Читать книгу A Lodge in the Wilderness - John Buchan - Страница 7

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THE great log-fire in the outer hall threw strange shadows upon the walls, and made the lion heads grin like outlandish ogres. Lamps were lit on the email tables, and the company settled in deep chairs, within the glow of the fire but outside its disquieting warmth.

Lord Appin, who had seated himself near the centre of the circle, produced a little volume in which newspaper extracts were pasted.

"I am, as you know," he said, "a connoisseur of public opinion. In my belief no statesman can afford to neglect the ingenuous manifestations of it which from time to time appear in its popular organs. There you will find the will of certain classes of the community stated, no doubt with imperfect grammar and more imperfect taste, but still with all the frankness and confusion of the original. So I subscribe to several press-cutting agencies, and my secretary, who knows my desires, keeps for me the more characteristic extracts. I ought, however, first of all to define what I mean by public opinion. Properly understood, it is the bed-rock, the cardinal fact of all democratic politics such as ours. It is the sum total of the instincts, traditions, and desires of our race, created not only by reasoned beliefs, but by those impalpable forces of persuasion which no contemporary can hope to diagnose. I am no despiser of the average man. What he thinks at the bottom of his heart, when he thinks at all, is what is sooner or later going to happen. Now creeds are not necessarily public opinion. They are the attempts to interpret it made by its official interpreters—preachers, journalists, and politicians. When I quote from the Press, therefore, I do not profess to be quoting public opinion in its real meaning, but an interpretation of it which has a vogue among a certain section of the interpreting class.

"Let me begin with a definition of the creed which has just won so conspicuous a victory. The bright flamboyant style betrays its source:—

"A sigh of thankfulness and hope is heard throughout the land. England with no uncertain voice has turned her face against Toryism, with all its moral défaillance, its insincerity, its opportunism, its lack of seriousness, its narrow and trifling sophistries, its unabashed class interest. The white soul of our people turns towards its true sun. Once more the large and generous spirit of Liberalism is abroad. We are on the threshold of a new era, and behind us lies nothing but confusion. Foreign affairs have been conducted from hand to mouth without any perception of large issues; domestic affairs have been dominated by an obscurantism which, under the influence of momentary panic, blossomed forth into ill-considered experiments in reaction. The heart of the nation needed a solemn purification, and by the grace of God that purification has come. Men go about in the streets to-day with a new light in their eyes—poor men who see at last a hope for their starving households, earnest men who have fretted in secret at the long reign of apathy, young men who have now before them a career of civic usefulness. From warder to warder runs the challenge,'Brother, is it well with the State?' and the answer comes, 'It is well!'"

Lord Appin paused. "It is a charming picture of a national renaissance. But let us look," he continued, "at what Liberalism has to give:—

"The policy of Liberalism is clear. Men's minds have been too long dazzled by the jingo generalities of empire. Imperialism battens on the basest attributes of humanity, the lust of conquest and power, the greed of gold, the morbid unsettlement and discontent of a degenerate age. It is for Liberalism to bring back the people to the paths of political wisdom, which are also those of peace and pleasantness. Purity of character must be insisted upon in our public men. The heresies of a decadence must be expunged, and we must return to the sober and rational orthodoxy of our fathers. The House of Commons, the People's House, must be restored to its old prestige. The overgrown burden of armaments must be reduced, and England must appear before the world as the herald of a truce between nations. The cost of administration must be lessened that the private comfort of the citizen may be increased. Provision must be made for the old and feeble of the land; the slums—that eyesore of our civilisation—must be opened up to the wholesome air and light; the workman must be placed on a level with the master in the economic struggle, and for that purpose raised above the caprice of juries; in the exploitation of her neglected assets, the State must find work for those who are squeezed out of the capitalist mill. For each class of the community the way must be made plain for that development which is its due. Education must be freed from the blighting influence of clericalism; the liquor traffic must be curbed in the public interest; capitalism and the servitude it entails must be checked with a strong and earnest hand. In a word, Liberalism must lift again its old banner, on which its great master inscribed its never-to-be-forgotten creed—'Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform!'"

