he only power that of successfully shirking facts. We
were like bankrupts, who cannot summon energy to begin life and work
again in earnest. And we were represented by the most comic parliament
that ever sat in Westminster, upon which it would be too painful here to
expatiate.

One didn't know what had happened, or what was happening, or what was
going to happen. We had won the war. But what was that going to mean?
What were we going to get out of it? What did we want the new world to
be? What did we want this country to be? Every one shouted a different
answer. The December elections seemed to give one answer. But I don't
think it was a true one. The public didn't really want the England of
_John Bull_ and Pemberton Billing; they showed that later.

A good many people, of course, wanted and want revolution and the
International. I don't, and never did. I hate red-flaggery, and all other
flaggery. The sentimentalism of Bob Smillie is as bad as the
sentimentalism of the Pinkerton press; as untruthful, as greedy, as
muddle-headed. Smillie's lot are out to get, and the Potterites out to
keep. The under-dog is more excusable in its aims, but its methods aren't
any more attractive. Juke can swallow it all. But Jukie has let his
naturally clear head get muddled by a mediaeval form of religion.
Religion is like love; it plays the devil with clear thinking. Juke
pretended not to hate even Smillie's interview with the coal dukes. He
applauded when Smillie quoted texts at them. Though I know, of course,
that that sort of thing is mainly a pose on Juke's part, because it
amuses him. Besides, one of the dukes was a cousin of his, who bored him,
so of course he was pleased.

But those texts damned Smillie for ever in my eyes. He had those poor
imbeciles at his mercy--and he gave his whole case away by quoting
irrelevant remarks from ancient Hebrew writers. I wish I had had his
chance for ten minutes; I would have taken it. But the Labour people are
always giving themselves away with both hands to the enemy. I suppose
facts have hit them too hard, and so they shrink away from them--pad them
with sentiment, like uneducated women in villas. They all need--so do the
women--a legal training, to make their minds hard and clear and sharp.
So do journalists. Nearly the whole press is the same, dealing in
emotions and stunts, unable to face facts squarely, in a calm spirit.

It seemed to some of us that spring that there was a chance for