I have a fairly long memory, and five years later I quoted Mayhew's words to him. He was honest enough to say that he had forgotten them and that the two Balkan wars had converted him to my own belief that a European war was too big a thing for any power to begin.
House of Steynes was an asylum from the House of Commons, but we could not keep altogether free from politics. No one who remembers the 1909 Session will be surprised. I believe my record for divisions under the famous Budget was equalled by two men and beaten by three. It was the great fight of our time. I had been getting a bad name with the Whips, and observant eyes on the opposite side were already marking me down a possible renegade. That wicked old wire-puller, the Duchess of Ross, on ten minutes' acquaintance at a Foreign Office reception invited me to stay at Herrig Castle to complete the conversion. I would have accepted in a spirit of adventure had it not been for the Budget; but any man with one drop of Radical blood in his veins felt, as I did, that Democracy was fighting for its life.
I shall not revive the old battle that we fought in the House and refought with Loring. I only allude to it because of the change that controversy wrought in his life, a change he was already beginning resignedly to contemplate.
"There is good in all things, even your Budget," he told my uncle ironically. "One irresponsible, hereditary legislator will be able to retire with dignity."
"Our whole democratic development for fifty years is based on the financial monopoly of the Commons," Bertrand answered.
To my mind the saddest effect of political life is the ease with which even considerable intellects come to live by catch-phrases.
"That's little recommendation in my eyes, sir," Loring answered. "Come! Come! Let's die fighting! If we let this through—to the tune of the Land Song—there's nothing you won't be able to pass as a Money Bill. And there's always the chance that the country may support us."
"And you'd make every future Budget fight for its life like this one—against an irresponsible House?"
Not lightly did my uncle forget his all-night sittings and endless perambulations through the lobbies.