"It is a spirited piece of prose," said Lord Appin as he concluded, "though I am afraid it is mostly made up of what logicians call 'identical propositions.' Notice, too, the refrain throughout, 'Return,' 'our historic creed,' political orthodoxy.' Somehow it does not strike me as inspiring, but I think it is a not unfair statement of what a great many of the interpreting class wish the nation to believe. I propose to read as a pendant some remarks of my friend, the editor of the 'International Review.' With him the English language is a spiked mace, and perhaps some of the spikes are too long and sharp for my liking:—

"Triumphant Liberalism has promulgated its creed, and we trust that the world is edified. For ourselves, we can only see pathos in colossal travail with a ridiculus mus as the fruit of it. We have waited for a sign, and behold! we are referred to an ancient, vulgar, and half-effaced street-poster; we ask for some new thing, and we are given the oldest of pot-house cries. A contemporary, which claims to be the exponent of the new gospel, has given us a long and turgid exposition, in a style adorned by imperfectly remembered fragments of the Sermon on the Mount and the culture of the Mechanics' Institute. And the result? It is our old friend Gladstonianism with a more pronounced Nonconformist accent. The prophet of the future, it appears, is that poisonous politician—we dare not misuse the word 'statesman'—who, with the morbid conscience and purblind eyes of the egotist, was ready to sacrifice his country's honour to a fetish begotten of his own vanity. England, it seems, is to put her pride in her pocket and go whimpering among the nations as an apostle of peace, bleating about the grievous cost of her army and navy. The poor are to be elevated by tinkering expedients of re-housing and pauperised by doles from the Exchequer, while the law will be so amended as to give carte-blanche to mob violence. Education will once more be flung into the hands of clerics, only the frock-coat will take the place of the cassock, and the snuffle of Little Bethel will oust the more scholarly tones of the Church. The prestige of the Parliamentary "talking-shop," which all thinking men have long ago come to disregard, is to be revived and increased. An egregious economy will play havoc with our revenue system, and the deficit will be made up by the plunder, not of the rich parvenus, but of the unfortunate owners of ancestral lands. Our Empire, won by the blood and sweat of our great progenitors, and maintained by that class which alone is worthy of the name of Englishmen—our Empire, which gives to generous youth its only horizon, is to be lightly cast aside to satisfy the whimsies of a few dropsical pedants. Not one constructive idea emerges from the chaos of absurdities. Not once do the propagandists dare to look at the facts of a living world. Let us re-shuffle the cards, they say; let us pull down a little here and add a little there; but for God's sake do not tell us that conditions can change, for we know that our great leader has laid down once and for all the principles of our English policy. Let no man lay a finger upon that Ark of the Covenant!"

Lord Appin looked up from his book. "There is a great deal more, but that is the gist of my friend's criticism; and though I deplore its intemperance, I am inclined to agree with it. Liberalism, so far as I can judge, is correctly described as a shuffling of the cards. One further quotation I cannot resist. My friend goes on to show that the Conservative party is equally barren of ideas, and he gives far from flattering portraits of some of those leaders—he calls them 'Mandarins'—who have just gone out of office, and in many cases out of Parliament. 'Oh for one hour,' he exclaims, 'of Randolph Churchill!' Then he turns to myself:—

"Lord Appin stands in a different position. He is, at least, untouched by the administrative incompetence of his former colleagues. He may choose to play the grand seigneur out of office, but once in the toils of a department he shows an industry as unwearied and a mind as acute as any statesman who has risen by merit alone. But he is cursed with a fatal temperamental weakness. He is intolerant of mediocrity, impatient of the pedestrian and the dull, and his shining gifts of intellect and character are available only in emergencies. His metaphysical habit of mind interposes a veil between him and the will of the people. He will not condescend to join in the dusty squabbles amid which the political life must be lived. He will do brilliantly in the field if he is permitted either to issue orders from a luxurious tent in the rear or to charge some desperate position at the head of the Maison du Boi. ... But he will neither fight in the ranks nor in their immediate vicinity. The result is that he has fallen out of the battle-line of public life. He might have ruled England as Disraeli ruled her, but he has chosen to make elegant speeches and write agreeable books. He has, definitely and of set purpose, given up to a coterie what was due to the Empire. He might have been a second Pitt; he has succeeded in becoming a second Lord Houghton."

The quotation was received with amusement by the company, with the exception of Mr Wakefield, who had listened to it with serious approval, glad of support for the views he had aired at the dinner-table.

