Mr. Cadbury is not inconsistent if he tells truth at a different rate to different people, or if he chooses to put truths before people in Indian file.
A man is not inconsistent who does not tell all the news he knows to all kinds of people, all at once, all the time.
There is nothing disingenuous about having an order for truth.
It is not considered compromising to have an order in moving railway trains. Why not allow an order in moving trains of thought? And why should a schedule for moving around people's bodies be considered any more reasonable than a schedule or timetable or order for moving around their souls?
Truth in action must always be in an order. Nine idealists out of ten who fight against News-men, or men who are trying to make the beautiful work, and who call them hypocrites, would not do it if they were trying desperately to make the beautiful work themselves. It is more comfortable and has a fine free look, to be blunt with the beautiful—the way a Poet is—to dump all one's ideals down before people and walk off. But it seems to some of us a cold, sentimental, lazy, and ignoble thing to do with ideals if one loves them—to give everybody all of them all the time without considering what becomes of the ideals or what becomes of the people.
CHAPTER XVI
CROWD-MEN
MARCH 4, 1913.
As I write these words, I look out upon the great meadow. I see the poles and the wires in the sun, that long trail of poles and wires I am used to, stalking across the meadow. I know what they are doing.