goes by outside-untouched. Those Crampton fools slink by all

this,"-he waved at the woman again-"pretend it doesn't exist, or

is going to be banished root and branch by an Act to keep children

in the wet outside public-houses. Do you think they really care,

Remington? I don't. It's make-believe. What they want to do, what

Lewis wants to do, what Mrs. Bunting Harblow wants her husband to

do, is to sit and feel very grave and necessary and respected on the

Government benches. They think of putting their feet out like

statesmen, and tilting shiny hats with becoming brims down over

their successful noses. Presentation portrait to a club at fifty.

That's their Reality. That's their scope. They don't, it's

manifest, WANT to think beyond that. The things there ARE,

Remington, they'll never face! the wonder and the depth of life,-

lust, and the night-sky,-pain."

"But the good intention," I pleaded, "the Good Will!"

"Sentimentality," said Britten. "No Good Will is anything but

dishonesty unless it frets and burns and hurts and destroys a man.

That lot of yours have nothing but a good will to think they have

good will. Do you think they lie awake of nights searching their

hearts as we do? Lewis? Crampton? Or those neat, admiring,

satisfied little wives? See how they shrank from the probe!"

"We all," I said, "shrink from the probe."

"God help us!" said Britten…

"We are but vermin at the best, Remington," he broke out," and the

greatest saint only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment

from the dust. We are damned, we are meant to be damned, coral

animalculae building upward, upward in a sea of damnation. But of

all the damned things that ever were damned, your damned shirking,

temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-

believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is tbe utterly damnedest."

He paused for a moment, and resumed in an entirely different note:

"Which is why I was so surprised, Remington, to find YOU in this

set!"

"You're just the old plunger you used to be, Britten," I said. "

You're going too far with all your might for the sake of the damns.

Like a donkey that drags its cart up a bank to get thistles.

There's depths in Liberalism-"

"We were talking about Liberals."

"Liberty!"

"Liberty! What do YOOR little lot know of liberty?"

"What does any little lot know of liberty?"

"It waits outside, too big for our understanding. Like the night

and the stars. And lust, Remington! lust and bitterness! Don't I

know them? with all the sweetness and hope of life bitten and

trampled, the dear eyes and the brain that loved and understood-and

my poor mumble of a life going on! I'm within sight of being a

drunkard, Remington! I'm a failure by most standards! Life has cut

me to the bone. But I'm not afraid of it any more. I've paid

something of the price, I've seen something of the meaning."

He flew off at a tangent. "I'd rather die in Delirium Tremens," he

cried, "than be a Crampton or a Lewis…"

"Make-believe. Make-believe." The phrase and Britten's squat

gestures haunted me as I walked homeward alone. I went to my room

and stood before my desk and surveyed papers and files and

Margaret's admirable equipment of me.

I perceived in the lurid light of Britten's suggestions that so it

was Mr. George Alexander would have mounted a statesman's private

room…

I was never at any stage a loyal party man. I doubt if party will

ever again be the force it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries. Men are becoming increasingly constructive and

selective, less patient under tradition and the bondage of initial

circumstances. As education becomes more universal and liberating,

men will sort themselves more and more by their intellectual

temperaments and less and less by their accidental associations.

The past will rule them less; the future more. It is not simply

party but school and college and county and country that lose their

glamour. One does not hear nearly as much as our forefathers did of

the "old Harrovian," "old Arvonian," "old Etonian" claim to this or

that unfair advantage or unearnt sympathy. Even the Scotch and the

Devonians weaken a little in their clannishness. A widening sense

of fair play destroys such things. They follow freemasonry down-

freemasonry of which one is chiefly reminded nowadays in England by

propitiatory symbols outside shady public-houses…

There is, of course, a type of man which clings very obstinately to

party ties. These are the men with strong reproductive imaginations

and no imaginative initiative, such men as Cladingbowl, for example,