11

Rud had never been in a plane before. He felt a boyish excitement in seeing the familiar map of south–west England spread out below him in the twilight; he watched the lightships and lighthouses flashing into being, and he soared up, up past a few cloud whiffs, and up and up, into a softly throbbing starlight. He glimpsed the retreating sunset and then lost it again. The sun has gone ahead, he thought, and presently it will be round again and overtaking us, but some day the common man will beat the sun. In which case somehow wouldn't he always be picking up his yesterdays?

That line of thought was too mathematical for Rud's rhetorical mind, and he dropped it. He lay back dreaming and presently a deep blue daybreak came to swallow up the stars.

The plane came down into the lower air. New York, that city of ten thousand bristling towers, facing the sunrise, still with the sleep in its ten million office windows, was a memorable picture. As they droned softly over the Hudson river, the reawakening clangour of that mighty aggregation penetrated the suddenly subdued hum of the engines.

The press had come to the airport for them, eager for a first–hand story of the Purple House. Steenhold had seen to that. They seemed to be more excited than the British press about Bohun. "He's the sort of thing we have to clear away, before England and America can talk together," said Rud, concluding some pithy comments on his defeated adversary.

"What have you come to tell us, Mr. Whitlow?" "Rud—if you please—Rud Whitlow. I've come to learn." "Anything in particular?"

"I want to know who's responsible for keeping the common man in England and the common man in America out of step."

"Most of us would say it's your government. Especially now."

"I think so too. But there's more in it than that. That's what I want to find out."

"Are you going to talk on the Radio?"

"Ask me. I'll talk."

"Do you talk on the Radio in England?"

"Never. We've got a government–controlled Radio over there now, and they tighten it up and tighten it up, for fear of ideas getting loose. The Anglican Empire has taken to sitting on the safety–valve of free speech; it's been heading back to Dreamland ever since the Abdication. So much the worse when the burst comes. The Bishops and the Court people and the Foreign Office and the Old Gentry and Bath and Cheltenham and Blimpland and all that, are more and more afraid of our common men getting ideas. New ideas. Very afraid. They've done so well by the old set. You know they censor all your American papers? The more they're blacked out, the more we like you. Backwardness is their pride and glory. The Churchmen have stifled our schools and universities for a century. The House of Lords is the sterilisation chamber for newspaper owners and publishers. England's become the great Hush Hush land of the world. Not a land of cruel repression but a land of Hush, Hush. Don't say a word or else you'll wake the babies. Politically the British common folk are the most ignorant and backward people in the world. But maybe now I am over here I'll talk a bit to England on the air."

"The Great Hush Hush Land" made a good headline start for Rud.

The idea of an English common man coming to America to speak his mind to England, was fresh enough in itself to get him a press. "We've never heard of this English common man of yours before," said one reporter.

"You have. What else do you think kept our nobility and gentry from messing up your Civil War?"

"That's true, I suppose," said the news–man.

"And much thanks we common Englishmen get in your histories," said Rud.

Some of the Tory press tried to guy Rud. They said he had an Oxford accent and conversely that he rearranged his aspirates. They telephoned to London for facts against him, but they could get hardly any facts for or against him. They tried to find out if he had a "love life". They could not find so much as a blonde hair upon him. They said he was a political monomaniac, but that did not hurt him. They picked the worst photographs of him and issued caricatures. But though they made him grotesque, that did not make him in the least feeble or repulsive. The more liberal papers took him up from a different angle as the New Type Briton. The press fought about him and the Radio people found he had a natural aptitude for "talks", always with something new to say and always in effect reiterating his self–assertion.

"Our common people have been kept apart by politicians and bad history, long enough. We ought to have scrapped old George the Third when you did. That's kept us out of step ever since. Sorry to be so behind you; but how about getting together now? Our common tongue. Our common freedom. Our common future. While there is still time. Then we'll get these soldiers off our backs, and start fair. That's what I'm here for. That's what I want to learn about."

"Your Party is the Popular Socialist Party, isn't it, still?"

"We're dropping that name out of respect to his lost lordship. We fired him. We're calling ourselves the Party of the Common Man."

"In England?"

"Throughout the world."