"I have given you the current interpretation of Liberalism," Lord Appin continued, "and I have here a long extract containing the creed of the new Labour party. I do not propose to read it to you, for it is very long, and the gist of it can be put in a few words. It is written by Ainsworth, and is an excellent piece of work."

The Duchess made a mouth of disgust. "I do not see how one can attach much value to the views of a man like Mr Ainsworth. He washes so seldom and so imperfectly. Oh yes, Flora! I know that your mother was foolish enough to take him up, and that she pretends to admire and understand him. But I have no patience with such a course. If the man hates us and is going to destroy us and all our belongings, then let us treat him as an enemy and not as a tame cat."

"But, Aunt Susan," said Lady Flora, "he is really quite a dear. When he came to stay at Wirlesdon he wrote his letter of thanks on our own notepaper, and left it on his dressing-table."

"The gist of Ainsworth's argument," Lord Appin resumed, in a tone of mild expostulation, "is more or less what Imperialists say themselves. He claims that none of our old creeds are applicable, because the conditions have changed, and he asks for a fresh analysis. We shall, of course, differ from him profoundly as to the nature of the new conditions and the principles which govern their interpretation, but our general attitude is the same. Provided the whole Empire is taken as the battle-ground, I am quite content to see Socialism and Individualism fight out their quarrel unhampered. So there remains for our present consideration only the wide word 'Conservatism.' The elder Toryism, we shall all agree, is dead. Indeed, I am far from certain if it ever existed to any large extent in modern times. I am afraid that it was in the main, like the doctrine of Innate Ideas, a fiction of its opponents. It still makes an excellent Aunt Sally to knock down on the hustings, but a modern Lucian would have to go far afield to find an honest exponent of it. In the depths of the country, in vicarages and manor-houses, one or two very old or very stupid men and a few innocent women may still hold to it. There is, however, a Conservatism—I beg Lady Amysfort's pardon, a Toryism—which is a more living creed, or perhaps we had better call it an attitude of mind. Lady Amysfort is going to be very kind and read us her confession of faith."

The lady thus appealed to flung away her cigarette and, lying back in her chair so that the glow of the lamp was behind her head, opened a small manuscript.

"I ought to say," she began, "that I wrote this originally as an address to a meeting of Primrose Dames. You know the kind of thing—the local mayoress, the wives of rising tradespeople, and a sprinkling of the female clergy. But Henry Parworth, who read it, said that it would break up the Primrose League altogether, so I had to give them a chapter of 'Sibyl' instead." She adjusted her head and began to read in slow, clear accents:—

"Where shall we discover the path of the Statesman?" asked the Stranger in the 'Politicus,' and the question has often returned to pull up the hasty politician. We hear much about administrative reform, the clearing out of this office or that, but our political charwomen give us no clue to the constructive principles of statecraft. We see both our traditional parties seeking the will-o'-the-wisp of the moment, making their bow to the Dagon of to-day and the Baal of to-morrow, till it is hard for the unprejudiced spectator to detect wherein lies the difference in the articles of their faith. Yet the difference exists, we are told by Liberal writers. The Liberal party is conspicuously the possessor of a creed, of principles; if they accept a new doctrine it is because in some occult way it is part of their historic policy, and if they reject it the reason is the same. They are the party of a continuous intellectual development, while Conservatives are hand-to-mouth office-seekers, attendant upon the movements of the traditional cat.

"It is this current and facile view of Conservatism which I wish to combat. The old creed of the party is by universal consent no longer binding. The Tory country gentleman who believed as his fathers taught him and held all reform the invention of the devil is an extinct being, though he may maintain a shadowy subjective existence in the minds of a few Liberal journalists. But if this belief be gone, have we anything to take its place? Are our principles invented in the morning and discarded at the going down of the sun? Are our tenets bound up with no rational philosophy of human society, but merely the hasty maxims of clever adventurers? Mr Morley, in his book 'On Compromise,' has granted us some shadow of a creed, but our gratitude is moderated by the fact that it is not the creed of modern Conservatism. Those principles to which he bids us be true, if we would call ourselves honest men and women, are so archaic, so tenderly romantic, that not even Disraeli in his youth could have wholly accepted them. But unless we are to court the charge of frivolity, it is necessary to provide some theory of Conservative statesmanship and the Conservative attitude. On us lies the burden of definition. The fact of the Conservative temper in the nation is beyond cavil: it is for its upholders to show that it is not unreasonable. If we shrink from a noisy confession of faith, there is all the more need for a recognition of the meaning of our attitude. We decline to dogmatise about politics, but we are compelled to dogmatise about our attitude towards them. We must define our critical standpoint, though we hazard no further definitions, lest we fall into the old silliness and erect in our market-places altars to an Unknown God.

