a dead man, my little angel-elect.

Rumbunkski (feebly): I say no. I’ve told you I won’t marry her. Impugn my honour and all that. A thousand times no.

Irena (tenderly): Nobody’s impugned your honour, illustrious Stepan Stepanovitch. Your mind is affected by the poison, my little darling.

Rumbunkski: No. He did (indicates Bougárov). He accuses me of waylaying Dmitri Dmitriov. Not that he has any right to talk after what was done to Andrey Andreyvitch.

Bougárov (as violently as he is able): Now I give you one chance, Stepan Stepanovitch. Either stop these insinuations or leave my house. Yes. I’m sick of you. Yes. I’ve had enough. Enough, I say.

Rumbunkski (staggering): I’ll go. Yes. I’d better go. I’m fainting with pain, and I’ve such a bilious attack I can hardly move without nausea; but I’d sooner suffer any torments than put up with false friends.

[Pg 150]

Irena: False friends? Take care what you say, Stepan Stepanovitch. When you talk about false friends remember how you betrayed Nicolai Nicolaivitch at Moscow, and so on. Think of the Cheka and all that, before you talk of disloyalty, my little wood pigeon.

Bougárov (sneering): And remember that even if I am a dying man with heart disease and paralysis, I’ve got people in my house who are good enough to settle the hash of a lame hen like you, honoured Stepan Stepanovitch Rumbunkski.

Rumbunkski: Ah, you threaten, do you? Wait a bit.... Ah, Little Fathers, this poison. I’m dead again. (He falls over sideways.)

Irena Ivanovna (screaming at Bougárov): He’s dead. Unnatural father. Murderer.

Bougárov (at the top of his voice): Don’t yell like that. You inflict me with the most acute palpitations.... I can’t see.... I’m a dead man. (He sinks back in his chair.)

Irena Ivanovna: Little Fathers and Mothers!... I must escape. (She drains the vodka bottle and falls prostrate. They all lie motionless. You think they are dead; but they are not. Just as the light is failing they come to life one by one and resume their dispute. The fall of the curtain and the end of the play leave nothing decided.)

[Pg 151]

Rumbunkski: Ah! Little Fathers, this poison——

(An Historical Drama in the manner sometimes attributed to the Lord Verulam.)

The Knight of Swansea: Gif me your attentions, I pray you, and mark vell dese vorts. Ve Velshman haf great traditions. Ve are proud and ancient peoples. Some tink perhaps ve shows too much ze pride of race, yes? Ze fierce Celtic patriotism? But ve are chustly proud to tink ourself descendant of Cadvallader, cradle of Tudors, and fine stocks of Owen Clendower, look you—Mark den vat vorts our leader shall tell you and observe dese rulings. (He withdraws a pace.)

First Druid:

Second Druid:

A Herald: Peace Ho! Have silence there.

Voices from the Crowd: Silence for David.

Other Voices: Peace for the Man of Wales.

Riddell (aside):

King David:

The Crowd (murmuring): We’ll have none of that. None of that. We’ll rise and storm their strongholds. We’ll burn down their castles to the ground.

King David:

Druids:

King David:

The Davieses (talking among themselves): There’s much in this.

The Williamses: Most true and notable.

The Evanses: Not to be lightly put aside, look you.

A Druid: Peace, he begins again.

King David:

All:

(Sound a flourish. Exeunt.)

(A Play in the Irish Manner.)

Sean: Where’s himself?

Seamus: Taking a bit of sleep, maybe, if he’s able—God help him!

Sean (exultantly): There’s fine doings on the sands this night, with great ships boarded and sunk and the lads making grand talk. Rifles and cannon we’ve taken, and munitions would be enough for a great war.

The Men of Gunn (murmuring appreciatively): Bully for you, Kid!

Peadar: It’s himself will bless these tidings. (Addressing Eamon with conspicuous timidity): Mister, honey, he’s after saying they’ve[Pg 159] sunk the British Navy, and captured all the munitions in the western world.

Eamon: The blessing of Gunn upon those words! (Dropping his voice): I say, what d’you imagine they’ve really got?

Peadar (dropping his): Oh, I don’t know—a few dozen rifles, I suppose, and a couple of boxes of S.A.A. One has to exaggerate a bit in an Irish drama.

Boûgus (in bloodthirsty tones): It’s taking the arms up to the caves they are, till all’s ready to strike the blow; and it’s fine gory heads there’ll be, and great masses of dead bodies that day in the six counties, and throughout the land, so you’ll not avoid to tread on the white upturned faces of the dead, they lying so thick. And I’ll be king that day in Ulster, and the black Orangemen destroyed and vanquished.

The Men of Gunn (with appreciation): Sa-ay, kid, that’s talking.

Eamon: Let you go down now, Boûgus, with Naisi and Narsti and the men of Gunn; for I’ve word that Cosgrave, or perhaps Mulcahy, do be coming to Castlebar or maybe Dundalk, and it’s there he must be[Pg 160] sent away with scorn and laughter, and maybe a leaden bullet or two.

The Men of Gunn (springing to their feet): Easy money. Get right after it, boys.

Boûgus (bursting into song): Oh, Alannah, Acushla, Asthore, Macree, Honomandhiaul!!! (He dashes out at the head of the party. Eamon wraps himself complacently in his rags and nods over the fire. The women continue to regard him with speechless devotion.)

Seamus: Where’s himself?

Sean: Asleep, God help him, and dreaming of Caitilin ni Houlihan, the creature, and her wedded to him in these coming days.

Peadar (roughly): It’s her he can put from his mind then, for she’s up there on the hillside with Cosgrave and Mulcahy, and James Craig, and they going on together with dancing and merriment, the way would surprise the stags for leppin’; and her that let on to be a decent woman would marry a holy man.

Bridgeen Dick (sharply): Let yourself be holding your tongue now, Peadar Roabensôn, with your great noises to waken the seven sleepers,[Pg 161] and he not stretched in his bed a dozen hours to be resting after his great labours.

Boûgus (rushing in, followed by Naisi and Narsti): It’s destroyed we are, entirely.

Eamon (sitting up suddenly): I beg your pardon? Did you say destroyed?

Boûgus: Aye, destroyed.... She’s turned against us, and joined the hands of Cosgrave and James in friendship—as Deirdre, in the days of old, did try with Conchubor and the sons of Usna.

Eamon (in an undertone, to one of his personal retinue): My God, what are we to do now?

The Other (whispering): You must make a speech in Gaelic.

Eamon (also whispering): I can’t. I’ve left the book at the Mansion House.

The Other: Well, you must think of something appropriate in English, then.

Boûgus (keening): Oh, whirra, whirra, Ochone, Ochone. (They all burst into tears.)

Eamon (as one pronouncing a curse): If the sun could have darkened to hide her shame, and the waters of the great ocean given themselves to wash away her faithlessness, it’s a strange, black, arid world we’d be living in this day. O’Connell, Parnell, Redmond, she’s broken the heart in all of them; and now it’s mine she’s broken, too; and it’s[Pg 162] not Cosgrave and James that she’ll spare in the days to come.—I will go out with the Men of Gunn....

Seamus: Where’s himself?

Sean: Musha avick, how many more times will I be telling you in this play that he’s asleep, God help him, the holy man, and maybe dreaming, if he’s able, of the grand goings on there’ll be when they’re after making him Pope and King of all the world, and he a scraggy, thin, weakly man would put you in mind of an old hen, or maybe a worn-out jackass to be taken from the shafts and turned away among the roots and grasses to die.

Peadar: Sure, I’m thinking that’s not what he’d be dreaming at all, but the great joy of making combats and running here and there in high spirits, with the Men of Gunn around him.

Eamon (mournfully): The heart’s broke in me, Seamus Smitha, for it’s all put aside and finished now, and there’s no more doings I can contrive; and there’s nothing left but to go back, the way we came, among the[Pg 163] Bohunks and Dagoes, and die in a little dirty state in the hind end of America.

The Widow Markiewicz (scornfully): And isn’t there land called England over across a dirty bit of water would hardly wet your boots to cross it; where do be fine houses, and gold ornaments, and a stupid uncomplaining people to govern, and a crazy Parliament over it all is calling for ever on the Mother of God to send an alternative Government?

The Men of Gunn: Gee whiz!!

The Widow: How do you say, Eamon! Will you take this country and people and make a new Ireland there; and be leaving the North and the South to slit the throats on each other?

Eamon (in a great voice): I’ll do it, so.... And won’t it be the fine adventure to hold it over the heads of Cosgrave and Mulcahy, when I’m sitting in the seat of Lloyd George with the Kings and Emperors and Presidents of the world around under my feet, and Boûgus beside me, and Naisi and Narsti on my either hand, and the Men of Gunn holding the fair land of England, and me Lord of it all?

Bridgeen: And haven’t you the right, Mister honey, to be sitting in that place and taking[Pg 164] your ease, and a sup of whiskey itself maybe; for it’s you surely is destroyed by thinking and fighting in these days in Ireland, and where would there be your match for craft and savagery in all the western islands?

Eamon: I have so. (To Naisi and Narsti): Call up the Men of Gunn, and let Boûgus be there, and Seamus, and Sean, and Peadar Roabensôn, and any other man would make his future, so; and I’ll lead them out to England, or Russia itself if need be, and split the brainpan on Lloyd George and all of them, and be master of the world in their places; and so I will. (They go out.)

The Widow Markiewicz (looking after them as they go): And isn’t he the fine handsome lad to be riding forth on a great adventure; and he, God help him, nothing but a poor crazy scholar, with a great savagery and bitterness in his heart?

