. We meant to make the paper right and
good down to the smallest detail, and we set ourselves at this with
extraordinary zeal. It wasn't our intention to show our political
motives too markedly at first, and through all the dust storm and
tumult and stress of the political struggle of 1910, we made a little
intellectual oasis of good art criticism and good writing. It was the
firm belief of nearly all of us that the Lords were destined to be
beaten badly in 1910, and our game was the longer game of reconstruction
that would begin when the shouting and tumult of that immediate conflict
were over. Meanwhile we had to get into touch with just as many good
minds as possible.

As we felt our feet, I developed slowly and carefully a broadly
conceived and consistent political attitude. As I will explain later,
we were feminist from the outset, though that caused Shoesmith and Gane
great searching of heart; we developed Esmeer's House of Lords reform
scheme into a general cult of the aristocratic virtues, and we did much
to humanise and liberalise the narrow excellencies of that Break-up of
the Poor Law agitation, which had been organised originally by Beatrice
and Sidney Webb. In addition, without any very definite explanation to
any one but Esmeer and Isabel Rivers, and as if it was quite a small
matter, I set myself to secure a uniform philosophical quality in our
columns.

That, indeed, was the peculiar virtue and characteristic of the BLUE
WEEKLY. I was now very definitely convinced that much of the confusion
and futility of contemporary thought was due to the general need of
metaphysical training.... The great mass of people--and not simply
common people, but people active and influential in intellectual
things--are still quite untrained in the methods of thought and
absolutely innocent of any criticism of method; it is scarcely a
caricature to call their thinking a crazy patchwork, discontinuous and
chaotic. They arrive at conclusions by a kind of accident, and do not
suspect any other way may be found to their attainment. A stage above
this general condition stands that minority of people who have at
some time or other discovered general terms and a certain use
for generalisations. They are--to fall back on the ancient
technicality--Realists of a crude sort. When I say Realist of course
I mean Realist as opposed to Nominalist, and not Realist in the almost
diametrically different sense of opposition to Idealist. Such