WITH PIPE ALIGHT

Southland Times, Issue 19546, 9 May 1925, Page 13

WITH PIPE ALIGHT

'on freedom.

(By

Criticus.)

He was an Englishman, a Londoner, a Cockney and extremely proud of the fact, but his pride was founded in the greatness of the race to which he belonged and not in any belief in his own qualities. We met in front of a fireplace; I had my pipe and he had managed to procure enough liquor by dubious means to loosen ins longue and his pent-up indignation, to say nothing of a fine flow of picturesque ornamentation which gave spice, to say nothing of the cobalt, to his conversation. He confessed that some kind friends had given him a password which, when uttered over the telephone, had provided him with a key to stocks of fiery spirits which were expensive, but extremely exhilirating. He had paid royally, but then he had fared royally. “You know,” he said, and throughout his talk with me there was a series of adjectives as vigorous as they were monotonous, “you people in this place think you are free and that we in the Old Country are bound down, ground down and held under the restraint of traditions and distinctions.” I murmured something that sounded like a protest with the idea of inducing him to elaborate a thesis so well begun. “When I was in Sydney I held forth before a crowd of Aussies,” he went on.

“I pickled or I couldn’t have said a thing, but everything I fired at ’em was the honest truth. I’m not educated, I’m as rough as they make ’em, but I’ve been round the world four times and I say this: the British working men is the happiest and the freest man in the world—l know — I’m with him and I’m one of them. Go into the inns, on to railway stations, to libraries and you’ll see notices urging the British working man to go to New Zealand, and Australia and to Canada. Does he go? Not him. He knows in his heart that he is free and he knows that all the stories he has heard of the freedom in the colonies is just bunkum. You talk about freedom here and say you have no class distinctions—utter rot. If Igo to the races in England and pay my money I can go on the lawns and rub shoulders with lords, with dukes and kings and they rub shoulders with me. They will go over and speak with the gypsies—everybody does—and they afte part of the great lively day with the masses of pleasure-seekers around the roundabouts. I’ve gone to Epsom without any boots and gone to Lord Derby’s carriage and he’s said: ‘You look hungry, my boy; tuck in and have what you want.’ Open-handed, generous and thoughtful, the British aristocracy are the salt of the earth, the salt of the whole adjectival earth, my boy.”

“You have missed this in the colonies, I ventured.