on to the floor, where they scrambled and punched each
other....

"There is a fine of eighteenpence," said Roger, "for disorderly conduct.
I'll just enter it against you both!"

The combatants rose and routed Roger, and when they had disposed of him,
Ninian agreed to let Gilbert use his line about the frozen meat. "I
shall expect you to put a note in the programme that the epigram in the
second act was supplied by Mr. Ninian Graham," he said.

"_The_ epigram!" Gilbert exclaimed. "_The_ epigram!"

"Why, will there be any more?" said Ninian innocently.

Hostilities thereupon broke out again.

4

They sat up late that night talking of themselves and of England and
public affairs. Roger was interested in Trade Unions, and he lamented
the fact that the Tories had allowed an alliance to be formed between
Labour and Liberalism. "Ask any workman you meet in the street whether
he'd rather work for a Liberal or a Tory, and I bet you what you like,
the chances are that he'll plump for the Tory. His experience is that
the Tory's the better employer, and the reason why that's so is that the
Liberal conducts his business on principles, whereas the Tory conducts
his on instincts. In principle, the Liberal concedes most things to the
workman, but in practice he doesn't: in principle, the Tory concedes
nothing to the workman, but in practice he treats him decently. The
workman knows that, but the fool goes and votes for the Liberal, and the
fool of a Tory lets him!... You know," he went on, "this Trade Union
movement has got on to wrong lines altogether. Their chief function
seems to be to protect their members from ... well, from being cheated.
That's what it comes to. I don't blame 'em. They've had to behave like
that. I don't think any one can read Webb's 'Industrial Democracy' and
'The History of Trade Unionism' without feeling that, on the whole,
employers have been rather caddish to workmen ... so I don't blame the
Unions for making so much fuss about their rights. But I'd like to see
them making as much fuss about the quality of the work done by their
members. That's their real function. It isn't enough to keep up the
standard of wages and of conditions of employment--they ought also to
keep up the standard of work!"

This led them into a wrangle about the responsibility for the blame for
this indifference to quality of work.

"I suppose," said Roger, "employers and employed are to blame. I think
myself it's the res