“I don't think Liberalism has a monopoly of progress.”
She did not answer that. She sat quite still looking in front of her. “WHY have you gone over?” she asked abruptly as though I had said nothing.
There came a silence that I was impelled to end. I began a stiff dissertation from the hearthrug. “I am going over, because I think I may join in an intellectual renascence on the Conservative side. I think that in the coming struggle there will be a partial and altogether confused and demoralising victory for democracy, that will stir the classes which now dominate the Conservative party into an energetic revival. They will set out to win back, and win back. Even if my estimate of contemporary forces is wrong and they win, they will still be forced to reconstruct their outlook. A war abroad will supply the chastening if home politics fail. The effort at renascence is bound to come by either alternative. I believe I can do more in relation to that effort than in any other connexion in the world of politics at the present time. That's my case, Margaret.”
She certainly did not grasp what I said. “And so you will throw aside all the beginnings, all the beliefs and pledges—” Again her sentence remained incomplete. “I doubt if even, once you have gone over, they will welcome you.”
“That hardly matters.”
I made an effort to resume my speech.
“I came into Parliament, Margaret,” I said, “a little prematurely. Still—I suppose it was only by coming into Parliament that I could see things as I do now in terms of personality and imaginative range....” I stopped. Her stiff, unhappy, unlistening silence broke up my disquisition.
“After all,” I remarked, “most of this has been implicit in my writings.”
She made no sign of admission.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.