aim to
represent the very poor.

Now people like this might quite possibly produce a rational enough
report, and in this or that respect even improve things. Men of
that kind are tolerably kind, tolerably patriotic, and tolerably
business-like. But if any one supposes that men of that kind can
conceivably quiet any real 'quarrel with the Man of the Other Kind, the
man whom I first described, it is frantic. The common worker is angry
exactly because he has found out that all these boards consist of the
same well-dressed Kind of Man, whether they are called Governmental or
Capitalist. If any one hopes that he will reconcile the poor, I say, as
I said at the beginning, that such a one has not looked on the light of
day or dwelt in the land of the living.

But I do not criticise such a Commission except for one most practical
and urgent purpose. It will be answered to me that the first Kind of Man
of whom I spoke could not really be on boards and committees, as modern
England is managed. His dirt, though necessary and honourable, would
be offensive: his speech, though rich and figurative, would be almost
incomprehensible. Let us grant, for the moment, that this is so. This
Kind of Man, with his sooty hair or sanguinary adjectives, cannot be
represented at our committees of arbitration. Therefore, the other Kind
of Man, fairly prosperous, fairly plausible, at home at least with the
middle class, capable at least of reaching and touching the upper class,
he must remain the only Kind of Man for such councils.

Very well. If then, you give at any future time any kind of compulsory
powers to such councils to prevent strikes, you will be driving the
first Kind of Man to work for a particular master as much as if you
drove him with a whip.

THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN

I see that there have been more attempts at the whitewashing of King
John.

But the gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he
believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a
whole. He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not
sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or
merely a humdrum respectability.

I sympathise with the whitewashing of King John, merely because it is
a protest against our waxwork style of history. Everybody is in a
particular attitude, with particular moral attributes; Rufus is always
hunting and Coeur-de-Lion always crusading; Henry VIII always