Changing Winds Part 39

"Can I use that line about the New Zealand lamb?..."

"Yes, yes ... any d.a.m.n thing ... only get off my chest! You're ...

you're squeezing the inside out of me. Get up, will you!..."

"I'm really quite comfortable, thanks, Ninian. If it weren't for this whacking big bone here!..."

He did not complete the sentence, for Ninian, with a heaving effort, threw him on to the floor, where they scrambled and punched each other....

"There is a fine of eighteenpence," said Roger, "for disorderly conduct.

I'll just enter it against you both!"

The combatants rose and routed Roger, and when they had disposed of him, Ninian agreed to let Gilbert use his line about the frozen meat. "I shall expect you to put a note in the programme that the epigram in the second act was supplied by Mr. Ninian Graham," he said.

"_The_ epigram!" Gilbert exclaimed. "_The_ epigram!"

"Why, will there be any more?" said Ninian innocently.

Hostilities thereupon broke out again.

4

They sat up late that night talking of themselves and of England and public affairs. Roger was interested in Trade Unions, and he lamented the fact that the Tories had allowed an alliance to be formed between Labour and Liberalism. "Ask any workman you meet in the street whether he'd rather work for a Liberal or a Tory, and I bet you what you like, the chances are that he'll plump for the Tory. His experience is that the Tory's the better employer, and the reason why that's so is that the Liberal conducts his business on principles, whereas the Tory conducts his on instincts. In principle, the Liberal concedes most things to the workman, but in practice he doesn't: in principle, the Tory concedes nothing to the workman, but in practice he treats him decently. The workman knows that, but the fool goes and votes for the Liberal, and the fool of a Tory lets him!... You know," he went on, "this Trade Union movement has got on to wrong lines altogether. Their chief function seems to be to protect their members from ... well, from being cheated.

That's what it comes to. I don't blame 'em. They've had to behave like that. I don't think any one can read Webb's 'Industrial Democracy' and 'The History of Trade Unionism' without feeling that, on the whole, employers have been rather caddish to workmen ... so I don't blame the Unions for making so much fuss about their rights. But I'd like to see them making as much fuss about the quality of the work done by their members. That's their real function. It isn't enough to keep up the standard of wages and of conditions of employment--they ought also to keep up the standard of work!"

This led them into a wrangle about the responsibility for the blame for this indifference to quality of work.

"I suppose," said Roger, "employers and employed are to blame. I think myself it's the result of a world tendency towards hustle ... to get the thing done as quickly as possible without regard to the quality of it.

I suppose a modern contractor would break his heart if he were asked to spend his lifetime on _one_ cathedral ... but people were proud to do that in the Middle Ages. We'd build half a dozen cathedrals while a Middle Ages man was decorating a gargoyle!"

"Well, we have this comfort," said Ninian, "the modern builder's stuff won't last as long as Westminster Abbey!"

"I hate all this bleat about the Middle Ages," Gilbert exclaimed. "I'm surprised to hear you, Roger, talking like that fat papist, Belloc. One 'ud think to hear you talking that no one ever did shoddy work until the nineteenth century, but Christopher Wren let a lot of shoddy stuff into St. Paul's Cathedral. There were fraudulent contractors then, and jerry-builders, just as there are now, and there probably always will be people who give a bad return for their wages!..."

"That's why I want to see the Tory Party resuscitated," said Roger. "I want to limit the number of such people and to make every man feel that it's a gentlemanly thing to do your best, whatever your job is, and that payment has nothing whatever to do with the way you do your work!"

The whole industrial system would need re-shaping, the whole social system would need re-shaping, the Empire would need re-shaping.

"This craving for cheapness has cheapened nothing but life," said Roger, "and it brings incalculable trouble with it. I mean, a ha'penny saved now means pounds lost later. Oh, that's a plat.i.tude, I know, but we pay no heed to it. I've never been to America, but we know quite well that one of the most serious problems for the Americans is the negro problem.

I heard a Rhodes scholar talking about it once. He simply foamed at the mouth. He hadn't any plan for it ... didn't seem to realise that a plan could be made ... and you know they've only got that problem through the greediness of their ancestors. Negroes aren't native to America. The planters wanted cheap labour and so they imported them ... and the end of that business is the Negro Problem!"

"And lynchings and a Civil War in between," Henry murmured. "That's the most hateful part of it ... the killing and the bitterness."

"Great Scott!" said Ninian, "think of all those Yankees killing each other so that n.i.g.g.e.rs might wear spats and top hats and sing c.o.o.n songs in the music halls!... d.a.m.n silly, I call it!"