[Pg 165]

A man, or woman, who has just been elected to Parliament may be pardoned if, in the words of Gilbert, “the compliment implied, inflates” him (or her) “with legitimate pride.” It is rather difficult, when the declaration of the poll is announced by the Returning Officer, and you find yourself, by a swinging (or narrow) majority, the elected representative of some 30,000 people, to avoid a certain feeling of pleasurable self-congratulation. For the first time in your life you are, suddenly, the central figure of a great demonstration. You are astonished at your own popularity. Strangers rush up and clasp you by the hand; bearded men kiss you on both cheeks; you are taken in charge by the police, to save you from being torn limb from limb by your almost too enthusiastic friends. And, if there is a fleeting resemblance, in the triumphal march from the returning office to the headquarters of your organisation, to the old-time procession to the scaffold of a popular highwayman—a resemblance heightened by the necessity for making a speech on a crazy wooden erection usually known as “the hustings,” that air of[Pg 168] spurious importance is, for the most part, effaced next day, when you leave your constituency by train, unrecognised and even unremarked. After the splendours of the previous night, this anonymity is an almost painful contrast; but there are lower depths of abasement to be reached. You have yet to pay your first visit to the House of Commons.

In the interval between your election and the summoning of Parliament, you have probably to some extent recovered your normal self-confidence. You have doubtless secured a home near Westminster, “to be near the House, you know.” You may even have been interviewed by a provincial paper. It is just possible that one of the leaders of your party—a junior one—in the first generous glow of the election results, may have shaken you by the hand. Perhaps (but this happens very rarely) the august personage who speaks from the Front Bench in the name of your party, may have stared you out of countenance at Lady Broadside’s reception. You are actually beginning to feel that you are Somebody after all; and so you nerve yourself to make your first visit to the scene of your future labours.

Somehow, as you slink into Old Palace Yard, the fine fervour of enthusiasm, that accompanied you in your walk along Victoria Street, seems to have largely abated. You cannot help secretly[Pg 171] wondering whether you will be required to produce credentials by the doorkeeper. You visualise a painful moment, when a gigantic functionary will say politely, but oh so firmly, in response to your frantic asseverations, “Very sorry, sir, but if you can’t prove you’re a member, I can’t let you in.” You wonder whether he will accept the evidence of the birth certificate, and the cutting from the “Times” announcing your victory, which you hastily stuffed into your pocket before starting out; or whether you had better lie in wait for some senior member of your party, and steal in, in his wake. And, whilst these fearful doubts are invading your mind, you find yourself at the entrance, and an enormous, genial, rubicund policeman accosts you smilingly: “Good morning, Sir! New member, Sir?”

“New Member, Sir?”

Down, swelling heart!

You try to avoid bursting with pride; acknowledge his salute; and walk in. But ah, you think, the terrors are yet to come. Another constable equally large, equally genial, touches his hat as you pass through the swing doors, and says: “Cloakroom on the right, sir.” “Here at least,” you fear, “there will be a challenge.” An attendant comes up to you. He gives you a searching look. Your heart sinks into your boots. “Good Heavens,” you think to yourself, “I am in the wrong part of the building—this is probably[Pg 172] reserved for Cabinet Ministers.” You are about to mutter an excuse and slink away. Quite unnecessary. He was only memorising your face. “Name, sir?” he asks. You give it; you will never have to do so again. Like your face and appearance, it has been indelibly recorded for future reference. “Your peg’s here, sir,” he says; and you find, rather to your astonishment, that a peg has already been reserved for you, and bears your name. Two or three other members come in—old members evidently, for he knows them personally. They exchange greetings; and you think to yourself: now where have I seen something like this before?—Your mind, in a flash, bridges a gulf of a quarter of a century, and takes you back to your first day at your public school.... “New boy, sir?” said the janitor, committing your face and name to memory. “Mr. ——’s house, sir? That’s your peg in that corner; them’s the school notices under that shed, see? You ought to read them every day; and that’s the tuckshop the other side of the road opposite the gates.” ... “New member, sir?” enquires the attendant. “There’s your peg, sir; you’ll find the Post Office at the top of the stairs on the left of the Lobby; you ought to ask there for the letters. Smoking-room, sir? Along the corridor, turn to the right; and it’s on your left-hand side.”

[Pg 173]

Truly the boy is father to the man.

You leave your coat, and wander up the stairs to the inner Lobby. You sample the thrill of receiving your first batch of letters in the House of Commons. You peep reverentially into the empty Chamber—half afraid to go inside for fear of inadvertently transgressing some rule of the House. You would like to look at the Library and the smoking-room; and yet you feel a certain unwillingness to trouble the attendants with questions. Suddenly a stranger, noticing your irresolution, saunters up to you. “New member?” he asks affably (as who should say “New boy?”); and when you have admitted the soft impeachment—“Thought so,” he continues, “I think I knew most of the last Parliament. Care to look round? I’ve nothing to do for an hour.”

And, even as you accept, you remember how Williams (or Brown), who afterwards grew to be your alter ego, took pity on you in the old days at Greyfriars, led you round and “put you wise”; and, whilst your new friend is explaining the mysteries of the Chamber—the Chair, the Cross Benches, the Bar, the Galleries—leading you through the Library, along the passages to the House of Lords, and making you acquainted with your new public school, you think with gratitude, and some wonder, of the eternal youth of human institutions.

The Chief Whip of a Party is a very august personage. He shares in the councils of the Party leaders. He is one of the links that bind them to the Headquarters organisation, and the constituencies. He holds the party together on the lines laid down by the Leader. He keeps a watchful eye upon recalcitrants, like a sheep-dog with wayward sheep. He is, in fact, the Chief of Staff; and his lot is not an unenviable one.

The Junior Whips are another matter. Rebellious members of the party who would, however, feel some compunction about speaking their minds to the Chief Whip, lay bare their grievances, with embarrassing plain-spokenness, to the juniors. The Scottish and Welsh Whips must often find themselves like to the unfortunate victims of that mythological giant, whose habit it was to tie the legs of his foes to opposing fir-trees, and, releasing the trees, divide them in twain—by reason of the rival claims of their own particular groups of members and of the Chief Whip himself. Needless to say, in all parties, there is the fullest opportunity for members to bring their point of view to the notice of the leaders, both through the Whips and at party meetings. But once a party decision has been taken, it is obvious that, for the sake[Pg 175] of the unity of the party, it is highly important that its members should present a consolidated front. And it is when the preconceived opinions of individual members, or special circumstances in their constituencies, happen to be at variance with the general policy of the party, that the troubles of the Junior Whips begin. They have obviously an inclination towards those who compose their own group, such as the Welsh members or Scottish members; they have also their duty towards the party as a whole—not always easily to be reconciled. Anyone who experienced the unenviable position of a Junior Staff Officer in one of the feuds that habitually raged between battalion and brigade, or between brigade and division, during the war, will have a fairly accurate understanding of the trials of a Junior Whip.

But that is not all. The Whips are responsible for the social side of the party as well. Sir Augustus and Lady Broadside, let us say, offer to arrange a reception. For some reason, limitation of space for instance, it is not possible to invite everybody. On the Whips falls the invidious duty of making the selection, who shall be asked and who not. And when this difficult task has been performed, it is discovered that, by an oversight, there is no record of the fact that some new member is married—consequently he is asked and his wife is not, with inevitable[Pg 176] heartburnings as the result. Or, again, there are ceremonial duties to be attended to. Members wishing to attend the King’s Levee must have their paths made smooth. The presentation at Court of the wives and daughters of members must be arranged. The Whips must expect to be consulted, as well, on sumptuary questions, such, for instance, as whether a member ought to buy a levee dress, or whether it will be considered sufficient if he avails himself of the new regulation, and attends in evening coat and knee breeches; and what is the most appropriate garment, other than a white sheet, in which to make a maiden speech.

As if that was not enough, there are the speaking arrangements to be made. It does not, of course, follow that the list will be adhered to, but, for the convenience of the Speaker, it is usual for him to be furnished “through the usual channels,” which means in other words by the Whips, with a list of members of each party who would like to speak in any Debate. Obviously some selection must be made, or in a Parliament of active politicians, such as the present, the list of each party would be impossibly large. More than half a dozen names for each party would be more of a hindrance to the Speaker than a help, because there would be no possibility of getting them all in—seeing that the normal hours of[Pg 177] Debate are between four in the afternoon and eleven at night—seven hours in all—and the average duration of speeches is twenty minutes, giving a maximum of twenty-one speakers. This process of selection calls for tact of the highest order. On the one hand, if the list is too full, the Whip must not put off further volunteers in such a manner as to discourage them. On the other hand, he must be careful not to create the impression that he wants them to speak always, or they will never leave him in peace. Even the most sensible and level-headed people are touchy about their speaking; and the effect of a hasty word may easily take a whole session to efface from the mind of the person to whom it was addressed.

Nor do the Whip’s duties end there. A question suddenly arises needing instant determination. On the one hand, the leader may make up his mind at once as to the party attitude; in that case the Whips must hurry round, and communicate it to the members of the party. On the other hand, the leader may wish to know the feelings of his party before deciding on a course of action; there is no opportunity for holding a party meeting, the decision must be taken probably within half an hour; it now becomes the duty of the Whips to flit from member to member, collecting opinions and suggestions for communication to the Leader by[Pg 178] the “Chief.” Or it may be necessary to “keep a house” for one of the back-benchers who is “raising a question on the adjournment”; again the busy Whips must hurry here and there lobbying their party to make sure that forty members will be present, to protect their colleague against the misfortune of being “counted out.”

And then, on top of all this, there is liaison with the other parties, which in practice is more or less reserved for the Chief Whip himself—for this kind of work demands the delicacy of Agag. These are the accommodations, arrangements of business, exchange of party views, that necessarily go on behind the scenes as a preliminary to the set Debates—especially in connection with the procedure of the House and the settlement of the order of public business.

There is a certain glamour in being styled a Whip. Your name and, probably, your photograph are published in the papers; you are given special facilities for entertaining your fellow-members; if your party happens to be in power, you hold a junior office in the Treasury. The Chief Whip, despite his responsibilities, has, on the whole, an interesting job. He is largely concerned with what is sometimes called the kitchen side of politics; but his function of linking up the Parliamentary party with the leader, calls for high qualities; and his weight, in the determination of[Pg 179] the party programme in the conclave of leaders, is considerable. The Junior Whips are devotees of a high order to their party’s organisation. Their task is a thankless one. They condemn themselves to well-nigh Trappist vows in the Chamber, because they are almost always at work outside it. They place themselves at everyone’s beck and call. They are in demand to smooth out any difficulty that may arise.

In fact, as a man once said, who was A.D.C. to a Colonial Governor: “It’s a spittoon of a life.”

