PART I_The Message（#27860）

THE DESCENT

Non his juventus orta parentibus infecit aequor sanguine

Punico.--HORACE.

THE MESSAGE

IN THE MAKING

"Such as I am, sir--no great subject for a boaster, I admit--you see

in me a product of my time, sir, and of very worthy parents, I

assure you."--EZEKIEL JOY.

As a very small lad, at home in Tarn Regis, I had but one close chum,

George Stairs, and he went off with his father to Canada, while I was

away for my first term at Elstree School. Then came Rugby, where I had

several friends, but the chief of them was Leslie Wheeler. Just why we

should have been close friends I cannot say, but I fancy it was mainly

because Leslie was such a handsome fellow, and always seemed to cut a

good figure in everything he did; while I, on the other hand, excelled

in nothing, and was not brilliant even in the expression of my

discontent, which was tolerably comprehensive. Withal, in other matters

beside discontent, I was a good deal of an extremist, and by no means

lacking in enthusiasm.

My father, too, was an enthusiast in his quiet way. His was the

enthusiasm of the student, and his work as historian and archaeologist

absorbed, I must suppose, a great deal more of his interest and energy

than was ever given to his cure of souls. He was rector of Tarn Regis,

in Dorset, before I was born, and at the time of his death, to be

present at which I was called away in the middle of the last term of my

third year at Cambridge. I was to have spent four years at the

University; but, as the event proved, I never returned there after my

hurried departure, three days prior to my father's death.

The personal tie between my father and those among whom he lived and

worked was not a very close or intimate bond. His contribution to the

Cambridge History was greatly appreciated by scholars, and his

archaeological research won him the respect and esteem of his peers in

that branch of study. But I cannot pretend that his loss was keenly felt

by his parishioners, with most of whom his relations had been strictly

professional rather than personal. A good man and true, without a trace

of anything sordid or self-seeking in his nature, my father was yet

singularly indifferent to everything connected with the daily lives and

welfare of his fellow creatures.

In this he was typical of a considerable section of the country clergy

of the time. I knew colleagues of his who were more pronounced examples

of the type. One in particular I call to mind (whose living was in the

gift of a Cambridge college, like my father's), who, though a good

fellow and a clean-lived gentleman, was no more a Christian than he was

a Buddhist--less, upon the whole. Among scholarly folk he made not the

slightest pretence of regarding the fundamental tenets of the Christian

faith in the light of anything more serious than interesting historical

myths, notable sections in the mosaic of folk-lore, which it was his

pride and delight to study and understand.

Such men as A---- R---- and my father (and there were many like them,

and more who shared their aloofness while lacking half their virtues)

lived hard-working, studious lives, in which the common kinds of

self-indulgence played but a very small part. Honourable, kindly at

heart, gentle, rarely consciously selfish, these worthy men never gave a

thought to the current affairs of their country, to their own part as

citizens, or to the daily lives of their fellow countrymen. Indeed, they

exhibited a kind of gentle intolerance and contempt in all topical

concerns; and though they preached religion and drew stipends as

expounders of Christianity, they no more thought of "prying" or

"interfering," as they would have said, into the actual lives and hearts

and minds of those about them, than of thrusting their hands into their

parishioners' pockets.

Stated in this bald way the thing may sound incredible, but those whose

recollections carry them back to the opening years of the century will

bear me out in saying that this was far from being either the most

distressing or the most remarkable among the outworkings of what was

then extolled as a broad spirit of tolerance. Our "tolerance," our

vaunted "cosmopolitanism," were far more dangerous factors of our

national life, had we but known it, than either the insularity of our

sturdy forbears or the strength of our enemies had ever been.

Even my dear mother did not, I think, feel the shock of her bereavement

so much as might have been supposed. One may say, without disrespect,

that the loss of my father gave point and justification to my mother's

attitude toward life. Kind, gentle soul that she was, my mother was

afflicted with what might be called the worrying temperament; a

disposition characteristic of that troublous time. My memory seems to

fasten upon the matter of domestic labour as representing the crux and

centre of my dear mother's grievances and topics of lament prior to my

father's death. The subject may seem to border upon the ridiculous, as

an influence upon one's general point of view; but at that time it was

really more tragic than farcical, and I know that what was called "the

servant question"--as such it was gravely treated in books and papers,

and even by leader-writers and lecturers--formed the basis of a great

deal of my mother's conversation, just as I am sure that it coloured her

outlook upon life, and strengthened her tendency to worry over

everything, from the wear-and-tear of house-linen to the morality of the

people. All this was incomprehensible and absurd to my father, though,

had he but thought of it, it was really more human than his own

attitude; for certainly my mother was interested and concerned in the

daily lives of her fellow creatures, though not in a cheering or

illuminating manner perhaps.

But, as I say, the deprecatory, worrying attitude had become second

nature with my mother long years before her widowhood, and had lined and

seamed her poor forehead and silvered her hair before my Rugby days

were over. Bereavement merely gave point to a mood already well

established.

That I should not return to Cambridge was decided as a matter of course

within the week of my father's funeral, when we learned that the little

he had left behind him would not even pay for the dilapidations of the

rectory. There was practically nothing, when my father's affairs were

put in order, beyond my mother's little property, a recent legacy, the

investment of which in Canadian railway stocks brought in about a

hundred and fifty a year.

Thus I found myself confronted with a sufficiently serious situation for

a young man whose training so far had no more fitted him for taking part

in any particular division of the battle of life, where the prize sought

is an income, than for the administration of the planet Mars. Rugby was

better than some of the great public schools in this respect, for a lad

with definite purposes and ambitions, but its curriculum had far less

bearing upon the working life of the age than it had upon its games and

pastimes and the affairs of nations and peoples long since passed away.

Yet Rugby belonged to a group of schools that were admittedly the best,

and certainly the most outrageously costly, of the educational

establishments of the period.

I think my sister Lucy was more shocked than any one else by the death

of our father. I say shocked, because I am not certain whether or not

the word grieved would apply accurately. For one thing, Lucy had never

before seen any dead person. Neither had I, for that matter; but Lucy

was more affected by the actual presence in the house of Death, than I

was. Twice a day for years she had kissed our father's forehead. Now and

again she had sat upon the arm of his chair and stroked his thin hair.

These demonstrations were connected, I believe, with the quest of

favours--permission, money, and so forth; but doubtless affection played

a part in them.