"My first remark concerns the vexed question of the relation of ethics and politics. Liberalism may be said to have devoted itself to the special cult of the political moralist. Now, to my mind, there is a vast distinction between conscience and conscientiousness, and that distinction is based upon the calibre of the accompanying intellect. If a man appeals to his conscience, I am entitled to inquire if it be the conscience of a man or the conscientiousness of a fool. Moral earnestness, if accompanied by intelligence, is worthy of all respect; but, if not so attended, it is merely a pathological state, like hysteria or delirium. I find, however, that the moralist in politics is apt to put a value upon conscience in itself. He pleads for a kind of finesse in ethics, a terrible finicking consistency, an abstract devotion to a very abstract creed. He refuses to allow the conscience to be ruled and directed by the mind: intellectual considerations, he says in effect, have no relevance in this sphere. We maintain, on the other hand, that the primary condition of statesmanship is what Hilda Wangel calls a 'robust conscience.' By this I do not mean an obtuse mind, and still less a dishonest one. I mean the temper which allows the sense of right and the practical intelligence to go hand in hand, never subserving the former to the latter, but interpreting the one by the other. It is the temper which looks at the essentials of virtue and not at its trappings. 'No great country,' Horace Walpole wrote, 'was ever saved by its good men, because good men will not go the lengths that are necessary.'

"Now mark what the word 'good' means. This is no plea for the unscrupulous man who sinks morality in statecraft. But it is a plea for the statesman who can sink himself in his people, who is less concerned with trying to save his soul than with trying to save his country, who can look at the great issues of life with eyes undimmed by any metaphysic of morality. It is a protest against the saint in politics, that worthy, hypercritical, and useless type of mind which is incapable of single-hearted action. 'La petite morale,' in Mirabeau's words, 'est l'ennemi de la grande.' When the Emperor Charles the Fifth, as we are told on good authority, appeared before the Throne of God, the Devil's Advocate had a long list of burnings, sackings, and slaughterings to bring against him. But his Guardian Angel argued thus: 'This man has lived a hard life among men, and not in the cloister or in the desert. He must be judged by fitting standards, and if on the whole he followed righteousness we must forget his stumblings.' And history adds that this view was accepted and Charles permitted to enter Paradise.

"The first point, then, in the Conservative attitude is that it insists upon a robust and practical mind. The second is that such a mind must think and feel in accord with the traditions of the national character. In this character there are certain clearly defined features. It is a temper naturally conservative, prone to keep up the form of things, though the spirit has gone, till they crumble to pieces from sheer age; slow to think; distrustful of novelties; intolerant of brilliance—the temper which in the individual spells mediocrity, but in the mass a kind of greatness. Against this great rock of English conservatism the spirits of a Bacon, a Cromwell, a Bolingbroke, a Canning, a Disraeli, like so many ineffectual angels, have beaten their wings in vain. But the majority of them, being wise in their generation, recognised their barriers and turned their prison-house into a wall of defence. It is not like the conservatism of the Liberal, an absorption in a barren dogma; it is the conservatism of a national temperament, and therefore upon it true statesmanship must build as upon its foundation. Ultimately, as most political thinkers have urged, the people in a blind, dumb way work out their own ideas, and these ideas are always right. There is a cant maxim among Liberal politicians that the statesman is the servant of democracy. So be it. But let a statesman serve the people by penetrating to their real interests and their real desires, and not by obeying any casual knot of agitators who clamour that their unintelligible patois is the voice of God.

