191 33 A Nation s Loss 



Herbert Perris was a vigorous and progressive Perris 

 journalist whose views coincided very closely with 

 my own. At the Congress at The Hague he was a 

 prominent factor; he also represented the London 

 Chronicle at a meeting in Paris in 1914, and later 

 went to France as a war correspondent. 



In the National Liberal Club,^ where, through 

 Unwin's courtesy, I enjoyed the privileges of a guest, 

 I once had a talk with Perris and Robert Young, -^ 

 editor of the Japan Chronicle. Both spoke in the Wasted 

 highest terms of the intellectual quality of many of ^"^^"^ 

 the coal miners in Lancashire, and thought it re- 

 dounded to the credit of Great Britain that so much 

 intelligence should exist among laborers engaged in 

 the coarsest, least specialized, and most disagreeable 

 type of work. I took the opposite view. To me it 

 showed the failure of British training that men of 

 such excellent caliber should be forced to spend their 

 lives in trades so little uplifting and making no 

 mental demand. Had England a system of adequate 

 free schools, those sons of hers would be trained to 

 higher things, and would help build up the community 

 at large instead of spending their intelligence in the 

 narrow circles about a coal mine. 



J. Ramsay Macdonald, with whom I spent an after- Ramsay 

 noon, was then the leader of the Labor Party in ^'^'^'"'^^^ 

 Parliament. A man of keen mind, broad education, 

 and thorough understanding of political affairs, he is 

 an uncompromising foe of war and its adjunct, secret 

 diplomacy, the seamy side of which he has rigorously 



'The motto at the entrance to the Liberal Club is from Gladstone: "The 

 principle of Toryism is distrust of the people, qualified by fear. The principle 

 of Liberalism is trust of the people, qualified by prudence." 



- See Chapter xxxviii, page 386, and Chapter xlix, page 618. 



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