He goes on to a denunciation of my republicanism. Ignoring steamships, banking, Imperial Preference, and a common language, he declares the only sure link of the Empire is “the golden circle of an ancient crown.” I would hate to say anything in detraction of a devoted and indefatigable royal family, but I do not believe that there is any effective imperial binding force in the cult of snobbery and sentiment, of which its members are at once the divinities and the sacrificial victims. The healthy natural man is a republican, and has a stiff backbone. Nobody really loves or respects a courtier. One of the chief troubles in the Irish settlement has been the excessive distaste of many Irishmen for the forms of royalty. One of the chief barriers between the British and closer co-operation with America is this king-business. The true cement of our communities must be the sense of equal brotherhood and common aims. After that Mr. Churchill lapses into sheer naughtiness. There are times when the evil spirit comes upon him and when I can think of him only as a very intractable little boy, a mischievous, dangerous little boy, a knee-worthy little boy. Only by thinking of him in that way can one go on liking him. Suddenly he breaks out about Russia, and I am reminded that he has been one of the chief afflictions of that unfortunate country, that he was largely responsible for the waste of scores of million pounds of British money, in arming first one brigand chief and then another to attack and further devastate our war-exhausted ally. He is still unrepentant. He declares that I was a passionate and am now a disappointed pro-Bolshevik, although I have always been an austere critic and witness of Bolshevik incompetence and unpracticalness. But I have also borne my witness to the fact that the Bolshevik leaders are mainly honest men, fighting against stupendous difficulties and leading hard lives, and that the Russian people would far rather have them as its rulers than any of the vicious, plundering, pogromming White Hopes and Czarist reactionaries patronised by Mr. Churchill. These Russians have fought against tremendous difficulties against invading Japanese, Poles, Esthonians, French-subsidised invaders and British-subsidised invaders, and against famine and a pitiless blockade, and against their own ignorance and the atrociously rough and cruel legacy of Czarism, and it seems as if after all they will pull through and lay the foundations of a renascent Russia. And this is the handful of mud this English statesman hurls at the struggling rulers of this great land with which we are at peace. “They are just a selfish, plundering crew of tyrants and parasites who descended upon an unhappy land and enslaved or slaughtered its people, soiled its honour, ruined its prosperity, devoured its substance, and enriched themselves and their female belongings.”