Part 13 (1/2)

AN OXFORD FRIENDshi+P

Though it is the rule of thesepeople, I feel I ard to Sir Bernard Mallet, the first friend I e days, and the dearest friend of my after-life Of course, even in his case I cannot say all that I should like to say, for I don't want to exposea sy man, declared that he did not care for funeral orations on the living! Another advocate of ascetic reticence in similar circumstances is said to have remarked that it was hardly decent to use such favourable expressions except in the case of a deadto expose ive a true picture ofupon Mallet's influence upon me My friendshi+p with him was my first experience of real friendshi+p--the relation which it is in the power of youth to establish and maintain, a relation akin to the tie of brotherhood, and one which ht to have, in it an ele s political, intellectual, and literary, is rightly and necessarily founded upon talk My friend and I were eager to know not only about each other but about everything else in the universe Mallet's influence becareat upon me at a point where I much needed it He was deeply interested, and very well-read for a boy of his age, in Political Economy His father, Sir Louis Mallet, was not only one of the htened of Civil Servants, but had made a scientific study of the theory of economics Besides that he had acted as Cobden's official secretary when Cobden negotiated the Commercial Treaty with France, and had becoreat Free Trader and his policy From his father Mallet had learnt as infinitelyhe could learn in textbooks He had learnt to look upon Political Econo which concerned our h it, no doubt, involved Free Trade, what both the Mallets pleaded for was ”the policy of Free Exchange” a policy entering and ruling every for to which the quality of value inured, and so the quality of exchangeability

At the time when I went up to Balliol and sat down beside Mallet at the Fresh, bursting with the desire to talk and to hear talk, and yet not exactly knowing how to approach my fellow-novices, I was an ardent, if theoretical, Republican and Socialist I hile only a schoolboy of fourteen or fifteen, a passionate adricultural Labourers' Union, and a regular reader of his penny weekly organ It was the first paper to which I becah I had noted soe of conversion to full-blown Socialisuish in those days between the two I was especially anxious, as every youngto help a-men and to find a policy which would secure a better distribution of wealth and of the good things of the world

Very soon, at once indeed, I confided my views to my new friend Our conversation is ih, of course, I did not realise it at the tireat effect upon my life I told Mallet that I was so haunted by the miseries of the poor and the injustice of our social order that, however reat the dangers, I was growing more and more into the belief that it would be my duty to espouse the cause of Socialism; then, be it ree, the single-tax man, in an attenuated form I was a Free Trader, of course, but if, as a result of the Free Trade syste poorer, and the rich richer, as, alas! it seeainst Free Trade

On this Mallet, instead of growing zealously angry with ht I had to suggest that the principles of Political Economy and Free Trade had been tested and had failed He admitted that if to maintain them would prevent a better distribution of wealth, they ree also that if everything else had been exhausted, it would be right to try Socialism, _provided one was not convinced that the remedy would prove worse than the disease_ But he went on to explain to htened econo system They held, instead, that the present ills of the world cas of Political Econoe was interfered with and violated, on soland it would not be said that Free Exchange had been given a complete trial It was, he went on to show, because they believed that the ills of human society could be cured, _and only cured_, by a proper understanding and a proper observance of the laws of econoe so strongly and opposed every attempt to disestablish it

[Illustration: J St Loe Strachey as an Oxford Freset rid of poverty, ot the true remedy, if only ere allowed to apply it There would be plenty of the good things of the world for everybody, if we did not constantly interfere with production, and if we did not destroy capital, which would otherwise be co for labour, not labour for it By the madness of war and the preparation for e lay low that which prevents une exchanges, the essential sources of wealth Yet onder that we ree, he went on, arded merely as a kind of alternative to Socialism True believers in economics were bound to point out that the nostruood, would do infinite harm if applied to the community There was a possibility of release froe, but none by the way of Socialis even greater miseries upon mankind than those they endured at the present reatly moved, and asked for more instruction I soon realised that econo to what I had supposed My father was a strong Free Trader and had talked to reat enthusiass, first to the Socialism of Owen, and then to the Christian Socialish later he had dropped these views and had becoht in the controversy over the Factory Acts (and let ht), he had taken the Shaftesbury rather than the Manchester view Right or wrong in principle, any proposal to protect women and children would have been sure to secure his support He would rather be wrong with their advocates than right with a ht, I don't think he ever quite forgave hi about the ”residuum” My father had no sympathy with insult, even if it was deserved With him, to suffer was to be worthy of help and coh he read his Mill, he was not deeply interested He understood and assented to the et inspired by the idea that the way to accomplish his essential desire to improve the lot of the poor, and so to save society, was by discovering a true theory of applying the principles of Free Exchange As Sir Louis Mallet used to say, a great deal of thiscame from the unfortunate fact that we called our policy Free _Trade_, and so narrowed it and made it appear sordid If, like the French, we had called it Free Exchange, we should have

Mallet's words, then, came to me like a revelation I saw at once, as I have seen and felt ever since, that Political Economy, properly understood and properly applied, is not a dreary science, but one of theof all forives real hope fora better business of human life in the future than was ever known in the past; far better than anything the Communist theorisers can offer Let their theories be exaence but in the scientific spirit, and they fade away like the dreams they are

