uneasy association with the Baileys and the professedly constructive

Young Liberals. To get that ordered life I had realised the need of

organisation,knowledge, expertness, a wide movement of co-ordinated

methods. On the individual side Ithought that a life of urgent

industry, temperance, and close attention was indicated by my

perception of these ends. I married Margaret and set to work. But

something in mymind refused from the outset toaccept these

determinations as final. There was always adoubt lurking below,

always a faint resentment, a protesting criticism, afeeling of

vitally important omissions.

I arrived at last at the clear realisation that my political

associates, and I in my association with them, were oddly narrow,

priggish, andunreal, that the Socialists with whom we were

attempting co-operation were preposterously irrelevant to their own

theories, that my political life didn't in some way comprehend more

than itself, that rather perplexingly I was missing the thing I was

seeking. Britten's footnotes to Altiora's self-assertions, her fits

of energetic planning, her quarrels and rallies and vanities, his

illuminating attacks on Cramptonism and the heavy-spirited

triviality of such Liberalism as the Children's Charter, served to

point my way to my present conclusions. I had been trying to deal

all along with human progress as something immediate in life,

something to be immediately attacked by political parties and groups

pointing primarily to that end. I now began tosee that just as in

my ownbeing there was the rather shallow, rather vulgar, self-

seeking careerist, who wore an admirable silk hat and bustled self-

<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>