ch he or she thinks 'so sweet.' The capitalist
has bound his hands and his brain and, if the Eugenists get their
abominable way, he'll bind his emotions and his body too. Hitherto he
has been free to love as he chooses, and that's why he loves such a
lot. It isn't for nothing that a very popular song tells of a Little
Grey Home in the West where people go to amatory bliss 'when the toil
of the long day is o'er.'

"Well, what's the upshot of it all? Merely that the home matters far
more than you imagine, because it's the one place where the Servile
State hasn't really got hold of its victims yet. It's true that a
middle-class home may be deadly; so far I agree with the paper. But I
don't agree that the minor's next step is to smash the home altogether.
No, we've got to save it if we want to save men from being turned into
mere wealth-producing machines. We've got to save it with all its
dangers because it is the expression of genuine and valuable emotion.
You people are all for smashing the home before you've smashed the
system: my idea is just the reverse. When you have a state in which
men can take pride and find beauty in their work, you can go in and
smash the home. If you try and put the home on a business basis you
may help a few middle-class people who have brains and time enough to
quarrel, but you'll be taking from the oppressed their only release and
making life more commercial and sordid than it is at present. Set up a
society where life has rational interests, where a man can express his
desire for beauty without leaving it to nocturnal sentimentality, and
I'm with you. In the meanwhile there's a good deal to be said for The
Little Grey Home in the West. It answers a need. To kill that need
you must smash Industrialism. And that, my Fabian friends, is some
business."

After such an oration, not silly and blatant as the words of Lawrence
often tended to become, it seemed wrong to talk further. Martin, who
was by nature far more sympathetic to the popular taste than was
Rendell, had been influenced by the last speech and the defence of The
Little Grey Home: in his reply he made a considerable recantation. The
society adjourned, the visitors disappeared, and the elect remained to
talk. Once more Woman was the theme, and her position and claims were
thoroughly discussed until, about midnight, the conversation drifted,
like early Greek history, "into the mythical" and fiction succeeded
theory.