Defer it as you may, upon one pretext or another, the fatal moment will come at last when you must make your maiden speech. There have, it is to be supposed, been members of Parliament of such agonising modesty or such iron self-restraint, that they would have been willing to pass their entire Parliamentary lives in silence. But sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, an aggregation of pressures—duty to the constituency, the spur of amour propre, green jealousy of the triumph of X., who so impressed the House by his speech on the Protection of Insects Bill, the subtle encouragement of some fair flatterer who, when X.’s speech was discussed, eyed you archly and murmured, “Of course you ...” leaving your vanity to fill in the blanks—these, and other compelling reasons, combine to persuade you to the irrevocable step of giving in your name to the Whips, after which, feeling like a man who has made an appointment with his dentist, you slink away and prepare for the worst.

With becoming modesty, you select some insignificant, and relatively trivial, subject—such as World Federation, the Solar system, or the relations of the Almighty and the Universe,[Pg 181] as affording you scope for the pronouncement you feel it in you to make. You collect a whole pantechnicon-load of authorities, which, when you have read them through, are allowed to lie piled in the darkest passages of your house for the servants to fall over; you take a ticket for the British Museum Library; you apply yourself to study with all the fervour of a Bengalee competing for an examination. And then, one or at the most two days before the great oration is scheduled to be delivered, your Whip says casually, “Oh, we’ve had to change the arrangements. We’re getting you in on the Committee stage of the Impurities in Milk (Abolition) Bill”; and all your labour is shown to be wasted and vain. There are only three days left. You rush to the Dairy Produce Association, the Institute of Milkmaids, and the Society for the Preservation of Cattle and Kine, from each of which you receive an undigested mass of propaganda, disguised in the form of scientific tracts. There is no time to push your investigations beyond these, so you set yourself to learn them word by word. You come down to the House on the fatal day primed with knowledge, with lactialities on your lips and the milk of human kindness bubbling from your heart—and you discover that, before your arrival, a member of your own party, interested in the welfare of subject populations of the[Pg 182] Empire, has moved the Adjournment of the House to draw attention to a matter of urgent and definite public importance, namely, the refusal of the Government to issue practising licences and a charter of incorporation to the witch-doctors in the U-Ba-Be district of Abeokeuta.

You seek out your Whip, demanding information. He tells you that the Government has changed its mind about the Bill on which you were to speak, and intends, in its place, to introduce an Amending Act in connection with the Acquisition of Mineral Royalties in Zanzibar, Proclamation of 1872. Having no knowledge whatever of Zanzibar or minerals, other than those in bottles, and only a nodding acquaintance with the lesser grades of royalty, you feel bound to demur, when he suggests that you should “give tongue” at such short notice on this subject. Whereupon he offers you your choice between the Protection of Herrings (Scotland) Bill, Second Reading; the Civil Service and Revenue Departments (grants in respect of medical referees, destitute aliens, and port and riparian sanitary authorities) Vote on Account; and the Army and Air Force Annual Bill. Smitten with despair at the prospect of the vigils, prayer and fasting entailed in the mastery of any one of these three subjects, and fortified by a hazy recollection of “King Solomon’s[Pg 183] Mines,” you quaveringly ask whether it would not be possible for you to speak on the Witch Doctors Adjournment. As your Whip has been searching high and low for someone to do this very thing, he almost invites you to dinner in his relief; and hurries away with your name to the Speaker. In due course he seeks you out in the Library, where you are sitting, in a cold perspiration at your own temerity, and struggling to master a report on “Witchcraft and the Black Arts as practised in the Continent of Africa,” furnished through the medium of the Aborigines Suppression Society in 1850—apparently the only standard work on the subject. He informs you that you will be called immediately after the Government has replied. Your heart sinks into your boots; a clammy sweat breaks out upon your forehead; and you apply yourself assiduously to the report.

Just before 8.15 p.m. you stagger into the Chamber. To your excited fancy it seems to have grown very large. The seat on which you are accustomed to sit, seems an immense distance from the Speaker’s Chair. But, as the House is practically empty, you sneak into somebody’s corner seat, and hope for the best. The one encouraging factor in the whole proceedings is that, in spite of the ghastly hash that the mover of the resolution seems to be making, the patient[Pg 184] House is attentively listening in silence. After all, you think, remembering your own triumphant speeches during the election, the swing of the words, the thrill of the audience, the storm of applause—after all, it can’t be as difficult as all that.... An Under-Secretary begins a half-hearted defence of the Government. He says he is quite certain that in this case the House will consider that the House ought to be extremely careful before responding to the suggestion made by his hon. and gallant friend that the House is at liberty to vary a former decision of that House, as hon. members below the gangway seem to imagine. He goes on to say, er—that the Government—er—will, of course, be ruled—er—or perhaps he ought to say guided—er—by the view of the House towards—er—or with regard to the matter—assuming that in that matter or—er—as he would rather put it, in such questions—er—the opinion of the House must be the governing consideration. Furthermore, he would remind the House, with the permission of the House, that the House is always reluctant to set aside a privilege won by the House in former times and upheld on the floor of the House by statesmen like Drigg and Bulgman with the full approval of the House—an approval, Mr. Speaker, which, as the House is aware, is recorded in the journals of the House, and which he is satisfied—nay,[Pg 185] assured—that all members of the House would pause before challenging.

With this adjuration he resumes his place. You climb tremulously to your feet. The Speaker calls: “Mr. Wutherspoon.” And immediately most of the people in the Chamber rise, and hurry out, with looks of disgust and loathing. The bustle of their exit rather takes away from the effect of your carefully prepared opening sentences; and your biting gibe at the expense of the Minister seems in some mysterious way to have lost the greater part of its sting. Those to whom it is audible ejaculate a mirthless “Ha, ha,” to encourage a maiden speaker, and vanish in the wake of those members who have already left. You wonder to yourself, in dismay, whatever induced you to embark upon a Parliamentary career; and at the same moment, stumbling, quite by accident, upon some happy phrase, you are greeted, to your astonishment, with modified cheering. This is what you were waiting for. You feel that Parliament is not so insensible to your merits, as you had at first supposed. You seize the lapel of your coat with your left hand, and, throwing out your right in a generous half-circle, you venture boldly upon the great passage in your speech, beginning, “The witch-doctors of U-Ba-Be, a humble section of our fellow-subjects, organised, as who shall say they[Pg 186] have no right to be organised, in a society, union or corporation, turn their eyes and lift up their voices to this House of Commons imploring....” Somehow, by the malignant intervention of unhappy chance, before you have said half a dozen words of this moving passage, a deathly silence has fallen upon the Chamber; all eyes are fixed upon you; you stumble and falter; and murmured conversation at once begins. Again you blunder on a telling phrase. Once more you find you are being listened to. This is a pity, because it betrays you into a touch of self-confidence. Immediately, all around you, faces, like flowers in the morning sun, expand into smiling bloom. But you are getting into your stride: you correct that mistake with a modest remark and a deprecating movement of the hand. Whereupon, you are cheered. You turn with graceful assurance towards the Chair. “Why, Mr. Speaker, the witch-doctors of U-Ba-Be,” you begin; and you find that the Speaker, who has a legion of duties beyond listening to the speeches, is in earnest conversation over the arm of the Chair with one of the Whips, or perhaps is writing, or—and this is so disconcerting as almost to petrify one with astonishment—he has vacated the Chair to the Deputy-Speaker, who wearing neither wig nor gown, is well-nigh invisible under the mighty canopy. In the dismay[Pg 187] of this paralysing discovery, your legs endeavour to collapse under you. You nerve yourself for a prodigious effort, jettison the witch-doctors into space, and endeavour to sweep into the peroration, so carefully prepared on the subject of World Peace, adapted later to the Milk Bill, and now, with suitable alterations, doing service on behalf of the subject populations of the Empire. You get along very nicely for about two minutes; you feel that you are taking the House into your arms; you carefully avoid a second glance at the Chair, and look along the benches, warming to your work. Alas! at that moment somebody laughs. In all human probability his laughter had nothing to do with anything you said. In a feverish effort to recall your words, for purposes of correction, you lose the sequence of ideas, and the peroration follows the witch-doctors into the limbo of forgotten things. You lamely thank the House for its indulgence; and sit down covered with ignominy and shame.

Then, to your astonishment, other members turn round, and nod to you—nods of approval. Somebody says “Well done.” Somebody else leans forward, and pats you on the back. One of the leaders on the Front Bench actually turns round and looks at you. The Whip who arranged for your call offers words of congratulation.

You congratulate yourself—on having got it over.

The Front Bench, which faces the Treasury Box, and is located on the right of the Speaker’s Chair, is reserved for Ministers of the Crown. The Front Opposition Bench, which is on the left of the Speaker’s Chair and faces a similar box, is reserved for ex-Ministers and Privy Councillors in opposition. What secrets of State these massive brass-bound boxes contain, must be a source of anxious wonder to everyone who attends a Debate and looks down upon them from one of the Galleries. They look as though they are the very Holy of Holies of the Constitution, the arcana in which repose the mystic foundations of our greatness. You feel that, at least, they ought to contain Doomsday Book, the original manuscript of Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Rights. So massive and monumental is their appearance, so hallowed their associations, that you would not be surprised to discover that the special form of oath in the House of Commons was to swear “By the Treasury Box!” as kings of old did swear par le splendeur Dex.

Lovers of Stevenson will recall how, during his stay on the Island of Apemama, having been afflicted by influenza, and when all Western[Pg 189] medicines had failed, he put himself in the hands of Tembinok’s Chief Magician, who, by invoking the deity Chench, effected a miraculous cure—so shaking the scepticism of Stevenson that he pursued investigations with the magician, which culminated in the discovery that Chench occupied a small wooden box in the Warlock’s house. Insatiable in his desire to extend his theological knowledge, he succeeded, after protracted bargaining, in acquiring the tenement of the god, bore it home in triumph, found himself, like one of his own characters in the story of the Bottle Imp, unable to resist the pangs of curiosity, and, with who can guess what delicious anticipations of the unknown, removed the lid—only to discover three cowrie shells and a little piece of matting. Such are the disappointments of the seeker after truth who should bring himself to open the Treasury boxes, for one is empty and the other contains a cheaply bound and quite unremarkable copy of the Bible and a couple of pieces of cardboard bearing a certain family resemblance to that part of the paraphernalia of the optician that he hangs on the wall to test your sight by—which are, in fact, copies in large letters of the oath, the Scotch oath and the Affirmation, required by law to be taken on signing the roll of Parliament, and embodied in this form for the convenience of the Clerk who administers them.

