SWAN SONG 799
" My dear Mont," said the chairman, with a grin, " aren't
you cutting there at the basis of all privilege ? "
" Very probably," said Michael, with an answering grin.
" I think, of course, that child emigration is much better,
but nobody else does, apparently."
Everybody knew that ' young Mont' had a ' bee in his
bonnet' about child emigration, and there was little
disposition to encourage it to buzz. And, since no one
was more aware than Michael of being that crank in
politics, one who thought you could not eat your cake
and have it, he said no more. Presently, feeling that they
would go round and round the mulberry bush for some
time yet, and sit on the fence after, he excused himself and
went away.
He found the address he wanted : " Miss June Forsyte,
Poplar House, Chiswick," and mounted a Hammersmith
'bus.
How fast things seemed coming back to the normal!
Extraordinarily difficult to upset anything so vast, intricate,
and elastic as a nation's life. The 'bus swung along among
countless vehicles and pedestrian myriads, and Michael
realised how firm were those two elements of stability in
the modern state, the common need for eating, drinking,
and getting about; and the fact that so many people could
drive cars. c Revolution ? ' he thought: ' There never was
a time when it had less chance. Machinery's dead agin
it.' Machinery belonged to the settled state of things,
and every day saw its reinforcement. The unskilled multi-
tude and the Communistic visionaries, their leaders, only
had a chance now where machinery and means of com-
munication were still undeveloped, as in Russia. Brains,
ability and technical skill, were by nature on the side of
capital and individual enterprise, and were gaining ever
more power.