“I must be getting back to London,” was all he would answer.
I was reminded irresistibly of a similar party, similarly dispersing in the first days of August four and a half years earlier. We had all said then that we must get back to London; we could none of us have said what we expected to do there.
“You’ll wait till Bertrand comes,” I begged.
“Yes. I don’t suppose a day or two more or less will make much difference,” said O’Rane. “After all these years, too . . . It’s a curious thing, George; we’re both of us Irishmen, both of us men of peace; and, most of all, we’re reformers. All our working life we’ve seen the reforms nearest our hearts postponed and postponed by an eruption in Ireland or by a threat of European war. God forgive me, I had to stand as a tory and a militarist, because I saw this war coming! Overboard went all my dreams of making life tolerable for the sons of Ishmael! And now again!”
I might have added that it was this feeling of futility which kept me from standing again for parliament when I lost my seat in 1910.
“Until these same sons of Ishmael strike against war,” I answered, “it’s idle to think of improving their lot.”
“And yet it’s so little I’m asking!,” he sighed. “I only want every man to have freedom to work . . . and save money . . . and marry . . . and have children . . . without interfering with his neighbours . . . and without interference from them. I want him to spend his old age in the comfort and peace of mind which he has earned. His children must be born healthy, to work, to save, to marry, to live and die as he has done. If civilized society can’t give him that . . . And it can’t so long as a country contains one single prison or workhouse or infirmary or brothel . . .”
“I suspect there were brothels in the golden age,” I interposed.
O’Rane leant forward and gripped my wrist till I winced with the pain.
“In the golden age,” he answered between his teeth, “there were hopeless, uncaring cynics, who said that prostitution was the oldest profession in the world. Slavery was the oldest solution of all labour problems. Torture was the oldest safeguard of civil authority. The moral sense of the world must be roused till it sweeps away prostitution and disease, as it swept away torture and slavery. It was not to keep them flourishing that we went to war. And we can’t sweep them away while another war threatens.” . . .