As for Lucy's home life, a little conversation I recall on the occasion

of her driving me to the station when I was leaving for what proved my

last term at Cambridge, seems to me to throw some light. I had but

recently learned of Lucy's engagement to marry Doctor Woodthrop, of

Davenham Minster, our nearest market-town. I had found Woodthrop a

decent fellow enough, but thirty-four as against Lucy's twenty-one,

inclining ominously to corpulence, and as flatly prosaic and

unadventurous a spirit as a small country town could produce. Now, as

Lucy seemed to me to have hankerings in the direction of social

pleasures and the like, with a penchant for brilliancy and daring, I was

a little puzzled about her engagement, for Woodthrop was one who kept a

few conversational pleasantries on hand, as a man keeps old pipes on a

rack, for periodical use at suitable times.

"So you are actually going to be married, Loo?" I said.

"Oh, well, engaged, Dick," she replied, with a little blush.

"With a view, I presume. Then I suppose it follows that you are in

love--h'm?"

"Why, Dick, what a cross-examiner you are!" The blush increased.

"Well, my dear girl, surely it's a natural assumption, is it not?"

"Oh, I suppose so. But----"

"Yes?"

"Well, I don't think in real life it's the same thing that you read

about in novels, do you, Dick?"

"What? Being in love?"

"Yes."

"Well, perhaps not; but I imagine it ought to be something pretty

pronounced, you know, even in such a pale reflection of the novels as

real life. I gather that it ought to be; seriously, Loo, I think it

ought to be. I suppose you do love Woodthrop, don't you?"

My sister looked a little distressed, and I half-regretted having put so

direct a question. I was sufficiently the product of my day to be

terribly afraid of any kind of interference with my fellow creatures.

Our apotheosis of individual liberty had made any such action anathema,

"bad form," a sin more resented in the sinner than cowardice or

dishonesty, or than any kind of wickedness which was strictly personal

and, as you might say, self-contained. Our one object of universal

reverence and respect was the personal equation.

"There, Loo," I said, "I didn't mean to tease you." Thus, in accordance

with my traditions, I brushed aside and apologized for my natural

interest in her well-being in the same way that my poor father and his

like brushed away all matters of topical import, and the average man of

the period brushed aside all concern with his fellow men, all

responsibility for the common weal.

"No," she said, "I know you didn't. And, indeed, Dick, I suppose I don't

love Herbert as well as I ought; but--but, Dick, you don't know what it

is to be a girl. You can go off to Cambridge, and presently you will go

out into the world and live your own life in your own way. But it's

different for me, Dick. A girl is not supposed to want to live her own

life; she is just part of the home, and the home----. Well, Dick, you

know father's life, and mother--poor mother----"

"Yes," I said, "that's so."

"Well, Dick, I'm afraid it seems pretty selfish, but I do want to live

my own way, and I do get terribly tired of--of----"

"Of the 'servant question,' for instance."

"Exactly."

"And you think you can live your own life with Woodthrop?"

"Why, I think he is very kind and good, Dick, and he says there's no

reason why I shouldn't hunt, if I can manage with one mount, and we can

have friends of mine to stay, and--and so on."

"Yes, I see. You will be mistress of a house."

"And, of course, I like him very much, Dick; he really is good."

"Yes."

That was how Lucy felt about her marriage. There seemed to me to be a

good deal lacking; but then I was rather given to concentrating my

attention upon flaws and gaps. And when I was next at home, at the time

of my father's death, I could not help feeling that the engagement was

something to be thankful for. A hundred and fifty a year would mean a

good deal of pinching for my mother alone, as things went then; but for

mother and Lucy together it would have been painfully short commons.

Life, even in the country, was an expensive business at that time

despite the current worship of cheapness and of "free" trade, as our

Quixotic fiscal policy was called. The sum total of our wants and

fancied wants had been climbing steadily, while our individual

capability in domestic and other simple matters had been on the decline

for a long while.

In the end we decided that my mother and Lucy should establish

themselves in apartments on the outskirts of Davenham Minster, which

apartments would serve my mother permanently, with the relinquishment of

a single room after Lucy's marriage. I saw them both established,

gathered my few personal belongings in a trunk and a couple of bags, and

started for London on a brilliantly fine morning toward the end of June.

At that time a young man went to London as a matter of course, when

launching out for himself. It was not that folk liked living in the huge

city (though, curiously enough, many did), but they gravitated toward it

because the great aim, always, and in those conditions necessarily, was

to make money. There was more money "knocking about," so people said, in

London than anywhere else; so that was the place for which one made.

I started for London with a capital of precisely eleven guineas over and

above my railway fare--and left it again on the same day.

AT THE WATER'S EDGE

"Now a little before them, there was on the left-hand of the Road, a

Meadow, and a Stile to go over into it, and that Meadow is called

By-Path-Meadow."--_The Pilgrim's Progress._

My friend, Leslie Wheeler, had left Cambridge a few months before my

summons home, in order to enter his father's office in Moorgate Street.

His father was of the mysteriously named tribe of "financial agents,"

and had evidently found it a profitable calling.

As I never understood anything of even the nomenclature of finance, I

will not attempt to describe the business into which my friend had been

absorbed; but I remember that it afforded occupation for dozens of

gentlemanly young fellows, the correctness of whose _coiffure_ and

general appearance was beyond praise. These beautifully groomed young

gentlemen sat upon high stools at desks of great brilliancy. They used

an ingenious arrangement of foolscap paper to protect their shirt-cuffs

from contact with baser things, and one of the reasons for the evident

care lavished upon the disposition of their hair may have been the fact

that they made it a point of honour to go hatless when taking the air or

out upon business during the day. Their general appearance and

deportment in the office and outside always conveyed to me the

suggestion that they were persons of some wealth and infinite leisure;

but I have been assured that they were hard-working clerks, whose

salaries, even in these simpler days, would not be deemed extravagant.

These salaries, I have been told, worked out at an average of perhaps

L120 or L130 a year.

Now London meant no more to me at that time than a place where, upon

rare occasions, one dined in splendour, went to a huge and gilded

music-hall, cultivated a bad headache, and presently sought to ease it

by eating a nightmarish supper, and eating it against time. My allowance

at Cambridge had, no doubt fortunately for my digestion, allowed of but

few excursions to the capital; but my friend Wheeler lived within twenty

miles of it, and I figured him already burgeoning as a magnate of

Moorgate Street. Therefore I had of course written to him of my proposed

descent upon the metropolis, and had been very kindly invited to spend a

week at his father's house in Weybridge before doing anything else.

Accordingly then, having reached Waterloo by a fast train, I left most

of my effects in the cloak-room there, and taking only one bag,

journeyed down to Weybridge.

