such men as Neal, Crupp, Gane, and the one or two other New
Imperialists who belonged to us. They were nearly all like Bailey
Oxford men, though mostly of a younger generation, and they were all
mysteriously and inexplicably advocates of Tariff Reform, as if it
were the principal instead of at best a secondary aspect of
constructive policy. They seemed obsessed by the idea that streams
of trade could be diverted violently so as to link the parts of the
Empire by common interests, and they were persuaded, I still think
mistakenly, that Tariff Reform would have an immense popular appeal.
They were also very keen on military organisation, and with a
curious little martinet twist in their minds that boded ill for that
side of public liberty. So much against them. But they were
disposed to spend money much more generously on education and
research of all sorts than our formless host of Liberals seemed
likely to do; and they were altogether more accessible than the
Young Liberals to bold, constructive ideas affecting the
universities and upper classes. The Liberals are abjectly afraid of
the universities. I found myself constantly falling into line with
these men in our discussions, and more and more hostile to Dayton's
sentimentalising evasions of definite schemes and Minns' trust in
such things as the "Spirit of our People" and the "General Trend of
Progress." It wasn't that I thought them very much righter than
their opponents; I believe all definite party "sides" at any time
are bound to be about equally right and equally lop-sided; but that
I thought I could get more out of them and what was more important
to me, more out of myself if I co-operated with them. By 1908 I had
already arrived at a point where I could be definitely considering a
transfer of my political allegiance.
These abstract questions are inseparably interwoven with my memory
of a shining long white table, and our hock bottles and burgundy
bottles, and bottles of Perrier and St. Galmier and the disturbed
central trophy of dessert, and scattered glasses and nut-shells and
cigarette-ends and menu-cards used for memoranda. I see old Dayton
sitting back and cocking his eye to the ceiling in a way he had
while he threw warmth into the ancient platitudes of Liberalism, and
Minns leaning forward, and a little like a cockatoo with a taste for
confidences, telling us in a hushed voice of his faith in the
Destiny of Mankind. Thorns lounges, rolling his round face and
round eyes from speaker to speaker and sounding the visible depths
of misery whenever Neal begins. Gerbault and Gane were given to
conversation in undertones, and Bailey pursued mysterious purposes
in lisping whispers. It was Crupp attracted me most. He had, as
people say, his eye on me from the beginning. He used to speak at
me, and drifted into a custom of coming home with me very regularly
for an after-talk.
He opened his heart to me.
"Neither of us," he said, "are dukes, and neither of us are horny-
handed sons of toil. We want to get hold of the handles, and to do
that, one must go where the power is, and give it just as
constructive a twist as we can. That's MY Toryism."
"Is it Kindling's-or Gerbault's?"
"No. But theirs is soft, and mine's hard. Mine will wear theirs
out. You and I and Bailey are all after the same thing, and why
aren't we working together?"
"Are you a Confederate?" I asked suddenly.
"That's a secret nobody tells," he said.
"What are the Confederates after?"
"Making aristocracy work, I suppose. Just as, I gather, you want to
do."…
The Confederates were beingheard of at that time. They were at
once attractive and repellent to me, an odd secret society whose
membership nobody knew, pledged, it was said, to impose Tariff
Reform and an ample constructive policy upon the Conservatives. In
the press, at any rate, they had an air of deliberately organised
power. I have no doubt the rumour of them greatly influenced my
ideas…
In the end I made some very rapid decisions, but for nearly two
years I was hesitating. Hesitations were inevitable in such a
matter. I was not dealing with any simple question of principle,
but with elusive and fluctuating estimates of the trend of diverse
forces and of the nature of my own powers. All through that period
I was asking over and over again: how far are these Confederates
mere dreamers? How far-and this was more vital-are they rendering
lip-service to social organisations? Is it true they desire war
because it confirms the ascendency of their class? How far can
Conservatism be induced to plan and construct before it resists the
thrust towards change. Is it really in bulk anything more than a
mass of prejudice and conceit, cynical indulgence, and a hard
suspicion of and hostility to the expropriated classes in the
community?
That is a research which yields no statistics, an enquiry like
asking what is the ruling colour of a chameleon. The shadowy answer
varied with my health, varied with my mood and the conduct of the
people I was watching. How fine can people be? How generous?-not
incidentally, but all round? How far can you educate sons beyond
the outlook of their fathers, and how far lift a rich, proud, self-
indulgent class above the protests of its business agents and
solicitors and its own habits and vanity? Is chivalry in a class
possible?-was it ever, indeed, or will it ever indeed be possible?
Is the progress that seems attainable in certain directions worth
the retrogression that may be its price?
4
It was to the Pentagram Circle that I first broached the new
conceptions that were developing in my mind. I count the evening of
my paper the beginning of the movement that created the BLUE WEEKLY
and our wing of the present New Tory party. I do that without any
excessive egotism, because my essay was no solitary man's
production; it was my reaction to forces that had come to me very
large through my fellow-members; its quick reception by them showed
that I was, so to speak, merely the first of the chestnuts to pop.
The atmospheric quality of the evening stands out very vividly in my
memory. The night, I remember, was warmly foggy when after midnight
we went to finish our talk at my house.
We had recently changed the rules of the club to admit visitors, and
so it happened that I had brought Britten, and Crupp introduced
Arnold Shoesmith, my former schoolfellow at City Merchants, and now
the wealthy successor of his father and elder brother. I