The Eye Witness
THE PUBLICATION OF _What's Wrong With the World_ brings us to 1910.
Gilbert had, as we have seen, originally intended to call the book
_What's Wrong?_ laying some emphasis on the note of interrogation. It
amused him to perplex the casual visitor by going off to his study
with the muttered remark: "I must get on with What's Wrong." The
change of name and the omission of the note of interrogation (both
changes the act of his publishers) represented a certain loss, for
indeed Gilbert was still asking himself what was wrong when he was
writing this book, although he was very certain what was right--his
ideals were really a clear picture of health. His doubts about the
achievement of those ideals in the present world and with his present
political allegiance were, as he suggests in the _Autobiography_,
vague but becoming more definite.
Did this mean that he ever looked hopefully towards the other big
division of the English political scene--the Tory or Conservative
party to which his brother had once declared he belonged without
knowing it? That would be a simpler story than what really happened
in his mind--and I confess that I am myself sufficiently vague and
doubtful about part of what the Chesterbelloc believed they were
discovering, to find it a little difficult to describe it clearly.
Cecil Chesterton and Belloc set down their views in a book called
_The Party System_. Gilbert made his clear in letters to the Liberal
Press.
The English party system had often enough been attacked for its
obvious defects and indeed the _New Witness's_ even livelier
contemporary _John Bull_ was shouting for its abolition. But Belloc
and Cecil Chesterton had their own line. Their general thesis was
that not only did the people of England not govern, Parliament did
not govern either. The Cabinet governed and it was chosen by the real
rulers of the party. For each party was run by an oligarchy, and run
roughly on the same lines. Lists were given of families whose
brothers-in-law and cousins (though not yet their sisters and their
aunts) found place in the Ministry of one or other political party.
Moreover, the governing families on both sides were in many cases
connected by birth or marriage and all belonged to the same social
set. But money too was useful: men could buy their way in. Each party
had a fund, and those who could contribute largely had of necessity
an influence on party policy. The existent Liberal Government had
brought to a totally new peak the art of swelling its fund by the
sale of titles: which in many instances meant the sale of hereditary
governing powers, since those higher titles which carry with them a
seat in the House of Lords were sold like the others, at a higher
rate naturally. For the rank and file member, a political career no
longer meant the chance for talents and courage to win recognition in
an open field. A man who believed that his first duty was to
represent his constituents stood no chance of advancement. Certainly
a private member could not introduce a bill as his own and get it
debated on its merits.
None of this was new, though the book did it rather exceptionally
well. What was new was the theory that the two party oligarchies were
secretly one, that the fights between the parties were little more
than sham fights. The ordinary party member was unaware of this
secret conspiracy between the leaders and would obey the call of the
party Whip and accept a sort of military discipline with the genuine
belief that the defeat of his party would mean disaster to his
country.
Belloc had discovered for himself the impotence of the private
member. He had, as we have seen, been elected to Parliament by South
Salford in 1906 as a Liberal. In Parliament he proposed a measure for
the publication of the names of subscribers to the Party Funds.
Naturally enough the proposal got nowhere. Also naturally enough the
Party Funds were not forthcoming to support him at the next election.
He fought and won the seat as an Independent. At the second election
of 1910 he declined to stand, having lucidly explained to the House
of Commons in a final speech that a seat there was of no value under
the existing system.
Thus Belloc's own experience, and a thousand other things, went to
prove the stranglehold the rulers of the party had on the party. But
did it prove, or did the book establish, the theory of a
behind-scenes conspiracy between the small groups who controlled each
of the great historical parties, which was the theme not only of _The
Party System_ but also of Belloc's brilliant political novels--
notably _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_ and _Pongo and the Bull?_
Of the stranglehold there was no doubt and Gilbert soon found it too
much for his own allegiance to the Liberal Party or any other. At the
election of 1910, he addressed a Liberal meeting at Beaconsfield and
dealt vigorously with constant Tory questions and interjections from
the back of the hall. He obviously enjoyed the fight and a little
later he spoke for the "League of Young Liberals" and was
photographed standing at the back of their van. But although he went
to London to vote for John Burns in Battersea and would probably have
continued to vote Liberal or Labour, he showed at a Women's Suffrage
meeting in 1911 a growing scepticism about the value of the vote. He
was reported as saying, "If I voted for John Burns now, I should not
be voting for anything at all (laughter)."