"The third item in our definition is that Conservative statesmanship must be positive. When the great wave of reaction produced by the French Revolution had subsided, the era of Industrialism set in. New inventions lessened the cost of production. Manufacturers and mine-owners saw wealth, colossal wealth, in the near future. But there was the labouring class to be considered, a class to some extent tainted with the French restlessness, demanding better pay, shorter hours, happier conditions of life. It was a unique chance for a constructive statesman, but Canning died and the Manchester school succeeded. With a creed made up of a few tags from dissenting ethics and a few dubious economic maxims, this school was in the main composed of capitalists and employers of labour. To secure a free development for the new industrialism was their aim, but in the meantime sops must be thrown to the Cerberus of the proletariat. So they passed the Reform Bill of 1832, that harmless excursion in academic reform, and they repealed the Corn Laws, which put money in their pockets, silenced for a moment the cries of labour, and effectually ruined agricultural England. Against Chartism, which was a crude but genuine scheme of reform, they fought with tooth and nail! Reform for reform's sake, provided it be not radical, change for change's sake, provided it be unnecessary—such has been the lofty tradition of this vicious and destructive theorising. And thus the so-called Radicalism has advanced, professing a high ethical purpose, pandering to every fad of every clique of agitators, taking in vain the sacred name of Progress. And Conservatism? It, too, has forgotten at times that doctrine of positiveness which Canning taught, but throughout its moments of error and forgetfulness it has never quite lost sight of its ideal. As the party which professes no abstract creed, but bases its duty upon a knowledge of national character and a conception of practical good, it has maintained that reform when it comes must be real, and that a trifling with change for its own sake is the last and fatalest heresy.

"In 'positiveness' then the true raison d'être of Conservatism is to be found. But, indeed, I object to the word Conservative. I should prefer to call myself a Tory. The former word implies that the centre of gravity lies in a dull conserving of institutions and creeds which may have outgrown their usefulness. 'Tory,' I am told, meant in the beginning an Irish robber, and the attitude of the Irish robber in life seems to me preferable to that of the hide-bound formalist who worships a Church and State which are no more than names to him. Toryism is not the path of least resistance, but a living and militant creed, offering tangible results and based upon the vital needs of the nation. I have read many 'Pleas for Unprincipled Toryism,' which were attempts to defend our supposed lack of a theoretical basis. But we have no need of such a defence. We have our basis, we have our principles, and they are none the less principles because we are not so arrogant as to confuse them with the laws of Sinai.

"One word in conclusion. It seems to me that there is another duty incumbent upon the Tory party, which is perhaps of all its tasks the most arduous and the most vital. In our modern world we have Been inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility. Old simple faiths have been discredited, a spirit of minor criticism has gone abroad, and the beliefs of centuries are now in a state of solution. It is not a promising mood. 'Provincial arrogance and precipitate self-complacency' are not the stuff of which a strong nation is made. National prejudices, deep inborn convictions for which no copy-book justifications can be found, are after all the conquering forces of the world. The French Revolution destroyed the cult of Church and King; but it inspired an equally blind and passionate worship of certain civic ideals, and with these in their soul the raw levies of France conquered Europe. To the Tory the instincts of the people must always seem truer in the long-run than the little-reasoned disquisitions of a few professors. To the Liberal this is heresy; he demands a creed which shall approve itself to his superb intellect, for Liberalism is essentially the faith of the intellectual. Against such an attitude it is the duty and the highest privilege of Tory statesmanship to wage implacable war. It may take many forms—attacks upon institutions which still fulfil their purpose though in a narrow way their basis may seem irrational, dogmas in economics and theories of reform which have only a speculative validity, a system of ethics made in the study or the lecture-room. I know of few finer words in literature than those in which Burke swept away the sophistries which sought to abolish patriotism and defend certain vague cosmopolitan rights of man, or those in which Disraeli in the theatre at Oxford in '64 scourged the money-changers of popular science. And so in our analysis of Conservatism we come back to something which is not unlike the beliefs of our grandfathers. Conservatism in their view was sworn to defend Church and Throne, in our view it is sworn to defend the things which lie at the back of Church and Throne, the instincts of a people, the character of a nation. It is conservative, this attitude, but it is also reforming. A people develops unconsciously, and this development is on far other lines than the progress of Liberal illuminati. It is its duty to foster this popular development as against the vagaries of a clique or a caucus. It is its duty to conserve, while there is reason, and to destroy ruthlessly and finally when the justification has passed. And it has a right to this attitude, for it bases its conduct upon the 'instant need of things' and upon no a priori creed. Its opponents, fixing their eyes upon falling stars, have no leisure to study the ground they walk on. Mistaking their own clientele for the nation and themselves for Omnipotence, they wander like children in the dark, and instead of the narrow path to the Celestial City follow the primrose path to that sinister personage who, as a great authority has told us, was the first Whig."

