garden of Klingsor; but sometimes one came upon horsebreakers and
heartbreakers who could make the best of both worlds. As a rule,
however, the two were apart and knew little of one another; so
the prime minister folk had to choose between barbarism and
Capua. And of the two atmospheres it is hard to say which was the
more fatal to statesmanship.


Revolution on the Shelf

Heartbreak House was quite familiar with revolutionary ideas on
paper. It aimed at being advanced and freethinking, and hardly
ever went to church or kept the Sabbath except by a little extra
fun at weekends. When you spent a Friday to Tuesday in it you
found on the shelf in your bedroom not only the books of poets
and novelists, but of revolutionary biologists and even
economists. Without at least a few plays by myself and Mr
Granville Barker, and a few stories by Mr H. G. Wells, Mr Arnold
Bennett, and Mr John Galsworthy, the house would have been out of
the movement. You would find Blake among the poets, and beside
him Bergson, Butler, Scott Haldane, the poems of Meredith and
Thomas Hardy, and, generally speaking, all the literary
implements for forming the mind of the perfect modern Socialist
and Creative Evolutionist. It was a curious experience to spend
Sunday in dipping into these books, and the Monday morning to
read in the daily paper that the country had just been brought to
the verge of anarchy because a new Home Secretary or chief of
police without an idea in his head that his great-grandmother
might not have had to apologize for, had refused to "recognize"
some powerful Trade Union, just as a gondola might refuse to