It must have been irritating that this interpolation "laughter" was
liable to occur when Chesterton was most serious; he did not change
quickly but in the alteration of his outlook towards his party, his
growing doubt whether it stood for any real values, he was very
serious. In the years that followed the coming into power of
Liberalism there were a multitude of Acts described as of little
importance and passed into law after little or no discussion. At the
same time, private members complained that they could get no
attention for really urgent matters of social reform. The _Nation_,
as a party paper, defended the state of things and talked of official
business and of want of time. Their attitude was vigorously attacked
by Gilbert, whose first letter (Jan. 17, 1911) ended with this
paragraph:
Who ever dreamed of getting "perfect freedom and fulness of
discussion" except in heaven? The case urged against Cabinets is
that we have no freedom and no discussion, except that laid down
despotically by a few men on front benches. Your assurance that
Parliament is very busy is utterly vain. It is busy on things the
dictators direct. That small men and small questions get squeezed out
among big ones, that is a normal disaster. With us, on the contrary,
it is the big questions that get squeezed out. The Party was not
allowed really to attack the South African War, for fear it should
alienate Mr. Asquith. It was not allowed to object to Mr. Herbert
Gladstone (or is it Lord Gladstone? This blaze of democracy blinds
one) when he sought to abolish the Habeas Corpus Act, and leave the
poorer sort of pickpockets permanently at the caprice of their
jailers. Parliament is busy on the aristocratic fads; and mankind
must mark time with a million stamping feet, while Mr. Herbert Samuel
searches a gutter-boy for cigarettes. That is what you call the
congestion of Parliament.
The Editor of the _Nation_ was so rash as to append to this letter
the words, "We must be stupid for we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton
means." This was too good an opening to be lost. G.K. returned to the
charge and I feel that this correspondence is so important in various
ways that the next two letters should be given in full.
Sir,
In a note to my last week's letter you remark, "We must be stupid;
but we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton means." As an old friend I
can assure you that you are by no means stupid; some other
explanation of this unnatural darkness must be found; and I find it
in the effect of that official party phraseology which I attack, and
which I am by no means alone in attacking. If I had talked about
"true Imperialism," or "our loyalty to our gallant leader," you might
have thought you knew what I meant; because I meant nothing. But I do
mean something; and I do want you to understand what I mean. I will,
therefore, state it with total dullness, in separate paragraphs; and
I will number them.
(1) I say a democracy means a State where the citizens first desire
something and then get it. That is surely simple.
(2) I say that where this is deflected by the disadvantage of
representation, it means that the citizens desire a thing and tell
the representatives to get it. I trust I make myself clear.
(3) The representatives, in order to get it at all, must have some
control over detail; but the design must come from popular desire.
Have we got that down?
(4) You, I understand, hold that English M. P.s today do thus obey
the public in design, varying only in detail. That is a quite clear
contention.
(5) I say they don't. Tell me if I am getting too abstruse.
(6) I say our representatives accept designs and desires almost
entirely from the Cabinet class above them; and practically not at
all from the constituents below them. I say the people does not wield
a Parliament which wields a Cabinet. I say the Cabinet bullies a
timid Parliament which bullies a bewildered people. Is that plain?
(7) If you ask why the people endure and play this game, I say they
play it as they would play the official games of any despotism or
aristocracy. The average Englishman puts his cross on a ballot-paper
as he takes off his hat to the King--and would take it off if there
were no ballot-papers. There is no democracy in the business. Is that
definite?
(8) If you ask why we have thus lost democracy, I say from two
causes; (a) The omnipotence of an unelected body, the Cabinet; (b)
the party system, which turns all politics into a game like the Boat
Race. Is that all right?
(9) If you want examples I could give you scores. I say the people
did not cry out that all children whose parents lunch on cheese and
beer in an inn should be left out in the rain. I say the people did
not demand that a man's sentence should be settled by his jailers
instead of by his judges. I say these things came from a rich group,
not only without any evidence, but really without any pretence, that
they were popular. I say the people hardly heard of them at the
polls. But here I do not need to give examples, but merely to say
what I mean. Surely I have said it now.
Yours,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
January 26th, 1911.
_Editor's Note_.
Mr. Chesterton is precise enough now, but he is precisely wrong.
There are grains of truth in his premises, a bushel of exaggeration
in his conclusions. We have not "lost democracy"; the two instances
which he alleges, both of which we dislike, are too small to prove so
large a case.
To this G. K. replied:
Sir,
I want to thank you for printing my letters, and especially for
your last important comment, in which you say that the Crimes and
Children's Acts were bad, but are "too small" to support a charge of
undemocracy. And I want to ask you one last question, which is the
question.
