ee how he meant to
work up to the cinematograph and Tim's invention. I tried to get a
glimpse of Mrs. Ascher's face. I wanted to find out how she was taking
this glorification of Tim's blasphemy against art. Unfortunately I could
only see the back of her head. I moved along the side of the hall as
much as I dared in the hope of getting a sight of her face from some
angle. I failed. To this day I do not know whether Mrs. Ascher admired
Gorman's art as an orator enough to make her forgive the vile purpose
for which it was used.

When I began to listen to the speech again Gorman had reached his
peroration.

The arts of war, he said, were the natural fruits of the human intellect
in a society organised on an aristocratic basis. The development of the
arts of peace and pleasure followed the birth of democracy. Tyrants and
robber barons in old days loved to fight and lived to kill. The common,
kindly men and women of our time, the now at length sovereign people,
lived to love and desire peace above all things.

"The spirit of democracy," said Gorman, "is moving through the world.
Its coming is like the coming of the spring, gentle, kindly, gradual. We
see it not, but in the fields and hedgerows of the world, past which
it moves, we see the green buds bursting into leaf, the myriad-tinted
flowers opening their petals to the sunlight. We see the lives of humble
men made glad, and our hearts are established with strong faith; faith
in the spirit whose beneficence we recognise, the spirit which at last
is guiding the whole wide world into the way of peace."

I gathered from these concluding remarks that all danger of war had
passed from the horizon of humanity since the Liberal Government muzzled
the House of Lords.

Gorman did not mention this great feat in plain words. He suggested it
in such a way that the Cabinet Ministers in front of him understood what
he meant, while Lady Kingscourt and her friends thought he was referring
to a revolution in China or Portugal or the establishment of some kind
of representative government in Thibet. Thus every one was pleased and
Gorman climbed down from the platform amid a burst of applause.

Lady Kingscourt clapped her pretty hands as loudly as any one. Her
husband is a territorial magnate. Her brothers are soldiers. But she is
prepared to welcome democracy and universal peace as warmly as any of
us. Perhaps what attracted her in Gorman's programme was the prospect of
a great incre