“Oh, admitted!,” I said. “I’m thinking about the day of reckoning.” We were walking slowly along Knightsbridge on our way to one of the weekly editorial dinners; and, as we approached the French Embassy, I crossed the road for fear of encountering Lucien de Grammont. My shoulders were not broad enough to support the load of obloquy which he kept in reserve for our few, uneasy meetings; and, though I stated candidly that the French were now the chief obstacles to peace, I could not persuade Lucien that it was the prime minister and not the humble editor of an obscure review who had coaxed the French to open their mouths and shut their eyes at Versailles. Now that no sweetmeats were to be had, the French were threatening to undertake the search themselves. This was the first bill to be met on the day of reckoning; but I was not prepared to say that it would be the last or the heaviest. In Ireland, the practice of wholesale murder and destruction was being met with reprisals in kind. Of India and Egypt it is enough to say that we knew very little, that all we knew was bad and that we were not allowed to print all we knew. “That’s my point,” said Bertrand with cynical complacency. “Any one of these things would have brought down a government in old days. Take taxation! Take unemployment!” “My one consolation,” I broke in, “is that _no_ man, even if damned fools call him a ‘little wizard’, can cope with all that at the same moment.” “I’ll write you an article on _The First Duty of Government_,” Bertrand promised. “And that, some of these gentry may be surprised to hear, is . . . to _govern_.” 3 My most vivid memory of my uncle’s subsequent diatribe was that I declined to publish it. In Ireland or France, where irony is understood, it would have gone with a swing; but we were unpopular enough already without assailing the cherished conviction of the English that they have a natural talent for self-government. And this is what Bertrand attempted with artful citations from any convenient speech in which an English publicist had asserted that Dervishes, Hottentots, Andaman Islanders or even Irishmen were unfit to govern themselves. Could darkest Africa shew such a record of misrule as we had at our doors? Had Egypt plunged to bankruptcy with greater recklessness than we displayed? By the standard of our Indian crimes and blunders, was not Abdul the Damned unjustly damned? The English were mistaken, but it was not too late to repair the mistake; and my uncle proposed in conclusion that the United States should lend Mr. Herbert Hoover for six months to organize and run the British Empire Protectorate. “It won’t do, Bertrand,” I said. “But isn’t it true?” “It’s too true.”