Why do you think of these things as small? They are really
enormous. One alters the daily habits of millions of people; the
other destroys the public law of thousands of years. What can be more
fundamental than food, drink, and children? What can be more
catastrophic than putting us back in the primal anarchy, in which a
man was flung into a dungeon and left there "till he listened to
reason?" There has been no such overturn in European ethics since
Constantine proclaimed the cross.
Why do you think of these things as small? I will tell you.
Unconsciously, no doubt, but simply and solely because the Front
Benches did not announce them as big. They were not "first-class
measures"; they were not "full-dress debates." The governing class
got them through in the quick, quiet, secondary way in which they
pass things that the people positively detests; not in the pompous,
lengthy, oratorical way in which they present measures that the
people merely bets on, as it might on a new horse. A "first-class
measure" means, for instance, tinkering for months at some tottery
compromise about a Religious Education that doesn't exist. The reason
is simple. "Sound Church Teaching" and "Dogmatic Christianity" both
happen to be hobbies in the class from which Cabinets come. But going
to public-houses and going to prison are both habits with which that
class is, unfortunately, quite unfamiliar. It is ready, therefore, at
a stroke of the pen, to bring all folly into the taverns and all
injustice into the jails.
Yours,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
February 2nd, 1911.
It was not only in the _Nation_ that such letters as these appeared.
"We can't write in every paper at once," runs a letter in the _New
Age_. "We do our best." ("We" meant Gilbert, Cecil and Hilaire
Belloc.) And G.K. goes on to answer four questions which have been
put by a correspondent signing himself, "Political Journalist."
First, in whose eyes but ours has the Party System lost credit? I
say in nearly everybody's. If this were a free country, I could
mention offhand a score of men within a stone's throw; an innkeeper,
a doctor, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a civil servant. As it is, I may
put it this way. In a large debating society I proposed to attack the
Party System, and for a long time I could not get an opposer. At
last, I got one. He defended the Party System on the ground that
people must be bamboozled more or less.
Second, he asks if the Party System does not govern the country to
the content of most citizens. I answer that Englishmen are happy
under the Party System solely and exactly as Romans were happy under
Nero. That is, not because government was good, but because Life is
good, even without good government. Nero's slaves enjoyed Italy, not
Nero. Modern Englishmen enjoy England but certainly not the British
Constitution. The legislation is detested, wherever it is even felt.
The other day a Cambridge don complained that, when out bicycling
with his boys, he had to leave them in the rain while he drank a
glass of cider. Count the whole series of human souls between a
costermonger and a Cambridge don, and you will see a nation in mutiny.
Third, "What substitute, etc., etc." Here again, the answer is
simple and indeed traditional. I suggest we should do what was always
suggested in the riddles and revolutions of the recent centuries. In
the seventeenth century phrase, I suggest that we should "call a free
Parliament!"
Fourth, "Is Democracy compatible with Parliamentary Government?"
God forbid. Is God compatible with Church Government? Why should He
be? It is the other things that have to be compatible with God. A
church can only be a humble effort to utter God. A Parliament can
only be a humble effort to express Man. But for all that, there is a
deal of commonsense left in the world, and people do know when
priests or politicians are honestly trying to express a mystery--and
when they are only taking advantage of an ambiguity.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
Encouraged by the excitement that had attended the publication of
_The Party System_ its authors decided to attempt a newspaper of
their own. This paper is still in existence but it has in the course
of its history appeared under four different titles. To avoid later
confusion I had better set these down at the outset.
The Eye Witness, June 1911-October 1912
The New Witness, November 1912-May 1923
G. K.'s Weekly, 1925-1936
The Weekly Review, 1936 till today
During the first year of its existence the _Eye Witness_ was edited
by Belloc. Cecil Chesterton took over the editorship after a short
interregnum during which he was assistant editor. Charles Granville
had financed it. When he went bankrupt the title was altered to _The
New Witness_. When Cecil joined the Army in 1916, G.K. became Editor.
In 1923 the paper died, but two years later rose again under the
title, _G.K.'s Weekly_. After Gilbert's own death Belloc took it back.
Today, as _The Weekly Review_, it is edited by Reginald Jebb, Belloc's
son-in-law. With all these changes of name, the continuity of the
paper is unmistakable. Its main aim may be roughly defined under two
headings. 1. To fight for the liberty of Englishmen against
increasing enslavement to a Plutocracy. 2. To expose and combat
corruption in public life.
