storm and tumult and stress of the political struggle of 1910, we

made a little intellectual oasis ofgood art criticism andgood

writing. It was the firm belief of nearly all of us that the Lords

were destined to be beaten badly in 1910, and our game was the

longer game of reconstruction that would begin when the shouting and

tumult of that immediate conflict were over. Meanwhile we had to

get intotouch with just as manygoodminds as possible.

As wefelt our feet, I developed slowly and carefully a broadly

conceived and consistent politicalattitude. As I will explain

later, we were feminist from the outset, though that caused

Shoesmith and Gane great searching of heart; we developed Esmeer's

House of Lords reform scheme into a general cult of the aristocratic

virtues, and we did much to humanise and liberalise the narrow

excellencies of that Break-up of the Poor Law agitation, which had

been organised originally by Beatrice and Sidney Webb. In addition,

without any very definite explanation to any one but Esmeer and

Isabel Rivers, and as if it was quite a small matter, I setmyself

to secure a uniform philosophical quality in our columns.

That, indeed, was the peculiarvirtue andcharacteristic of the BLUE

WEEKLY. I was now very definitely convinced that much of the

confusion and futility of contemporarythought was due to the

general need of metaphysical training… The great mass of

people-and not simply common people, but people active and

influential in intellectual things-are still quite untrained in the

methods ofthought and absolutely innocent of any criticism of

method; it is scarcely a caricature to call theirthinking a crazy

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