on it
came as the revolt of the workers. Rodbertus we never heard of and
the Fabian Society we did not understand; Marx and Morris, the Chicago
Anarchists, JUSTICE and Social Democratic Federation (as it was then)
presented socialism to our minds. Hatherleigh was the leading exponent
of the new doctrines in Trinity, and the figure upon his wall of a
huge-muscled, black-haired toiler swaggering sledgehammer in hand across
a revolutionary barricade, seemed the quintessence of what he had to
expound. Landlord and capitalist had robbed and enslaved the workers,
and were driving them quite automatically to inevitable insurrection.
They would arise and the capitalist system would flee and vanish like
the mists before the morning, like the dews before the sunrise, giving
place in the most simple and obvious manner to an era of Right and
Justice and Virtue and Well Being, and in short a Perfectly Splendid
Time.

I had already discussed this sort of socialism under the guidance of
Britten, before I went up to Cambridge. It was all mixed up with ideas
about freedom and natural virtue and a great scorn for kings, titles,
wealth and officials, and it was symbolised by the red ties we wore. Our
simple verdict on existing arrangements was that they were "all wrong."
The rich were robbers and knew it, kings and princes were usurpers and
knew it, religious teachers were impostors in league with power,
the economic system was an elaborate plot on the part of the few to
expropriate the many. We went about feeling scornful of all the current
forms of life, forms that esteemed themselves solid, that were, we knew,
no more than shapes painted on a curtain that was presently to be torn
aside....

It was Hatherleigh's poster and his capacity for overstating things, I
think, that first qualified my simple revolutionary enthusiasm. Perhaps
also I had met with Fabian publications, but if I did I forget the
circumstances. And no doubt my innate constructiveness with its
practical corollary of an analytical treatment of the material supplied,
was bound to push me on beyond this melodramatic interpretation of human
affairs.

I compared that Working Man of the poster with any sort of working man
I knew. I perceived that the latter was not going to change, and indeed
could not under any stimulus whatever be expected to change, into the
former. It crept into my mind as slowly and surely as the dawn creeps
into a room that the former was not, as I