Lady Amysfort's cool accents had scarcely ceased before Mr Wakefield, who had listened with some attention, said loudly, "My dear lady, there is a great deal of sound sense in that and a great deal of nonsense. I detest your obscurantism, but on the main point I entirely agree with you. We must be positive and practical in our work, and the metaphysician is every bit as bad as the Liberal doctrinaire."

The Duchess had had her temper considerably ruffled by the matter, and still more by the manner of Lady Amysfort's discourse. She had an intense dislike of the Primrose League, and a suspicion of Disraeli, who had once said of her husband that his air suggested an "inspired rabbit." Looking round the circle she saw no one disposed to take up the cudgels for her much-abused party, and Lady Amysfort's attitude, as, slim and exquisite, she leaned over a lamp to light a cigarette, annoyed her by its suggestion of the supercilious. She therefore fixed her opponent with an austere eye, and advanced to the attack.

"There is much that I could say, Caroline," she began, "but I will confine myself to one point which is common to you and the writer of Bob's second extract. You both maintain that we Liberals are hag-ridden by formulas, and declare that the Conservatives are the only people who can look squarely at facts. To begin with, I think that you very much overstate your case. Heaven is my witness that I do not love the style of the Radical press. I detest its loudmouthed generalities, and I think the way it drags the most sacred words of Scripture into its arguments simply blasphemous. It resorts so consistently to immense appeals on trivial occasions, that when the great occasion arises it has nothing further to say. But in spite of all this folly you cannot maintain that you can do without dogma altogether, or that the dogmatism of the two factions differs otherwise than in degree. Take again this question of facing facts. I think the Liberal point is a perfectly good one. Things have gone hideously wrong under a Conservative Government, simply because it did not look at facts. We may choose—foolishly, I think—to cloak our return to common-sense in Nonconformist language, but what we really mean is that our opponents did not understand their data, and we are going to try to understand them. We are not really quarrelling about principles but about facts, and it is only a bad debating trick to pretend otherwise. I do not say that we shall read the facts correctly, any more than you did, but our sole justification is that we intend to try. When you maintain that the Conservatives look at facts, and the Liberal clings to principles, all you mean is that the different sides have different arts for capturing the popular fancy. We are apt to claim a monopoly of the purer virtues, you of practical common-sense; but we both aim at common-sense, though my side invests it with the glamour of high principles, yours with the charm of an historic past. I honestly think that is the fairest way to look at our political records. I quite agree with you that the difference at bottom is one of temperament. I have heard Bob's voice shake with emotion when he spoke of Chatham, and I have seen tears in Mr Calderwood's eyes when he spoke of Eternal Justice. I will confess that I would rather have politicians pat a little history book familiarly than the New Testament, but both are legitimate forms of appeal. Our faiths spring from the same source. You think us foolish; we think you stupid; while the truth is that we are both rather foolish, rather stupid, and in the last resort rather wise."

The Duchess's remarks met with the strong approbation of Lord Launceston, who had been crossing and uncrossing his long legs nervously while Lady Amysfort read.

"I think what you say is most true," he said. "All parties have a common basis now. They preach the same faith though in different accents. And all parties tend simply to shuffle the old cards at any crisis, instead of making a new analysis of the facts. It is the business of clear-eyed people to prevent this natural inclination. Our common basis I should call democracy—English democracy, that is, with all its historical and racial colouring. It is not a dogma, but a fact, or rather the recognition of a fact—that under modern conditions Everyman governs. Now democracy is the great destroyer of shams. It clears out the rubbish and leaves the truth tolerably plain to the single-minded inquirer. Besides, it opens up the way for superiority. I do not say that it means always an enlightened rule, but it gives scope at any rate for the true enlightener when he arrives. It is the best, indeed the only, basis for building anew on. And here, curiously enough, it reaches the same result as Toryism. It used to be the old boast of the Tory party that it was loyal, and would always render faithful service to any leader who could capture it. The Liberal party, it was said, was too individualistic, too split up by the differences which come from honest but incomplete thinking independently, ever to make a good following. Democracy does the work of Toryism on a wider basis. The people have no intellectual arrogance. They think slowly, not very clearly, and always on broad and simple lines, but when they once grasp a conception they are invincible."

