part in our East-end politics down here." He gave the other the

engineer's address, adding with characteristic breadth,

"It might be worth your while to follow him up perhaps, Colonel."

Joe Burt lodged in the East-end off Pevensey Road in the heart of the

new and ever-growing industrial quarter of Seagate, which was gradually

transforming a rather suburban little town of villas with a

fishing-station attached into a manufacturing city, oppressed with all

the thronging problems of our century. There the Colonel visited his

new friend. Burt was the first man of his type the old soldier, who

had done most of his service in India, had met. The engineer himself,

and even more the room in which he lived, with its obvious air of

culture, was an eye-opener to the Colonel.

There was an old sideboard, beautifully kept, and on it a copper kettle

and spirit lamp; a good carpet, decent curtains. On the walls were

Millais's _Knight Errant_, Greiffenhagen's _Man with a Scythe_, and

Clausen's _Girl at the Gate_. But it was the books on a long deal

plank that most amazed the old soldier; not so much the number of them

but the quality. He stood in front of them and read their titles with

grunts.

Alfred Marshall's _Principles of Economics_ lolled up against the

Webbs' _Industrial Democracy_; Bradley's lectures on the tragedies of

Shakespeare hobnobbed with Gilbert Murray's translations from

Euripides. Few of the standard books on Economics and Industrial

History, English or American, were missing. And the work of the modern

creators in imaginative literature, Wells, Shaw, Arnold Bennett were

mixed with _Alton Locke_, _Daniel Deronda_, _Sybil_, and the essays of

Samuel Butler and Edward Carpenter.

"You're not married then?" said the Colonel, throwing a glance round

the well-appointed room.

"Yes, A am though," the engineer answered, his black-brown eyes

twinkling. "A'm married to Democracy. She's ma first loov and like to

be ma last."

"What you doing down South?" asked the Colonel, tossing one leg over

the other as he sat down to smoke.

"Coom to make trouble," replied the other.

"Good for you!" said the Colonel. "Hotting things up for our friend

Stan. Well, he wants it. All the politicians do."

His first visit to Seagate Lane was by no means his last: for the

engineer's courage, his integrity, his aggressive tactics, delighted

and amused the scholarly old soldier; but when he came to tackle his

man seriously on the business of the National Service League he found

he could not move him an inch from the position he invariably took up:

The Army would be used by the Government in the only war that

matters--the Industrial war; and therefore the Army must not be

strengthened.

"If the Army was used for the only purpose it ought to be used

for--defence--A'd be with you. So'd the boolk of the workers. But

it's not. They use it to croosh strikes!" And he brought his fist

down on the table with a characteristic thump. "That's to croosh

us!--For the strike's our only weapon, Colonel."

The power, the earnestness, even the savagery he displayed, amazed the

other. Here was a reality, an elemental force of which he had scarcely

been aware. This was Democracy incarnate. And whatever else he might

think he could not but admire the sincerity and strength of it. But he

always brought his opponent back to what was for him the only issue.

"Germany!" he said.

"That's blooff!" replied the other. "They'll get the machine-guns for

use against Germany, and when they've got em they'll use them against

us. That's the capitalists' game.--Then there's the officers."

"What about em?" said the Colonel cheerfully. "They're harmless

enough, poor devils."

"Tories to a man. Coom from the capitalist class."

"What if they do?"

"The Army does what the capitalist officer tells it. And he knows

where his interest lies aw reet."

"Well, of course you know the British officer better than I do, Burt,"

replied the Colonel, nettled for once.

His opponent was grimly pleased to have drawn blood.

"In the next few years if things go as they look like goin we shall

see," was his comment. "Wait till we get a Labour Government in power!"

The Colonel knocked out his pipe.

"Well, Burt, I'll say this," he remarked. "If we could get half the

passion into our cause you do into yours, we should do."

"We're fighting a reality, Colonel," the other answered. "You're

fighting a shadow, that's the difference."

"I hope to God it may prove so!" said the Colonel, as they shook hands.

The two men thoroughly enjoyed their spars. And the battle was well

matched: for the soldier of the Old Army and the soldier of the New

were both scholars, well-read, logical, and fair-minded.

On one of his visits the Colonel found Ernie Caspar in the engineer's

room standing before the book-shelf, handling the books. Ernie showed

himself a little shame-faced in the presence of his old Commanding

Officer.

"How do they compare to your father's, Caspar?" asked the Colonel,

innocently unaware of the other's _mauvaise honte_ and the cause of it.

"Dad's got ne'er a book now, sir," Ernie answered gruffly. "Only just

the Bible, and Wordsworth, and Troward's Lectures. Not as he'd ever

anythink like this--only Carpenter. See, dad's not an economist. More

of a philosopher and poet like."

"I wish they were mine," said the Colonel, turning over Zimmeni's

_Greek Commonwealth_.

"They're all right if so be you can afford em," answered Ernie shortly,

almost sourly.

"Books are better'n beer, Ernie," said Joe Burt, a thought maliciously;

and added with the little touch of priggishness that is rarely absent

from those who have acquired knowledge comparatively late in

life--"They're the bread of life and source of power."

"Maybe," retorted Ernie with a snort; "but they aren't the equal of

wife and children, I'll lay."

He left the room surlily.

Burt grinned at the Colonel.

"Ern's one o the much-married uns," he said.

"D'you know his wife?" the Colonel asked.

Joe shook his bull-head.

"Nay," he said. "And don't wish to."

"She's a fine woman all the same," replied the Colonel.

"Happen so," the other answered. "All the more reason a should avoid

her. They canna thole me, the women canna. And A don't blame em."

"Why can't they thole you?" asked the Colonel curiously.

"Most Labour leaders rise to power at the expense of their wives," the

other explained. "They go on; but the wives stay where they are--at

the wash-tub. The women see that; and they don't like it. And they're

right."

"What's the remedy?"

"There's nobbut one." Joe now not seldom honoured the Colonel by

relapsing into dialect when addressing him. "And that's for the Labour

leader to remain unmarried. They're the priests of Democracy--or

should be."

"You'll never make a Labour leader out of Caspar," said the Colonel

genially. "I've tried to make an N.C.O. of him before now and failed."

"A'm none so sure," Joe said, and added with genuine concern: "He's on

the wobble. Might go up; might go down. Anything might happen to yon

lad now. He's just the age. But he's one o ma best pupils--if he'll

nobbut work."

"Ah," said the Colonel with interest. "So he's joined your class at

St. Andrew's Hall, has he?"

"Yes," replied the other. "Mr. Chislehurst brought him along--the new

curate in Old Town. D'ye know him?"

"He's my cousin," replied the Colonel. "I got him here. He'd been

overworking in Bermondsey--in connection with the Oxford Bermondsey

Mission."

"Oh, he's one of _them_!" cried the other. "That accounts for it. A

know _them_. They were at Oxford when A was at Ruskin. They're

jannock,--and so yoong with it. They think they're going to convert

the Church to Christianity!" He chuckled.

"In the course of history," remarked the Colonel, "many Churchmen have

thought that. But the end of it's always been the same."

"What's that?" asked the engineer.

"That the Church has converted them."