And yet all the while, at the bottom of his heart,
every-one knowsthat this is humbug.
But you see I was still halfafraid of the working
class. And yet all the while, at the bottom of his heart, every-one knowsthat this
is humbug.
I was consciousof an immense weight of guilt that I
had got to expiate.
But I should have felt the same shame even ifthere
had been no one to bring it home to me. It takes a lot of guts to be openly such a
skunkas that.
For severalyears it was all the fashion to be a
Bolshie, as people then called it. Snob-bishness is one of those vices which we can
discern in every-one else but never in ourselves.
Only now were here for Gods sake lets stay here. A
middle-class person embraces Socialism and perhaps even joins theCommunist
Party.
But onedid not feel towards the natives as one felt
to-wards the lower classesat home. For some months I lived entirely in coal-miners
houses.
At most you get rid of some of your own
class-prejudice by doingso. The word unemployment was on everyones
lips.
But when you come to the normal working class the
position is totallydifferent.
But the feeling thatpunishment is evil arises
inescapably in those who have to administer it.
To begin with, there is no short cut into their
midst.
The next momentthe stevedore collapsed on my chest
and flung his arms round my neck. And this, youobserve, was pure
prejudice.
It isso easy to be witty about the British
Empire.
From their point of view all that mattersis that
you, like themselves, are on the bum.
Hence the eager class-breaking activities which one
can see in progress onall sides. But why is it so easy to be on equal terms with
social outcasts?
I was not goingback to be a part of that evil
despotism.
It can only be because in his heart he feelsthat
proletarian manners are disgusting.
Galsworthy is a very fine specimen of the
thin-skinned, tear-in-the-eye,pre-war humanitarian. I knew it was a common
lodging-house by the sign Good Bedsfor Single Men in the window. It was too hot to
sleep and we spent the night in talking.
For five years I had been part of anoppressive
system, and it had left me with a bad conscience. England was full of half-baked
antinomian opinions.