MUNICIPAL ACTIVITY IN BRITAIN
T. D. A. COCKERELL University of Colorado
I spent the summer of 1904 in my native country, England, after an absence of about thirteen years. One who returns thus, after a considerable interval, is perhaps in a better position to appreciate the progress of affairs than a total stranger, on the one hand, or a permanent resident on the other. It gives one a curious sensation to walk the streets, and realize that the boys and girls now on their way to school were not even born when one last passed that way. Yet the old familiar scenes have not lost their character, and some of the older men seem hardly to have changed. England is England still, and yet
In those bygone days, the ghosts of which so strangely mingle with the present, we used to assemble in the little hall originally a stable at Kelmscott House, overlooking the Thames at Hammersmith. Every Sunday evening the Socialist League met there, and a small audience listened while William Morris, Bernard Shaw, or some other ardent radical set forth the promise of a new and better time. I remember very well the arrival of Stepniak from Russia, and the amusement we got out of the hysterical leader one of the daily papers published thereupon. A strange man with a large beard, sitting quietly in the audience, was pointed out one evening it was none other than Kropotkin. Then John Burns came down, and explained to us that, physically speaking, it was better to go to prison than to the workhouse. There was the veteran Craig, the hero of Ralahine, who could not refrain from expounding his views of phrenology, which interested us much less than his Irish experi- ences. There was Sparling, and Tochatti. and Mordhurst; and occasionally we saw Walter Crane or Edward Carpenter ; while Emery Walker, the secretary, was always present and helped, not talking so much as some, but getting things done.
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