WILLIE WHISPER 9 



the reward of long and meritorious secretarial 

 service and I stepped into his cast-off secretarial 

 shoes, that the actualities of public political life 

 began to dispel the illusions with which I had 

 embellished it. I was in the inner ring. In all 

 things political I became the confidant of my 

 chief ; and oh, the bitter awakening of it all ! 



"It seemed to me that all were for the party 

 and none were for the state. Men who in private 

 life were truthful and the soul of honour laboured 

 under the conviction or illusion that politics was 

 a game to which the ordinary rules of ethics did 

 not apply. All means were deemed legitimate to 

 serve a legitimate end, and what was the end ? 

 To gull the people, to outmanoeuvre an opponent, 

 to get the inside track of a friend, to avert party 

 disaster, to inflict party defeat. It was party 

 alone that the players thought of. Place and 

 power were the stakes and no code of honour 

 regulated the game. Oh, of course my chief, in 

 common no doubt with others, acted on the 

 assumption that the success of his party was 

 essential to the well-being of the state. But did 

 they really think so ? I would fain believe it, but 

 who can say ? Has not the same belief or de- 

 lusion possessed every great conqueror and scourge 



