columns of _The Mass_.

I can conceive of no infamy which that journal was not ready to condone,
no offence it would not seek to justify--save and except the crime of
patriotism, loyalty, avowed love of Britain. And this obscene, mad-dog
policy, so difficult even to imagine at this time, was by curious
devious ways identified with Socialism. _The Mass_ was called a
Socialist organ. The fact may have been a libel upon Socialism, if not
upon Socialists; but so it was.

Be it said that at Cambridge I had rather surprised the evangelical
section of my college (Corpus Christi) by the part I played in founding
a short-lived institution called the Anonymous Society, the choicest
spirits in which affected canvas shirts and abstention from the use of
neckties. As Socialists, we invited the waiters of the college to a
soiree, at which a judicious blend of revolutionary economics and
bitter beer was relied upon to provide a flow of reasonable and
inexpensive entertainment. The society lapsed after a time, chiefly
owing, if I remember rightly, to an insufficiency of funds for
refreshments. But I had remained rather a person to be reckoned with at
the Union.

I regarded my meeting with Clement Blaine as something of an event, and
I very cheerfully and quite gratuitously contributed an article to his
journal dealing with some form of government subvention which I held to
be a State duty. (We wasted few words over the duties of the citizen in
those days.) It was as a result of that article that I was invited to a
Socialist soiree in which the moving spirit, at all events in the
refreshment-room, was Mr. Clement Blaine. Here I met a variety of queer
fish who called themselves Socialists. They were of both sexes, and upon
the whole they were a silly, inconsequent set. Their views rather
wearied me, despite my predisposition to favour them.

They were a kind of tepid, ineffectual anarchists, unconvinced and
wholly unconvincing. Broadly speaking, theirs was a policy of blind
reversal. They were not constructive, but they were opposed vaguely to
the existing order of things, and, particularly, to everything British.
They pinned their faith to the foreigner in all things, even though the
foreigner's whole energies might be devoted to the honest endeavour to
raise conditions in his country to a level approaching the British
standard. Any contention against the existing order, and, above all,
anything against Britain, appealed directly to