ations, wretchedness and unemployment of the
poor. Muddle! I remember myself quoting Kipling--

"All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess,
All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less."

"We build the state," we said over and over again. "That is what we are
for--servants of the new reorganisation!"

We planned half in earnest and half Utopianising, a League of Social
Service.

We talked of the splendid world of men that might grow out of such
unpaid and ill-paid work as we were setting our faces to do. We spoke
of the intricate difficulties, the monstrous passive resistances, the
hostilities to such a development as we conceived our work subserved,
and we spoke with that underlying confidence in the invincibility of the
causes we adopted that is natural to young and scarcely tried men.

We talked much of the detailed life of politics so far as it was known
to us, and there Willersley was more experienced and far better informed
than I; we discussed possible combinations and possible developments,
and the chances of some great constructive movement coming from
the heart-searchings the Boer war had occasioned. We would sink to
gossip--even at the Suetonius level. Willersley would decline towards
illuminating anecdotes that I capped more or less loosely from my
private reading. We were particularly wise, I remember, upon the
management of newspapers, because about that we knew nothing whatever.
We perceived that great things were to be done through newspapers. We
talked of swaying opinion and moving great classes to massive action.

Men are egotistical even in devotion. All our splendid projects were
thickset with the first personal pronoun. We both could write, and all
that we said in general terms was reflected in the particular in our
minds; it was ourselves we saw, and no others, writing and speaking
that moving word. We had already produced manuscript and passed the
initiations of proof reading; I had been a frequent speaker in the
Union, and Willersley was an active man on the School Board. Our feet
were already on the lower rungs that led up and up. He was six and
twenty, and I twenty-two. We intimated our individual careers in terms
of bold expectation. I had prophetic glimpses of walls and hoardings
clamorous with "Vote for Remington," and Willersley no doubt saw himself
chairman of this committee and that, saying a few slightly ironical
words after the declaration of the poll, and then sitti