e
worship of the fossilized party spirit, had eaten into the very vitals
of this section of the political world. The form of madness we called
party loyalty made the best men we had willing to sacrifice national to
personal interests. So-and-so must retain his place; loyalty to the
party demands our support there and there. We must give it, whatever the
consequences. The thing is not easy to understand; but it was so, and
the strongest and best men of the day were culpable in this.

The farther my London experiences took me, the greater became the mass
of my shattered illusions, broken ideals, and lost hopes. I remember my
reflections during a brief visit I paid to my mother in Dorset, when I
had spent an evening talking with my sister Lucy's husband. Doctor
Woodthrop was a good fellow enough, and my sister seemed happier with
him than one would have expected, remembering that it was rather the
desire for freedom, than love, which gave her to him.

Woodthrop was popular, honest, steady-going; a fine, typical Englishman
of the period, I suppose. In politics he was as his father before him,
though the name had changed from Tory to Conservative. He talked
politics for a week at election time. I would not say that he ever
thought politics. I know that he had no knowledge, and less interest,
where the affairs of his country were concerned, when I met and talked
with him during that visit. The country's defences were actually of far
less importance in his eyes than the country's cricket averages. As for
either social reform interests in England, or the affairs of the Empire
outside England, he simply could not be induced to give them even
conversational breathing space. They were as exotic to my sister's
husband as the ethics of esoteric Buddhism. But he was a thick and thin
Conservative. To be sure, he would have said, nothing would cause him to
waver in that.

As for myself, I defended the anti-national party in its repudiation of
Imperial responsibility by arguing that the domestic needs of the
country were too urgent and great to admit of any kind of expenditure,
in money or energy, upon outside affairs. We did not recognize that
internal reform and content were absolutely incompatible with shameless
neglect of fundamental duties.

We were as sailors who should concentrate upon drying and cleaning their
cabin, seeking at all hazards to make that comfortable, while refusing
to spare time for the ship's pumps, though th