"And about Peace you speak . . . as if you were inspired!"
"About Peace . . . perhaps, but not about myself. I went to America, I became a workman. But the terrible thing was that I felt I was not a workman. I had money. I gave it all to the poor . . . nearly. But I kept just enough never to be hungry, to live a little more comfortably than my mates, to take a day's rest when I was tired, to buy meat and wine and medicines when I wanted them . . . to go to the theatre dressed as a gentleman. Do you understand? I was a Sunday workman. I was an amateur labourer. I remained a gentleman, a 'toff.' I come of a good middle-class family: well, over there, in America, while I was a workman, I remained—I became even more than I had been—an aristocrat. I felt that I was far above my fellow-workmen. I knew more than they, I knew a great deal: they could tell it by listening to me. I was finer-grained, more delicately constituted than they: they could tell it by looking at me. They regarded me as a wastrel who had been kicked out of doors, who had 'seen better days;' but they continued to think me a gentleman and I myself felt a gentleman, a 'toff.' I never became a proper workman. I should have liked to, so as to understand the workman thoroughly and afterwards, in the light of my knowledge, to work for his welfare, back in my own country, in my own station of life. But,
