The Cruickshank deputation returned across that North Atlantic which it
was their desire to see so much more than ever the track of the flag,
toward the middle of July. The shiny carriages were still rolling about
in great numbers when they left; London’s air of luxury had thickened
with the advancing season and hung heavily in the streets; people had
begun to picnic in the Park on Sundays. They had been from the beginning
a source of wonder and of depression to Lorne Murchison, the people
in the Park, those, I mean, who walked and sat and stood there for the
refreshment of their lives, for whom the place has a lyrical value
as real as it is unconscious. He noted them ranged on formal benches,
quiet, respectable, absorptive, or gathered heavily, shoulder to
shoulder, docile under the tutelage of policemen, listening to anyone
who would lift a voice to speak to them. London, beating on all borders,
hemmed them in; England outside seemed hardly to contain for them a
wider space. Lorne, with his soul full of free airs and forest
depths, never failed to respond to a note in the Park that left him
heavy-hearted, longing for an automatic distributing system for the
Empire. When he saw them bring their spirit-lamps and kettles and
sit down in little companies on four square yards of turf, under
the blackened branches, in the roar of the traffic, he went back to
Bloomsbury to pack his trunk, glad that it was not his lot to live with
that enduring spectacle.
They were all glad, every one of them, to turn their faces to the West
again. The unready conception of things, the political concentration
upon parish affairs, the cumbrous social machinery, oppressed them
with its dull anachronism in a marching world; the problems of sluggish
overpopulation clouded their eager outlook. These conditions might have
been their inheritance. Perhaps Lorne Murchison was the only one who
thanked Heaven consciously that it was not so; but there was no man
among them whose pulse did not mark a heart rejoiced as he paced the
deck of the Allan liner the first morning out of Liverpool, because he
had leave to refuse them. None dreamed of staying, of “settling,” though
such a course was practicable to any of them except Lorne. They were
all rich enough to take the advantages that money brings in England, the
comfort, the importance, the state; they had only to add their wealth
to the sumptuous side of the dramatic contrast. I doubt whether the idea
even presented itself. It is the American who takes up his appreciative
residence in England. He comes as a foreigner, observant, amused, having
disclaimed responsibility for a hundred years. His detachment is as
complete as it would be in Italy, with the added pleasure of easy
comprehension. But homecomers from Greater Britain have never been
cut off, still feel their uneasy share in all that is, and draw a long
breath of relief as they turn again to their life in the lands where
they found wider scope and different opportunities, and that new quality
in the blood which made them different men.
The deputation had accomplished a good deal; less, Cruickshank said,
than he had hoped, but more than he had expected. They had obtained
the promise of concessions for Atlantic services, both mail and certain
classes of freight, by being able to demonstrate a generous policy on
their own side. Pacific communications the home Government was more
chary of; there were matters to be fought out with Australia. The
Pacific was further away, as Cruickshank said, and you naturally can’t
get fellows who have never been there to see the country under the
Selkirks and south of the Bay--any of them except Wallingham, who had
never been there either, but whose imagination took views of the falcon.
They were reinforced by news of a shipping combination in Montreal to
lower freights to South Africa against the Americans; it wasn’t news to
them, some of them were in it; but it was to the public, and it helped
the sentiment of their aim, the feather on the arrow. They had secured
something, both financially and morally; what best pleased them,
perhaps, was the extent to which they got their scheme discussed. Here
Lorne had been invaluable; Murchison had done more with the newspapers,
they agreed, than any of them with Cabinet Ministers. The journalist
everywhere is perhaps more accessible to ideas, more susceptible to
enthusiasm, than his fellows, and Lorne was charged with the object of
his deputation in its most communicable, most captivating form. At all
events, he came to excellent understanding, whether of agreement or
opposition, with the newspapermen he met--Cruickshank knew a good
many of them and these occasions were more fruitful than the official
ones--and there is no doubt that the guarded approval of certain leading
columns had fewer ifs and buts and other qualifications in consequence,
while the disapproval of others was marked by a kind of unwilling
sympathy and a freely accorded respect. Lorne found London editors
surprisingly unbiased, London newspapers surprisingly untrammelled.
