nd, of course, for nationalisation. They were not
idealists, and not Bolshevists, but frank grabbers, like most of us. But,
as every one will remember, 'Bolshevist' had become at this period a
vague term of abuse, like 'Hun' during the war. People who didn't like
Carson called him a Bolshevist; people who didn't like manual labourers
called _them_ Bolshevists. What all these users of the mysterious and
elastic epithet lacked was a clear understanding and definition of
Bolshevism.

The _Daily Haste_, of course (and, to do it justice, many other
papers), used the word freely as meaning the desire for better
conditions and belief in the strike as a legitimate means of obtaining
them. I suppose it took a shorter time to say or write than this does;
anyhow, it bore a large, vague, Potterish meaning that was irresistible
to people in general.

The _Haste_ made such a fool of itself over the miners that we came to
blows with them, and quarrelled all through July and August, mostly over
trivial and petty points. I may add that the _Fact_ was not supporting
immediate nationalisation; we were against it, for reasons that it would
be too tedious to explain here. (As a matter of fact, I know that all I
record of this so recent history is too tedious; I do not seem to be
able to avoid most of it; but even I draw the line somewhere). The
controversy between the _Fact_ and the _Haste_ seemed after a time to
resolve itself largely into a personal quarrel between Hobart and
myself. He was annoyed that Jane occasionally wrote for us. I suppose it
was natural that he should be annoyed. And he didn't like her to
frequent the 1917 Club, to which a lot of us belonged. Jane often
lunched there, so did I. She said that you got a better lunch there than
at the Women's University Club. Not much better, but still, better. You
also met more people you wanted to meet, as well as more people you
didn't. We started a sort of informal lunch club, which met there and
lunched together on Thursdays. It consisted of Jane, Katherine Varick,
Juke, Peacock, Johnny Potter, and myself. Often other people joined us
by invitation; my sister Rosalind and her husband, any girl Johnny
Potter was for the moment in love with, and friends of Peacock's,
Juke's, or mine. Juke would sometimes bring a parson in; this was rather
widening for us, I think, and I dare say for the parson too. To Juke it
was part of the enterprise of un-Potterising the Church, which was on
hi