“Just so. That was the point of view, and there is a lot to say for it considering the hash women made of power when first they got it, though not so enormous a hash as the Labour Party. You know, I suppose, we’ve had three Labour Governments since the great war?”
“I always prophesied a Labour Government would come, and I feared it. I knew they had not sufficient education to rule. No conception of foreign policy.”
“Not an atom. I agree with you. Not a scrap. Thirty years ago most of our rulers hadn’t an idea where India was, or why we must complete the trans-African railway in case we lost control of the Suez Canal. They actually opposed it. They nearly piloted the Ship of State on to the rocks.”
John frowned.
“Now what I want to know is,” said Jack, extending two long blue stockinged legs, and enjoying himself immensely, “why instead of opposing female suffrage you did not combine to place the franchise on an educational basis, irrespective of sex; the grant of the vote to be dependant on passing certain examinations, mainly in history and geography. Or, if you were resolved to delay as much as possible the entrance of women into politics, why didn’t you give better national education. You did neither. You let loose a horde of entirely ignorant and irresponsible men and women out of your national schools. You say you foresaw that a Labour Government was inevitable, but you don’t seem to have made any preparation, or taken any precaution to insure its efficiency when it did come.”
John was silent.
“They were also hostile men and women,” continued the young man. “That was the worst of it. Were you at Lille when you were fighting in France?”
“No.”
“Well, the East Lancashires were. They were all miners, and the thing that interested them most was the devastated mines, ruined by the Germans in their retreat. And they saw the remains of the bath houses at the pit heads. Those baths had been there before the war. Every miner could go back clean to his own home, instead of having to wash in his own kitchen. Grandfather, you owned coal-mines. Why didn’t you and the other coal-owners put up baths at the pit heads? You would have liked it if you had been a miner. And just think what it would have saved your wife. The English miners got them by threats after they had seen the wrecks of them in France. But why didn’t the English coal-owners copy French methods, if they hadn’t the imagination to think them out for themselves? Why did they only concede when they could not help it? Reforms were wrung out of the governing class in your day by threats and strikes. That is what, for nearly thirty years, ruined our class with Labour when it came into power. Why didn’t your generation foresee that?”
“We didn’t see the danger,” said John, “as you see it. Everyone can be wise after the event.”