My friend welcomed me in person in the hall of his father's big and

rather showy house, he having returned from the City earlier than usual

for that express purpose. I had already met his mother and two sisters

upon four separate occasions at Cambridge. Indeed, I may say that I had

almost corresponded with Leslie's second sister, Sylvia. At all events,

we had exchanged half a dozen letters, and I had even begged, and

obtained, a photograph. At Cambridge I thought I had detected in this

delicately pretty, soft-spoken girl, some sympathy and fellow-feeling in

the matter of my own crude gropings toward a philosophy of life. You may

be sure I did not phrase it in that way then. The theories upon which my

discontent with the prevailing order of things was based, seemed to me

then both strong and practical; a little ahead of my time perhaps, but

far from crude or unformed. As I see it now, my creed was rather a

protest against indifference, a demand for some measure of activity in

social economy. That my muse was socialistic seems to me now to have

been mainly accidental, but so it was, and its nutriment had been drawn

largely from such sources as Carpenter's _Civilization: its Cause and

Cure_, in addition to the standard works of the Socialist leaders.

It is quite possible that one of the reasons of my continued friendship

with Leslie Wheeler was the fact that, in his agreeable manner, he

represented in person much of the butterfly indifference to what I

considered the serious problems of life, against which my fulminations

were apt to be directed. I may have clung to him instinctively as a

wholesome corrective. At all events, he submitted, in the main

good-humouredly, to my frequently personal diatribes, and, by his very

complaisance and merry indifference, supplied me again and again with

point and illustration for my sermons.

Leslie's elder sister, Marjory, was his counterpart in petticoats;

merry, frivolous, irresponsible, devoted to the chase of pleasure, and

obdurately bent upon sparing neither thought nor energy over other

interests; denying their very existence indeed, or good-humouredly

ridiculing them when they were forced upon her. She was a very handsome

girl; I was conscious of that; but, perhaps because I could not

challenge her as I did her brother, her character made no appeal to me.

But Sylvia, on the other hand, with her big, spiritual-looking eyes,

transparently fair skin, and earnest, even rapt expression; Sylvia

stirred my adolescence pretty deeply, and was assiduously draped by me

in that cloth of gold and rose-leaves which every young man is apt to

weave from out of his own inner consciousness for the persons of those

representatives of the opposite sex in whom he detects sympathy and

responsiveness.

Mrs. Wheeler spoke in a kind and motherly way of my bereavement, and the

generosity of youth somehow prevented my appreciation of this being

dulled by the fact that, until reminded, she had forgotten whether I had

lost a father or a mother. Indeed, though not greatly interested in

other folk's affairs, I believe that while the good soul's eyes rested

upon the supposed sufferer, or his story, she was sincerely sorry about

any kind of trouble, from her pug's asthma to the annihilation of a

multitude in warfare or disaster. She had the kindest heart, and no

doubt it was rather her misfortune than her fault that she could not

clearly realize any circumstance or situation which did not impinge in

some way upon her own small circle.

I met Leslie's father for the first time at dinner that evening. One

could hardly have imagined him sparing time for visits to Cambridge. He

was a fine, soldierly-looking man, with no trace of City pallor in his

well-shaven, purple cheeks. Purple is hardly the word. The ground was

crimson, I think, and over that there was spread a delicate tracery, a

sort of netted film, of some kind of blue. The eyes had a glaze over

them, but were bright and searching. The nose was a salient feature,

having about it a strong predatory suggestion. The forehead was low,

surmounted by exquisitely smooth iron-gray hair. Mr. Wheeler was

scrupulously fine in dress, and used a single eye-glass. He gave me

hearty welcome, and I prefer to think that the apparent chilling of his

attitude to me after he had learned of my financial circumstances was

merely the creation of some morbid vein of hyper-sensitiveness in

myself.

At all events, we were all very jolly together that evening, and I went

happily to bed, after what I thought a hint of responsive pressure in my

handshake with Sylvia, and several entertaining anecdotes from Mr.

Wheeler as to the manner in which fortunes had been made in the purlieus

of Throgmorton Street. Launching oneself upon a prosperous career in

London seemed an agreeably easy process at the end of that first evening

in the Wheeler's home, and the butterfly attitude toward life appeared

upon the whole less wholly blameworthy than before. What a graceful

fellow Leslie was, and how suave and genial the father when he sat at

the head of his table toying with a glass of port! And these were

capable men, too, men of affairs. Doubtless their earnestness was strong

enough below the surface, I thought--for that night.

III

AN INTERLUDE

"To observations which ourselves we make,

We grow more partial for th' observer's sake."

POPE.

Though in no sense unfriendly or lacking in sympathy, I noticed that

Leslie Wheeler showed no inclination to be drawn into intimate

discussion of my prospects. I was not inclined to blame my friend for

this, but told myself that he probably acted upon paternal instructions.

For me, however, it was impossible to lay aside for long, thoughts

regarding my immediate future. I was aware that a nest-egg of eleven or

twelve pounds was not a very substantial barrier between oneself and

want. Mr. Wheeler told no more stories of fortunes built out of nothing

in the City, but he did take occasion to refer casually to the fact that

City men did not greatly care for the products of public schools and

universities, as employees.

I was more than half-inclined to ask why, in this case, Leslie had been

sent to Rugby and Cambridge, but decided to avoid the personal

application of his remark. It was, after all, no more than the

expression of a commonly accepted view, striking though it seems as a

comment upon the educational system of the period, when one remembers

the huge proportion of the middle and upper-class populace which was

absorbed by commercial callings of one kind or another.

There was practically no demand for physical prowess or aptitude,

outside the field of sport and games, nor even for those qualities which

are best served by a good physical training. One need not, therefore, be

greatly surprised that the public schools should have given no physical

training outside games, and that even of the most perfunctory character,

the majority qualifying as interested spectators merely, of the prowess

of the minority. But it certainly is remarkable, that no practical

business training, nor studies of a sort calculated to be of use in

later business training, should have been given in the schools most

favoured by those for whom business was a life's calling. In this, as in

so many other matters, I suppose we were guided and directed entirely by

habit and tradition; the line of least resistance.

When I talked of my prospects with handsome Leslie Wheeler--his was his

father's face, unblemished and unworn--our conversation was always three

parts jocular, at all events upon his side. I was to recast society and

mould our social system anew by means of my pen, and of journalism. I

was to provide "the poor blessed poor" with hot-buttered rolls and

devilled kidneys for breakfast, said Leslie, and introduce old-age

pensions for every British workman who survived his twenty-first

birthday.

I would not be understood to suggest that this sort of facetiousness

indicated the average attitude of the period with regard to the horrible

fact that the country contained millions of people permanently in a

state of want and privation. But it was a quite possible attitude then.