[Pg 190]

But this is a digression from the Front and Back Benches. The two members for the City of London, by some curious old survival, are entitled to sit on the Front Bench of their party; but in practice, since both Front Benches are notoriously insufficient to accommodate all claimants to seats, this traditional right of the City members is only exercised on the first day of a new Session, as who should put a barrier once a year across a private road, to prevent the right from lapsing. Nowadays with three large parties in the House, the third headed by two ex-Prime Ministers and a number of distinguished ex-Ministers and Privy Councillors, the front bench below the gangway, on the right of the Speaker’s Chair, has, by the Speaker’s ruling, become a Front Bench. Its opposite number on the left of the Chair has no special status. By virtue of their office, the Whips sit on the front benches of their respective parties. All the remainder of the House constitutes the back benches, with the exception of the Cross-benches—which, however, though actually within the Chamber, are, by a fiction, outside the House, being behind the Bar. It follows that a member may not address the House from the Cross-benches; but since, by way of compensation, the Members’ Galleries on either side of the House, though outside the Chamber, are, in fact, by a similar fiction, inside[Pg 191] the House, a member may, and in Mr. Pemberton Billing’s time did, address the House from these lofty altitudes above it (if he is so fortunate as to catch the Speaker’s eye), giving himself, in the exercise of this privilege, the appearance of a contemplative passenger leaning over the side of a ship.

So much for the physical difference between the Front and Back Benches. What of the Front and Back Benchers? The Front Bencher is the finished product of the Parliamentary machine. He is, to the humble majority of his fellows, what the members of those august and mystic societies, like “Pop” at Eton, are reputed to be, to their less distinguished brethren. A Front Bencher is, by tradition of the House, entitled to catch the Speaker’s eye in preference to any Back Bencher. He need not attend prayers: indeed, if he values the privileges of his order, he will be careful never to attend prayers, but will saunter in to take his place whilst the Speaker’s Chaplain is bowing his way backwards down the floor of the House. He has the privilege of putting his feet on the Table, a practice which he not infrequently carries into his own home—to the mingled pride of his family and astonishment of his friends. But if the position has these privileges to give, it has also its responsibilities. Front Benchers must behave with[Pg 192] decorum, and that is more than is expected of anyone else. They are the Sixth Form boys, and must set an example.

The successful Back Bencher should approach his work in the spirit of the Lower Third. Whilst he should not actually permit himself the relaxation of practical joking, and would perhaps be called to order if he shook a mouse out of his trouser leg, like “Pater” Winton in Kipling’s story, he has within reasonable limits of good humour, an ample licence to make sport. One well-known member of the House spends the greater part of his Parliamentary time twisting order papers into something between a spill and a spear, which he then ostentatiously throws upon the floor, as though he feared to encounter the temptation of continuing to hold them. Another is assiduous in the manufacture of paper darts, which as yet have never been thrown.

The experiences of other deliberative Assemblies have taught the House of Commons that Back Benchers are not to be trusted with inkwells. This is probably the reason why there is no provision for making notes, except upon one’s knee. But a lot of quiet fun can be had out of raising points of order that are not points of order, and by the judicious organisation of a hum of conversation to drown an opponent’s speech. Isolated interjections, if possible foreign to the subject[Pg 193] of the Debate, and Supplementary Questions bearing no relation whatever to the original question, are also amongst the legitimate weapons of the Back Benchers. And finally, there is the great Parliamentary instrument, the use of which is almost entirely confined to Back Benchers, of moving the Adjournment of the House. Where some luckless Minister can be tripped up in answering a question, and it can be made to appear that the answer reveals a state of affairs definite, urgent and of public importance, the Speaker may be asked for leave to move the adjournment. If leave be granted, the motion is made, and, if supported by 40 members, is set down for discussion at 8.15 on the same evening, irrespective of what business has been allotted to that hour. This, in the hands of senior Back Benchers, can be turned to very effective account. Junior Back Benchers are well advised to master the use of the lesser Parliamentary weapons to begin with.

In all seriousness, there is a noticeable difference between Front and Back Benchers, noticeable whether you put Back Benchers on the front benches or Front Benchers on the back benches. Thus, in the last Parliament, Mr. Austen Chamberlain and Mr. Lloyd George, addressing the House from back bench corner seats, contrived to present the appearance of Gullivers amid[Pg 194] Lilliputian surroundings—a phenomenon largely attributable to the Front Bench manner. Some members of the new Government (and one or two members of the last Government) who have not yet attained to Front Bench dimensions, present an equally astonishing contrast of the opposite kind. Their painfully unsuccessful efforts to command attention are a source of dismay to their friends and discomfort to their foes. The secret of successful Front Benchery is heavy thinking, and a heavier form of expression. His chief weapon is the polysyllable. A Back Bencher does best to study plain speech, the simpler the better. He may enliven his argument with jest and flippancy. He may controvert his opponent with a plain denial.

Woe to the leader who makes a joke. “Pas de plaisanteries, Madame,” observed a scandalised European monarch, to his jesting spouse: and that is a safe rule for Front Benchers in Debate. If a man is dull enough he can get almost anywhere, once he has reached the Front Bench; but ah, how difficult are the demands upon those behind him! The speeches which the House would fill to hear from the Front Bench, would, with equal certainty, denude it of all occupants, if delivered from behind. A Front Bench speech may run half an hour, three-quarters[Pg 195] of an hour, and even, in the case of the leaders, an hour. No Back Bencher should speak for more than twenty minutes, and fifteen is better. The Front Bench speech should be sonorous, well documented, weighty, responsible—in fact, a pronouncement. The Back Bench speech should be pithy, strictly to the point, not too serious, and, above all, modest—in the nature of a tentative expression of opinion.

Fortunately Front Benchers are not always dull—though they do their best. And Back Benchers as a rule are far from modest.

For a consequence the proceedings often provide such a feast of good fun, that successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have only narrowly resisted the imposition of an Entertainment Tax. This would be fair enough, if substantial compensation were payable for enduring the agonies of devastating boredom entailed by sitting through, for instance, some of the Scot——

Hush! There are too many Members of that virile race, for such remarks to be altogether wise.

In other lands they manage things differently. The President of the Lower House is enthroned on a majestic dais, at the head of a steep flight of steps; the Tribune, from which speeches are made, is beneath him; and he could, if he wished, bring the orator to reason, or, if need be, to the conclusion of his discourse, by a few steadying taps on the head with the ivory mallet which (auctioneer-wise) is his normal instrument for obtaining order. The mallet is reinforced by a large muffin bell, which, in times of distress, the President rings. And his final means of expressing disapproval is to put on his hat—a custom which perhaps furnishes us with the source of the jolly old folk tale, recorded in Grimm, of the King who used to suppress insurrections by pulling down his hat over his eyes, whereby cannons were fired off in all directions. This picturesque ceremonial, far more imposing than the procedure of the House of Commons, is also less effective for the maintenance of order. In the course of really closely reasoned arguments, in those less reticent assemblies, inkwells have been known to fly, the members have been kept from each other’s throats only by the intervention of the sabre-girt attendants, and the very citadel of the President himself has been beset; whereat,[Pg 197] jangling his bell with one hand, and repulsing his assailants with a ruler in the other, he has resolutely maintained his hat upon his head, in testimony of the fact that, legally speaking and despite “the tumult and the shouting,” the séance has long been at an end.

But in the House of Commons the powers of the Speaker are satisfactorily real; not only has he temporary jurisdiction over all persons within the precincts of the Palace, he has also unassailable power to deal with the members. He is himself both a member and something more than a member. He is chosen by the vote of the House; and, once approved by the King, is vested with supreme authority in the management of the Commons. Should a point of procedure arise, his decision is final. Should a question be put of which he disapproves he may disallow it. Should a member say that which, in the Speaker’s opinion, should not have been said, he may order the member to withdraw. Should his ruling be disobeyed he may send a member out of the Chamber. Should the defiance be persisted in, he may suspend the member from the service of the House, whereafter that member may not be admitted to the precincts, until, by resolution, the House itself has terminated his suspension. Yet the Speaker, omnipotent though he seems, is also the servant of the House. It was instructive[Pg 198] not long ago to hear Speaker Whitley define his powers, in relation to the Crown, almost in the very words used by Speaker Lenthall, well-nigh three hundred years before: “For myself I think my reply must be that I have no tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me.”

It must not, however, be supposed that the Speaker exercises his functions of authority harshly. His principal weapon, in fact, is a kind of awful benignity. It is doubtful if there has ever been a Speaker of the House of Commons who maintained his position by severity; indeed, the House of Commons, which is far from being the unintelligent assembly one might suppose, if one judged by the Press, would never choose a person with whom there was the slightest risk of friction; for the House is very jealous of the rights of members. An indication of the kind of results that might be produced by an assumption of too pedagogic a heaviness, on the part of the Chair, was given in the Debate on the Army and Air Force Annual Bill in the last Parliament. In the early hours of the morning, after a trying all-night sitting, Sir Frederick Banbury, who was temporarily in the Chair, raised his voice a little beyond the pitch of good humour in calling to order Mr. Lansbury, who was addressing the House, whereat the latter bluffly retorted:[Pg 199] “You must not shout at me. Order yourself.” Strictly speaking, Mr. Lansbury was out of order in making this retort. He should have deferred to the ruling of the temporary Chairman, and, if necessary, raised the matter with the Speaker after questions on the following day. But there has never been in modern times a member so jealous of the privileges of the House as Sir Frederick Banbury. He realised that tempers, his own perhaps included, had worn a little frayed during the sitting; and therefore, contenting himself by reminding the offender that he must not challenge the decisions of the Chair, he dexterously shepherded the discussion into safer channels.