"We are agreed, then, on one important point," Carey took up the conversation. "Both of our great parties purport to look at facts, but both tend to get into conventional grooves and neglect their duty. However, in the democracy which lies behind them both, there is a permanent instinct under proper guidance to revise the data of policy. And here I may anticipate what I think Lord Appin intends to say. The new Labour party, which claims to be specially in touch with democracy, urges as its chief raison d'être the duty of revision. We may differ from them on what constitutes the data, we may differ still more profoundly on the interpretation, but our general attitude is exactly theirs."

"I have always maintained," said Lord Appin, "that they were our natural allies. I opened a review the other day and found an article on their programme by one of their leaders. He advocated a mission of labour delegates to the Colonies in order to confer with the Labour parties there and arrange a common programme. I confess that the proposal, crude as it was, cheered me greatly, as showing some kind of sense of imperial solidarity."

"So, if the hooligans of Mile End sent a deputation to consult with the larrikins of Sydney and the toughs of Montreal, you would call that an effort in the cause of imperial unity?"

Mr Wakefield spoke with an asperity which for the moment left the company silent. The tension was relieved by Lady Flora, who, with an innocence not destitute of tact, inquired if a larrikin was the same as a bush parrot, since a pair had just been sent her. Upon which, with a paternal gravity and some humour, Mr Wakefield proceeded to explain to her in an undertone the exact distinction.

"My point is very simple," Lord Appin continued. "Even a class policy, which recognises that success can only be won on the stage of the whole Empire, has a certain statesmanship in it. For it recognises one cardinal truth, the enlarged basis of our problems."

"Now, Hugh," said Carey, "you shall have that definition of Imperialism for which your soul yearns. It is simply looking at all the facts instead of at only a few of them. We begin by realising that we are not an island but an empire, and therefore, in considering any great question, we take the whole data into account. Imperialism, if we regard it properly, is not a creed or a principle, but an attitude of mind."

Lady Flora caught the last words in the midst of her lecture on bush parrots. "That is exactly what Cousin Charlie said when Uncle George found him at Monte Carlo when he should have been at his Embassy. Uncle George said it was a disgrace that he should be seen in such a place, and Charlie said it wasn't a place but an attitude of mind."

"We are all Imperialists at heart nowadays," Carey went on, "except Lady Flora, who is a wicked girl. Every party is more or less resigned to the fact of empire. Some kick a little against the pricks, some are half-hearted, others burn with zeal; but all have the same conviction that it is inevitable. We have not begun yet to work out the details seriously, but we have won the first position. And that is as it should be. The Empire must be accepted, like the Monarchy, as a presupposition in politics which is beyond question. Any inclination to use it for party ends should be as jealously condemned as the occasional attempts to drag the King's name into current controversies or to assume that patriotism is the monopoly of one side. We shall, of course, always differ on particular questions, but there should be no difference on the ideal. Indeed, I honestly think that there is little among ordinary sane-minded people. The average man may be described as a confused Imperialist. He wants to make the best of the heritage bequeathed to him; his imagination fires at its possibilities; but he is still very ignorant and shy, and he has no idea how to set about the work. The first of imperial duties is to instruct him."

"And yet," said Mr Astbury, "I find many people openly contemptuous of the ideal. I daresay this contempt is due to imperfect understanding, but we have to face the fact that many are not only apathetic about the things we care most for, but actively hostile."

Lord Appin reopened his scrap-book. "True enough. We have some honest opponents, and a few indifferently so, and I have been at the pains to collect their opinions. I think I can distinguish several types. There is, first of all, Mr Luke Simeon, who surrendered his fellowship at King's to 'labour,' as he says, among the masses. He is eminent at Browning halls and university settlements, and has done much, I believe, to civilise the East End by the distribution of indistinct reproductions of Giotto and Botticelli. He is a pale, earnest, well-meaning, and rather silly young man, who should have remained in the church of his clerical forefathers. He attacks Imperialism as the 'worship of force.' It represents, he says, that tendency of a decadent age which may be observed in the Roman ladies who took their lovers from the prize-ring. Up to a point I agree with him. The worship of brute force, of mere conscienceless power, is the most certain sign of degeneration. His fallacy is that he really condemns force altogether, whether exercised for a beneficent purpose or not, and he hides his bias under the assumption that Imperialism means power without ideals or conscience. He has a temperamental shrinking from certain of the hard realities of life, and he flatters his weakness by investing it with a moral halo. He lives in a little world of artistic and literary trifling, and he has consequently no perspective, so that he will quote you a bad artist on some point of foreign policy and a minor poet on some problem of economics. His shallow aesthetic soul is revolted by three-fourths of life, so he dubs it evil and rejects it. He is not a young man whom it is worth taking pains to convert, but his stuff has its vogue, and he has disciples. We have but to expound the moral purpose in our creed to take the logical ground from beneath his feet, for, though he desires it in his heart, he is not prepared for an absolute condemnation of power. Then we have our Benthamite friend, Mr Wrigley of Manchester, who is one of the few remaining exponents of the old Radicalism of the 'forties. War is his special dislike, and commerce his idol. He is averse to empire partly because his mind is full of Rome and Carthage and he has not the imagination to conceive a new model, partly because it gives scope for energies which are only by accident utilitarian. His ideal State would be a community of Samuel Budgetts and Worldly Wisemans. The answer to him and his kind is that their doctrine is built on a false conception of human nature, and that in tranquillising life they would denude it of all that makes it worth having.

'Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori,

Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.'*

* Juvenal, viii. S3: "Count it the last disgrace to prefer life to honour, and for living's sake to destroy all that makes life worthy."

For good or for ill humanity has long since decided against him. Next, there is the school of which we may take Mr Chatterton as a representative. In theory they are full-blooded and masculine enough, though their heroics smack of Peckham. They love to rhapsodise about 'Old England' and the Elizabethans, and beer and cricket, and heaven knows what. Their complaint is that a spacial extension means a weakening in intensity of the national life, and they also will throw Rome and Athens at your head. They are all for the virility of England, they say, as against the neurotic restlessness of the Imperialist. With them, again, I have a certain sympathy, though the taunt of 'neurotic' comes ill from gentlemen whose style is so explosive and delirious. The answer to their arguments depends upon the question of the value of space and of the whole material basis in any spiritual development, and in deference to Mr Wakefield we will leave that over till a later day. Lastly comes an honest fellow for whom I have a great regard. You all know Ambrose by name. He lives on twopence a-day and slaves at his philanthropy. He objects to empire because imperial questions distract the attention of the nation from urgent matters of home reform. And he is perfectly right. As long as we make 'national' and 'imperial' water-tight compartments, there must be this jealousy. What we have to show him is that the whole is one great problem, and that his own interests cannot be realised save by the help of the other interests which he despises. And then he will be on our side, for at heart he is one of us."

"You have omitted," said Mrs Wilbraham, "the greatest source of opposition—the folly of some of our own people. Why is it that many of us—myself for one—grow nervous when the word 'Empire' is mentioned, and get hot all over? Human nature is so hopelessly silly. A dear creature, whom most of us know, started a league last year to ensure that women throughout the Empire should be reading Shakespeare at the same time every evening. 'How sweet,' she said, 'to think that every night at half-past nine the whole English-speaking world would be repeating immortal words,' and she was very angry with me for saying that the English-speaking world would be much better employed dining. And then, what is to be said about our poetry? I had a collection of imperial songs from the works of popular poets sent me this summer. One had the chorus, 'We can all do our little bit for England.' Another was an invocation to empire—'Empire, the very thought of thee!' And, worst of all, there is Sir Herbert Jupp. You know how ambitious he is to be a great orator, so he has had many elocution lessons, and he speaks whenever he is invited. It is the most dreadful stuff, and he winds up always with a tag from some bad poet, which is enough to make one cry. One could believe that he was hired by our opponents to make our case ridiculous. I almost think that, more than any other party, we suffer from a defective sense of humour."

"Tut, tut," said Mr Wakefield, heaving himself from his chair and straddling into the firelight. "It will never do to be hypercritical. It is only a dying cause which can attain to perfect taste. A living creed is sure to have its extravagances and its crudities, but it can afford to be absurd. After all, we must have our subalterns as well as our marshals, our Garibaldis as well as our Cavours and Mazzinis. The more silliness in Imperialism the better, say I! It shows that it is getting on terms with human nature, which is deplorably silly. Of course our poetry is bad, of course our rhetoric is tawdry, of course we show no sense of the ridiculous! And the reason is simply that we are in earnest. If we once become self-conscious, then we may as well shut up shop and pull down the sign.... Carey, my soul longs for a whisky-and-soda!"