The Holy Terror by H.g. Wells

Author:H.g. Wells
Format: epub

§ IX

Chiffan cleaned up another neglected facet of Rud's education by taking him to the Houses of Parliament, sitting with him in the Strangers' Gallery for a time and introducing him to a friend or two, for whom he had done trifling journalistic services in the past. One or two members who had heard already of the Common-sense Movement in their constituencies were only too willing to be friendly with this ugly, white-faced, erratic talker. Rud was given tea on the terrace and inspected and drawn out.

He surveyed this celebrated Terrace. Narrow, it was, he noted, at the foot of a cliff of sham Gothic stonework, barely a century old and already badly corroded. "Thoroughly Anglican," he thought. Chiffan's friend collected a small group for him, that came and went restlessly.

These politicians impressed him as being the most shortsighted and sceptical men he had ever met. They lived in a little world that was bounded on the one side by "office" and on the other by the constituencies, and they seemed unable to imagine that it was not an eternal world. One tall man, he observed, in the year of grace 1941 was wearing a long frock-coat and a peculiar half-stiff collar reminiscent of that great parliamentary hand, Mr. Gladstone. They talked with one another about divisions; the government majority had dropped to twenty; and they talked about a scene in the House. The P.M.'s manners were becoming intolerable. Then with an air of relaxation they turned to Rud. The possibility of altering opinions in the constituencies seemed a very theoretical one to them. No doubt there were these waves of opinion in the country, and an intelligent parliamentary politician observed them and dodged about among them, but it was quite outside their technique to consider how the pressures of opinion could accumulate and be directed.

Rud thought they might be impressed by the breadth of his outlook. He tried to pose as the earnest young enquirer, wanting to know. He thrust out feelers. Where is power in the country? Where is responsibility? In this country? In any country?

But the elusive mystery of political power is no proper subject for the terrace at tea-time. There is nothing to be known about it and everybody knows all about it. So what is there to discuss?

He tried over a suggestion of Chiffan's that Power is always being drawn together into a centre, and then escaping again and diffusing itself. He had not thought much of that at the time, but now that he heard himself say it, it seemed quite a good idea. There were, he argued, widespread accumulative phases in politico-social life, and these were always followed by executive phases, a sort of diastole and systole, a diastole of accumulation and a systole of concentrated impulse against diffused systematic resistances. He tried to impress them with the idea that a phase of diastole was coming to an end, and that the apparent apathy of the day might turn at any moment to the rush of the oncoming systole.

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