a class, and he instanced the
conflict of motives he found in all the members of his Committee and
most so in himself. He repeated the persuasion he had already confessed
to Dr. Martineau that there was not a single member of the Fuel
Commission but had a considerable drive towards doing the right thing
about fuel, and not one who had a single-minded, unencumbered drive
towards the right thing. "That," said Sir Richmond, "is what makes life
so interesting and, in spite of a thousand tragic disappointments, so
hopeful. Every man is a bad man, every man is a feeble man and every
man is a good man. My motives come and go. Yours do the same. We vary in
response to the circumstances about us. Given a proper atmosphere, most
men will be public-spirited, right-living, generous. Given perplexities
and darkness, most of us can be cowardly and vile. People say you cannot
change human nature and perhaps that is true, but you can change its
responses endlessly. The other day I was in Bohemia, discussing Silesian
coal with Benes, and I went to see the Festival of the Bohemian Sokols.
Opposite to where I sat, far away across the arena, was a great bank of
men of the Sokol organizations, an unbroken brown mass wrapped in their
brown uniform cloaks. Suddenly the sun came out and at a word the whole
body flung back their cloaks, showed their Garibaldi shirts and became
one solid blaze of red. It was an amazing transformation until one
understood what had happened. Yet nothing material had changed but the
sunshine. And given a change in laws and prevailing ideas, and the
very same people who are greedy traders, grasping owners and revolting
workers to-day will all throw their cloaks aside and you will find them
working together cheerfully, even generously, for a common end.
They aren't traders and owners and workers and so forth by any inner
necessity. Those are just the ugly parts they play in the present drama.
Which is nearly at the end of its run."

"That's a hopeful view," said Miss Grammont. "I don't see the flaw in
it--if there is a flaw."

"There isn't one," said Sir Richmond. "It is my chief discovery about
life. I began with the question of fuel and the energy it affords
mankind, and I have found that my generalization applies to all
human affairs. Human beings are fools, weaklings, cowards, passionate
idiots,--I grant you. That is the brown cloak side of them, so to speak.
But they are not such fools and so forth that they c