of utterly inglorious
squabbling. They bait me. They have been fighting the same fight within
themselves that they fight with me. They know exactly where I am, that I
too am doing my job against internal friction. The one thing before all
others that they want to do is to bring me down off my moral high
horse. And I loathe the high horse. I am in a position of special moral
superiority to men who are on the whole as good men as I am or better.
That shows all the time. You see the sort of man I am. I've a broad
streak of personal vanity. I fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've other
things, as you perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore,
I get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable sense of
ill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be working with me
steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. He gets a laugh round
the table at my expense. Young Dent, the more intelligent of the labour
men, reads me a lecture in committee manners. Old Cassidy sees HIS
opening and jabs some ridiculous petty accusation at me and gets me
spluttering self-defence like a fool. All my stock goes down, and as my
stock goes down the chances of a good report dwindle. Young Dent grieves
to see me injuring my own case. Too damned a fool to see what will
happen to the report! You see if only they can convince themselves I am
just a prig and an egotist and an impractical bore, they escape from a
great deal more than my poor propositions. They escape from the doubt
in themselves. By dismissing me they dismiss their own consciences.
And then they can scamper off and be sensible little piggy-wigs and not
bother any more about what is to happen to mankind in the long run....
Do you begin to realize the sort of fight, upside down in a dustbin,
that that Committee is for me?"

"You have to go through with it," Dr. Martineau repeated.

"I have. If I can. But I warn you I have been near breaking point. And
if I tumble off the high horse, if I can't keep going regularly there
to ride the moral high horse, that Committee will slump into utter
scoundrelism. It will turn out a long, inconsistent, botched, unreadable
report that will back up all sorts of humbugging bargains and sham
settlements. It will contain some half-baked scheme to pacify the miners
at the expense of the general welfare. It won't even succeed in doing
that. But in the general confusion old Cassidy will get away with
a series of hauls that may run