Such people as my friend could never have mocked the sufferings of an

individual. But with regard to the state of affairs, the pitiful

millions, as an abstract proposition, indifference was the rule, a tone

of light cynicism was customary, and "the poor we have always with us,"

quoted with a deprecatory shrug, was an accepted conversational refuge,

even among such people as the clergy and charitable workers.

And this, if one comes to think of it, was inevitable. The life and

habits and general attitude of the period would have been absolutely

impossible, in conjunction with any serious face-to-face consideration

of a situation which embraced, for example, such preposterously

contradictory elements as these:

The existence of huge and growing armies of absolutely unemployed men;

the insistence of the populace, and particularly the business people,

upon the disbandment of regiments, and upon great naval and military

reductions, involving further unemployment; the voting of considerable

sums for distribution among the unemployed; violent opposition to the

mere suggestion of State aid to enable the unemployed of England to

migrate to those parts of the Empire which actually needed their labour;

the increasing difficulty of the problem which was wrapped up in the

question of "What to do with our sons"; the absolute refusal of the

nation to admit of universal military service; the successive closing by

tariff of one foreign market after another against British manufactures,

and the hysterical refusal of the people to protect their own markets

from what was graphically called the "dumping" into them of the surplus

products of other peoples.

It is a queer catalogue, with a ring of insanity about it; but these

were the merest commonplaces of life at that time, and the man who

rebelled against them was a crank. My friend Leslie's attitude was

natural enough, therefore; and, with a few exceptions, it was my own,

for, curiously enough, the political school I favoured was, root and

branch, opposed to the only possible remedies for this situation.

Liberals, Radicals, Socialists, and the majority of those who arrogated

to themselves the title of Social Reformers; these were the people who

insisted, if not upon the actual evils and sufferings indicated in this

illustrative note of social contradictions, then upon violent opposition

to their complements in the way of mitigation and relief. And I was

keenly of their number.

Many of these matters I discussed, or perhaps I should say, dilated

upon, in conversation with Sylvia, while her brother and father were in

London. We would begin with racquets in the tennis-court, and end late

for some meal, after long wanderings among the pines. And in Sylvia, as

it seemed to me, I found the most delightfully intelligent

responsiveness, as well as sympathy. My knowledge of feminine nature,

its extraordinary gifts of emotional and personal intuition, was of the

scantiest, if it had any existence at all. But my own emotional side was

active, and my mind an inchoate mass of ideals and more or less

sentimental longings for social betterment. And so, with Sylvia's

gentle acquiescence, I rearranged the world.

Much I have forgotten, and am thus spared the humiliation of recounting.

But, as an example of what I recall, I remember a conversation which

arose from our passing a miniature rifle-range which some local

resident--"Some pompous Jingo of retrogressive tendencies," I called

him--had erected with a view to tempting young Weybridge into

marksmanship; a tolerably forlorn prospect at that time.

"Is it not pathetic," I said, "in twentieth-century England, to see such

blatant attacks upon progress as that?"

Sylvia nodded gravely; sweetly sympathetic understanding, as I saw it.

And, after all, why not? Understanding of my poor bubbling mind, anyhow,

and--Nature's furnishing of young women's minds is a mighty subtle

business, not very much more clearly understood to-day than in the era

of knight-errantry.

Sylvia nodded gravely, as I spurned the turf by the range.

"Here we are surrounded by quagmires of poverty, injustice, social

anomalies, and human distress, and this poor soul--a rich pork-butcher,

angling for the favours of a moribund political party, I dare

say--lavishes heaven knows how many pounds over an arrangement by which

young men are to be taught how to kill each other with neatness and

despatch at a distance of half a mile! It is more tragical than

farcical. It is enough to make one despair of one's fellow countrymen,

with their silly bombast about 'Empire,' and their childish waving of

flags. 'Empire,' indeed; God save the mark! And our own little country

groaning, women and children wailing, for some measure of common-sense

internal reform!"

"It is dreadful, dreadful," said Sylvia. My heart leapt out to meet the

gentle goodness of her. "But still, I suppose there must be soldiers,"

she added. Of course, this touched me off as a spark applied to tinder.

"But that is just the whole crux of the absurdity, and as long as so

unreal a notion is cherished we can never be freed from the slavery of

these huge armaments. Soldiers are only necessary if war is necessary,

and war can only be necessary while men are savages. The differences

between masters and men are far more vital and personal than the

differences between nations; yet they have long passed the crude stage

of thirsting for each other's destruction as a means of settling

quarrels. War is a relic of barbarous days. So long as armies are

maintained, unscrupulous politicians will wage war. If we, who call

ourselves the greatest nation in Christendom, would even deserve the

credit of plain honesty, we must put away savagery, and substitute

boards of arbitration for armies and navies."

"Yes, I see," said Sylvia, her face alight with interest, "I feel that

must be the true, the Christian view. But suppose the other nations

would not agree to arbitration?"

"But there is not a doubt they would. Can you suppose that any people

are so insensate as really to like war, carnage, slaughter, for their

own sake, when peaceful alternatives are offered?"

"No, I suppose not; and, indeed, I feel that all you say is true, Mr.

Mordan."

"Please don't say 'Mr. Mordan,' Sylvia. Even your mother and sister call

me Dick. No, no, the other nations would be only too glad to follow our

lead, and we, as the greatest Power, should take that lead. What could

their soldiers do to a soldierless people, anyhow; and even if we lost

at the beginning, why, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole

world and lose his own soul?' Of what use is the dominion of a huge,

unwieldy empire when even a tiny country like this is so administered

that a quarter of its population live always on the verge of starvation?

Let the Empire go, let Army and Navy go, let us concentrate our energies

upon the arts of peace, science, education, the betterment of the

conditions of life among the poor, the right division of the land among

those that will till it. Let us do that, and the world would have

something to thank us for, and we should soon hear the last of these

noisy, ranting idiots who are eternally waving flags like lunatics and

mouthing absurd phrases about imperialism and patriotism, national

destiny, and rubbish of that sort. Our duty is to humanity, and not to

any decayed symbols of feudalism. The talk of patriotism and imperialism

is a gigantic fraud, and the tyranny of it makes our names hated

throughout the world. We have no right to enforce our sway upon the

peace-loving farmers and the ignorant blacks of South Africa. They

rightly hate us for it, and so do the millions of India, upon whom our

yoke is held by armies of soldiers who have to be maintained by their

victims. It casts one down to think of it, just as the sight of those

ridiculous rifle-butts and the thought of the diseased sentiment behind

them depresses one."

"It all seems very mad and wrong, but--but I wish you would not take it

so much to heart," said Sylvia.

"That is very sweet of you," I told her; "and, indeed, there is not so

much real cause to be downhearted. The last elections showed clearly

enough that the majority of our people are alive to all this. The leaven

of enlightenment is working strongly among the people, and the old

tyranny of Jingoism is dying fast. One sees it in a hundred ways. Boer

independence has as warm friends in our Parliament as on the veld. The

rising movements of internationalism, of Pan-Islam, the Swadeshi

movement, the rising toward freedom in India; all these are largely

directed from Westminster. The Jingo sentiment toward Germany, a really

progressive nation, full of natural and healthy ambitions, is being

swept away by our own statesmen; by their courteous and friendly

attitude toward the Kaiser, who delights to honour our present Minister

of War. Also, the work of disarmament has begun. The naval estimates are

being steadily pruned, and whole regiments have been finally disbanded.

And all this comes from within. So you see we have some grounds for

hopefulness. It is a great step forward, for our own elected leaders to

show the enthusiastic and determined opposition they are showing to the

old brutal pretensions of England to sway the world by brute strength.

But, forgive me! Perhaps I tire you with all this--Sylvia."

"No, no, indeed you don't--Dick, I--I think it is beautiful. It--it

seems to make everything bigger, more kind and good. It interests me,

immensely."

And I knew perfectly well that I had not tired her--wearisome though the

recital of it all may be now. For I knew instinctively how the personal

note told in the whole matter. I had been really heated, and perfectly

sincere, but a kind of subconscious cunning had led me to utilize the

heat of the moment in introducing between us, for example, the use of

first names. Well I knew that I was not wearying Sylvia. But coldly

recited now, I admit the rhodomontade to be exceedingly tiresome. My

excuse for it is that it serves to indicate the sort of ideas that were

abroad at the time, the sort of sentiments which were shaping our

destiny.

After all, I was an educated youth. Many of my hot statements, too, were

of fact, and not merely of opinion and feeling. It is a fact that the

sentiment called anti-British had come to be served more slavishly in

England than in any foreign land. The duration of our disastrous war in

South Africa was positively doubled, as the result of British influence,

by Boer hopes pinned upon the deliberate utterances of British

politicians. In Egypt, South Africa, India, and other parts of the

Empire, all opposition to British rule, all risings, attacks upon our

prestige, and the like, were aided, and in many cases fomented, steered,

and brought to a successful issue--not by Germans or other foreigners,

but by Englishmen, and by Englishmen who had sworn allegiance at St.

Stephens. It is no more than a bare statement of fact to say that, in

the very year of my arrival in London, the party which ruled the State

was a party whose members openly avowed and boasted of their opposition

to British dominion, and that in terms, not less, but far more sweeping

than mine in talking to Sylvia among the pines at Weybridge.

But if Sylvia appreciated and sympathized in the matter of my

sermonizing, the rest of the family neither approved the sermons nor

Sylvia's interest in them. I was made to feel in various ways that no

import must be attached to my attentions to Sylvia. Marjory began to

shadow her sister in the daytime, and, as she was frankly rather bored

by me, I could not but detect the parental will in this.

Then with regard to my social and political views, Mr. Wheeler joined

with his son in openly deriding them. In Leslie's case the thing never

went beyond friendly banter. Leslie had no political opinions; he

laughed joyously at the mere notion of bothering his head about such

matters for a moment. And, in his way, he represented an enormous

section of the younger generation of Englishmen in this. The father, on

the other hand, was equally typical of his class and generation. This

was how he talked to me over his port:--

"I tell you what it is, you know, Mordan: you're a regular firebrand,

you know; by Jove, you are; an out-and-out Socialistic Radical: that's

what you are. By gad, sir, I don't mince my words. I consider

that--er--opinions like yours are a danger to the country; I do,

indeed; a danger to the country, and--er--to the--to the Empire. I do,

by gad. And as for your notions about disarmament and that, why, even if

our army reductions are justifiable, which, upon my word, I very much

doubt, it's ridiculous to suppose we can afford to cut down our Navy.

No, sir, the British Navy is Britain's safeguard, and it ought not to be

tampered with. I'm an out-and-out Imperialist myself, and--er--I can

tell you I have no patience with your Little Englandism."

I am not at all sure whether the class Mr. Wheeler belonged to was not

almost the most dangerous class of all. The recent elections showed this

class to be a minority. Of course, this section had its strong men, but

that it also included a large number of men like Leslie's father was a

fact--a fact which yielded pitiful evidence of its weakness. These men

called themselves "out-and-out Imperialists," and had not a notion of

even the meaning of the word they used. Still less had they any notion

of accepting any role which involved the bearing of responsibilities,

the discharge of civic and national duties.

Mr. Wheeler's aim in life was to make money and to enjoy himself. He

would never have exercised his right to vote if voting had involved

postponing dinner. He liked to talk of the British Empire, but he did

not even know precisely of what countries it consisted, and I think he

would cheerfully have handed Canada to France, Australia to Germany,

India to Russia, and South Africa to the Boers, if by so doing he could

have escaped the paying of income-tax.

On Sunday night, my last night at Weybridge, I walked home from church

alone with Sylvia. Marjory was in bed with a sore throat, and whatever

their notions as to my undesirability, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wheeler were

inclined to attend evening service. Leslie was not home from golf at

Byfleet. We were late for dinner, Sylvia and I, and during our walk she

promised to write to me regularly, and I promised many things, and

suggested many things, and was only deterred from actual declaration by

the thought of the poor little sum which stood between me and actual

want.

Next morning I went up to town with Leslie and his father to open my

campaign in London. As a first step toward procuring work, I was to

present a letter of introduction from a Cambridge friend to the editor

of the _Daily Gazette_. After that, as Leslie said, I was to "reform

England inside out."

THE LAUNCHING

"O Friend! I know not which way I must look

For comfort, being, as I am, opprest

To think that now our life is only drest

For show; mean handi-work of craftsman, cook,

Or groom!--We must run glittering like a brook

In the open sunshine, or we are unblest;

The wealthiest man among us is the best;

No grandeur now in Nature or in book

Delight us...."

WORDSWORTH.

Looking back now upon that lonely launch of mine in London, I see a very

curious and sombre picture. In the living I am sure there must have been

mitigations, and light as well as shade. In the retrospect it seems one

long disillusion. I see myself, and the few folk with whom my relations

were intimate, struggling like ants across a grimy stage, in the midst

of an inferno of noise, confusion, pointless turmoil, squalor, and

ultimate cataclysm. The whole picture is lurid, superhuman in its

chaotic gloom; but in the living, I know there were gleams of sunlight.

The tragic muddle of that period was so monstrous, that even we who

lived through it are apt in retrospect to see only the gloom and

confusion. It is natural, therefore, that those who did not live through

it should be utterly unable to discern any glimpse of relief in the

picture. And that leads to misconception.

As a fact, I found very much to admire in London when I sallied forth

from the obscure lodging I had chosen in a Bloomsbury back street, on

the morning which brought an end to my stay with the Wheelers at

Weybridge. Also, it was not given to me at that time to recognize as

such one tithe of the madness and badness of the state of affairs. Some

wholly bad features were quite good in my eyes then.

London still clung to its "season," as it was called, though motor-cars

and railway facilities had entirely robbed this of its sharply defined

nineteenth-century limits. Very many people, even among the wealthy,

lived entirely in London, spending their week-ends in this or that

country or seaside resort, and devoting the last months of summer with,

in many cases, the first months of autumn, to holiday-making on the

Continent, or in Scotland, or on the English moors or coasts.

The London season was not over when I reached town, and in the western

residential quarters the sun shone brightly upon many-coloured awnings

and beautiful decorative plants and flowers. The annual rents paid by

people who lived behind these flowers and awnings frequently ran into

thousands of pounds, with ten shillings in each pound additional by way

of rates and taxes. To live at all, in this strata, would cost a man and

his wife perhaps eighty to a hundred pounds a week, without anything

which would have been called extravagance.

Hundreds of people who lived in this way had neighbours within a

hundred yards of their front doors who never had enough to eat. Even

such people as these had to pay preposterous rents for the privilege of

huddling together in a single wretched room. But many of their wealthy

neighbours spent hundreds, and even thousands of pounds a year over

securing comfort and happiness for such domestic animals as horses,

dogs, cats, and the like. Amiable, kindly gentlefolk they were, with

tender hearts and ready sympathies. Most of them were interested in some

form of charity. Many of them specialized, and these would devote much

energy to opposing the work of other charitable specialists. Lady

So-and-so, who advocated this panacea, found herself bitterly opposed by

Sir So-and-so, who wanted all sufferers to be made to take his nostrum

in his special way. Then sometimes poor Lady So-and-so would throw up

her panacea in a huff, and concentrate her energies upon the work of

some society for converting Jews, who did not want to be converted, or

for supplying red flannel petticoats for South Sea Island girls, who

infinitely preferred cotton shifts and floral wreaths. Even these futile

charities were permitted to overlap one another to a bewilderingly

wasteful extent.

But the two saddest aspects of the whole gigantic muddle so far as

charitable work went, were undoubtedly these: The fact that much of it

went to produce a class of men and women who would not do any kind of

work because they found that by judicious sponging they could live and

obtain alcohol and tobacco in idleness; and the fact that where

charitable endeavour infringed upon vested interests, licit or illicit,

it was savagely opposed by the persons interested.

The discipline of the national schools was slack, intermittent, and of

short reach. There was positively no duty to the State which a youth was

bound to observe. Broadly, it might be said that at that time discipline

simply did not enter at all into the life of the poor of the towns, and

charity of every conceivable and inconceivable kind did enter into it at

every turn.

The police service was excellent and crime exceedingly difficult of

accomplishment. The inevitable result was the evolution in the towns of

a class of men and women, but more especially of men, who, though

compact of criminal instincts of every kind, yet committed no offence

against criminal law. They committed nothing. They simply lived,

drinking to excess when possible, determined upon one point only: that

they never would do anything which could possibly be called work. It is

obvious that among such people the sense of duty either to themselves,

to each other, or to the State, was merely non-existent.

London had long since earned the reputation of being the most charitable

city in the world. Its share in the production of an immense loafer

class formed one sad aspect of London's charity when I first came to

know the city. Another was the opposition of vested interests--the

opposition of the individual to the welfare of the mass. One found it

everywhere. An instance I call to mind (it happened to be brought

sharply home to me) struck at the root of the terribly rapid production

of degenerates, by virtue of its relation to pauper children--that is,

the children to whom the State, through its boards of guardians, stood

in the light of parents, because their natural parents were dead, or in

prison, or in lunatic asylums, or hopelessly far gone in the state of

criminal inactivity which qualified so many for all three estates.

Huge institutions were built at great expense for the accommodation of

these little unfortunates. Here they were housed in the most costly

manner, the whole work of the establishment being carried on by a highly

paid staff of servants and officials. The children were not allowed to

do anything at all, beyond the learning by rote of various theories

which there was no likelihood of their ever being able to apply to any

reality of life with which they would come in contact.

They listened to lectures on the making of dainty dishes in the best

style of French cookery, and in many cases they never saw a box of

matches. They learned to repeat poetry as parrots might, but did not

know the difference between shavings and raw coffee. They learned vague

smatterings of Roman history, but did not know how to clean their boots

or brush their hair. It was as though experts had been called upon to

devise a scheme whereby children might be reared into their teens

without knowing that they were alive or where they lived, and this with

the greatest possible outlay of money per child. Then, at a given age,

these children were put outside the massive gates of the institutions

and told to run away and become good citizens.

It followed as a matter of course that most of them fell steadily and

rapidly into the pit; the place occupied by the criminally inactive, the

"public-house props." So they returned poor, heavy-laden creatures, by

way of charity, to the institutions of the "rates," thus completing the

vicious circle of life forced upon them by an incredibly wrong-headed,

topsyturvy administration.

For the maintenance of this vicious circle enormous sums of public money

were required. Failing such vast expenditure, Nature unaided would have

righted matters to some extent, and the Poor Law guardians would have

become by so much the less wielders of power and influence, dispensers

of public money. Some of these Poor Law guardians gave up more or less

honest trades to take to Poor Law guardianship as a business; and they

waxed fat upon it.

Every now and again came disclosures. Guardians were shown to have paid

ten shillings a score for such and such a commodity this year, and next

year to have refused a tender for the supply of the same article at 9s.

8d. a score, in favour of the tender of a relative or protege of one of

their number at 109s. 8d. a score. I remember the newspapers showing up

such cases as these during the week of my arrival in London. The public

read and shrugged shoulders.

"Rascally thieves, these guardians," said the Public; and straightway

forgot the whole business in the rush of its own crazy race for money.

"But," cried the Reformer to the Public, "this is really your business.

It is your duty as citizens to stop this infamous traffic. Don't you see

how you yourselves are being robbed?"