They seemed to him to suffer from no dictated views, no interests in the
background or special local circumstances. They had open minds, most of
them, and when a cloud appeared it was seldom more than a prejudice. It
was only his impression, and perhaps it would not stand cynical inquiry;
but he had a grateful conviction that the English Press occupied in the
main a lofty and impartial ground of opinion, from which it desired only
a view of the facts in their true proportion. On his return he confided
it to Horace Williams, who scoffed and ran the national politics of the
Express in the local interests of Fox County as hard as ever; but it had
fallen in with Lorne’s beautiful beliefs about England, and he clung to
it for years.
The Williamses had come over the second evening following Lorne’s
arrival, after tea. Rawlins had gone to the station, just to see that
the Express would make no mistake in announcing that Mr L. Murchison had
“Returned to the Paternal Roof,” and the Express had announced it,
with due congratulation. Family feeling demanded that for the first
twenty-four hours he should be left to his immediate circle, but people
had been dropping in all the next day at the office, and now came the
Williamses “trapesing,” as Mrs Murchison said, across the grass, though
she was too content to make it more than a private grievance, to where
they all sat on the verandah.
“What I don’t understand,” Horace Williams said to Mr Murchison, “was
why you didn’t give him a blow on the whistle. You and Milburn and a few
others might have got up quite a toot. You don’t get the secretary to a
deputation for tying up the Empire home every day.”
“You did that for him in the Express,” said John Murchison, smiling as
he pressed down, with an accustomed thumb, the tobacco into his pipe.
“Oh, we said nothing at all! Wait till he’s returned for South Fox,”
Williams responded jocularly.
“Why not the Imperial Council--of the future--at Westminster while
you’re about it?” remarked Lorne, flipping a pebble back upon the gravel
path.
“That will keep, my son. But one of these days, you mark my words, Mr
L. Murchison will travel to Elgin Station with flags on his engine and
he’ll be very much surprised to find the band there, and a large number
of his fellow-citizens, all able-bodied shouting men, and every factory
whistle in Elgin let off at once, to say nothing of kids with tin ones.
And if the Murchison Stove and Furnace Works siren stands out of that
occasion I’ll break in and pull it myself.”
“It won’t stand out,” Stella assured him. “I’ll attend to it. Don’t you
worry.”
“I suppose you had a lovely time, Mr Murchison?” said Mrs Williams,
gently tilting to and fro in a rocking-chair, with her pretty feet
in their American shoes well in evidence. It is a fact, or perhaps
a parable, that should be interesting to political economists, the
adaptability of Canadian feet to American shoes; but fortunately it is
not our present business. Though I must add that the “rocker” was also
American; and the hammock in which Stella reposed came from New York;
and upon John Murchison’s knee, with the local journal, lay a pink
evening paper published in Buffalo.
“Better than I can tell you, Mrs Williams, in all sorts of ways. But
it’s good to be back, too. Very good!” Lorne threw up his head and drew
in the pleasant evening air of midsummer with infinite relish while his
eye travelled contentedly past the chestnuts on the lawn, down the vista
of the quiet tree-bordered street. It lay empty in the solace of
the evening, a blue hill crossed it in the distance, and gave it an
unfettered look, the wind stirred in the maples. A pair of schoolgirls
strolled up and down bareheaded; now and then a buggy passed.
“There’s room here,” he said.
“Find it kind of crowded up over there?” asked Mr Williams. “Worse than
New York?”
“Oh, yes. Crowded in a patient sort of way--it’s enough to break your
heart--that you don’t see in New York! The poor of New York--well,
they’ve got the idea of not being poor. In England they’re resigned,
they’ve got callous. My goodness! the fellows out of work over
there--you can SEE they’re used to it, see it in the way they slope
along and the look in their eyes, poor dumb dogs. They don’t understand
it, but they’ve just got to take it! Crowded? Rather!”
“We don’t say ‘rather’ in this country, mister,” observed Stella.
“Well, you can say it now, kiddie.”
