decent society. But, holy Mike! I'm a new man. I used to do my work
with a sick heart and a taste in my mouth like a graveyard, and now I
can eat and drink what I like and frolic round like a colt. I wake up
every morning whistling and thank the good God that I'm alive, It
was a bad day for Kaiser when I got on the cars for White Springs.'

'This is a rum place to meet,' I said, 'and you brought me by a
roundabout road.'

He grinned and offered me a cigar.

'There were reasons. It don't do for you and me to advertise our
acquaintance in the street. As for the shop, I've owned it for five
years. I've a taste for good reading, though you wouldn't think it,
and it tickles me to hand it out across the counter ... First, I want
to hear about Biggleswick.'

'There isn't a great deal to it. A lot of ignorance, a large slice of
vanity, and a pinch or two of wrong-headed honesty - these are the
ingredients of the pie. Not much real harm in it. There's one or
two dirty literary gents who should be in a navvies' battalion, but
they're about as dangerous as yellow Kaffir dogs. I've learned a lot
and got all the arguments by heart, but you might plant a
Biggleswick in every shire and it wouldn't help the Boche. I can see
where the danger lies all the same. These fellows talked academic
anarchism, but the genuine article is somewhere about and to find
it you've got to look in the big industrial districts. We had faint
echoes of it in Biggleswick. I mean that the really dangerous fellows
are those who want to close up the war at once and so get on with
their blessed class war, which cuts across nationalities. As for being