Roman, mediaeval and modern history could not fail to be
fascinated by the political drama unfolding before his eyes. He
watched history in the making with the same eagerness that he read the
history of the past. The prevailing tone at Dulwich, as at most public
schools, is Conservative. Paul was a perfervid Liberal. In school and
out of school, not only did he not disguise, he gloried in his
advanced opinions. The extent of his political knowledge and the
ripeness of his views were astonishing in one so young.

From the moment he began to think for himself his sympathies flowed
out to the wage-earning classes. What he remembered and what he had
heard of his Puritan grandfather, William Jones, a grand specimen of
the Victorian artisan, who died in December, 1905, on the verge of 80,
deepened his regard for them. But his own broad and sympathetic nature
would have drawn him instinctively to their side. In his judgment it
was on and by the working-classes that the wheels of the world moved
forward. He had nothing but contempt for the sparrow-like frivolity of
fashionable Society, and was repelled from the middle classes by their
servitude to conventions, their prejudices social and political, and
their non-receptivity to ideas. He for his part must breathe an ampler
air. He was wont to speak disdainfully of the Victorian era, because,
in spite of all the advances it witnessed in the physical sciences and
of Britain's rapid growth in wealth between 1850 and 1890, it did so
little for social welfare.

For feudal magnates and the _nouveaux riches_ he had scant respect,
holding that both the aristocracy and the plutocracy had used their
political power for selfish ends. Old feudalism in some respects he
regarded as better than new Capital, for the landed aristocracy did at
least recognise some obligations to those under their sway, whereas
Capital was so concerned with its rights that it forgot altogether its
reciprocal duties. His view was that, under shelter of the
_laissez-faire_ system, with its false presumption that employers and
employed were on a parity in bargaining power, Capital had
scandalously evaded its obligations to Labour. He regarded the
conditions of life in some of our industrial districts as a grave
reproach to the nation. The lust for wealth and other unlovely aspects
of competitive commercialism were most repugnant to him. He knew that
Nature cares not a rap for equality and lavishes her gifts with a