Beyond the fact that they are all desperately in earnest, all know each
other, and occupy all the most responsible and lucrative posts on the
face of the earth, Scotsmen are a class with whose characteristics I am
not well acquainted. But I learned a great deal from my new secretary.
Robin soon settled down to work. He not only performed his duties with
zeal and discretion, but he kept me up to mine. He hounded me through
the routine work of my Department; he verified my references; he managed
my correspondence; and he frequently drafted my speeches. He even
prepared some of my impromptus. Indeed, my--or rather his--description
of a certain member of the other side, a lesser light of the last
Government, a worthy man, always put up to explain matters when his
leader had decided that honesty on this occasion was the best policy, as
"a political niblick, always employed to get his party out of bad lies,"
won me more applause and popularity in a House of enthusiastic golfers
than endless weeks of honest toil behind the scenes had ever done.
But I learned more from Robin than that. I suppose I am a typical
specimen of Conservative officialdom. Until Robin came into my house it
had never occurred to me to ask myself why I was a Conservative: I had
been born one, and it was difficult for me to understand how any man of
ordinary intelligence could be anything else.
My father and grandfather were Conservative members before me, and I
come of a line which has always feared God, honoured the King, paid its
tithes, and tried to do something for the poor; and which regards
Radicals, Socialists, Nonconformists, and criminal lunatics as much the
same class of person. The only difference between myself and my
forebears is that I am much too pacific (or lazy) to cherish any
animosity against people whose views differ from my own. This fact,
coupled with certain family traditions, has brought me to my present
position in life; and, as I have already indicated, it will probably
keep me there. At least, so Kitty says.
"You must _assert_ yourself, dear," she declares. "Be _rude_ to people,
and go on being rude! Then they will take notice of you and give you
nice big posts to keep you quiet. Do you know what the Premier said
about you the other night at dinner, to Lady Bindle? (She told Dicky
Lever, and he told the Twins.) 'Inglethwaite? A dear fellow, a sound
party man, and runs his Department admirably. But--he strikes only on
the box!' Pig!"
It was about this time that Robin became a member of our establishment.
I had no idea what his political views were--it was just like me not to
have asked him, Kitty said--but felt confident that whatever side he
supported he would do so hot and strong.
But at first he gave no indication of his leanings. It was not until we
sat one night over our wine, in company with John Champion (member for a
big northern constituency, and regarded by many, notwithstanding various
eccentricities, as the coming man of the party) that he first gave
definite utterance to his views.
The cigars had gone round, and we had just performed that mysterious
national rite which, whether it owes its existence to economy or
politeness, invariably ends in several people burning their fingers with
the same match.
"I suppose, Mr Fordyce," said Champion, who had not met Robin before,
but obviously liked him, "that in common with all Scotsmen you are at
heart a Radical."
"Am I?" said Robin, with native caution.
"Most of your countrymen are," said Champion, with a sigh. "'They think
too much'--you know the rest of the quotation, I expect."
Robin nodded.
I was a little scandalised at this flagrant tribute to the enemy, and
said so.
Champion laughed.
"You are a whole-hearted old war-horse, Adrian. I envy you. Sometimes, I
wish that I----"
"For mercy's sake don't go and say that you are a Radical at heart too,"
I cried.
"N-n-o. But isn't it rot, the whole business?"
"What whole business?"
"Ask Mr Fordyce there. He will tell you. I see it in his eye."
"What is rot, Robin?" I asked. "Party government?"
"Yes," said Robin, quite explosively for him. "It is such a scandalous
waste of power and material." He laid down his cigar. "Man, it's just
pitiful. Consider! A party is returned to office. With great care and
discrimination a Cabinet is chosen. It is composed of men who are mainly
honest and patriotic. They are not necessarily men of genius, but they
are all men of undoubted ability, and they are genuinely anxious to do
their duty by the country. Now observe." (As a matter of fact he said
"obsairrve.") "How is this energy and ability expended? About half of
it--fifty per cent--goes in devising means to baffle the assaults of the
Opposition and so retain a precarious hold on office. Sir, it's just
ludicrous! Instead of concentrating their efforts upon--upon--I want a
metaphor, Mr Champion."
"Upon steering the ship of State," said Champion, with a twinkle in his
eye.
"That'll do, fine.--Upon steering the ship of State, they have to devote
half their time and energy to dodging the missiles of their shipmates.
That is what I mean when I say the thing is pitiful. What should we
think of the sanity of an ordinary ship's company, if the man at the
wheel had to spend half his time up in the rigging because a minority of
his messmates wanted to throw him overboard?"