My teacher was as keen ason each other, the sparks fly It was not long, then, before I believed myself to have e-- principles sih not easy to state exactly To apply them in a lazy and sophistically-minded world is still ht to know better, ignore the science on which their livelihood is wholly founded

Thus, with a halo of friendshi+p and intellectual freedom round ht be accoe, and apply their knowledge to affairs

When I see so in the mire of his own creation, I say to oes John St Loe Strachey” I should, indeed, be an ingrate if I did not acknowledge my debt

Here is Sir Bernard Mallet's account of me at Oxford in the year 1878

SIR BERNARD MALLET'S MEMORANDUM

I can find no diaries--or any of the letters which I must have written to my people about Oxford, so I must do what I can without their help I daresay they would not have been ood letters, andare still pretty fresh It would be odd if they were not, for our Oxford alliance was far the biggest and most important influence in my life there

I think it must have been within two or three days of my arrival at Balliol as fresh beside you at dinner in Hall No doubt we soon found out each other's names Yours at once fixed my attention because, as my father was then Under Secretary of State for India and in intireat Indian states been faivein your company! I remember to this hour the vivid, emphatic way you talked, and your appearance then--your rather pale face and your thin but strongly-built figure I was at once greatly impressed, but I am not sure that the first impression on a more or less conventional public-schoolboy (such as I suppose I ether favourable! Certainly I have always thought of you as a reason for distrusting my first impression of a man! Luckily for me, however, we continued to meet You were so alive and unreserved that you very soon posted me up in all the details of your life and family, and drew the same confidences from me; and we soon found that we had so much in common that in a very few days we fell into those specially inti after It is not easy to analyse or account for the rapid growth of such a friendshi+p, but onso different froely attracted in with, you had never been at school; you knew nothing of Greek or Latin as languages, nor of cricket or football! But the want of this routine education or discipline was no disadvantage to you (except for certain seriousintelligence enabled you to get far s than you could have got out of any school You had kept all your intellectual freshness and originality In English literature, from the Elizabethan doards, you had read widely and deeply, and your wonderful ht really, with those tastes and that training, to have become a poet yourself! and till politics and journalisht that pure literature would be your line But your political instincts were even then quite as strong; you came of a family with political interests and traditions; and as a boy you had ood rave, your hbour, or at Cannes, where your family used to spend the winter But your politics had rather a poetical tinge!

Shelley, Swinburne, Walt Whitman coloured your ideas--you were a dereat enthusiasm for the United States and for the story of Abraham Lincoln But you were never faddist or doctrinaire, and your practical bent showed itself in the keen interest you took in the noticing of political economy in which I used to dabble, and which we used to discuss by the hour You seerasp of economic and fiscal truths which astonished e than I was The real truth is that, though there were, no doubt, gaps in your mental equipment which may have horrified the dons, you were miles ahead of most of us in the width and variety of your interests, in your gift of self-expression and, in a way, in knowledge of the world Every talk with you seemed to open up new vistas to me I was perhaps more receptive than the usual run of public-schoolboy, as I too had had interests awakened by hos and tradition We both of us, in fact, owed a very great deal to our respective fathers, and it was a real pleasure and guide to me to be introduced later to your father and hoet to know and appreciate my father

But I ive a faithful account of how you struckyet of one of your characteristics which I think weighed withelse, and that was the re out the best in others

Intellectual power or force of character (or whatever you like to call it) is so often self-centred as to lose half its value With you, however, it was different You always appeared to be, and I think genuinely were, quite as much interested in other people's ideas or personalities as in your own--or even more interested You listened to them, you questioned, you put the their crude or half-ihts, and all this without a trace of flattery or patronage By this, and by your generous over-appreciation of thereater confidence in themselves than they would otherwise have had In your company they were, or felt themselves, really better men To one of my disposition, at all events, this was a source of extraordinary encouragement and help I felt it fro it in my attempt to describe what you were like ein details which contemporary records, if they had existed, could alone have supplied But I hope youin it which will suit your purpose I don't think, after all, you have changed as much as most people in the forty-odd years I have known you!

CHAPTER XIII

OXFORD MEMORIES (_Concluded_)

Even at the risk of raphy open to accusation that it is a kind of Strachey Anthology, I should be giving a false impression ofabout my poetical life at the University, for there, as in reat part I did not leave the Muses till I left their bower on the Isis Every mood of my Oxford life was reflected in my verse I can only record a very few of those reflections, and here, again,a collection ofincursion, I venture to say, for those who are interested in the evolution of English verse fro to be recorded in this epitoht at finding in Oxford people of e who cared for poetry as I did, and the same kind of poetry It is true that most of my friends with a poetic bent wore their rue with a difference, but that did not h they practised a different rite, they were all sworn to the great , Mackail, Nichols, Warren, and also Willie Arnold, who, though not an undergraduate, very soon became one of my close friends, never failed, and this is the test, to be delighted in any new discovery in verse hich I was for themyself