“For God’s sake don’t talk about the common people as though they were dirt, Joyce! They saved England. England owes them something. Those fellows in my company—”
Joyce flicked some cigarette ash into the fireplace and put her hands round her knees.
“Those fellows in your company! I can’t think how you kept your authority, hob-nobbing with them so much!”
Bertram said in a low voice that they had saved his life more than once.
“That’s ancient history,” said Joyce. “You’re always harking back to the old war! Let’s forget it. We’re talking about the present situation. The working people are thoroughly lazy, utterly demoralised, and infected with Bolshevism. They ought to be kept in their places with a strong hand.”
“I agree!” said Kenneth Murless. “They’ve become tyrannical and snobbish.”
“Snobbish!” said Bertram, laughing, and making an effort to keep the temper that was rising in him.
“Yes,” said Kenneth, observing a paradoxical argument from afar; “the snobbishness of the working classes is disgusting. Because they don’t wear collars and ties, they won’t associate with men who are afflicted with stiff linen round their necks. Because they’re illiterate, they make a caste of illiteracy and condemn the Intellectual as a parasite and a pariah. Their Trade Unions are more exclusive than West-end clubs, more intolerant than mediæval Star Chambers. Their Labour leaders are enemies of the liberty so hardly won for England by English gentry—freedom of speech, equality before the law, justice for rich and poor alike, religious toleration, taxation according to wealth. Why these fellows are all for the suppression of liberty. Anybody who ventures to disagree with them is called a damned reactionary. If they had their way, as in Russia, they would prevent the free exercise of religion, and stifle all intellectual opposition with the hangman’s rope. Even now in England the working class is the only one exempt from taxation, getting their education for nothing, and blackmailing those who have accumulated a little money by hard toil.”
“Like you,” said Bertram.
“Like me,” answered Kenneth, calmly. “I confess my little job at the F.O. is not exacting, but don’t I toil over my sonnets—on official stationery—? Don’t I agonise in labour to produce a gem of thought for ‘The London Mercury’?”