Speaker Whitley keeps order by an unbroken suavity of manner, a great sense of fair play and a wise lenience towards faults committed in error, from which it will be seen that his hold upon the House is very largely due to the feelings of personal affection, in addition to natural respect and loyalty, with which he is regarded by all members, even the most junior. He is quite capable of administering a rebuke, but he prefers to conquer by gentleness: that is his peculiar quality. With Speaker Lowther it was a keen sense of humour and, if necessary, a blasting and ironic wit, that gave him his ascendancy. This is not to say that Speaker Whitley is always[Pg 200] grave; far from it. His rulings are most often touched with humour. But it is a quiet, gentle humour, like the man himself—the humour of a serious man, not the esprit of a wit. With Mr. Speaker Peel the governing factor was a tremendous, awe-inspiring dignity—something of the same kind as that traditionally ascribed to Dr. Arnold of Rugby School.

It must not, indeed, be imagined that the House of Commons never gets out of hand: nor must it be imagined that the House of Commons has only got out of hand since the Labour Party grew large. The House of Commons must always have been a troublesome body. “Scenes” in the House have taken place right back to the days of Oliver Cromwell; indeed, Mr. Drinkwater in his play gave a vivid representation of a scene in the House in those days. The very carpets on the floor are eloquent of what took place in former times; for the red line, down the outer edge of the strip that borders the front benches, is no less than a warning to members that, in speaking, they must not put their feet beyond it, on pain of being “out of order”: and the purpose of this rule is to keep them from engaging each other with their swords instead of their tongues in the heat of Debate! There were scenes in the House, constant scenes, in the old Reform Bill days and in the old Irish days.[Pg 201] Mr. T. P. O’Connor still tells the dramatic story of the expulsion of Bradlaugh, and equally dramatic stories of the bodily removal of Irish members. Mr. Lloyd George himself has stories of suspension to tell. There were scenes in Parliament just before the war—when, for instance, Mr. McNeill threw a book at Mr. Churchill. There were scenes in the last Parliament, as when the four Labour members were suspended, and on other occasions. There will inevitably be scenes in the present Parliament; and it is safe to say that scenes will take place so long as the Commons shall survive.

But whereas in other countries, despite the muffin bell and the top hat, the President cannot avoid being drawn in, in the Mother of Parliaments the Speaker is something more than a restraining influence, he is the embodiment of law and order. He has behind him for the suppression of disorder the whole power of the State. He could fill the House of Commons with police, and suppress disorder of any magnitude; and if such an occasion arose, and threatened, as it would, our whole Parliamentary institution, the Speaker for the time being would unhesitatingly do so. But that situation will hardly arise. We do most things in this country in the spirit in which we play our games. Members know that, if they transgress the rules beyond[Pg 202] a certain point, they will be suspended. They know that when suspended the Speaker will sign to the Sergeant-at-Arms and the Sergeant-at-Arms, advancing up the floor of the House, will require them to leave the Chamber. And because it is part of the rules of the game that they must do so, they will do so, in the same spirit as they would accept the decision of the umpire in a cricket match. So much for individuals. And if a party—which happened once in the last Parliament—as an organised whole, were to make business impossible by concerted noise, the Speaker has yet another weapon in his armoury. Under Standing Order he may, “in view of grave disorder,” adjourn the House “without question put,” and give the forces of reason time to reassert themselves.

How undramatic! Yes. But the whole point about the Speaker is that he is not a Loud-Speaker.

Though housed in the same building, though separated by a mere matter of yards of stone-flagged corridor and lobby, no two assemblies more essentially different in character, than the House of Commons and the House of Peers, could easily be imagined. They exist, it is true, for legislative purposes, the one being complementary to the other; but when that has been said not many points of similarity remain. The Speaker of the Commons is enthroned in a majestic canopied chair, dominating the Assembly over which he rules; the Lord Chancellor, who presides over the proceedings of the House of Lords, squats on a monstrous crimson cushion, like a feather-bed gone mad, facing a yet more monstrous crimson cushion upon which, on occasions of State, His Majesty’s Judges sit back to back, reproducing that obsolete formation, the hollow square, with which we won the battle of Waterloo. The Speaker of the Commons is so called because he so seldom speaks—because, indeed, he is the only member of the House who may not speak, except as the House directs him. The Lord Chancellor, on the other hand, may, and habitually does, indulge in any flights of dithyrambic eloquence that happen to surge out of his teeming brain; and,[Pg 204] though, unlike the Speaker, it does not lie with him to determine the order in which Noble Lords shall address the House, he might, if he chose, monopolise the whole time with his own speeches. Indeed, when Lord Birkenhead was Chancellor such a happening was not regarded as....

Fortunately, no such proceeding is possible in the House of Commons, or, with a series of stunning reports, Mr. Pringle, Commander Kenworthy and Mr. David Kirkwood would explode from suppressed mortification; and there are others whose peace of mind would be seriously impaired. But in the House of Lords they are only too anxious to avoid speaking; indeed, the difficulty usually seems to be, to overcome the natural reluctance of Noble Lords to allow their voices to be heard, in that rarefied atmosphere, before they have reached the years of threescore and ten, laid down by the Psalmist as the normal span of mankind.

In such circumstances of difference what wonder that each House regards the other as a sort of lusus naturæ, a freak, a giant pumpkin? This sense of strangeness finds the extreme of its expression, in the House of Commons, in such outbursts as Mr. Jack Jones’s bitter expostulation against “those marionettes,” on the occasion when the Commons were sent for by the Lords to hear a Commission read, and found in the[Pg 205] Gilded Chamber five Lords Commissioners resplendent in robes, seated in line; a solitary Back Bench Bishop, and one very junior Peer, probably a mere Baron, who, having wandered in by mistake, sought to efface himself under the lee of Black Rod’s box. “That,” said Mr. Jack Jones bitterly, “is what they think of Us.” Indeed, a chilling disdain is the chief characteristic of the public attitude of the Upper towards the Lower House—as for instance when the latter, in a new Parliament, are haughtily bidden to “repair to the place where you are to sit,” as though they were fowls, “and proceed to the choice of some proper person to be your Speaker,” as though, without that admonition, they would choose somebody from the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. This well-bred contempt is repaid, in the Commons, by veiled references to “another place.” On this exchange of courtesies, the Peers seem to come off best; though, when it comes to practicalities, the positions are reversed, as any student of the Parliament Act knows only too well—little now remaining to the Peers of their former legislative glory.

They get it back upon the faithful Commons, in virtue of their position in the Constitution as the Supreme Judicial Tribunal of the kingdom, whereby it follows that, if, under the Parliament Act, they cannot oppose indefinitely the legislative[Pg 206] will of the Commons, they can to some small extent indemnify themselves, in their capacity of final interpretative authority, after the legislation has been passed. In practice they delegate this function to the Law Lords, five of whom, seated on the red benches with rickety desks in front of them, spend interminable mornings appraising subtle and circumlocutory arguments addressed to them from the Bar of the House by learned Counsel, standing at a kind of lectern, and surrounded by their fellows eager to propound distinctions. There is, however, nothing to prevent any Noble Lord so minded from partaking in this intellectual feast. Indeed, a legend obtains of a sturdy independent Peer, jealous of what would be called in the House of Commons “private members’ rights,” who, for years, insisted on attending, on these occasions, and delivering himself of ponderous allocutions of which no one present, himself least of all, understood one word of the meaning. It says much for the self-restraint of our Hereditary Nobles that his example has not been followed in modern times—though with Sir Frederick Banbury elevated to the Peerage one can never be quite sure.

The House of Lords, in short, is a living example of the utility of the unworkable, the practicality of the impracticable, and the incredible[Pg 207] sanity of the British Constitution. By all the rules of the game, in a Chamber composed of more than 600 people, fully half of whom have no serious political interests, governed apparently by no rules of procedure, and held in check, in fact, by nothing except tradition, the proceedings might be expected to be those of a disorderly rabble. In fact, 80 members is a good attendance, and 50 is nearer the average. The speeches are as a rule so closely reasoned, so admirably informed and of such excellence of style, as to be a source of never-ending envy to members of the Commons. Such a thing as a “constituency” speech is, of course, unknown. There are no “dockyard” members. Nothing need be said with a view to a general election. Nor can a member of the Upper Chamber be imagined making a speech, for the sake of speaking. It is not exactly an inviting atmosphere for such an undertaking. Imagine yourself standing up to address a huge and almost empty chamber, furnished with crimson benches, and tenanted by a smattering of elderly gentlemen all staring with polite fixity at their boots. It really looks as though this undemocratic and almost atavistic body, despite all its anomalies, was in practice something of an example to its elective fellow-House, both in the expeditious transaction of business and in the orderliness of its proceedings.[Pg 208] Their very method of voting is indicative of their critical keenness, their impatience with the institutions of this world, their determination to be satisfied with nothing less than perfection. The form of the vote is not, as in the Commons, “Aye” and “No,” but “Content” and “Not Content.”

Usually they are not content.

[Pg 209]

He received me with exquisite courtesy, waved me into a chair, sank into another himself, and sat, with folded hands and an expression compounded of saintly refinement and dignified composure, regarding me gravely through limpid, untroubled eyes, protected from the tarnishing realities of the world by horn-rimmed spectacles. His silky, white hair gleamed softly in the half-light. His moustache reposed over a mouth touched with wistful sadness, but serene and courageous. Rarely have I seen anything more placid and self-possessed. But he had his small irritations. I was one of them.

“Yes,” he began, with the faintest air of hesitation, “yes. It’s good of you to have come—er. Er—most obliging, I’m sure. It’s a pity they didn’t tell me about it. You see, I’d already arranged.... Yes—(really troubled)—most unfortunate! (Brightening.) We might walk a little way together. (Troubled again.) But perhaps that wouldn’t suit you—no. It would? That’s very lucky. Shall we go now?... They’ll give me a hat, I suppose?...”

