ful in
the world. It is worse than Glasgow, worse than Manchester, worse than
Birmingham."

Belfast is, no doubt, the main difficulty. If there were no Belfast the
resistance of the rest of Ulster would be inconsiderable. I admired the
political instinct which enabled Mrs. Ascher to go straight to the very
centre of the situation. But, in all probability, Gorman gave her the
hint. Gorman does not seem to understand how real the Ulster opposition
is, but he has intelligence enough to grasp the importance of Belfast.
What puzzled me first was the extreme bitterness with which Mrs. Ascher
spoke.

"What has Belfast ever given to the world?" she asked.

"Well," I said, "ships are built there, and of course there's linen. I
believe they manufacture tobacco, and----"

"That," said Ascher, "is not quite what my wife means. The gifts which a
city or a country give to the world must be of a more permanent kind if
they are to be of real value. Ships, linen, tobacco, we use them, and in
using we destroy them. They have their value, but it is not a permanent
value. Ultimately a city will be judged not by its perishable products,
but by----"

"Art," said Mrs. Ascher.

I might have known it. Mrs. Ascher would be sure to judge cities, as she
judges men, by their achievement in that particular line. I was bound
to admit that the reputation of Belfast falls some way short of that of
Athens as a centre of literature and art.

"Or thought," said Ascher, "or criticism. It is curious that a community
which is virile and fearless, which is able to look at the world and
life through its own eyes, which is indifferent to the general consensus
of opinion----"

"Belfast is all that," I said. "I never knew any one who cared less what
other people said and thought than Malcolmson."

"Yet," said Ascher, "Belfast has done nothing, thought nothing, seen
nothing. But perhaps that is all to come. The future may be, indeed I
think must be, very different."

Ascher will never be a real leader of men. His habit of seeing two sides
of every question is an incurable weakness in him. Mrs. Ascher does not
suffer in that way. She saw no good whatever in Belfast, nor any hope
for its future.

"Never," she said, "never. A people who have given themselves over
to material things, who accept frankly, without even the hypocrite's
tribute to virtue, the money standard of value, who ask 'Does it pay?'
and ask nothing else---- Have you ever been in Belfa