w and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech, or
possibly in the middle of a sentence, slip up quietly and take a look
(under glass) at The People, or he uses a microscope, perhaps, or a
reading glass on The People, Mr. Bonar Law's, Mr. Lloyd George's, Ramsay
MacDonald's, Will Crook's, or somebody's. Then he comes back gravely as
if he had got the people attended to now, and finishes what he was
saying.

It is a very queer feeling one has about the People in the House of
Commons.

I mean the feeling of their being under glass; they all seem so
manageable, so quiet and so remote, a kind of glazed-over picture in
still life, of themselves. Every now and then, of course one takes a
member seriously when he steps up to the huge showcase of specimen
crowds, which members are always referring to in their speeches. But
nothing comes of it.

The crowds seem very remote there under the glass. One feels like
smashing something--getting down to closer terms with them--one longs
for a Department Store or a bridge or a 'bus--something that rattles and
bangs and is.

All the while outside the mighty street--that huge megaphone of the
crowd, goes shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But no
one does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring of
silence around it, all England listening, all the little country papers
far away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded
Dailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterlies
all acting as if it mattered....

Even during the coal strike nothing really happened in the House of
Commons. There was a sense of the great serious people, of the crowds on
Westminster Bridge surging softly through glass outside, but nothing got
in. Big Ben boomed down the river, across the pavements, over the
hurrying crowds and over all the men and the women, the real business
men and women. The only thing about the House that seemed to have
anything to do with anybody was Big Ben.

Finally one goes up to Harrod's to get relief, or one takes a 'bus, or
one tries Trafalgar Square, or one sees if one can really get across the
Strand or one does something--almost anything to recall one's self to
real life.

And then, of course, there is Oxford Street.

Almost always after watching the English people express themselves or
straining to express themselves in the House of Commons, I try Oxford
Street.

I know, of course, that as a