ng friendly
beside me on the government benches. There was nothing impossible in
such dreams. Why not the Board of Education for him? My preference at
that time wavered between the Local Government Board--I had great ideas
about town-planning, about revisions of municipal areas and re-organised
internal transit--and the War Office. I swayed strongly towards the
latter as the journey progressed. My educational bias came later.

The swelling ambitions that have tramped over Alpine passes! How many
of them, like mine, have come almost within sight of realisation before
they failed?

There were times when we posed like young gods (of unassuming exterior),
and times when we were full of the absurdest little solicitudes about
our prospects. There were times when one surveyed the whole world of
men as if it was a little thing at one's feet, and by way of contrast
I remember once lying in bed--it must have been during this holiday,
though I cannot for the life of me fix where--and speculating whether
perhaps some day I might not be a K. C. B., Sir Richard Remington, K. C.
B., M. P.

But the big style prevailed....

We could not tell from minute to minute whether we were planning for
a world of solid reality, or telling ourselves fairy tales about this
prospect of life. So much seemed possible, and everything we could think
of so improbable. There were lapses when it seemed to me I could never
be anything but just the entirely unimportant and undistinguished young
man I was for ever and ever. I couldn't even think of myself as five and
thirty.

Once I remember Willersley going over a list of failures, and why
they had failed--but young men in the twenties do not know much about
failures.

10

Willersley and I professed ourselves Socialists, but by this time I knew
my Rodbertus as well as my Marx, and there was much in our socialism
that would have shocked Chris Robinson as much as anything in life could
have shocked him. Socialism as a simple democratic cry we had done with
for ever. We were socialists because Individualism for us meant muddle,
meant a crowd of separated, undisciplined little people all obstinately
and ignorantly doing things jarringly, each one in his own way.
"Each," I said quoting words of my father's that rose apt in my memory,
"snarling from his own little bit of property, like a dog tied to a
cart's tail."

"Essentially," said Willersley, "essentially we're for conscription, in
peace and