mountain worlds, to ports and fortresses and lighthouses and
watch-towers and grazing lands and corn lands all about the globe. Once
more I traverse Victoria Street, grimy and dark, where the Agents of the
Empire jostle one another, pass the big embassies in the West End
with their flags and scutcheons, follow the broad avenue that leads to
Buckingham Palace, witness the coming and going of troops and officials
and guests along it from every land on earth.... Interwoven in the
texture of it all, mocking, perplexing, stimulating beyond measure, is
the gleaming consciousness, the challenging knowledge: "You and your
kind might still, if you could but grasp it here, mould all the destiny
of Man!"

4

My first three years in Parliament were years of active discontent. The
little group of younger Liberals to which I belonged was very ignorant
of the traditions and qualities of our older leaders, and quite out of
touch with the mass of the party. For a time Parliament was enormously
taken up with moribund issues and old quarrels. The early Educational
legislation was sectarian and unenterprising, and the Licensing Bill
went little further than the attempted rectification of a Conservative
mistake. I was altogether for the nationalisation of the public-houses,
and of this end the Bill gave no intimations. It was just beer-baiting.
I was recalcitrant almost from the beginning, and spoke against the
Government so early as the second reading of the first Education Bill,
the one the Lords rejected in 1906. I went a little beyond my intention
in the heat of speaking,--it is a way with inexperienced man. I called
the Bill timid, narrow, a mere sop to the jealousies of sects and
little-minded people. I contrasted its aim and methods with the manifest
needs of the time.

I am not a particularly good speaker; after the manner of a writer I
worry to find my meaning too much; but this was one of my successes. I
spoke after dinner and to a fairly full House, for people were already
a little curious about me because of my writings. Several of the
Conservative leaders were present and stayed, and Mr. Evesham,
I remember, came ostentatiously to hear me, with that engaging
friendliness of his, and gave me at the first chance an approving "Hear,
Hear!" I can still recall quite distinctly my two futile attempts to
catch the Speaker's eye before I was able to begin, the nervous quiver
of my rather too prepared opening, the effect of hea