ions
of the party next week.

I talked, I remember, with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still
larger professional frock-coat, and with a great shock of very fair
hair, who was candidate for some North Country constituency. We
discussed the political outlook, and, like so many Socialists at that
time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Liberal party. I
was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed less vividly in
many others of these Socialist leaders, and which gave me at last a clue
to the whole business. He behaved exactly like a man in possession of
valuable patent rights, who wants to be dealt with. He had an air of
having a corner in ideas. Then it flashed into my head that the whole
Socialist movement was an attempted corner in ideas....

8

Late that night I found myself alone with Margaret amid the debris of
the gathering.

I sat before the fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white and
weary, came and leant upon the mantel.

"Oh, Lord!" said Margaret.

I agreed. Then I resumed my meditation.

"Ideas," I said, "count for more than I thought in the world."

Margaret regarded me with that neutral expression behind which she was
accustomed to wait for clues.

"When you think of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of the
Socialist ideas, and see the men who are running them," I explained....
"A big system of ideas like Socialism grows up out of the obvious common
sense of our present conditions. It's as impersonal as science. All
these men--They've given nothing to it. They're just people who have
pegged out claims upon a big intellectual No-Man's-Land--and don't feel
quite sure of the law. There's a sort of quarrelsome uneasiness....
If we professed Socialism do you think they'd welcome us? Not a man of
them! They'd feel it was burglary...."

"Yes," said Margaret, looking into the fire. "That is just what I felt
about them all the evening.... Particularly Dr. Tumpany."

"We mustn't confuse Socialism with the Socialists," I said; "that's
the moral of it. I suppose if God were to find He had made a mistake in
dates or something, and went back and annihilated everybody from Owen
onwards who was in any way known as a Socialist leader or teacher,
Socialism would be exactly where it is and what it is to-day--a growing
realisation of constructive needs in every man's mind, and a little
corner in party politics. So, I suppose, it will always be.... But they