They laughed at the little passage--the traveller’s importation of one
or two Britishisms had been the subject of skirmish before--but silence
fell among them for a moment afterward. They all had in the blood the
remembrance of what Lorne had seen.
“Well, you’ve been doing big business,” said Horace Williams.
Lorne shook his head. “We haven’t done any harm,” he said, “but our
scheme’s away out of sight now. At least it ought to be.”
“Lost in the bigger issue.” said Williams, and Lorne nodded.
The bigger issue had indeed in the meantime obscured the political
horizon, and was widely spreading. A mere colonial project might
well disappear in it. England was absorbed in a single contemplation.
Wallingham, though he still supported the disabilities of a right
honourable evangelist with a gospel of his own, was making astonishing
conversions; the edifice of the national economic creed seemed coming
over at the top. It was a question of the resistance of the base, and
the world was watching.
“Cruickshank says if the main question had been sprung a month ago we
wouldn’t have gone over. As it is, on several points we’ve got to wait.
If they reject the preferential trade idea over there we shall have done
a little good, for any government would be disposed to try to patch up
something to take the place of imperial union in that case; and a few
thousands more for shipping subsidies and cheap cablegrams would have
a great look of strengthening the ties with the colonies. But if they
commit themselves to a zollverein with us and the rest of the family
you won’t hear much more about the need to foster communications.
Communications will foster themselves.”
“Just so,” remarked John Murchison. “They’ll save their money.”
“I wouldn’t think so before--I couldn’t,” Lorne went on, “but I’m afraid
it’s rather futile, the kind of thing we’ve been trying to do. It’s
fiddling at a superstructure without a foundation. What we want is the
common interest. Common interest, common taxation for defence, common
representation, domestic management of domestic affairs, and you’ve got
a working Empire.”
“Just as easy as slippin’ off a log,” remarked Horace Williams.
“Common interest, yes,” said his father; “common taxation, no, for
defence or any other purpose. The colonies will never send money to be
squandered by the London War Office. We’ll defend ourselves, as soon
as we can manage it, and buy our own guns and our own cruisers. We’re
better business people than they are, and we know it.”
“I guess that’s right, Mr Murchison,” said Horace Williams. “Our own
army and navy--in the sweet bye-and-bye. And let ‘em understand they’ll
be welcome to the use of it, but quite in a family way--no sort of
compulsion.”
“Well,” said Lorne, “that’s compatible enough.”
“And your domestic affairs must include the tariff,” Mr Murchison went
on. “There’s no such possibility as a tariff that will go round. And
tariffs are kittle cattle to shoo behind.”
“Has anybody got a Scotch dictionary?” inquired Stella. “This
conversation is making me tired.”
“Suppose you run away and play with your hoop,” suggested her brother.
“I can’t see that as an insuperable difficulty, Father. Tariffs could
be made adaptable, relative to the common interest as well as to the
individual one. We could do it if we liked.”
“Your adaptability might easily lead to other things. What’s to prevent
retaliation among ourselves? There’s a slump in textiles, and the
home Government is forced to let in foreign wool cheaper. Up goes the
Australian tax on the output of every mill in Lancashire. The last state
of the Empire might be worse than the first.”
“It wouldn’t be serious. If I pinched Stella’s leg as I’m going to in a
minute, she will no doubt kick me; and her instincts are such that she
will probably kick me with the leg I pinched, but that won’t prevent our
going to the football match together tomorrow and presenting a united
front to the world.”
They all laughed, and Stella pulled down her lengthening petticoats with
an air of great offence, but John Murchison shook his head.
“If they manage it, they will be clever,” he said.
“Talking of Lancashire,” said Williams, “there are some funny fellows
over there writing in the Press against a tax on foreign cotton because
it’s going to ruin Lancashire. And at this very minute thousands of
looms are shut down in Lancashire because of the high price of cotton
produced by an American combine--and worse coming, sevenpence a pound
I hear they’re going to have it, against the fourpence ha’penny they’ve
got it up to already. That’s the sort of thing they’re afraid to
discourage by a duty.”