"We've got to make people believe that it isn't what you get that matters, but what you do," Roger went on. "All this footling squabble between workmen and employers about a farthing an hour more or a farthing an hour less ... isn't decent ... it isn't gentlemanly. Oh, I know very well that the counter-jumper thinks it's very clever to trick a customer out of a ha'penny ... but it doesn't last, that kind of profit. We lost America because we behaved like cads to the colonists, and we'll lose everything if we continue to play the counter-jumper trick. It isn't very popular now to talk about gentlemen ... people sneer at the word ... but I'd rather die like a gentleman than live like a cad ... and that's the spirit I want to see restored to the Tory Party. It's awfully needed in England now!"

They began to lay plans for an Improved Tory Party that included an alliance with Labour and a closer confederation of the colonies, together with a definite understanding with America.

"And what about Ireland?" said Henry.

"Oh, of course, Ireland must have Home Rule and be treated like a colony. n.o.body but a fool wants to treat it in any other way!" said Roger.

"There are an awful lot of fools in the world," Gilbert said.

"I know that," Roger retorted, "but need we trouble about them?"

"We've got to get a group of fellows together on much the same principle as the Fabian Society ... no one to be admitted unless he has brains and is willing to work without payment. _Look_ at the work that Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw and all those people did for Socialism _for nothing_, even paying for it out of their own pockets when they weren't over-flush ... my goodness, if we can only get people with that kind of spirit into our group, we'll mould the world! By the way, we ought to pinch some ideas from the Fabians! We could meet somewhere ... here, to begin with. And when we've got a group of fellows together with some notion of what we all want to do, we can start inviting eminent ones to talk to us ... and heckle the stuffing out of them!"

Gilbert was able to tell them a great deal about the origin of the Fabian Society ... for his father was one of the founders of it ... and he told them how the Society had invited Mr. Haldane to talk to them ...

and of the way in which they had fallen on him in the discussion and left all his arguments in shreds when the meeting ended.... "If we can get Balfour or Asquith or some other Eminent Pot here," he said, "and simply argue h.e.l.l's blazes out of him ... my Lordy G.o.d, that 'ud be great!"

"They're not likely to come," said Ninian.

"I don't know. Eminent Ones sometimes do the most unusual things!"

Ninian yawned and stretched his arms. "I move that this House be now adjourned!" he said.

But they ignored his sleepiness, and he would not move away from their company.

"Well, we've settled what our future is to be," said Gilbert.

"What is it to be?" Ninian interrupted, stifling another yawn.

"Weren't you listening? We're to be Improved Tories ... and we're to improve the Universe, so to speak. We've just settled it. All the Old Birds are to be hoofed out of office, and we're to take their places, and I thoroughly approve of that. In my opinion, any man who wants to occupy a place of authority after the age of sixty should be publicly and cruelly pole-axed. I can't stand old men ... they're so cowardly and so obstinate and so conceited!"

"The great thing," said Roger, "is to keep ourselves from sloppiness. We mustn't make fools of ourselves!"

"The princ.i.p.al way in which a man makes a fool of himself," Gilbert added, "is in connexion with the female species. Is that what you mean, Roger?" Roger nodded his head. "Pay attention to that, Ninian," Gilbert went on. "You have a weakness for females, I've noticed!"

Ninian, suddenly forgetting his fatigue, sat up in his seat. "I say, let's jaw about women," he said.

"No," Gilbert replied. "We won't ... not at this hour of the morning!"

But, disregarding his decision, he went on, "My view of women is that we all make too much fuss about 'em! Either we d.a.m.n them excessively or we praise them excessively. They're a cursed nuisance in literature. All the writers seem to think that man was made for woman or woman for man, and they write and write about s.e.x and love as if there weren't other things in the world besides women!"

"I'd like to know what else we were made for?" Henry said.

"We were made to do our jobs," Roger answered. "I believe in what I may call the modified anchorite ... women are too emotional and get between a man and his work. Love is an excellent thing ... excellent ... but there are other things!..."

"What else is there?" Henry demanded almost crossly. He felt vaguely stirred by what was being said, vaguely antagonistic to it.

"Oh, lots of things," Roger answered. "Fighting for your place, moving mult.i.tudes to do your will ... oh, lots of things!"

Gilbert had read some of Henry's novel, and he now began to talk about it.

"You turn on the Slop-tap too often," he said. "Quinny, my son, you're a clever little chap, but you're frightfully sloppy. I've read a lot more of your novel...."

"Yes?" said Henry, nervously anxious to hear his criticism.