The fight for Liberty appears in the letters quoted above in the form
of an attack on certain bills: Belloc unified and defined it with
real genius in the articles which became two of his most important
books: _The Servile State_ and _The Restoration of Property_. If
these two books be set beside Chesterton's _What's Wrong With the
World_ and _The Outline of Sanity_ the Chesterbelloc sociology stands
complete.
In his _Cobbett_, G.K. was later to emphasise the genius with which
Cobbett saw the England of today a hundred years before it was there
to be seen. Belloc in the same way saw both what was coming and the
way in which it was coming. Especially far-sighted was his attitude
to Lloyd George's Compulsory Health Insurance Act. It was the first
act of the kind in England and the scheme in outline was: every week
every employed person must have a stamp stuck on a card by his
employer, of which he paid slightly less and the employer slightly
more than half the cost. The money thus saved gave the insured person
free medical treatment and a certain weekly sum during the period of
illness. Agricultural labourers were omitted from the act and a
ferment raged on the question of domestic servants, who were
eventually included in its operation. It was practically acknowledged
that this was done to make the Act more workable financially. For
domestic servants were an especially healthy class and, moreover, in
most upper and middle-class households they were already attended by
the family doctor without cost to themselves.
The company in which the _Eye Witness_ found itself in opposing this
Act was indeed a case of "strange bedfellows." For the opposition was
led by the Conservatives (on the ground that the Act was Socialism).
Many a mistress and many a maid did I hear in those days in good
Conservative homes declaring they would rather go to prison than
"lick Lloyd George's stamps." Most Liberals, on the other hand,
regarded the Act as an example of enlightened legislation for the
benefit of the poor. The _Eye Witness_ saw in it the arrival of the
Servile State. Their main objections cut deep. As with compulsory
education, but in much more far-reaching fashion, this Act took away
the liberty and the personal responsibilities of the poor--and in
doing so put them into a category--forever ticketed and labelled,
separated from the other part of the nation. As people for whom
everything had to be done, they were increasingly at the mercy of
their employers, of Government Inspectors, of philanthropic
societies, increasingly slaves.
What was meant by the Servile State? It was, said Belloc, an
"arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the
families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labour
for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the
whole community with the mark of such labour." It was, quite simply,
the return of slavery as the condition of the poor: and the
Chesterbelloc did not think, then or ever, that any increase of
comfort or security was a sufficient good to be bought at the price
of liberty.
In a section of the paper called "Lex versus the Poor" the editor
made a point of collecting instances of oppression. A series of
articles attacked the Mentally Deficient Bill whereby poor parents
could have their children taken from them--those children who most
needed them and whom they often loved and clung to above the others,
and a Jewish contributor to the paper, Dr. Eder, pointed out in
admirable letters how divided was the medical profession itself on
what constituted mental deficiency and whether family life was not
far more likely to develop the mind than segregation with other
deficients in an Institution.
To the official harriers of the poor were added further inspectors
sent by such societies as the National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children. Cruelty to children, as Gilbert often pointed
out, is a horrible thing, but very seldom proved of parents against
their own children. The word was stretched to cover anything that
these inspectors called neglect. Lately we have read of a case, and
many like it were reported in the _New Witness_, where failure to
wash children adequately was called cruelty. And what was the remedy?
To take away the father, the breadwinner, to prison. For insufficient
food and clothes to substitute destitution, for insufficient care to
remove the only one the children had to care for them at all: always
to break up the family.
Worst of all was the question of school attendance: While a child of
three was dying of starvation, the mother was at the Police Court
where she was fined for not sending an older child to school. As she
could not pay the fine her husband was sent to prison for a week. A
child died of consumption. The parents said at the inquest they had
not dared to keep her at home when she got sick, for fear of the
school inspector.
As he had in _What's Wrong With the World_ been fired by the thought
of the landless poor of England, so now these stories stirred Gilbert
deeply. He saw the philanthropists like the Pharisees, unheeding the
wisdom learned by the Wise Men at Bethlehem: saw them with their busy
pencils peering at the Mother's omissions while the vast crimes of
the State went unchallenged. He wrote a poem called "The Neglected
Child" and "dedicated in a glow of Christian Charity to a
philanthropic Society."
The Teachers in the temple
They did not lift their eyes
For the blazing star on Bethlehem
Or the Wise Men grown wise.
They heeded jot and tittle,
They heeded not a jot
The rending voice in Ramah
And the children that were not.
