"Well, the East Lancashires were. They were all miners, and the thing that interested them most was the devastated mines, ruined by the Germans in their retreat. And they saw the remains of the bath houses at the pit heads. Those baths had been there before the war. Every miner could go back clean to his own home, instead of having to wash in his own kitchen. Grandfather, you owned coal-mines. Why didn't you and the other coal-owners put up baths at the pit heads? You would have liked it if _you_ had been a miner. And just think what it would have saved your wife. The English miners got them by threats after they had seen the wrecks of them in France. But why didn't the English coal-owners copy French methods, if they hadn't the imagination to think them out for themselves? Why did they only concede when they could not help it? Reforms were wrung out of the governing class in your day by threats and strikes. That is what, for nearly thirty years, ruined our class with Labour when it came into power. Why didn't your generation foresee that?" "We didn't see the danger," said John, "as you see it. Everyone can be wise after the event." "Just so. But if you couldn't foresee the danger, why didn't you see at the time the _justice_ of their claims, men like you, grandfather, who fought for justice for the smaller nations? It seems to me, the national characteristic of the upper classes fifty years ago must have been opposition to all change, a tendency to ignore symptoms which really were danger signals, and an undeveloped sense of justice ..., which only acted in certain grooves. The result was the uneducated came into power, embittered, without a shred of confidence in the disinterestedness of the educated. The Commonwealth--" "The what?" "The Commonwealth--you used to call it the Empire--nearly went upon the rocks." Jack's young face became awed and stern and aged, as John had seen men's faces become when they charged through the mud in the dawn. "I was in Liverpool," Jack said, "all through the Black Winter. It needn't have been. It never, never need have been if there had been justice and sympathy in England for Labour forty years before. But there was not. So they paid us back in our own coin. We had no justice from them. My God! I can't blame them." Serena, coming quietly up the path, saw the two men looking fixedly at each other, both pallid in the soft sunshine. The same shadow of suffering seemed to have fallen on the beautiful young face, and on the old one. "You must not talk any more," she said to John, casting a reproachful glance at her son. "You are over-tired." Jack took the hint, kissed his mother's hand, and walked slowly away. He was deeply moved. John shivered. A deathlike coldness was creeping over him, was laying an icy hand upon his heart. He turned to his sole comforter, Serena, watching him with limpid grieved eyes.