You must picture our British Public of the day as a flushed, excited

man, hurrying wildly along in pursuit of two phantoms--money and

pleasure. These he desired to grasp for himself, and he was being

furiously jostled by millions of his fellows, each one of whom desired

just the same thing, and nothing else. Faintly, amidst the frantic

turmoil, came the warning voices in the wilderness:

"This is your business. It is your duty as citizens," etc.

Over his shoulder, our poor possessed Public would fling his answer:

"Leave me alone. I haven't time to attend to it. I'm too busy. You

mustn't interrupt me. Why the deuce don't the Government see to it? Lot

of rascals! Don't bother me. I represent commerce, and, whatever you do,

you must not in any way interfere with the Freedom of Trade."

The band of the reformers was considerable, embracing as it did the

better, braver sort of statesmen, soldiers, sailors, clergy, authors,

journalists, sociologists, and the whole brotherhood of earnest

thinkers. But the din and confusion was frightful, the pace at which the

million lived was terrific; and, after all, the cries of the reformers

all meant the same thing, the one thing the great, sweating public was

determined not to hear, and not to act on. They all meant:

"Step out from your race a moment. Your duties are here. You are passing

them all by. Come to your duties."

It was like a Moslem call to prayer; but, alas! it was directed at a

people who had sloughed all pretensions to be ranked among those who

respond to such calls, to any calls which would distract them from their

objective in the pelting pursuit of money and pleasure.

But I am digressing--the one vice which, unfortunately for us, we never

indulged or condoned at the time of my arrival in London. I wanted to

give an instance of that aspect of charity and attempted social reform

which aroused the opposition of vested interests and chartered brigands

in the great money hunt. It was this: A certain charitable lady gave

some years of her life to the study of those conditions in which, as I

have said, the criminally inactive, the hopelessly useless, were

produced by authorized routine, at a ruinous cost in money and

degeneracy, and to the great profit of an unscrupulous few.

This lady then gave some further years, not to mention money, influence,

and energy, to the evolution of a scheme by which these pauper children

could really be made good and independent citizens, and that at an

all-round cost of about one-fifth of the price of the guardians' method

for converting them into human wrecks and permanent charges upon the

State. The wise practicability of this lady's system was admitted by

independent experts, and denied by nobody. But it was swept aside and

crushed, beaten down with vicious, angry thoroughness, in one

quarter--the quarter of vested interest and authority; quietly,

passively discouraged in various other quarters; and generally ignored,

as another interrupting duty call, by the rushing public.

Here, then, were three kinds of opposition--the first active and

deadly, the other two passive and fatal, because they withheld needed

support. The reason of the first, the guardians' opposition, was frankly

and shamelessly admitted in London at the time of my arrival there. The

guardians said:

"This scheme would reduce the rates. We want more rates. It would reduce

the amount of money at our disposal. We aim at increasing that. It would

divert certain streams of cash from our own channel into other channels

in other parts of the Empire. We won't have it." But their words were

far less civil and more heated than these, though the sense of them was

as I have said.

The quiet, passive opposition was that of other workers in charity and

reform. They said in effect:

"Yes, the scheme is all right--an excellent scheme. But why do you take

it upon yourself to bring it forward in this direct manner? Are you not

aware of the existence of our B---- nostrum for pauper children, or our

C---- specific for juvenile emigration? Your scheme, admirable as it is,

ignores both these, and therefore you must really excuse us if we----

Quite so! But, of course, as co-workers in the good cause, we wish you

well----", and so forth.

The opposition of the general public I have explained. It was not really

opposition. It was simply a part of the disease of the period; the

dropsical, fatty degeneration of a people. But the mere fact that the

reformers sent forth their cries and still laboured beside the public's

crowded race-course; that such people as the lady I have mentioned

existed--and there were many like her--should show that London as I

found it was not all shadow and gloom, as it seems when one looks back

upon it from the clear light of better days.

The darkness, the confusion, and the din, were not easy to see and hear

through then. From this distance they are more impenetrable; but I know

the light did break through continually in places, and good men and

women held wide the windows of their consciousness to welcome it,

striving their utmost to carry it into the thick of the fight. Many

broke their hearts in the effort; but there were others, and those who

fell had successors. The heart of our race never was of the stuff that

can be broken. It was the strongest thing in all that tumultuous world

of my youth, and I recall now the outstanding figures of men already

gray and bowed by long lives of strenuous endeavour, who yet fought

without pause at this time on the side of those who strove to check the

mad, blind flight of the people.

London, as I entered it, was a battle-field; the perverse waste of human

energy and life was frightful; but it was not quite the unredeemed chaos

which it seems as we look back upon it.

Even in the red centre of the stampede (Fleet Street is within the City

boundaries) men in the race took time for the exercise of human

kindliness, when opportunity was brought close enough to them. The

letter I took to the editor of the _Daily Gazette_ was from an old

friend of his who knew, and told him, of my exact circumstances. This

gentleman received me kindly and courteously. He and his like were

among the most furiously hurried in the race, but their handling of

great masses of diffuse information gave them, in many cases, a wide

outlook, and where, as often happened, they were well balanced as well

as honest, I think they served their age as truly as any of their

contemporaries, and with more effect than most.

This gentleman talked to me for ten minutes, during which time he

learned most of all there was to know about my little journalistic and

debating experience at Cambridge, and the general trend of my views and

purposes. I do not think he particularly desired my services; but, on

the other hand, I was not an absolute ignoramus. I had written for

publication; I had enthusiasm; and there was my Cambridge friend's

letter.

"Well, Mr. Mordan," he said, turning toward a table littered deep with

papers, and cumbered with telephones and bells, "I cannot offer you

anything very brilliant at the moment; but I see no reason why you

should not make a niche for yourself. We all have to do that, you

know--or drop out to make way for others. You probably know that in

Fleet Street, more perhaps than elsewhere, the race is to the swift.

There are no reserved seats. The best I can do for you now is to enter

you on the reporting staff. It is stretching a point somewhat to make

the pay fifty shillings a week for a beginning. That is the best I can

do. Would you care to take that?"

"Certainly," I told him; "and I'm very much obliged to you for the

chance."

"Right. Then you might come in to-morrow. I will arrange with the

news-editor. And now----" He looked up, and I took my hat. Then he

looked down again, as though seeking something on the floor. "Well, I

think that's all. Of course, it rests with you to make your own place,

or--or lose it. I sympathize with what you have told me of your

views--of course. You know the policy of the paper. But you must

remember that running a newspaper is a complex business. One's methods

cannot always be direct. Life is made up of compromises, and--er--at

times a turn to the left is the shortest way to the right--er--Good

night!"

