I remember what a former ally of his had said to me just before the Manchester Conference: "No, I am not going to Manchester. I don't agree with Gladstone's Irish policy, but I know that if I were to go to Manchester I would shout with the rest." Those were days when the world had sunk far into the morasses of parliamentary talk. All things were to be settled by talking and voting and pious intentions. A complacent faith in Democracy was to save the world, if, indeed, the world were not already saved by it. In English-speaking countries it had become little short of dishonourable to praise naval and military valour; and reliance upon force as the defence of a nation was thought to be unchristian. Democracy was to be shielded by its own virtue. We have heard that since the Great War, too. It is the old story of an old dream. Envy, hatred, and malice had departed from the world. There would be no more cause for great wars. The era of perpetual peace was about to dawn. Nations were to put their trust in a parliamentary God, a Deity of Congresses. When every one voted, there would be a new heaven on a new earth. The credulous invented a new kind of treason of which any one was accused when he expressed, publicly, doubts of the sanity of a democracy which could not see that the voter unprepared to defend his "sacred vote" by arms was risking his privilege, his goods, his kith and {156} kin, was imperilling his right to live as a freeman. He had put his faith in words. Mr. Gladstone was the nineteenth century's greatest conjuror with words. But he was incapable of demanding, as Woodrow Wilson did, that a nation should be "neutral in thought", while freedom, the very right to think, was being beaten down. Gladstone would not have blundered like that, you say. But it was not a blunder, it was a crime. {157} CHAPTER XI WHISTLER A familiar voice said, "Come!" It was Whistler's voice. I turned and answered, "All right. Where?" The slender, dapper figure halted; over the quizzical face a look of astonishment flashed; the flat-brimmed silk hat lifted perceptibly by the contortion of an eyebrow; and the immortal monocle dropped into the right hand as was its habit when punctuating a sentence of its controller. The monocle was Whistler's question mark, his exclamation point, his full stop; it served even as parenthesis when occasion demanded. "Where," replied Whistler, "where should an honest Londoner go at this hour but home to dine? Come, then! Escape the awful gaze of the rude world. We 're blocking Bond Street. Let's call a worthy hansom." A hansom worthy of its fare was found by searching,--varnished, resplendent; it bore a striped awning, and its driver was smart and wore a boutonnière; and its horse shone and arched a proud neck. We were at Chelsea in ten minutes. We were {158} neighbours there. Stopping the cab at the Tower House, in Tite Street, Whistler alighted, exclaiming: