And I had, Doctor; if what I saw then was true--I had! Yes, if ever man
blundered and fooled his countrymen into a false and fatal position--I was
that man! It wasn't a question of right or wrong. In politics that doesn't
really matter; you decide on a course, and you invent moral reasons for it
afterwards. No, what I had done was much worse than any mere wrongdoing.
All my political foresight and achievements were a gamble that had gone
wrong; and for that my Day of Judgment had come, and I stood in the
pillory, a peepshow for mockery. But why for their instrument of torture
did they choose primroses? Oh, I can invent a reason! It was Moses
Primrose, cheated of his horse with a gross of green spectacles cased in
shagreen. But that was not the reason. For then came new insight, and a
fresh humiliation. As I looked more intently I saw that I was _not_
being mocked; I was being worshipped, adulated, flattered; I had become a
god--for party purposes perhaps--and this was my day, given in my honour,
for national celebration. And I saw, by the insight given me, that they
were praising me _for having put their money on the wrong horse!_
Year by year the celebration had gone on, until they had so got into the
habit that they could not leave off! All my achievements, all my policies,
all my statecraft were in the dust; but the worship of me had become a
national habit--so foolish and meaningless, that nothing, nothing but some
vast calamity--some great social upheaval, was ever going to stop it.

DOCTOR. My dear lord, it is I who must stop it now. You mustn't go on.

STATESMAN. I have done, Doctor. There I have given you the essentials of
my dream; material depressing enough for the mind of an old man, enfeebled
by indisposition, at the end of a long day's work. But I tell you, Doctor,
that nothing therein which stands explainable fills me with such repulsion
and aversion as that one thing which I cannot explain--why, why primroses?