‘What about Haldane?’ roared Beefy, who got his politics from the Daily Mail.
‘Well, what about him?’
‘The Daily Mail says his soul is in Germany.’
‘If you read the Daily News you would find that it was his Expeditionary Force which landed in France in 1914, and his Territorial Force which warded off invasion. All your Tory Government did when in power was to change the design of Tommy’s shirt-tail and hand out caps made in Germany. You’re great fellows for political swank and eye-wash, but you haven’t the brains of a hen. And even in your Tory Coalition Government you’ve got to get Lloyd George to pull you through.’
‘Nobby!’ cried Ginger.
‘What?’
‘I’m fighting your constituency at the next election. You’re a pest, a peril, and a blighter. And if the Boche doesn’t kill you, I’ll smite you dead on the platform as soon as you whisper Free Trade. Free Trade will ruin the Empire. We’re going to have Protection, even if I’ve got to lay you out on a shutter of the Daily News. And I’ll bribe the hooligans to smash up the printing-machines of the Manchester Guardian. You Radicals have got to be destroyed.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Nobby, striking an oratorical pose, ‘look at this unwashed pro-consul from Oxford. He’s really afraid of Advanced Liberals passing a Utopian measure that every citizen must be washed. And he, the product of culture, the flower of chivalry, the superman, would bribe the toughs to smash up the Manchester Guardian! Oh Ginger, thy name is Autocracy!’
‘Yours is Democracy, and it’s a pretty rotten creed. You’re rushing us into a Republic, with a President in overalls, and Cabinet Ministers who drop their h’s, and snore when they’re sucking their soup. You won’t be happy till you see field-marshals as bus-conductors and admirals as A.B.’s. You’ll cut off the Colonies and let us fizzle out as the inglorious scrap-heap of a once glorious old Empire. Nobby, you’re a politician and a public fraud.’