parts into that great whole, the
subordination of all other interests to this: that I took to be John
Crondall's great end in life. By association I had come to identify
myself, and my ideals of social reform, entirely with those to whom mere
mention of the rest of the Empire, or of the ties which made it an
Empire, was as a red rag to a bull.

I have tried to explain something of the causes for this extraordinary
attitude, but I am conscious that at the present time it cannot really
be explained. It was there, however. We might interest ourselves in talk
of Germany, we might enthusiastically admire and even model ourselves
upon the conduct of a foreign people; but mention of the outside places
of our own Empire filled us with anger, resentment, scorn, and contempt.
It amounted to this: that we regarded as an enemy the man who sought to
serve the Empire. He cannot do that without opposing us, we said in
effect; as one who should say: You cannot cultivate my garden, or repair
my fences, without injuring my house and showing yourself an enemy to my
family. A strange business; but so it was.

Therefore, John Crondall's speech that day found me full enough of
opposition, and not at all inclined to be sympathetic. But the thing of
it was, I knew him for an honest and disinterested man; a man alight
with high inspiration and lofty motive; a man immeasurably above sordid
or selfish ends. And it was my task, first, to ridicule him; and,
second, to attach sordidness and self-interest to him. That was the
thing which made the day eventful for me.

John Crondall talked of British rule and British justice, as he had
known them in the world's far places. He drew pictures of Oriental rule,
Boer rule, Russian rule, savage rule; and, again, of the methods and
customs of foreign Powers in their colonial administration. When he
claimed this and that for British rule, and the Imperial unity which
must back it, as such, sneers came naturally to me. The anti-British
sentiment covered that. My qualms began, when he based his plea upon the
value of British administration to all concerned, the danger to
civilization, to mankind, of its being allowed to weaken.

Remember, he spoke in pictures, and in the first person; not of
imaginings, but of what he had seen: how a single anti-British speech in
London, meant a month's prolongation of bloody strife in one country, or
an added weight of cruel oppression in another. Right or wrong, John
Cro