Meantime, there was the fact that I had recently encroached twice upon my tiny nest-egg; once to buy a wedding present for my sister Lucy, and once for a piece of silly extravagance.
It was quite a notable week.
IX
A STEP DOWN
"Cosmopolitanism is nonsense; the cosmopolite is a cipher, worse than a cipher; outside of nationality there is neither art, nor truth, nor life; there is nothing."—Ivan Turgenieff.
I have mentioned a piece of reckless extravagance; it was reckless in view of my straightened circumstances. And the reason I mention this apparent trifle is that it and its attendant circumstances influenced me in my conduct after the abrupt termination of the Daily Gazette engagement.
One of my fellow knights of the reporters' room introduced me in a certain Fleet Street wine-bar to one of the characters of that classic highway—a man named Clement Blaine, who edited and owned a weekly publication called The Mass. I hasten to add that this journal had nothing whatever to do with any kind of religious observance. Its title referred to the people, or rather, to the section of the public which, at that time, we still described by the quaintly misleading phrase, "the working classes," as though work were a monopoly in the hands of the manual labourer.
The Mass was a journal which had quite a vogue at that time. This was brought about, I suppose, by the wave of anti-nationalism which, in 1906, established the notorious administration which subsequently became known as "The Destroyers." It was maintained largely, I fancy, by Clement Blaine's genius for getting himself quoted in other journals of every sort and standing.
The existence of The Mass, and the popularity which it earned by outraging every civic and national decency, stands in my mind as a striking example of the extraordinary laxity and slackness of moral which had grown out of our boasted tolerance, broad-mindedness, and cosmopolitanism. We had waxed drunken upon the parrot-like asseveration of "rights," which our fathers had won for us, and we had no time to spare for their compensating duties. This misguided apotheosis of what we considered freedom and broad-mindedness, produced the most startling and anomalous situations in our national life, including the almost incredible fact that, while nominally at peace with the world, the State was being bitterly warred against by cliques and parties among its own subjects.