roject in
this direction was going on in my mind concurrently with my speculations
about a change of party, like bass and treble in a complex piece of
music. The two drew to a conclusion together. I would not only go over
to Imperialism, but I would attempt to biologise Imperialism.

I thought at first that I was undertaking a monstrous uphill task.
But as I came to look into the possibilities of the matter, a strong
persuasion grew up in my mind that this panic fear of legislative
proposals affecting the family basis was excessive, that things were
much riper for development in this direction than old-experienced people
out of touch with the younger generation imagined, that to phrase
the thing in a parliamentary fashion, "something might be done in the
constituencies" with the Endowment of Motherhood forthwith, provided
only that it was made perfectly clear that anything a sane person could
possibly intend by "morality" was left untouched by these proposals.

I went to work very carefully. I got Roper of the DAILY TELEPHONE and
Burkett of the DIAL to try over a silly-season discussion of State Help
for Mothers, and I put a series of articles on eugenics, upon the fall
in the birth-rate, and similar topics in the BLUE WEEKLY, leading up
to a tentative and generalised advocacy of the public endowment of the
nation's children. I was more and more struck by the acceptance won by a
sober and restrained presentation of this suggestion.

And then, in the fourth year of the BLUE WEEKLY'S career, came the
Handitch election, and I was forced by the clamour of my antagonist,
and very willingly forced, to put my convictions to the test. I returned
triumphantly to Westminster with the Public Endowment of Motherhood
as part of my open profession and with the full approval of the party
press. Applauding benches of Imperialists cheered me on my way to the
table between the whips.

That second time I took the oath I was not one of a crowd of new
members, but salient, an event, a symbol of profound changes and new
purposes in the national life.

Here it is my political book comes to an end, and in a sense my book
ends altogether. For the rest is but to tell how I was swept out of this
great world of political possibilities. I close this Third Book as I
opened it, with an admission of difficulties and complexities, but now
with a pile of manuscript before me I have to confess them unsurmounted
and still entangled.

Yet my aim was