asking him questions of a
peculiarly intimate character. There were less than a dozen people in
the group, apart from Roger and Ninian and Gilbert and Henry, but each
of them had distinguished himself in some fashion at his college. Hilary
Cornwall had taken so many prizes and scholarships that he had lost
count of them, and when he entered the Colonial Office, it became a
commonplace to say of him that he was destined to become Permanent
Under-Secretary at a remarkably youthful age. Gerald Luke had produced
two little books of poetry of such quality that people believed that he
was in the line of great tradition. Ernest Carr had edited Granta so
ably that he was invited to join the staff of the _Times_. Then there
were Ashley Earls, who had had a play produced by the Stage Society, and
Peter Crooks, the chemist, and Edward Allen, who was private secretary
to a Cabinet Minister, and Goeffrey Grant, another journalist, and
Clifford Dartrey, who spent his time in research work and had already
produced a book on Casual Labour in the Building Trades in return for
the Shaw Prize at the London School of Economics.

They called themselves the Improved Tories, although most of them would
have voted at an election for any one but a Conservative candidate.
Ashley Earls and Gerald Luke were Socialists and had only consented to
join the group because they were told that the purpose of it was less
political than sociological.

"You see," Gilbert said to them, "it isn't good for England to have a
Tory Party so dense as this one is, and you'll really be doing useful
work if you help to improve their quality. What is the good of an
Opposition which can do nothing but oppose? Look at that fellow, Sir
Frederick Banbury! What in the name of God is the good of a man like
that? He doesn't make anything ... he just gets in the way. Of course,
that's useful ... but he doesn't know when to get out of the way ...
which is much more useful. And there ought to be people who aren't
content either to get in the way or just get out of it ... there ought
to be people who can shove things along. But there aren't ... except
Balfour, and he's getting old and anyhow he hasn't got much health. You
see what I mean, don't you? There ought to be a strong Opposition,
otherwise the Liberals will develop fatty degeneration of the political
sense.... The trouble with a lot of these fellows is that they believe
that twaddle that Lord Randolph Churchill talked ab