imagination is relaxed and the concentration of mind is withdrawn, the
atmosphere disappears, and then. One experiences what I feel when I take
up 'The Weavers' and, in a sense, wonder how it was done, such as it is.

The frontispiece of the English edition represents a scene in the House
of Commons, and this brings to my mind a warning which was given me
similar to that on my entering new fields outside the one in which I
first made a reputation in fiction. When, in a certain year, I
determined that I would enter the House of Commons I had many friends
who, in effect, wailed and gnashed their teeth. They said that it would
be the death of my imaginative faculties; that I should never write
anything any more; that all the qualities which make literature living
and compelling would disappear. I thought this was all wrong then, and I
know it is all wrong now. Political life does certainly interfere with
the amount of work which an author may produce. He certainly cannot
write a book every year and do political work as well, but if he does not
attempt to do the two things on the same days, as it were, but in blocks
of time devoted to each separately and respectively, he will only find,
as I have found, that public life the conflict of it, the accompanying
attrition of mind, the searching for the things which will solve the
problems of national life, the multitudinous variations of character with
which one comes in contact, the big issues suddenly sprung upon the
congregation of responsible politicians, all are stimulating to the
imagination, invigorating to the mind, and marvellously freshening to
every literary instinct. No danger to the writer lies in doing political
work, if it does not sap his strength and destroy his health. Apart from
that, he should not suffer. The very spirit of statesmanship is
imagination, vision; and the same quality which enables an author to
realise humanity for a book is necessary for him to realise humanity in
the crowded chamber of a Parliament.