sharp enough to get a great deal more, by
selling his coal at the best possible moment. He is not the aristocratic
politician, who has a cynical but a fair sympathy with both economic
opportunities. But he is the man who appears in scores of public places
open to the upper middle class or (that less known but more powerful
section) the lower upper class. Men like this all over the country are
really saying whatever comes into their heads in their capacities of
justice of the peace, candidate for Parliament, Colonel of the Yeomanry,
old family doctor, Poor Law guardian, coroner, or above all, arbiter in
trade disputes. He suffers, in the literal sense, from softening of the
brain; he has softened it by always taking the view of everything most
comfortable for his country, his class, and his private personality.
He is a deadly public danger. But as I have given him his name at the
beginning of this article there is no need for me to repeat it at the
end.

THE CONSCRIPT AND THE CRISIS

Very few of us ever see the history of our own time happening. And
I think the best service a modern journalist can do to society is to
record as plainly as ever he can exactly what impression was produced on
his mind by anything he has actually seen and heard on the outskirts of
any modern problem or campaign. Though all he saw of a railway strike
was a flat meadow in Essex in which a train was becalmed for an hour or
two, he will probably throw more light on the strike by describing this
which he has seen than by describing the steely kings of commerce and
the bloody leaders of the mob whom he has never seen—nor any one
else either. If he comes a day too late for the battle of Waterloo (as
happened to a friend of my grandfather) he should still remember that a
true account of the day after Waterloo would be a most valuable thing to
have. Though he was on the wrong side of the door when Rizzio was being
murdered, we should still like to have the wrong side described in
the right way. Upon this principle I, who know nothing of diplomacy or
military arrangements, and have only held my breath like the rest of
the world while France and Germany were bargaining, will tell quite
truthfully of a small scene I saw, one of the thousand scenes that were,
so to speak, the anterooms of that inmost chamber of debate.

In the course of a certain morning I came into one of the quiet squares
of a small French town and found its cathedral. It