We found ourselves walking down a prodigious[Pg 212] staircase, and I heard him say, “Extraordinary buildings these American hotels! I always wonder on what principle they’re constructed. The groining of the roof, for instance....” Well, to be truthful, I’m not really sure that he said “groining,” for my mind (I confess it with shame) was wandering speculatively among the mysterious “them” by whom all great men are surrounded. “They” are always lurking in the background. “They” do all the interesting things; but when some really unpleasant job comes along “they” always work it off on “him.” You can picture “them” planning out the day. “Now,” they say, “there’s your speech on the Irish question, your report for the League of Nations, the article you promised to write for the Hibbert Journal, new socks and ties, another hat, and that awful check waistcoat you bought to be exchanged for something quieter. We’ll do all that. Then there’s the christening of the Infant Princess Vodkha, and General Thing’s funeral. You’d better take those. They’re very important. Oh, and there’s the Pilgrims’ dinner in the evening. You can go to that, too. Mind you say nothing in your speech that we shall be sorry for afterwards.” I should like to be one of “them,” and feel that I was really pulling my weight in the country.

That, roughly, was the train of my thoughts,[Pg 213] when I remembered that an interviewer’s business is to interview and not to acquiesce in excursions into the by-paths of architecture. “They” would never allow that.

“—and I’ve wondered sometimes,” he was saying, “whether the cantilever had anything to do with it. But—but, no doubt, you can tell me that.”

“I can,” I said, “but it would take too long to explain. Besides, the public expects me to put my few moments with you to a better purpose than discussing mechanics. The world is expecting a new era to date from the Washington Conference; and, as the chief British delegate——”

“The trouble with the world,” he replied, “is that it is perpetually expecting the millennium. They expected it after the Congress of Berlin. They expected it to emerge from the Hague Peace Conference, and they got the Great War! They expected a new Heaven and a new Earth out of the Peace Treaty; they got the League of Nations, which was an enormous step forward. And because the League hasn’t revolutionised humanity, because in the space of two years it hasn’t yet effectively counter-checked all the instincts and passions which man has inherited from the anthropoid ape, they brand it as a failure—or, at best, a half success—and turn their eyes to Washington; and if we should not[Pg 214] be able (and who can predict that we shall be able?) to realise all the passionate hopes and aspirations in their hearts, they’ll turn away from our work in despair (however useful and practical it may be), and they’ll go on staring into the future, straining their sight in search of changes, that, by their very nature, are not to be perceived; and, because they cannot watch a kind of sensational picture-drama of evolution unfolding before their eyes, they will condemn each progressive step as a futility.”

“Now, in this particular case,” I began, for he had paused dreamily.

“I have always had warm feelings for America,” he continued, inconsequently as it seemed; “indeed, some of my earliest public speeches were devoted—Yes? Were you about to say anything?—were devoted to pleading for what one might call a Pax Anglo-Americana, as something wider than the Pax Britannica, and as a step towards—a step towards some better understanding between the various states of the world.”

I sought to pin him down. “And is that your expectation of the outcome of this Conference?”

“I see no reason why one should not hope, and ... and, indeed, there seems to me every reason for believing, that our ... our discussions and conversations will reveal sufficient of our respective points of view to serve as a basis for[Pg 215] future negotiations, and possibly to give a broad indication of the lines upon which a general agreement might ultimately be reached.”

I changed front swiftly. “You were in the United States in 1917?”

“In 1917, yes.”

“Do you notice many changes?”

“I can’t help feeling that there is a certain popular aridity which, I should have said, was conspicuously absent on the occasion of my last visit. Naturally, during a war, public opinion tends to be exuberant and ... and, indeed, at times fluid——”

“Then you think the political atmosphere of America has become noticeably drier?”

“I think you must not ask me to discuss the politics of a friendly Power within ... within the confines of that Power. Or, indeed, you may ask, of course, but I feel it would be improper to answer.”

I flung myself upon him from another angle.

“People in England cannot help wondering what effect Mr. Hara’s assassination will have on the Conference.”

“I have always thought,” he replied, after a pause, “that in a society so constituted as ours, it is impossible that such an incident—or, or, indeed, any incident—should be devoid of effect and significance.”

[Pg 216]

“It might prejudice the issue?”

“Conceivably. Or, on the other hand, in certain circumstances, by drawing attention to what is called the War Party in Japan—if such a party exists, as to which I say nothing—it might, in the long run, exercise quite the opposite influence.”

I tried a more direct approach. “Might I ask what will be the policy of the British Delegation?”

“Certainly. The policy of the British Delegation, subject to the approval of His Majesty’s Government, will be that decided upon, after due deliberation, by the Chief Delegate in consultation with his colleagues.”

We walked on a few yards in silence—I struggling to frame a question that he could not evade, he with his eyes on the horizon and his thoughts (I imagine) in another planet. To relieve my evident distress, he said at last, “Would you like me to say anything further?”

I threw diplomacy to the winds and faced him with savage determination. I said to myself that I would not be trifled with.

“Sir,” I cried, “we have talked for half an hour. I think I know less of your thoughts on this subject now than before we began. In the name of the publicity for which I have heard you appeal in the League of Nations, say something[Pg 217] specific of your hopes and fears, something to which posterity may point a finger, saying, ‘Here was a statesman with vision. He knew.’”

“That,” he replied with gentle gravity, “is a little difficult. Er—as ... as you know, I am always unwilling to assume the rôle of prophet. Indeed, I am not prepared to say that in the scheme of things as I understand it—and using ... using the word in the sense that is customary to me—that such a thing as a prophecy has any existence at all. But I feel—yes, I feel the necessity which you have urged upon me with—er—with—er ... so eloquently; and I am above all things—and at all times—desirous of affording such proper information as the public ought to receive, upon such a topic as our present Conference, to those whose ... whose work it is to—to disseminate—er—such information. I see no harm, therefore, in acceding to your request, at the same time making it clear that, since these issues are momentous and easily imperilled, you must observe the ... the greatest discretion in any use—er—in any use to which you may put my words.”

Overpowered at the apparent success of my appeal to his better feelings, I could only bow my thanks. The veteran statesman veiled his eyes with their tired lids and seemed to ponder.

“Well,” he said at last, “subject to what I[Pg 218] have already stated, I see no reason why I should not say that the Outlook is not ... is not as bad as it might be. And now—yes, this is where I must leave you. It has been a great pleasure to speak so frankly; and I know you will be discreet. Good-bye.”

And then he left me and strolled on his way with serene detachment. But whether the “Outlook” to which he referred was the paper of that name, or the prospect before the Washington Conference, those who have read so far are as well able to judge as I.

The great liner warped into the quay. Hushed expectation poised itself over the multitude. A dumpy figure, almost incredibly small against the vastness of the ship, appeared at the head of the accommodation ladder, and waddled slowly down the side, followed, at a respectful distance, by obsequious midgets. It approached nearer, resolving itself into a small round-shouldered man with a heavy, pale face, distinguished eyebrows and prodigious moustaches. His eyes were grey and meditative; his hair a shaggy, black mane, bursting irrepressibly from under his hat. He strode ashore, and prostrated himself on the soil of his beloved country.

“Ah, la patrie,” he cried in his thrilling, resonant voice, rising from his knees as he spoke, and lifting his right hand in solemn invocation. “Ah, my country, thy faithful Aristide, thy humble servitor salutes thee. He returns, inflated with no Imperialism, but none the less from the depths of his heart proud to have upheld, in thy name, before all the assembled conscience[Pg 220] of mankind, those principles of liberty, those imperishable ideals of justice, of international comity and brotherhood, that fine spirit of self-abnegation in which it has ever been the boast of France to lead the world. Oh, liberty, what sacrifice would we not willingly offer in thy behalf? Oh, freedom, where is thy source if not in France? Oh, humanity——”

I tapped him on the shoulder.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” I said.

“Vous dites, M’sieur?” he asked indignantly.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” I repeated sternly. “What do I hear that you’ve been saying in Washington about British warships and sardine-hunting, French submarines and botanical expeditions, and the unknown X?”

He showed his teeth in a grim smile.

“The unknown X? Qu’est-ce que c’est ça? M’sieur veut dire peut-être ‘La femme X’?”

“No evasions,” I warned him. “I am here in the interests of the British public. They are pained, Monsieur, pained! They know nothing of international politics, and very little about politicians—even their own. But they know that, in their quiet way, they’ve grown to be fond of your people. They see that you misunderstand them. And it hurts them to think that the Entente Cordiale——”

He flicked his fingers impatiently.

[Pg 221]

“L’entente cordiale! Ah, M’sieu, l’entente cordiale! ... Are you understanding French?”

“Not noticeably,” I confessed.

“Alors! Well, I shall tell you in English.... What is it, this Entente Cordiale? Hein? An understanding of friends, n’est ce pas? What the Americans call a ‘gentleman’s agreement.’ You make it because you trust so much, that you will not care to have a Treaty. Well, then, but you must trust your vis-à-vis. You must not put all the bad construction on his doing. Not even a Treaty will stand that. You cannot have Entente, and then go on nag, nag, nag, like an old peasant woman with the toothache. Oh, it is impossible, M’sieu, impossible!”

“Angora?” I hinted.

“Angora....” He shrugged bluffly. “Well, yes, Angora. That is, perhaps, a pity. We are—we are in the soup with Angora.” He passed it off with a disarming grin. “But, après tout, what can you expect of Bouillon? We shall settle all that.... And it is not Angora that threaten our Entente, M’sieu. Ah, no! That is a small thing. A few Kemalist do not imperil Anglo-French relations. Pouf!...”

His face grew troubled and sad.

“M’sieu, you know perfectly. It is Germany. Yes. You talk a lot of the separate peace with Turkey. In the letter that is so; but in the[Pg 222] spirit you make a separate peace with Germany. Oh, yes. This is not epigram—it is truth. Germany, she does not intend to pay. Perhaps she cannot pay. I do not know. It is possible she cannot; but you in England pretend to her that she cannot pay and to us that she will pay. Ménager la chèvre et le chou! Is that entente cordiale?...”

“You see,” I endeavoured to explain, “this is a subject on which there are two views in England. One side holds that Germany can pay something—the precise sum varies according to the knowledge and dispassion of the thinker. The other party contends that she can pay nothing at all—that it would be wiser in the general interest of Europe to cancel the whole debt; and that view, not widely held, is gaining ground——”

“At the expense of France,” he interjected sharply. “Yes. Not at your expense, my generous friend, but at the expense of France.”

