so as to link the parts of the Empire by common interests, and
they were persuaded, I still think mistakenly, that Tariff Reform would
have an immense popular appeal. They were also very keen on military
organisation, and with a curious little martinet twist in their minds
that boded ill for that side of public liberty. So much against them.
But they were disposed to spend money much more generously on education
and research of all sorts than our formless host of Liberals seemed
likely to do; and they were altogether more accessible than the Young
Liberals to bold, constructive ideas affecting the universities and
upper classes. The Liberals are abjectly afraid of the universities.
I found myself constantly falling into line with these men in our
discussions, and more and more hostile to Dayton's sentimentalising
evasions of definite schemes and Minns' trust in such things as the
"Spirit of our People" and the "General Trend of Progress." It wasn't
that I thought them very much righter than their opponents; I believe
all definite party "sides" at any time are bound to be about equally
right and equally lop-sided; but that I thought I could get more out
of them and what was more important to me, more out of myself if I
co-operated with them. By 1908 I had already arrived at a point where I
could be definitely considering a transfer of my political allegiance.

These abstract questions are inseparably interwoven with my memory of a
shining long white table, and our hock bottles and burgundy bottles, and
bottles of Perrier and St. Galmier and the disturbed central trophy of
dessert, and scattered glasses and nut-shells and cigarette-ends and
menu-cards used for memoranda. I see old Dayton sitting back and cocking
his eye to the ceiling in a way he had while he threw warmth into the
ancient platitudes of Liberalism, and Minns leaning forward, and a
little like a cockatoo with a taste for confidences, telling us in a
hushed voice of his faith in the Destiny of Mankind. Thorns lounges,
rolling his round face and round eyes from speaker to speaker and
sounding the visible depths of misery whenever Neal begins. Gerbault
and Gane were given to conversation in undertones, and Bailey pursued
mysterious purposes in lisping whispers. It was Crupp attracted me most.
He had, as people say, his eye on me from the beginning. He used to
speak at me, and drifted into a custom of coming home with me very
regularly for an after-talk.

He o