WE may not have coal, but we can have conferences. A conference is the
most typically English thing that there is. The old Anglo-Saxons had
them and called them moots. Why they called them a silly name like that,
when "conferences" would have done just as well, one can't imagine; but
they had their notions and stuck to them. They would have called
Parliament a moot; in fact they did. They called it a moot of wise men.
Sarcastic beggars, these Anglo-Saxons!
The advantages of having a conference about everything are almost too
numerous to explain. For one thing, suppose Smith is coming to see you
at 2.30 P.M. "It's no use his waiting now," you say. "I've got a
conference at 3. Tell him to come back at 5.30." And when he comes back
at 5.30 of course the conference is still going on, so you don't have to
see him at all.
There is nothing again that makes you feel so deliciously important as
being at a conference. You may be a leader of quite an insignificant
body of workers, like the Nutcracker-Teeth Makers' Union, but you rub
shoulders at a conference with men whose names are a household word
throughout the whole of Great Britain, amongst those who have houses.
The distinguished and the undistinguished lay their heads together; the
spat-wearing get their feet mixed with the non-spat-wearing; though
there is rather a fake, mind you, about this spat-wearing business, for
it may simply mean that the uppers are very badly worn, or that only
that very bright pink pair of socks came home from the wash this week,
or even that there are no socks underneath at all.
But anyhow, at a conference, Tom, Dick and Harry hobnob with Bob, James
and George, and all are equal, except perhaps the chairman, who has two
more pens in front of him and a much larger ash-tray. Mr. BEVIN and Sir
ERIC GEDDES smile affably across at each other, and the PRIME MINISTER
and Mr. CRAMP find out how much they have in common, such as love of
poetry and pelargoniums. The mine-owner offers the miners'
representative a cigarette, and the miners' representative says to the
mine-owner, "Many thanks, old boy; but I'll have one of my own." And
after it is over they all go out and stand arm-in-arm in a long row to
be photographed for the papers, and are read next morning from left to
right. It is the ambition of every properly constituted Englishman to
wake up some morning and find that his portrait is being read from left
to right; but how few succeed.
The total output of conferences in this country during one year has
never been computed yet, but it is supposed to exceed that of any
country in the world, except Red India. If there were to be a strike of
conferents or conferees, whatever they are called, in England, it is
impossible to say what would happen. But it might be possible to lay
down a datum line--a shilling extra for the first million words above
two hundred and fifty million per shift, and two shillings more for
every million words above that. Fortunately this will never be
necessary, for people who confer are so fond of conferences that they
will never down chairs.
And no wonder. Only a very strong man can hew coal, and only a very
reckless one can make a speech, but almost anyone can confer if he has a
large enough ash-tray; and there seems no reason why more people
shouldn't confer. Everybody is interested in conferences, whatever they
are about, and the British public ought to be admitted to this kind of
thing. One is always reading in the paper that the sound commonsense or
the traditional sense of fair play of the great British public will
support the miners in any just claim; but this claim is not just or just
isn't, or something of that sort. But how do they know what the great
British public will feel about it? They aren't there, are they? There
ought to be representatives of the G.B.P. on all these conferences. They
ought to be chosen from a rota, like jurymen. Very likely one of them
would have found out what a datum line is, anyway. There's a man who
comes up in the train with me in the morning who thinks he knows, but
unfortunately he gets out at Croydon so we haven't found out yet.
By having a lot more conferences and having a lot of representatives
from the public on them all, and paying them well for it, one could
practically settle the unemployment problem for the winter. If the
Government can only be brought to see that this is the only
statesmanlike course, and the sole course consistent with the
Anglo-Saxon sense of justice, and capable of leading to a satisfactory
Exploration of Avenues, Finding of Bridges and Discovery of Ways Out, we
may all achieve our life's ambition some day and open the morning paper
to find that we are being read at last from left to right. "Mr. ROBERT
WILLIAMS, Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, Mr. J. H. THOMAS, Lord RIDDELL," and so on
and so on, till you come at last to "J. Smith, Esq., R.B.P.," smiling
the widest of all. R.B.P.'s, I think, should wear a distinguishing
mark--a single spat perhaps. EVOE.
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