er. I met Clare Potter in the
street the day after it came out, and she cut me dead. I expect she
thought I had written it. I am sure she never read the _Fact_, but no
doubt the family 'attention had been drawn to' the article, as people
always express it when writing to a paper to remonstrate about something
in it they haven't liked. I suppose they think it would be a score for
the paper if they admitted that they had come across it in the natural
course of things--anyhow, they want to imply that it is, of course, a
paper decent people don't see--like _John Bull_, or the _People_.

When I met Johnny Potter, he grinned, and said, 'Good for you, old bean.
Or was it Peacock? My mother's persuaded it was you, and she'll never
forgive you. Poor old mater, she thought her new book rather on the
intellectual side. Full of psycho-analysis, and all that.... I say, I
wish Peacock would send me Guthrie's new book to do.'

That was Johnny all over. He was always asking for what he wanted,
instead of waiting for what we thought fit to send him. I was sure that
when he published a book, he'd write round to the editors telling them
who was to review it.

I said, 'I think Neilson's going to do it,' and determined that it should
be so. Johnny's brand of grabbing bored me. Jane did the same. A greedy
pair, never seeing why they shouldn't have all they wanted.

3

It was at this time (July) that a long, drawn-out quarrel started between
the _Weekly Fact_ and the _Daily Haste_ about the miners' strike. The
Pinkerton press did its level best to muddle the issues of that strike,
by distorting some facts, passing over others, and inventing more. By the
time you'd read a leader in the _Haste_ on the subject, you'd have got
the impression that the strikers were Bolshevists helped by German money
and aiming at a social revolution, instead of discontented, needy and
greedy British workmen, grabbing at more money and less work, in the
normal, greedy, human way we all have. Bonar Law, departing for once
rather unhappily from his 'the Government have given me no information'
attitude, announced that the miners were striking against conscription
and the war with Russia. Some Labour papers said they were striking
against the Government's shifty methods and broken pledges. I am sure
both parties credited them with too much idealism and too little plain
horse-sense. They were striking to get the pay and hours they wanted out
of the Government, a