"I think you are putting the case too strongly," I said. "The criticism
of a healthy public opinion is no bad thing. Besides, your Cabinet still
have fifty per cent of their energy left. What do they do with that?"
"Of that," said Champion, joining in, "about forty per cent is wasted on
mere parade--dummy legislation--bills that never will be passed, and
which no sensible man has any desire should be passed, except in a
mutilated and useless condition; bills merely brought forward by the
Government as a sop to the extreme wing of their own party. It doesn't
matter which side is in power. If they are Liberals, they have to
propose a few socialistic and iconoclastic measures, secretly thanking
God for the House of Lords all the while. If they are Conservatives,
they propitiate the Landlords and the Church by putting forward some
outrageously retrograde proposal or other, secure in the knowledge that
it will be knocked on the head by the halfpenny papers. Of the remaining
ten per cent----"
"About nine," resumed Robin, "is appropriated automatically to
absolutely essential routine business, like the Budget and Supply----"
"And the remaining one per cent," struck in Champion, "is devoted to
real live Legislation."
Then they both looked at me, this pair of carping pessimists, rather
furtively, like two fags who have allowed their tongues to wag over
freely in the presence of a monitor. It was a curious tribute to the
power of officialdom, for they were both far bigger men, in every sense,
than I. Finally Champion laughed.
"Don't look so horrified, Adrian," he said. "Mr Fordyce and I croak too
much. Still, you will find a grain or two of sense among the chaff, as
Jack Point says."
But I was not to be smoothed down so easily.
"According to you fellows," I grumbled, as I passed the port, "there is
practically no difference between one political party and another."
"None whatever," said Champion cheerfully--"not between the _backbones_
of the parties, that is. Of course excrescences don't count. Tell me,
Adrian, what bill, barring one or two contentious semi-religious
measures, has ultimately reached the Statute Book during the last twenty
years that might not have been put there by either party without any
violent departure from its principles? Not one! Foreign policy, again.
Does it make any difference to our position in the world which party is
in office nowadays? Not a scrap. The difference between the two sides is
immaterial. There is often a far deeper line of cleavage between two
sections of the same party than between party and party. We make faces
at each other, it is true; and one side plumes itself on the moral
support of Royalty and the aristocracy, while the other always bawls out
that it has the inviolable will of the people at its back,--I daresay
one assertion is about as true as the other--but I don't think there is
a pennyworth of difference, really. There used to be a lot, mind you,
when the Plebs were really struggling for a footing in the scheme of
things; but bless you! we are all more or less in the same crowd now.
Just a difference of label, that's all."
"There was a story my dominie used to tell," said Robin, who had been
listening to this diatribe with rapt attention, "about a visitor to a
seaside hotel, who ordered a bottle of wine. The boy brought up the
wrong kind, so the visitor sent for the landlord and pointed out the
mistake, adducing the label on the bottle as evidence. 'I'm very sorry,
sir, I'm sure,' said the landlord, 'but I'll soon put it right. Boy,
bring another label!' An old story, I am afraid, but it seems to me to
put Party goverment into a nutshell."
I rose, and began to replace the stoppers in the decanters. I was
feeling rather cross. I hate having my settled convictions tampered
with. They are not elastic, and this makes them brittle, and I always
feel nervous about their stability when the intellectual pressure of an
argument grows intense.
"When you two have abolished the British Constitution," I remarked
tartly, "what do you propose to substitute for the present _régime_?"
"'There,'" said Champion, "as the charwoman replied when asked for a
character, 'you _'ave_ me.' Let us join the ladies."
But I was still angry.
"It always seems best to me," I persisted doggedly, "to take up a good
sound line of action and stick to it, and to choose a good sound party
and stick to that. Half a glass of sherry before we go upstairs?"
"No, thanks. That is why I envy you, Adrian," said Champion. "It's a
wearing business for us, being so--so--what shall we call it, Mr
Fordyce?"
"Detached?" suggested Robin.
"That's it."
"Two-faced would be a better word," I growled.
Champion clapped me on the shoulder.
"Adrian," said he, "in time of peace there is always a large, critical,
neutral, and infernally irritating party, for ever philandering betwixt
and between two extremes of opinion. But when war is declared and it
comes to a fight, the ranks close up. There is no room for detachment,
and there are no neutrals. When occasion calls, you'll find all your
friends--your half-hearted, carping, Erastian friends--ranged up tight
beside you. Shall we be trapesing about in Tom Tiddler's ground when the
pinch comes, Mr Fordyce--eh?"
"Never fear!" said Robin.
And I am bound to say that we all of us lived to see John Champion's
assertion made good.