"Don't sneer at politics," said a young man, who had just come in. "You should first feel the swing of them, and hundreds of fellows roaring at your back. I'm in with all the strikes, don't you know. I tell them they oughtn't to stand it—not a day. A man's wages should be what he can live on comfortably with his wife and children, not any cursed balance of trade. What does it matter whether the masters get their profit or not? Confound the masters!—selfish beggars, setting up their unions too, forsooth, as if they had an equal right. The right's with the masses that have the work to do. When I see them sitting down contented and taking whatever is offered them, off I go and hold a meeting or two. And as for response!—if you once heard them shouting with you, by Jove you'd never try any of your dilettante ways again."
"Thoftly, my good fellow, thoftly," said Scarfield, from his chair. "We don't like such coarth thpeaking here——"
"Brutal," said Bailey, "brutal, encouraging all their worst instincts. That is not, from my point of view, the mission of the Oxford man. I wouldn't interfere with these rude problems: if you let them alone they will settle themselves. Why must they marry and fill the world with hungry children and get into difficulties about wages? I don't want to marry. I make myself a happy life of art and refined enjoyment. Why shouldn't they? I have no sympathy with your shouting, your talk of wages, and so forth. If they did without wives and children they would get on well enough. I can't afford wives and children. Scarfield's Botticelli to look at, or one of your own if you can afford it, is enough for me."
"There's something in strikes when you can do it," said a youth in one of the groups by the wall. "Schoolmasters, now—I'm going to be a schoolmaster—if we could strike, it would be a fine thing; but there's a hundred beggars waiting to step into your shoes."
"Then you must stop them," said John, in reply, who was nearest to him. "Pull down their houses, burn their books, blow up their schoolrooms—blind them or deafen them, if you can, still better; then they would be out of your way."
"Oh, I say," said the youth, "that would be a cowardly business; that would not be fair fighting; that would be a cad's way."
"There are no cads," said John. "Everything's fair on your side, nothing on the other—that's the new doctrine. Ask Sutton: he knows."
"Everything's fair against a rat who goes against his own side," cried the revolutionary; "everything's fair against the masters. Whenever there's force against you, you've got a licence to meet it any way you can. That is strategy, it's not a cowardly way."
"I am all for the rights of man, too," cried another youth, standing up against the wall. "And Chortles is brute force, and he's going to send me down—what am I to do?"
A sudden pause came upon the assembly. It was a fate to which all of them were subject, and the boldest held his breath. Besides, what could be done? there was nothing to be suggested amid all the expedients which theoretical revolution has in store.