and to
migrate to those parts of the Empire which actually needed their labour;
the increasing difficulty of the problem which was wrapped up in the
question of "What to do with our sons"; the absolute refusal of the
nation to admit of universal military service; the successive closing by
tariff of one foreign market after another against British manufactures,
and the hysterical refusal of the people to protect their own markets
from what was graphically called the "dumping" into them of the surplus
products of other peoples.

It is a queer catalogue, with a ring of insanity about it; but these
were the merest commonplaces of life at that time, and the man who
rebelled against them was a crank. My friend Leslie's attitude was
natural enough, therefore; and, with a few exceptions, it was my own,
for, curiously enough, the political school I favoured was, root and
branch, opposed to the only possible remedies for this situation.
Liberals, Radicals, Socialists, and the majority of those who arrogated
to themselves the title of Social Reformers; these were the people who
insisted, if not upon the actual evils and sufferings indicated in this
illustrative note of social contradictions, then upon violent opposition
to their complements in the way of mitigation and relief. And I was
keenly of their number.

Many of these matters I discussed, or perhaps I should say, dilated
upon, in conversation with Sylvia, while her brother and father were in
London. We would begin with racquets in the tennis-court, and end late
for some meal, after long wanderings among the pines. And in Sylvia, as
it seemed to me, I found the most delightfully intelligent
responsiveness, as well as sympathy. My knowledge of feminine nature,
its extraordinary gifts of emotional and personal intuition, was of the
scantiest, if it had any existence at all. But my own emotional side was
active, and my mind an inchoate mass of ideals and more or less
sentimental longings for social betterment. And so, with Sylvia's
gentle acquiescence, I rearranged the world.

Much I have forgotten, and am thus spared the humiliation of recounting.
But, as an example of what I recall, I remember a conversation which
arose from our passing a miniature rifle-range which some local
resident--"Some pompous Jingo of retrogressive tendencies," I called
him--had erected with a view to tempting young Weybridge into
marksmanship; a tolerably forlorn prospect at that time.

"Is it n