n the matter. They had not had the time. They had just
negotiated, like the mere politicians they were, for the Nationalist
vote. They seemed to hope that by a marvel God would pacify Ulster. Lord
Dunraven, Plunkett, were voices crying in the wilderness. The sides in
the party game would as soon have heeded a poet.... But unless Benham
was prepared to subscribe either to Home Rule or Tariff Reform there was
no way whatever open to him into public life. He had had some decisive
conversations. He had no illusions left upon that score....

Here was the real barrier that had kept him inactive for ten months.
Here was the problem he had to solve. This was how he had been left
out of active things, a prey to distractions, excitements, idle
temptations--and Mrs. Skelmersdale.

Running away to shoot big game or explore wildernesses was no remedy.
That was just running away. Aristocrats do not run away. What of his
debt to those men down there in the quarry? What of his debt to the
unseen men in the mines away in the north? What of his debt to the
stokers on the liners, and to the clerks in the city? He reiterated the
cardinal article of his creed: The aristocrat is a privileged man in
order that he may be a public and political man.

But how is one to be a political man when one is not in politics?

Benham frowned at the Weald. His ideas were running thin.

He might hammer at politics from the outside. And then again how? He
would make a list of all the things that he might do. For example he
might write. He rested one hand on his knee and lifted one finger and
regarded it. COULD he write? There were one or two men who ran papers
and seemed to have a sort of independent influence. Strachey, for
example, with his SPECTATOR; Maxse, with his NATIONAL REVIEW. But they
were grown up, they had formed their ideas. He had to learn first.

He lifted a second finger. How to learn? For it was learning that he had
to do.

When one comes down from Oxford or Cambridge one falls into the mistake
of thinking that learning is over and action must begin. But until one
perceives clearly just where one stands action is impossible.

How is one with no experience of affairs to get an experience of affairs
when the door of affairs is closed to one by one's own convictions?
Outside of affairs how can one escape being flimsy? How can one escape
becoming merely an intellectual like those wordy Fabians, those writers,
poseurs, and sham publicists