m a journalist," Culvain assented. "Since you have asked my
opinion, I must confess that I am all for more peaceful methods. These
Labour troubles which inconvenience and bring loss upon the community,
do harm to our cause. I am in favour of a vigorous course of platform
education through all the country districts of England. I think that
the principles of Socialism are not properly understood by the working
classes."

"If one might make a comment upon all that you have said," Maraton
remarked, "I might point out to you that there is a certain selfishness
in your individual suggestions. Three of you are in favour of a
gigantic strike, each in his own constituency. Mr. Culvain, who is a
writer and an orator, prefers the methods which appeal most to him. Yet
even these strikes which you propose are puny affairs. You want to wage
war for the sake of a few shillings. We ought to fight, if at all, for
a greater and more splendid principle. It isn't a shilling or two more
a week that the people want. It's a share--a share to which they are,
without the shadow of a doubt, entitled--in the direct product of their
labour."

"That's sound enough," Peter Dale admitted. "How are you going to get
it?"

"You ask for too much," Weavel observed, "and you get nothing."

"It is never wise," Culvain suggested quietly, "to have the public
against one."

Maraton rose a little abruptly to his feet. He had the air of one eager
to dismiss the subject.

"Gentlemen," he announced, "I've heard your views. In a few days' time
you shall hear mine. Only let me tell you this. To me you all seem to
be working and thinking on very narrow lines. Your object seems to be
the securing of small individual benefits for your individual
constituents. I think that if we get to work together in this country,
there must be something more national in our aspirations. That is all I
have to say for the present. As I think you know, I intend to make a
pronouncement of my own views at Manchester."

They all took their leave a little later. Maraton himself saw them out
and watched them across the Square. Somehow or other, his depression
had visibly increased as he turned away. He had come into contact
lately, on the other side of the world, with a different order of
person--men and women, too, passionately, strenuously in earnest. They
were well-fed, prosperous individuals, these whom he had just dismissed.
Their politics were their business, their position as