old plunger you used to be, Britten," I said. "You're
going too far with all your might for the sake of the damns. Like a
donkey that drags its cart up a bank to get thistles. There's depths in
Liberalism--"

"We were talking about Liberals."

"Liberty!"

"Liberty! What do YOOR little lot know of liberty?"

"What does any little lot know of liberty?"

"It waits outside, too big for our understanding. Like the night and the
stars. And lust, Remington! lust and bitterness! Don't I know them? with
all the sweetness and hope of life bitten and trampled, the dear eyes
and the brain that loved and understood--and my poor mumble of a life
going on! I'm within sight of being a drunkard, Remington! I'm a failure
by most standards! Life has cut me to the bone. But I'm not afraid of it
any more. I've paid something of the price, I've seen something of the
meaning."

He flew off at a tangent. "I'd rather die in Delirium Tremens," he
cried, "than be a Crampton or a Lewis...."

"Make-believe. Make-believe." The phrase and Britten's squat gestures
haunted me as I walked homeward alone. I went to my room and stood
before my desk and surveyed papers and files and Margaret's admirable
equipment of me.

I perceived in the lurid light of Britten's suggestions that so it was
Mr. George Alexander would have mounted a statesman's private room....

3

I was never at any stage a loyal party man. I doubt if party will
ever again be the force it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Men are becoming increasingly constructive and selective,
less patient under tradition and the bondage of initial circumstances.
As education becomes more universal and liberating, men will sort
themselves more and more by their intellectual temperaments and less and
less by their accidental associations. The past will rule them less; the
future more. It is not simply party but school and college and county
and country that lose their glamour. One does not hear nearly as much
as our forefathers did of the "old Harrovian," "old Arvonian," "old
Etonian" claim to this or that unfair advantage or unearnt sympathy.
Even the Scotch and the Devonians weaken a little in their clannishness.
A widening sense of fair play destroys such things. They follow
freemasonry down--freemasonry of which one is chiefly reminded nowadays
in England by propitiatory symbols outside shady public-houses....

There is, of course, a type of man which clings very