article off by heart I should only have built a little hut on the edge of the prairie. “I must have all the arguments at my fingers’ ends,” I had thought when I left London. The arguments, perhaps, were epitomized in Tyrrell’s volume of lectures (“given to me by the author,” as I had written on the flyleaf). Nevertheless those lectures on political philosophy, though clear and vigorous in style, were too advanced for my elementary requirements. They were, I read on the first page, “inspired by a view of the springs of action which has been suggested by the War. And all of them are informed by the hope of seeing such political institutions established in Europe as shall make men averse from war—a hope which I firmly believe to be realizable, though not without a great and fundamental reconstruction of economic and social life.” From the first I realized that this was a book whose meanings could only be mastered by dint of copious underlining. What integrates an individual life is a consistent creative purpose or unconscious direction. I underlined that, and then looked up “integrate” in the dictionary. Of course it meant the opposite of disintegrate , which was what the optimists of the press said would soon happen to the Central Powers of Europe. Soon afterwards I came to the conclusion that much time would be saved if I underlined the sentences which didn’t need underlining. The truth was that there were too many ideas in the book. I was forced to admit that nothing in Tyrrell’s lectures could be used for backing up my point of view when I was being interrogated by the Colonel at Clitherland. … The thought of Clitherland was unspeakably painful. I had a vague hope that I could get myself arrested without going there. It would be so much easier if I could get my case dealt with by strangers.
Aunt Evelyn did her best to brighten the part of my double life which included her, but at meal times I was often morose and monosyllabic. Humanly speaking, it would have been a relief to confide in her. As a practical proposition, however, it was impossible. I couldn’t allow my protest to become a domestic controversy, and it was obviously kinder to keep my aunt in the dark about it until she received the inevitable shock.