“Would a duty discourage it?” asked John Murchison.
“Why not--if they let British-grown cotton in free? They won’t
discourage the combine much--that form of enterprise has got to be
tackled where it grows; but the Yankee isn’t the only person in the
world that can get to understand it. What’s to prevent preferential
conditions creating British combines, to compete with the American
article, and what’s to prevent Lancashire getting cheaper cotton in
consequence? Two combines are better than one monopoly any day.”
“May be so. It would want looking into. We won’t see a duty on cotton
though, or wool either for that matter. The manufacturers would be
pleased enough to get it on the stuff they make, but there would be a
fine outcry against taxing the stuff they use.”
“Did you see much of the aristocracy, Mr Murchison?” asked Mrs Williams.
“No,” replied Lorne, “but I saw Wallingham.”
“You saw the whole House of Lords,” interposed Stella, “and you were
introduced to three.”
“Well, yes, that’s so. Fine-looking set of old chaps they are, too.
We’re a little too funny over here about the Lords--we haven’t had to
make any.”
“What were they doing the day you were there, Lorne?” asked Williams.
“Motorcar legislation,” replied Lorne. “Considerably excited about it,
too. One of them had had three dogs killed on his estate. I saw his
letter about it in the Times.”
“I don’t see anything to laugh at in that,” declared Stella. “Dogs are
dogs.”
“They are, sister, especially in England.”
“Laundresses aren’t washerwomen there,” observed Mrs Murchison. “I’d
like you to see the colour of the things he’s brought home with him, Mrs
Williams. Clean or dirty, to the laundry they go--weeks it will take to
get them right again--ingrained London smut and nothing else.”
“In this preference business they’ve got to lead the way,” Williams
reverted. “We’re not so grown up but what grandma’s got to march in
front. Now, from your exhaustive observation of Great Britain, extending
over a period of six weeks, is she going to?”
“My exhaustive observation,” said Lorne, smiling, “enables me to tell
you one thing with absolute accuracy; and that is that nobody knows.
They adore Wallingham over there--he’s pretty nearly a god--and
they’d like to do as he tells them, and they’re dead sick of theoretic
politics; but they’re afraid--oh, they’re afraid!”
“They’ll do well to ca’ canny,” said John Murchison.
“There’s two things in the way, at a glance,” Lorne went on. “The
conservatism of the people--it isn’t a name, it’s a fact--the hostility
and suspicion; natural enough: they know they’re stupid, and they half
suspect they’re fair game. I suppose the Americans have taught them
that. Slow--oh, slow! More interested in the back-garden fence than
anything else. Pick up a paper, at the moment when things are being
done, mind, all over the world, done against them--when their shipping
is being captured, and their industries destroyed, and their goods
undersold beneath their very noses--and the thing they want to know
is--Why Are the Swallows Late? I read it myself, in a ha’penny morning
paper, too--that they think rather dangerously go-ahead--a whole column,
headed, to inquire what’s the matter with the swallows. The Times the
same week had a useful leader on Alterations in the Church Service, and
a special contribution on Prayers for the Dead. Lord, they need ‘em!
Those are the things they THINK about! The session’s nearly over, and
there’s two Church Discipline Bills, and five Church Bills--bishoprics
and benefices, and Lord knows what--still to get through. Lot of anxiety
about ‘em, apparently! As to a business view of politics, I expect the
climate’s against it. They’ll see over a thing--they’re fond of doing
that--or under it, or round one side of it, but they don’t seem to
have any way of seeing THROUGH it. What they just love is a good round
catchword; they’ve only got to hear themselves say it often enough, and
they’ll take it for gospel. They’re convinced out of their own mouths.
There was the driver of a bus I used to ride on pretty often, and if he
felt like talking, he’d always begin, ‘As I was a-saying of yesterday--’
Well, that’s the general idea--to repeat what they were a-sayin’ of
yesterday; and it doesn’t matter two cents that the rest of the world
has changed the subject. They’ve been a-sayin’ a long time that they
object to import duties of any sort or kind, and you won’t get them to
SEE the business in changing. If they do this it won’t be because they
want to, it will be because Wallingham wants them to.”