Thus I was given my chance within a few hours of my descent upon the

great roaring City. I was spared much. Even then I knew by hearsay, as I

subsequently learned for myself, that hundreds of men of far wider

experience and greater ability than mine were wearily tramping London's

pavements at that moment, longing, questing bitterly for work that would

bring them half the small salary I was to earn.

I wrote to Sylvia that night, from my little room among the cat-infested

chimney-pots of Bloomsbury; and I am sure my letter did not suggest that

London was a very gloomy place. My hopes ran high.

[Illustration: THE ROARING CITY]

A JOURNALIST'S EQUIPMENT

"... Rapine, avarice, expense,

This is idolatry; and these we adore:

Plain living and high thinking are no more:

The homely beauty of the good old cause

Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,

And pure religion breathing household laws."

WORDSWORTH.

Acting on the instructions I had received overnight, I presented myself

at the office of the _Daily Gazette_ in good time on the morning after

my interview with the editor. A pert boy showed me into the

news-editor's room, after an interval of waiting, and I found myself

confronting the man who controlled my immediate destiny. He was

dictating telegrams to a shorthand writer, and, for the moment, took no

notice whatever of me. I stood at the end of his table, hat in hand,

wondering how so young-looking a man came to be occupying his chair.

He looked about my age, but was a few years older. His face was as

smooth as the head of a new axe, and had something else chopper-like

about it. He reminded me of pictures I had seen in the advertisement

pages of American magazines; pictures showing a wedge-like human face,

from the lips of which some such an assertion as "It's _you_ I want!"

was supposed to be issuing. I subsequently learned that this Mr.

Charles N. Pierce had spent several years in New York, and that he was

credited with having largely increased the circulation of the _Daily

Gazette_ since taking over his present position. He suddenly raised the

even, mechanical tone in which he dictated, and snapped out the words:

"Right. Get on with those now, and come back in five minutes."

Then he switched his gaze on to me, like a searchlight.

"Mr. Mordan, I believe?"

I admitted the charge with my best smile. Mr. Pierce ignored the smile,

and said:

"University man?"

Accepting his cue as to brevity, I said: "Yes. Corpus Christi,

Cambridge."

He pursed his thin lips. "Ah well," he said, "you'll get over that."

In his way he was perfectly right; but his way was as coldly offensive

as any I had ever met with.

"Well, Mr. Mordan, I've only three things to say. Reports for this paper

must be sound English; they must be live stories; they must be short.

You might ask a boy to show you the reporters' room. You'll get your

assignment presently. As a day man, you'll be here from ten to six.

That's all."

And his blade of a face descended into the heart of a sheaf of papers.

As I reached the door the blade rose again, to emit a kind of thin bark:

"Ah!"

I turned on my heel, waiting.

"Do you know anything about spelling?"

I tried to look pleasant, as I said I thought I was to be relied on in

this.

"Well, ask my secretary for tickets for the meeting at Memorial Hall

to-day; something to do with spelling. Don't do more than thirty or

forty lines. Right."

And the blade fell once more, leaving me free to make my escape, which I

did with a considerable sense of relief. I found the secretary a meek

little clerk, with a curious hidden vein of timid facetiousness. He

supplied me with the necessary ticket and a hand-bill of particulars.

Then he said:

"Mr. Pierce is quite bright and pleasant this morning."

"Oh, is he?" I said.

"Yes, very--for him. He's all right, you know, when you get into his

way. Of course, he's a real hustler--cleverest journalist in London,

they say."

"Really!" I think I introduced the right note of admiration. At all

events, it seemed to please this little pale-eyed rabbit of a man, who,

as I found later, was reverentially devoted to his bullying chief, and

positively took a kind of fearful joy in being more savagely browbeaten

by Pierce than any other man in the building. A queer taste, but a

fortunate one for a man in his particular position.

For myself, I was at once repelled and gagged by Pierce's manner. I

believe the man had ability, though I think this was a good deal

overrated by himself, and by others, at his dictation; and I dare say he

was a good enough fellow at heart. His manner was aggressive and

feverish enough to be called a symptom of the disease of the period. If

the blood in his veins sang any song at all to Mr. Pierce, the refrain

of that song must have been, "Hurry, hurry, hurry!" He and his like

never stopped to ask "Whither?" or "Why?" They had not time. And

further, if pressed for reasons, destination, and so forth, they would

have admitted, to themselves at all events, that there could be no other

goal than success; and that success could mean no other thing than the

acquisition of money; and that the man who thought otherwise must be a

fool--a fool who would soon drop out altogether, to go under, among

those who were broken by the way.

My general aim and purpose in journalistic work, at the outset, was the

serving of social reform in everything that I did. As I saw it, society

was in a parlous state indeed, and needed awaking to recognition of the

fact, to the crying need for reforms in every direction. That attitude

was justifiable enough in all conscience. The trouble was that I was at

fault, first, in my diagnosis; second, in my notions as to what kind of

remedies were required; and third, as to the application of those

remedies.

Like the rest of the minority whose thoughts were not entirely occupied

by the pursuit of pleasure and personal gain, I saw that the greatest

obstacle in the path of the reformer was public indifference. But with

regard to the causes of that indifference, I was entirely astray. I

clung still to the nineteenth-century attitude, which had been

justifiable enough during a good portion of that century, but had

absolutely ceased to be justifiable before its end came. This was the

attitude of demanding the introduction of reforms from above, from the

State.

Though I fancied myself in advance of my time in thought, when I joined

the staff of the _Daily Gazette_, I really was essentially of it. Even

my obscure work as reporter very soon brought me into close contact with

some of the dreadful sores which disfigured the body social and politic

at that time. But do you think they taught me anything? No more than

they taught the blindest racer after money in all London. They moved me,

moved me deeply; they stirred the very foundations of my being; for I

was far from being insensitive. But not even in the most glaringly

obvious detail did they move me in the right direction. They merely

filled me with resentment, and a passionate desire to bring improvement,

aid, betterment; a desire to force the authorities into some action.

Never once did it occur to me that the movement must come from the

people themselves.

Poverty, though frequently a dreadful complication, was far from being

at the root of all the sores. The average respectable working-class

wage-earner with a wife and family, who earned from 25s. to 35s. or 40s.

a week, would spend a quarter of that wage upon his own drinking;

thereby not alone making saving for a rainy day impossible, but docking

his family of some of the real necessities of life. But this was

accepted as a matter of course. The man wanted the beer; he must have

it. The State made absolutely no demand whatever upon such a man. But it

did for him and his, more than he did for himself and his family. And,

giving positively nothing to the State, he complainingly demanded yet