“That,” I answered, “is partly true; but not entirely true. Viewed in its immediate context, it may be so; but taken in perspective, the trade revival in Germany——”

“Ah,” he cried, “Ah, ça, M’sieu! The trade revival in Germany. And then, M’sieu, and then? The political revival of Germany. The military revival of Germany. The German[Pg 223] hegemony. Mittel Europa. Merci, M’sieu! And France, what of France?”

“France,” I began, “is a member of the League of Nations.”

“And Germany,” he replied, “is not. And America is not. And Russia, with her army of two millions, is not. Thank you for your League of Nations, M’sieu. What will it be in ten years? Perhaps the great co-ordinating harmoniser of the whole world. Perhaps not. What is America wishing since I leave Washington. They will have a new League, with no Covenant. C’est à dire nothing that binds—nothing that give security to such as France. Just a lot of amiable pleasantry, that you interpret as you please. Much of your Press are support them. Do that give confidence to France?... First we are to have the Tripartite Treaty—England, America, France. Then that is not ratify. And our English friends say, ‘Never mind. You have it all in Article 10. The League of Nations will protect you.’ Now, perhaps, the League will follow the Tripartite Treaty. Oh, yes, I know they say the Association will be side by side with the League. But how can you have that? It is a rival system. They say it will be found upon The Hague Tribunal. Then what comes to the International Court? It is to make of international politics a kind of bouillabaisse....[Pg 224] Non, M’sieu! I am head of a Government. I am responsible to a nation. Do you seriously advise me to trust in the League of Nations?”

“I advise you,” I answered, “to trust more in ideas, and less in things. Ideas let loose in the world cannot be destroyed. The League of Nations is an idea—not an office at Geneva. Civilisation is an idea; religion is an idea. What banded the nations together for the Great War? The strength of an idea.”

“Self-preservation,” he muttered, cynically.

“Monsieur le Président, that is unworthy.” (He bowed ironically at the rebuke.) “It is the contemptible argument of the materialist. What drew our young men to fight in 1914? Self-preservation. Never! I doubt if half of them knew the meaning of it. It was the conviction that an evil thing was being done, and the belief that it was their duty to prevent it.”

“Some of your Statesmen,” he continued, as if my remark had not been made, “are so kind as to teach my Government his business. They stand up in public and lecture us, warn us. Italy go wild with rage, because some lying journalist attribute to me what I have not said. England and America link arms and get drunk on formulas of disarmament, that perhaps mean nothing in the light of science to-day. Japan disguise herself[Pg 225] as a mandarin and go behind the scenes in China ... and Germany and Russia look on with sardonic satisfaction to see the isolation of France, and prepare for the next ‘Day’! That give one great encouragement to disarm. And all the time to be uncertain—uncertain of one’s friends.... You say your people, they have love for France. Ma foi, they take a strange method to show it!... I do not understand. No, I do not understand.”

“Must one,” I asked him, “must one always understand? Cannot one have faith in a friendship, tried and proved?”

“You say to have faith,” he mused. “Yes, but that is not so easy. For every belief there must be a foundation—the rock on which the Church is build. Where is my rock?”

“The English dead,” I murmured.

His voice suddenly softened.

“Ah, M’sieu, those dead. I was forgetting.... We have all lived at so much pressure since the Peace, that we forget too often the fundamentals. We live for so many such strenuous years steeped in sentiment, that now we have a reaction.... Those dead in their quiet graves in the North of France—sleeping there till the end of time.

“Yes. We have been too impatient, and we say things that we do not mean. It is not only[Pg 226] here in France; your Ministers, too, have been at fault. But, au fond, it means nothing.

“Listen. I shall tell you. Let us speak no more of L’Entente Cordiale. It is a phrase of politicians and tradesmen. We shall say in future La Grande Amitié. It shall be—it is—a great love between two peoples, sanctified in a bitter struggle for a common aim.... I am glad to have talked with you, M’sieu. Perhaps our conversation can be having good results.

“Do not be too hasty with us. Remember, France have much to fear on the Continent. If we do what seem to you wrong, then be patient. It is not perversity, always.”

He clambered into the car that waited, and drove away through the cheering ranks of his fellow-countrymen....

And I wondered.

“... And which of us,” he said, smiling at me over the breakfast table, “which of us do you wish to see?”

I murmured that I did not understand—er....

“A friend of yours writing in the press,” he explained drily, “has been good enough to find in me a second Jekyll and Hyde. Very well. With which of us do you wish to talk—Lloyd Jekyll or Hyde George?”

“Which,” I asked cautiously, “is which?”

“Both,” he replied, “are Me. Your friend misconceives the situation. He attributes all my political mistakes and failures to Hyde; and the successes I attain to Jekyll. But the truth is that between them they have always pulled me this way and that; and most of my actions are a compromise between their conflicting injunctions. Hyde is still the shrewd Welsh solicitor, who sharpened his wits from morning to night, that Jekyll might have his opportunity. Jekyll is still the idealist who dreamt in his youth of Welsh Home Rule; who upheld the Boers in his middle age because of the nobility of their struggle against overwhelming odds; and now in the fullness of maturity has conferred upon Ireland the freedom she has sought for centuries.”

[Pg 228]

“But——” I interjected.

He waved me aside. An inspiration had mastered him.

“The clouds of despair,” he chanted, “were gathered over our heads. They menaced our security, they threatened our national safety. No avenue of peace has been left unexplored.... The helmsman stands stark and firm, on the crosstrees. The ship of State lurches perilously on the ocean. The captain cons the passage with anxious eyes, the binnacle clasped in his hand, his belaying-pin beside him. Mountainous billows tower above us. The hour is dark. The time is nigh. Shipwreck, despite all our efforts, appears inevitable.... But faith, like a little child, steals in with the dawn; and the splendour of the sunlight, bursting upon the immemorial hills, floods the valleys with limpid rapture, and bathes all nature in joy unspeakable. The sheep frolic around the homestead. The housewife plies her needle with diligent care. And the ship of State, with its lonely pilot, worn but triumphant on the forecastle, glides in safety into the appointed harbour——”

“This,” I protested, “is not an Eisteddfodd,” but he ignored me.

“The tempest,” he continued, “the tempest will abate; the watchers will come down upon the shore with gladness in their hearts; and the[Pg 229] golden glory of my native hills will shine in the souls of men, leading them upward, and ever toward the light.”

A galvanic sweep of the arms brought this whirlwind of speech to a conclusion. A dish of eggs and bacon abruptly clattered on the floor. He pushed the muffins towards me, and refilled his teacup.

“Hyde has been trying to persuade me for some time,” he began, leaning forward confidentially, “to go to the country on the Irish issue. A far stronger rallying cry than ‘Hang the Kaiser!’ and ‘Search their pockets!’ Better even than the ‘Land fit for heroes’ and the ‘Bulging corn-bins.’ It would have been quite easy, you know, to break off negotiations on the question of allegiance. From the point of view of expediency there was a lot to be said for it. It might have swept the country. But Jekyll refused. I think he was right.

“All the same, Hyde’s a shrewd fellow. He sees in a flash what can be turned to good account. He prides himself on knowing what the public wants; and he makes me give it to them. My speech just now, for instance, would have been immensely successful in the House of Commons.... It—er—it didn’t seem to appeal to you.”

“It reminded me,” I replied, “if I may say[Pg 230] so without offence, of your Christmas message to the Lloyd George Liberal Magazine.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “another of Hyde’s activities. You read the magazine, then?”

“Not often,” I answered.

“I am afraid,” he said, “I am afraid you found my message wanting in literary flavour.”

“On the contrary, I should say its flavour was almost too pronounced.”

He smiled ruefully.

“Well,” he said, “you may be right—though personally I thought one or two passages rather fine. But, of course, Hyde ... the truth is, the fellow has an unerring flair for political situations; and he’s always bringing forward these highly flavoured sentiments and fathering them on to me, on the plea that they’re what the public wants. And the worst of it is, he’s right. The public likes that kind of thing.”

“Not the intelligent public,” I remonstrated.

“I don’t know what you mean by that. If you mean the intelligentsia, they don’t count politically.... Suppose my Government fell, what would happen? There’d be a General Election—in which I’m afraid Hyde George would come to the front—which I might lose. Another Government would replace me—perhaps Edward Grey and Bob Cecil. And then? One of two things. Either they’d carry on in the[Pg 231] same quiet, undistinguished and often shifty manner, as I do, balancing one interest against another, and being satisfied with the occasional inch of progress that one makes from time to time; or they’d launch out in an ambitious way, and the conflicting interests of modern society would crush them in six months.”

“Surely,” I said, “government in accordance with principle——”

“The fundamental principle of Government,” he interrupted, “is reputed to be the consent of the governed. But one is not always dealing with first principles; and for practical purposes one of the most indispensable things is the goodwill of the Press. The Press is controlled by capital interests. That is a consideration. The organisation of Labour is another consideration—powerful, though less powerful than formerly. There is the Entente with France to maintain, without going so far to maintain it as will offend large numbers of people here. There is an understanding to keep with America, and an Alliance to modify with Japan. There is a part to be played in the League of Nations, and that must often inevitably conflict with the cordiality of this country’s relations with certain countries, that are doing us no harm but are misconducting their relations with other countries—instances abound. There is the question of raising revenue—who[Pg 232] is to contribute; in what proportions; how? Every decision you make on any detail of these subjects, is going to hit somebody hard in the pocket, perhaps turn him out of employment.... And you talk of principles like a professor of mathematics considering the functions of π. I get so tired of this unpractical nonsense. That’s why I can’t get on with Bob Cecil. It’s a thousand pities; for if only he’d recognise these things and take his head out of the clouds, he’d be invaluable at the Foreign Office.... But to hear him talk, anyone would think, not only that my Government was a set of ill-balanced, self-seeking opportunists, inaccessible to any consideration except their own profit, but that what he calls honest government was as simple as beggar-my-neighbour.”