Or how the panic of the poor
Choked all the fields with flight,
Or how the red sword of the rich
Ran ravening through the night.
They made their notes; while naked
And monstrous and obscene
A tyrant bathed in all the blood
Of men that might have been.
But they did chide Our Lady
And tax her for this thing,
That she had lost Him for a time
And sought Him sorrowing.
To most of the _Eye Witness_ group the fight for freedom was so bound
up with the fight against corruption that all was but one fight. I
think that when they looked back they were too much inclined to see
the shadow of Lloyd George behind them as well as around them: that
in fact the Liberal Party of those years had brought with it a new
descent in political decency--a descent which would have startled
both Gladstone and the more cynical Disraeli. Of this more when we
come to Marconi. Meanwhile there was certainly a whole lot to fight
about and the group responsible for the _Witness_, not content with
the pen, formed a Society entitled "The League for Clean Government,"
with Mr. John Scurr as Secretary. This League specialised in
promoting the candidature of independent Members of Parliament for
such vacancies as occurred between general elections, and in
attacking Party "place men." Doubtless other elements were present at
some of these by-elections but the League boasted its success on
several occasions, notably in the three defeats sustained by C. F. G.
Masterman.
Charles Masterman had been with Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton a member
of the group of young Christian Socialists that drew its inspiration
in great part from Canon Scott Holland. He had gone further than most
of them in his practical sympathy and understanding for the
destitute. With a friend he had taken a workman's flat in the slums
and he had written a somewhat florid but very moving book recording
conditions experienced as well as observed. He was one of the Young
Liberals who entered Parliament full of ardour to fight the battles
of the poor. The sequel as they saw it may best be told by Belloc and
Cecil Chesterton themselves. In _The Party System_ they wrote:
. . . Mr. Masterman entered Parliament as a Liberal of independent
views. During his first two years in the House he distinguished
himself as a critic of the Liberal Ministry. He criticised their
Education Bill. He criticised with especial force the policy of Mr.
John Burns at the Local Government Board. His conduct attracted the
notice of the leaders of the party. He was offered office, accepted
it, and since then has been silent, except for an occasional
rhetorical exercise in defence of the Government. One fact will be
sufficient to emphasise the change. On March 13th, 1908, Mr.
Masterman voted for the Right to Work Bill of the Labour Party. In
May of the same year he accepted a place with a salary of £1200 a
year--it has since risen to £1500. On April 20th, 1909, he voted, at
the bidding of the Party Whips, against the same Bill which he had
voted for in the previous year. Yet this remarkable example of the
"peril of change"* does not apparently create any indignation or even
astonishment in the political world which Mr. Masterman adorns. On
the contrary, he seems to be generally regarded as a politician of
exceptionally high ideals. No better instance need be recorded of the
peculiar atmosphere it is the business of these pages to describe.
[* The title of one of Masterman's books was _In Peril of Change_.]
At the succeeding General Election, Masterman was not re-elected. And
he failed again in a couple of by-elections. In all these elections,
the League for Clean Government campaigned fiercely against him.
There was certainly in the feeling of Belloc and Cecil Chesterton
towards Masterman a great deal of the bitterness that moved Browning
to write, "Just for a handful of silver he left us," and I do not
think there is anything in the history of the paper that created so
strong a feeling against it in certain minds. There seemed something
peculiarly ungenerous in the continued attacks after a series of
defeats, in the insistence with which Masterman's name was dragged
in, always accompanied by sneers. Replying to a remonstrance to this
effect, Cecil Chesterton, then Editor of the _New Witness_, stated
that in his considered opinion it was a duty to make a successful
career impossible to any man convicted of selling his principles for
success.
I dwell on this matter of Masterman for two reasons. The first is
that it was one of the rare occasions on which Gilbert Chesterton
disagreed with his brother and Belloc. Gilbert was a very faithful
friend: it would be hard to find a broken friendship in his life. He
had moreover much of the power that aroused his enthusiasm in
Browning of going into the depths of a character and discovering the
virtue concealed there. And as with Browning his explanation took
account of elements that really existed but could find no place in a
more narrowly adverse view.
