I believe in few of these things. I detest charity of that kind; I hate the type of youth that our Public Schools and Oxfords turn out. I want to see the land belong to the people, I want to see every unit of the State working for the delight that work, as opposed to toil, can bring. The aristocracy has merits that I appreciate. Along with the poor they cheerfully die for their country ... it is the profiteering class with its "Business as Usual" cant that I want to slay. I want to see all the excellent material that exists in our aristocracy turned to nobler uses than bossing niggers in India so that millionaires at home may be multi-millionaires, than wasting time and wealth in the social rounds of London." "Are you a greater thinker than Balfour?" I sighed. "I think I have a greater ideal," I said. "And," I added, "I am sure that if Balfour were asked about it he would reply: 'I wish I could have got out of my aristocratic environment at your age.'" "Lawson," I continued, "I gathered tatties behind the digger once. That is the chief difference between me and Balfour. When first I went through Eton on a motor-bus and saw the boys on the playing grounds, I said to myself, 'Thank God I wasn't sent to Eton!'" "Class prejudice and jealousy," said Lawson. "Will the Rangers get into the Final?" * * * I met Wilkie the mason, on the road to-night. He cannot write his name, and he is the richest man in the village. "What's this Aw hear aboot you bein' are o' they Socialists?" he demanded. "Aw didna ken that when Aw voted for ye." "If you had?" "Not a vote wud ye hae gotten frae me. Ye'll be layin' yer bombs a' ower the place," he said half jocularly. "Ye manna put ony o' they ideas in the bairns' heids," he continued anxiously. "Politics have no place in a schule." I did not pursue the subject; I sidetracked him on to turnips, and by using what I had picked up from Andrew Smith I made a fairly good effort. When we parted Wilkie grasped my hand. "Ye're no dozzent," he said kindly, "but, tak ma advice, and leave they politics alone. It's a dangerous game for a schulemester to play." * * * I find that I am becoming obsessed by my creed. I see that I place politics before everything else in education. But I feel that I am doing the best I can for true education. After all it isn't Socialism I am teaching, it is heresy. I am trying to form minds that will question and destroy and rebuild. Morris's _News from Nowhere_ appeals to me most as a Utopia. Like him I want to see an artistic world. I travelled to Newcastle on Saturday, and the brick squalor that stretches for miles out Elswick and Blaydon way sickened me. Dirty bairns were playing on muddy patches, dirty women were gossiping at doors, miners were wandering off in twos and threes with whippets at their heels. And smoke was over all. Britain is the workshop of the world. Good old Merrie England!