till less how it is that you
belong to the latter.

The twins, who had got firsts in Schools, knew this much.

Johnny improvised hastily, with innocent gray eyes on his father's, 'It's
one of the rules that you mayn't talk about it outside. Anti-Propaganda
League, it is, you see ... for letting other people alone....'

'Well,' said Mr. Potter, who was not spiteful to his children, and
preferred his wife unruffled, 'we'll let you off this time. But you can
take my word for it, it's a silly business. Mother and I will last a
great deal longer than it does. Because we take our stand on human
nature, and you won't destroy that with Leagues.'

Sometimes the twins were really almost afraid they wouldn't.

'You're all very cryptic to-night,' Frank said, and yawned.

Then Mrs. Potter and the girls left the dining-room, and Frank and his
father discussed the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, a measure
which Frank thought would be a pity, but which was advocated by the
Potter press.

Johnny cracked nuts in silence. He thought the Church insincere, a put-up
job, but that dissenters were worse. They should all be abolished, with
other shams. For a short time at Oxford he had given the Church a trial,
even felt real admiration for it, under the influence of his friend Juke,
and after hearing sermons from Father Waggett, Dr. Dearmer, and Canon
Adderley. But he had soon given it up, seen it wouldn't do; the
above-mentioned priests were not representative; the Church as a whole
canted, was hypocritical and Potterish, and must go.

CHAPTER II

ANTI-POTTERS

1

The quest of Potterism, its causes and its cure, took the party of
investigation first to the Cornish coast. Partly because of bathing and
boating, and partly because Gideon, the organiser of the party, wanted to
find out if there was much Potterism in Cornwall, or if Celticism had
withstood it. For Potterism, they had decided, was mainly an Anglo-Saxon
disease. Worst of all in America, that great home of commerce, success,
and the booming of the second-rate. Less discernible in the Latin
countries, which they hoped later on to explore, and hardly existing in
the Slavs. In Russia, said Gideon, who loathed Russians, because he was
half a Jew, it practically did not exist. The Russians were without shame
and without cant, saw things as they were, and proceeded to make them a
good deal worse. That was barbarity, imbecility, and devilishness, but it
was no