“You know, sir,” I interjected deferentially, “some people can’t help feeling that a little more adherence to principle in dealing with Ireland would have saved——”

“My dear young friend,” he said in a pitying tone, “have you ever studied the Irish question divorced from the rhodomontade of Ulster, and the hysteria of the South? If you have, you’ll see that there’s right—a lot of it—on both sides. It would have been easy enough to apply a catchpenny solution to Ireland—that’s what we’ve been doing for generations, as each successive[Pg 233] crisis occurred. Any twopenny Tory demagogue can denounce me for not giving Ireland another taste of Cromwell. But can you see British troops engaged in the process? Any paltry crank can storm at my want of faith in not giving them a Republic long ago; but can you see this country acquiescing in the Balkanisation of the British Isles? And can you see the outside world welcoming the creation of another small State in Europe?... You’ve got to come to solutions slowly in these matters; and the only principle that counts, is the preservation of the Commonwealth of Nations to which we belong.”

“And have you preserved that by your settlement?” I asked him.

“It depends,” he said gravely, “on the spirit in which it is carried out. If neither party in Ireland can agree, and if they will not be reconciled to us, then we have achieved nothing. But if,” his voice grew in volume, “if there is a purpose in life; and if great trust breeds great trust, as I believe; and if faith and hope are more than words to humanity, and direct our thoughts and inspire our bravest acts; then, surely, this work will endure.”

He raised his hand, solemnly.

“Sir,” I said, “I have travelled much in our Empire. The Dominions are my second home.[Pg 234] Are they to be Dominions still? Or, if they claim it, are they to become Free States also?”

“It is a Dominion status,” he replied. “The name does not matter.”

“Are you sure?”

“The real tie,” he answered, “must be one of loyalty and love. It is a small matter how the thing is called: and if those qualities are absent you will not better it by the name of Dominion....

“And now,” he said, “I’ve talked long enough. I’ve a Cabinet Council and an interview with the Foreign Secretary to get through before lunch; and there are three confounded deputations which Hyde insists on my seeing personally. So you must go.”

Wherewith he disappeared through one of the multitude of doors surrounding his breakfast-room.

He had thrown himself negligently into a formidable wooden armchair. Lace ruffles of the eighteenth century clung round his wrists, and partly concealed his hands. Crossed over its fellow-knee, he displayed with pardonable ostentation a powerful calf, set on a shapely ankle, and set off by the silken hose of his high office. A prodigious cigar—Flor Monumento—protruded from the corner of his mouth. Intellectual intolerance was the distinguishing characteristic of his face.

The gentlemen ushers, marshals, petty bag keepers, javelin men and other menials, who had heralded me into the presence, bowed themselves obsequiously out. I sat down nervously on the edge of a chair. He eyed me with a freezing compound of disdainful curiosity and disfavour. Abashed out of countenance, I slipped out of my hands and fell on the floor with a faint thud. It seemed that it would only add to the solecism if I began groping about on the floor for myself—I made up my mind that I would let myself lie where I had fallen, until he wasn’t looking; but, somewhat to my surprise, he picked me up in the most courtly manner, dusted me, and restored me to my chair.

[Pg 236]

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said reassuringly. “It’s the look that does it. No witness has ever resisted it yet. They used to curl up, and go limp, and lean over the side of the box, when I began my cross-examination; and it has not lost its power.”

“Have you ever tried it on Mr. Lloyd George?” I gasped.

“Once,” he replied, “only once, and that long ago—for, you understand, it would hardly be fitting in me to hamper and embarrass His Majesty’s Government.”

“Was it effective?”

“I think I may claim that it impaired his digestion seriously for a few days. He tried to resist it, you see, and the after-effects in such a case become cumulatively more powerful.... As a matter of fact, his visit to Gairloch—well, perhaps I’d better say nothing further. Of course, the remainder of the Cabinet are the merest children. I can quell Fisher or Horne with comparative ease; I have even succeeded in making Curzon blush; and, as you know, on a recent occasion I overthrew poor Carson so severely that for several days they despaired of his reason. My castigations are notorious. Let me warn you to take great care....”

“Would it,” I began nervously, “would it fall under the heading of incurring a castigation, if I[Pg 237] were so presumptuous as to inquire about your hobbies?”

“By no means. A very proper question. I am devoted to all sports. Football, cricket, tennis, water polo, lion hunting, kiss-in-the-ring and spillikins are among my favourites; but I think that most of all I enjoy a quiet game of pogo with the Cabinet.... Sing? Yes, I sing frequently. My favourite song? I think my favourite is that fine old ditty, ‘Rendle, My Son.’ You are unacquainted with it?” He broke into a prodigious baritone:

“Indeed,” he continued, “I am devoted to simple old songs of all kinds—‘Weel May the Dail Row,’ for instance, and ‘Solly in Our Alley.’”

“And now,” I ventured to say, “... I was instructed to ask you for a Christmas message to the public.”

“If you will write something of the necessary degree of sickliness, I’ve no objection to signing it,” he replied. “Or wait.... It happens[Pg 238] that I have to deliver a judgment in the House this afternoon, in the case of a curious old man named Klaus against the Attorney-General for detinue, wrongful imprisonment, and a declaration of nationality. He has been excluded from the country under some of the numerous regulations of the Defence of the Realm Act, and his sack, which appears to contain an astonishing miscellany of objects, has been confiscated by the Customs authorities.... Would that serve your purpose? It will figure in the next edition of my judgments.”

“If I might hear it, perhaps....”

“Certainly.” He drew a formidable case-book from the shelf behind him, adjusted a pair of horn spectacles, and read as follows:

“In this case your lordships have been moved to set aside a decision by the Court of Appeal, affirming the decision of the King’s Bench, whereby the Attorney-General, the Sheriff, and the Justices of Lower Mudhaven were upheld in refusing admission into this country to the appellant, S. Klaus, a person of indubitable ex-enemy origin, but widely esteemed in this country, who carries on an old-established business in many parts of the world.

“It has been claimed on behalf of the appellant that, by long use, he has acquired a prescriptive domicile amounting to British nationality, which,[Pg 239] since it has been enjoyed without interruption for more than ninety years, is to be taken, by irrebuttable presumption, as having arisen in time immemorial, which, as we are all aware, means from the time of Richard I. It was contended for the Crown, that, by reason of the various statutes and regulations prohibiting the presence of enemies in this country during the war of 1914-1918, this user was in law interrupted, and therefore is bad as a plea. The appellant replies that, despite the prohibitions, he did, in fact, continue to ply his calling here during the four years in question; and in the Court below he called a number of witnesses, whose credit is in no way impeached, to depose that, to their knowledge, at a certain season in each year, he visited this country in order to keep his business afloat. This is certainly a matter to which the attention of the proper authorities ought to be drawn, for clearly at that time the appropriate person to have carried on his affairs was the Controller of Enemy Businesses under the supervision of the Public Trustee; and some inquiry seems to me to be called for, into the neglect of that official to carry out his duties. This, however, by the way.

“Passing over the testimony of Elsie Biggers and John Marmaduke Baxter-Cunliffe, also known by the alias of ‘Tweety,’ both of whom depose to having seen the appellant descend through the[Pg 240] chimney in their respective houses a year ago, but whose tender years—three in the first case and two and a-half, as I believe, in the second—raise a doubt in my mind as to their understanding of the nature of an oath, there is unquestionable and unimpeachable evidence of some person or persons unknown having placed a variety of articles in the houses, and, indeed, in the stockings, of a number of the deponents in this cause, which were not there before. The appellant avers that it was he who placed them there; and, as no alternative hypothesis has been advanced by the Crown, I should, I think, be disposed to accept the appellant’s word as conclusive, were it necessary for me, in advising your lordships as to the judgment which your lordships will shortly deliver, to pronounce either upon one side or upon the other in this conflict of testimony—so far as it can be so called.

“But is it necessary to go into these questions? Mr. Attorney-General, arguendo, has urged upon us that, where a person performs an act of which he is legally incapable, then it is as if the act in question had not been performed; and he cites the cases of a child under seven, who is doli incapax, and of a child between seven and fourteen, who is prima facie doli incapax, and the case of a minor incurring a debt other than for necessaries, and of a person who makes a will, not in due form[Pg 241] of law. From these premises, he contends that, since it was illegal for the appellant to come to, or be in, this country, it must be taken, for our purposes, that he was never there; and the plea of prescriptive domicile must fall to the ground.

“My lords, I am unable to resist this argument. Where a person, whether wilfully or not, steps outside the ambit of the law, it is clearly established that he does so at his own risk; and ignorance will not thereafter avail him as an excuse. I must advise your lordships to pronounce, that, despite the evidence, the appellant was not in this country during the war, that the user upon which he bases his title was interrupted during that time, and, consequently, that his first plea must fail——”

He broke off, and looked at me, quizzically.

“What do you think of that reasoning?” he asked. “Ingenious, isn’t it?”

“Hardly ingenuous though,” I murmured; “and it seems to me——”

He drew himself to his full height, and glared. One corner of his mouth went down, and the other rose to the level of his lower eyelid. It was the celebrated sneer.

“No doubt,” he said icily, “no doubt in the purlieus of Tooting Bec or Brockley, whichever you inhabit, remarks of that kind pass current as wit. I daresay, among cannibals and anthropoid[Pg 242] apes, there is to be found a rough sense of coarse buffoonery that is tickled by such vulgar exuberance; but, among the aristocracy of an old civilisation, your behaviour would provoke pity, rather than mirth, were it not that, with us, the impudence of a scavenger is accounted a more noxious thing than his trade——”

“Really,” I began, “I must protest——”

“What? Argument?” he cried harshly. He smote a bell. An old and trembling man doddered into the room. He pointed dramatically.

“Remove it,” he ordered.... I judged it best to remove myself.

And as I walked away along the corridor the notes of “Rendle, My Son” floated after me. Only at that distance I could not be quite sure that the name was Rendle.

A Tale with a Moral.

Edward and Eustace.

Moral.

Jovial Josiah Wedgwood and bold Wedgwood Benn.

Die-Hard.

CHORUS.

(Suitable to be sung at Anti-Proletarian Sunday Schools.)

(For little Die-Hards.)

W. H. Smith & Son, The Arden Press Stamford Street, London, S.E.I