re all footmen, parlourmaids, comic lodging-letters
and fashionable professional men, whilst the heroes and heroines are
miraculously provided with unlimited dividends, and eat gratuitously,
like the knights in Don Quixote's books of chivalry.

The city papers prate of the competition of Bombay with Manchester and
the like. The real competition is the competition of Regent Street with
the Rue de Rivoli, of Brighton and the south coast with the Riviera, for
the spending money of the American Trusts. What is all this growing
love of pageantry, this effusive loyalty, this officious rising
and uncovering at a wave from a flag or a blast from a brass band?
Imperialism: Not a bit of it. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity roused
by the prevailing smell of money. When Mr Carnegie rattled his millions
in his pockets all England became one rapacious cringe. Only, when
Rhodes (who had probably been reading my Socialism for Millionaires)
left word that no idler was to inherit his estate, the bent backs
straightened mistrustfully for a moment. Could it be that the Diamond
King was no gentleman after all? However, it was easy to ignore a rich
man's solecism. The ungentlemanly clause was not mentioned again; and
the backs soon bowed themselves back into their natural shape.

But I hear you asking me in alarm whether I have actually put all this
tub thumping into a Don Juan comedy. I have not. I have only made my Don
Juan a political pamphleteer, and given you his pamphlet in full by way
of appendix. You will find it at the end of the book. I am sorry to say
that it is a common practice with romancers to announce their hero as
a man of extraordinary genius, and to leave his works entirely to the
reader's imagination; so that at the end of the book you whisper to
yourself ruefully that but for the author's solemn preliminary assurance
you should hardly have given the gentleman credit for ordinary good
sense. You cannot accuse me of this pitiable barrenness, this feeble
evasion. I not only tell you that my hero wrote a revolutionists'
handbook: I give you the handbook at full length for your edification if
you care to read it. And in that handbook you will find the politics of
the sex question as I conceive Don Juan's descendant to understand them.
Not that I disclaim the fullest responsibility for his opinions and for
those of all my characters, pleasant and unpleasant. They are all right
from their several points of view; and their po