"Many of my own best friends," he wrote of Masterman, "entirely
misunderstood and underrated him. It is true that as he rose higher
in politics, the veil of the politician began to descend a little on
him also; but he became a politician from the noblest bitterness on
behalf of the poor; and what was blamed in him was the fault of much
more ignoble men. . . . But he was also an organiser and liked
governing; only his pessimism made him think that government had
always been bad, and was now no worse than usual. Therefore, to men
on fire for reform, he came to seem an obstacle and an official
apologist." After G.K. became Editor of the _New Witness_ the attacks
on Masterman ceased, but he did not differ from the two earlier
Editors in his views on the ethics of political action or the
principles of social reform.
The second reason for which the Masterman matter must be dwelt on is
because it affords the best illustration of one curious fact in
connection with the _Eye_ and _New Witness_ campaign. When the _Life
of Masterman_ recently appeared I seized it eagerly that I might read
an authoritative defence of his position. I searched the Index under
_Eye Witness, New Witness, Cecil Chesterton_ and _League for Clean
Government_. No one of them was mentioned. At last I discovered under
_Belloc_ and _Scurr_ a faint allusion to their activities at a
by-election in which Belloc was coupled with the Protestant Alliance
leader Kensit as part of a contemptible opposition, and the unnamed
League for Clean Government described as "those working with Mr.
Scurr"! Clearly where it is possible to use against something
powerful the weapon of ignoring it as though it were something
obscure, that weapon is itself a powerful one. Against the _New
Witness_ it was used perpetually.
A paper which included among its contributors Hilaire Belloc, G. K.
Chesterton, J. S. Phillimore, E. C. Bentley, Wells, Shaw, Katharine
Tynan, Desmond McCarthy, F. Y. Eccles, G. S. Street--to name only
those who come first to mind--obviously stood high. Cecil
Chesterton's own editorials, Hugh O'Donnell's picturesque series
_Twenty Years After_, the high level of the reviewing and (oddly
enough, considering the paper's outlook) the financial articles of
Raymond Radclyffe, were all outstanding. The sales (at sixpence) were
never enormous but the readers were on a high cultural level. The
correspondence pages are always interesting.
The _Eye Witness_ group, besides courage, had high spirits and they
had wit. "Capulet's" rhymes; the series of ballades written by
Baring, Bentley, Phillimore, Belloc and G.K.C.; "Mrs. Markham's
History" written by Belloc; there was little of this quality in the
other weeklies. Side by side with the serious attacks was a line of
satire and of sheer fooling. The silver deal in India was being
attacked in the editorials, while Mrs. Markham explained to Tommy how
good, kind Lord Swaythling, really a Samuel, had lent money to his
brother Mr. Montague (another Samuel) for the benefit of the poor
people of India. The next week Tommy and Rachel grew enthusiastic
about the kindness of Lord Swaythling in _borrowing_ money that
the Indian Government could not use. Mrs. Markham too made Rachel
take a pencil and write out a list of Samuels including the
Postmaster-General, now so busy over the Marconi Case. The next
lesson was about titles. Then came one about policemen, and finally
about company promoters and investments. How a promoter guesses there
is oil somewhere, how money is lent to dig for it ("But, Mamma! How
can money dig?"), how the Company promoter may find no oil, how if
they think he has cheated them the rich men who lent their money can
have him tried by twelve good men and true--(_Tommy:_ "How do they
know the men are good and true, Mamma?" _Mrs. M.:_ "They do this by
taking them in alphabetical order out of a list.").
Perhaps the combination of irony thinly veiling intensity of purpose,
with humour sometimes degenerating into wild fooling, damned them in
the eyes of many. But there was a more serious obstacle to the real
effectiveness they might otherwise have had. When it was unavoidable
to name the _New Witness_ its opponents referred to it as though to a
"rag." Why was this possible? Principally I think because of the
violence of its language. Most Parliamentary matters to which it made
reference were spoken of as instances of "foul" corruption or "dirty"
business. Transactions by Ministers were said to "stink," while the
Ministers themselves were described as carrying off or distributing
"swag" and "boodle." In Vol. II of the _Eye Witness_, for instance, we
find the "game of boodle," "dirty trick," "Keep your eye on the
Railway Bill: you are going to be fleeced," and "stunt" and "ramp"
_passim_. Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs are always called
"George" and "Isaacs." The General of the Salvation Army is
invariably "Old Booth," while in the headlines the word "Scandal"
constantly recurs. Even admirers were at times like Fox's followers
who
Groaned "What a passion he was in tonight!
Men in a passion must be in the wrong
And heavens how dangerous when they're built so strong."
Thus the great Whig amid immense applause
Scared off his clients and bawled down his cause,
Undid reform by lauding Revolution
Till cobblers cried "God save the Constitution."