The fat, as the vulgar say, was in the fire.
October, 1903, was a feverish and impassioned time in English affairs. From Birmingham that month the storm had burst. With a great splash Mr. Joseph Chamberlain had flung the issue of Protection into the sea of political affairs; huge waves of disturbance were sweeping out to the uttermost boundaries of the empire. Instead of paying taxes we were to “tax the foreigner.” To that our fine imperial dream had come. Over dinner-tables, in trains and smoking-rooms, men were quarrelling with their oldest friends. To Oswald the conversion of Imperialism into a scheme for world exploitation in the interests of Birmingham seemed the most atrocious swamping of real issues by private interests that it was possible to conceive. The Sydenham strain was an uncommercial strain. Slingsby Darton was manifestly in the full swirl of the new movement, the man looked cunning and eager, he put his pert little face on one side and raised his voice to argue. A gathering quarrelsomeness took possession of Oswald. He began to speak very rapidly and pungently. He assumed an exasperating and unjustifiable detachment in order to quarrel better. He came into these things from the outside, he declared, quite unbiased, oh! quite unbiased. And this “nail-trust organizer’s campaign” shocked him—shocked him unspeakably. Here was England confessedly in a phase of inefficiency and deterioration, needing a careful all-round effort, in education, in business organization, in military preparation. And suddenly drowning everything else in his noise came “this demagogue ironmonger with his panacea!”
Slingsby Darton was indignant. “My dear Sir! I cannot hear you speak of Mr. Chamberlain in such terms as that!”
“But consider the situation,” said Oswald. “Consider the situation! When of all things we want steady and harmonious constructive work, comes all the uproar, all the cheap, mean thinking and dishonest spouting, the music-hall tricks and poster arguments, of a Campaign.”
Slingsby Darton argued. “But, my dear Sir, it is a constructive campaign! It is based on urgent economic needs.”
Oswald would have none of that. Tariff Reform was a quack remedy. “A Zollverein. Think of it! With an empire in great detached patches all over the world. Each patch with different characteristics and different needs. A child could see that a Zollverein is absurd. A child could see it. Yet to read the speeches of Chamberlain you’d think a tariff could work geographical miracles and turn the empire into a compact continent, locked fast against the foreigner. How can a scattered host become a band of robbers? The mere attempt takes us straight towards disaster.”
“Straight away from it!” Slingsby Darton contradicted.
Oswald went on regardlessly. “An empire—scattered like ours—run on selfish and exclusive lines must bring us into conflict with every other people under the sun,” he asserted. “It must do. Apart from the utter and wanton unrighteousness, apart from the treason to humanity. Oh! I hate this New Imperialism. I hate it and dread it. It spoils my sleep at nights. It worries me and worries me....”
Slingsby Darton thought he would do better to worry about this free trade of ours which was bleeding us to death.
“I do not speak as one ignorant of the empire,” said Oswald. “I have been watching it——”