nent world commission of
scientific men and economists--with powers, just as considerable powers
as I can give them--they'll be feeble powers at the best--but still some
sort of SAY in the whole fuel supply of the world. A say--that may grow
at last to a control. A right to collect reports and receive
accounts for example, to begin with. And then the right to make
recommendations.... You see?... No, the international part is not the
most difficult part of it. But my beastly owners and their beastly
lawyers won't relinquish a scrap of what they call their freedom of
action. And my labour men, because I'm a fairly big coal owner myself,
sit and watch and suspect me, too stupid to grasp what I am driving at
and too incompetent to get out a scheme of their own. They want a world
control on scientific lines even less than the owners. They try to think
that fuel production can carry an unlimited wages bill and the owners
try to think that it can pay unlimited profits, and when I say; 'This
business is something more than a scramble for profits and wages; it's a
service and a common interest,' they stare at me--" Sir Richmond was
at a loss for an image. "Like a committee in a thieves' kitchen when
someone has casually mentioned the law."

"But will you ever get your Permanent Commission?"

"It can be done. If I can stick it out."

"But with the whole Committee against you!"

"The curious thing is that the whole Committee isn't against me. Every
individual is...."

Sir Richmond found it difficult to express. "The psychology of my
Committee ought to interest you.... It is probably a fair sample of the
way all sorts of things are going nowadays. It's curious.... There is
not a man on that Committee who is quite comfortable within himself
about the particular individual end he is there to serve. It's there I
get them. They pursue their own ends bitterly and obstinately I admit,
but they are bitter and obstinate because they pursue them against an
internal opposition--which is on my side. They are terrified to think,
if once they stopped fighting me, how far they might not have to go with
me."

"A suppressed world conscience in fact. This marches very closely with
my own ideas."

"A world conscience? World conscience? I don't know. But I do know that
there is this drive in nearly every member of the Committee, some drive
anyhow, towards the decent thing. It is the same drive that drives me.
But I am the most driven. It has