has its one or two outcasts huddled together and slumbering.

"These things come, these things go," a whispering voice urged upon

me, "as once those vast unmeaning Saurians whose bones encumber

museums came and went rejoicing noisily in fruitless lives."…

Fruitless lives!-was that thetruth of it all?…

Later I stood withinsight of the Houses of Parliament in front of

the colonnades of St Thomas's Hospital. I leant on the parapet

close by a lamp-stand of twisted dolphins-and I prayed!

Iremember the swirl of the tide upon the water, and how a string of

barges presently came swinging and bumping round as high-water

turned to ebb. That sudden change of position and my brief

perplexity at it, sticks like a paper pin through the substance of

mythoughts. It was then I was moved to prayer. I prayed that

night that life might not be in vain, that in particular I might not

live in vain. I prayed for strength andfaith, that the monstrous

blundering forces in life might not overwhelm me, might not beat me

back to futility and a meaningless acquiescence inexistent things.

Iknewmyself for the weakling I was, Iknew that nevertheless it

was set for me to make such order as I could out of these disorders,

and my task cowed me, gave me at thethought of it a sense of

yielding feebleness.

"Break me, O God," I prayed at last, "disgrace me, torment me,

destroy me as you will, but save me fromself-complacency and little

interests and little successes and the life that passes like the

shadow of adream."

BOOK THE THIRD

THE HEART OF POLITICS

CHAPTER THE FIRST

THE RIDDLE FOR THE STATESMAN

1

I have been planning and replanning, writing and rewriting, this

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