e political party," said Crupp,
with his eye on me. "You can't get away from that. The Liberals," he
added, "have never done anything for research or literature."

"They had a Royal Commission on the Dramatic Censorship," said Thorns,
with a note of minute fairness. "It shows what they were made of," he
added.

"It's what I've told Remington again and again," said Crupp, "we've
got to pick up the tradition of aristocracy, reorganise it, and make it
work. But he's certainly suggested a method."

"There won't be much aristocracy to pick up," said Dayton, darkly to the
ceiling, "if the House of Lords throws out the Budget."

"All the more reason for picking it up," said Neal. "For we can't do
without it."

"Will they go to the bad, or will they rise from the ashes, aristocrats
indeed--if the Liberals come in overwhelmingly?" said Britten.

"It's we who might decide that," said Crupp, insidiously.

"I agree," said Gane.

"No one can tell," said Thorns. "I doubt if they will get beaten."

It was an odd, fragmentary discussion that night. We were all with ideas
in our minds at once fine and imperfect. We threw out suggestions that
showed themselves at once far inadequate, and we tried to qualify them
by minor self-contradictions. Britten, I think, got more said than any
one. "You all seem to think you want to organise people, particular
groups and classes of individuals," he insisted. "It isn't that. That's
the standing error of politicians. You want to organise a culture.
Civilisation isn't a matter of concrete groupings; it's a matter of
prevailing ideas. The problem is how to make bold, clear ideas prevail.
The question for Remington and us is just what groups of people will
most help this culture forward."

"Yes, but how are the Lords going to behave?" said Crupp. "You yourself
were asking that a little while ago."

"If they win or if they lose," Gane maintained, "there will be a
movement to reorganise aristocracy--Reform of the House of Lords,
they'll call the political form of it."

"Bailey thinks that," said some one.

"The labour people want abolition," said some one. "Let 'em," said
Thorns.

He became audible, sketching a possibility of action.

"Suppose all of us were able to work together. It's just one of those
indeterminate, confused, eventful times ahead when a steady jet of ideas
might produce enormous results."

"Leave me out of it," said Dayton, "IF you please."

"We should," said Thorns