couldn't hold a party together alone, "interests and habits, not
ideas," I had that now, and so the great constructive scheme of
Socialism, invading and inspiring all parties, was necessarily
claimed only by this collection of odds and ends, this residuum of
disconnected and exceptional people. This was true not only of the
Socialist idea, but of the scientific idea, the idea of veracity--of
human confidence in humanity--of all that mattered in human life
outside the life of individuals. . . . The only real party that
would ever profess Socialism was the Labour Party, and that in the
entirely one-sided form of an irresponsible and non-constructive
attack on property. Socialism in that mutilated form, the teeth and
claws without the eyes and brain, I wanted as little as I wanted
anything in the world.

Perfectly clear it was, perfectly clear, and why hadn't I seen it
before? . . . I looked at my watch, and it was half-past two.

I yawned, stretched, got up and went to bed.



9


My ideas about statecraft have passed through three main phases to
the final convictions that remain. There was the first immediacy of
my dream of ports and harbours and cities, railways, roads, and
administered territories--the vision I had seen in the haze from
that little church above Locarno. Slowly that had passed into a
more elaborate legislative constructiveness, which had led to my