“I guess that’s so,” said Williams. “And if Wallingham gets them to he
ought to have a statue in every capital in the Empire. He will, too.
Good cigar this, Lorne! Where’d you get it?”
“They are Indian cheroots--‘Planters,’ they call ‘em--made in Madras.
I got some through a man named Hesketh, who has friends out there, at a
price you wouldn’t believe for as decent a smoke. You can’t buy ‘em in
London; but you will all right, and here, too, as soon as we’ve got the
sense to favour British-grown tobacco.”
“Lorne appreciates his family better than he did before,” remarked his
youngest sister, “because we’re British grown.”
“You were saying you noticed two things specially in the way?” said his
father.
“Oh, the other’s of course the awful poverty--the twelve millions that
haven’t got enough to do with. I expect it’s an outside figure and it
covers all sorts of qualifying circumstances; but it’s the one the Free
Fooders quote, and it’s the one Wallingham will have to handle. They’ve
muddled along until they’ve GOT twelve million people in that condition,
and now they have to carry on with the handicap. We ask them to put a
tax on foreign food to develop our wheat areas and cattle ranges.
We say, ‘Give us a chance and we’ll feed you and take your surplus
population.’ What is to be done with the twelve million while we are
growing the wheat? The colonies offer to create prosperity for everybody
concerned at a certain outlay--we’ve got the raw materials--and they
can’t afford the investment because of the twelve millions, and what may
happen meanwhile. They can’t face the meanwhile--that’s what it comes
to.”
“Fine old crop of catchwords in that situation,” Mr Williams remarked;
and his eye had the spark of the practical politician. “Can’t you hear
‘em at it, eh?”
“It scares them out of everything but hand-to-mouth politics. Any other
remedy is too heroic. They go on pointing out and contemplating and
grieving, with their percentages of misery and degeneration; and they go
on poulticing the cancer with benevolence--there are people over there
who want the State to feed the schoolchildren! Oh, they’re kind, good,
big-hearted people; and they’ve got the idea that if they can only give
enough away everything will come right. I was talking with a man one
day, and I asked him whether the existence of any class justified
governing a great country on the principle of an almshouse. He asked
me who the almsgivers ought to be, in any country. Of course it was
tampering with my figure--in an almshouse there aren’t any; but that’s
the way it presents itself to the best of them. Another fellow was
frantic at the idea of a tax on foreign food--he nearly cried--but would
be very glad to see the Government do more to assist emigration to the
colonies. I tried to show him it would be better to make it profitable
to emigrate first, but I couldn’t make him see it.
“Oh, and there’s the old thing against them, of course--the handling of
imperial and local affairs by one body. Anybody’s good enough to attend
to the Baghdad Railway, and nobody’s too good to attend to the town
pump. Is it any wonder the Germans beat them in their own shops and
Russia walks into Thibet? The eternal marvel is that they stand where
they do.”
“At the top,” said Mr Williams.
“Oh--at the top! Think of what you mean when you say ‘England.’”
“I see that the demand for a tariff on manufactured goods is growing,”
Williams remarked, “even the anti-food-tax organs are beginning to shout
for that.”
“If they had put it on twenty years ago,” said Lorne, “there would be no
twelve million people making a problem for want of work, and it would be
a good deal easier to do imperial business today.”
“You’ll find,” said John Murchison, removing his pipe, “that
protection’ll have to come first over there. They’ll put up a fence
and save their trade--in their own good time, not next week or next
year--and when they’ve done that they’ll talk to us about our big
ideas--not before. And if Wallingham hadn’t frightened them with the
imperial job, he never would have got them to take up the other. It’s
just his way of getting both done.”
“I hope you’re right, Father,” said Lorne, with a covert glance at his
watch. “Horace--Mrs Williams--I’ll have to get you to excuse me. I have
an engagement at eight.”
He left them with a happy spring in his step, left them looking after
him, talking of him, with pride and congratulation. Only Stella, with
a severe lip and a disapproving eye, noted the direction he took as he
left the house.