myself quoting Kipling--


"All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess,
All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less."


"We build the state," we said over and over again. "That is what we
are for--servants of the new reorganisation!"

We planned half in earnest and half Utopianising, a League of Social
Service.

We talked of the splendid world of men that might grow out of such
unpaid and ill-paid work as we were setting our faces to do. We
spoke of the intricate difficulties, the monstrous passive
resistances, the hostilities to such a development as we conceived
our work subserved, and we spoke with that underlying confidence in
the invincibility of the causes we adopted that is natural to young
and scarcely tried men.

We talked much of the detailed life of politics so far as it was
known to us, and there Willersley was more experienced and far
better informed than I; we discussed possible combinations and
possible developments, and the chances of some great constructive
movement coming from the heart-searchings the Boer war had
occasioned. We would sink to gossip--even at the Suetonius level.
Willersley would decline towards illuminating anecdotes that I
capped more or less loosely from my private reading. We were
particularly wise, I remember, upon the management of newspapers,