MARGINAL COMMENT
NICOLSON By HAROLD
SWIFT in his last years, happening to turn the pages of a book which he had written in his prime, groaned aloud and exclaimed, " Great God! What genius 1 had when I wrote that! " I suppose that when one becomes very old indeed, or when the bats of mental decay begin to fidget in the attics of one's mind, one does indeed look back upon one's younger self as upon someone wise and resolute and clear. I have not as yet reached that stage of senility, and in fact I am often startled, when I look back upon the self of only a few years ago, to find my lips curling into a smile of affectionate pity for anything so ingenuous, so innocent and so young 1 was nearly fifty years of age when I first entered Parliament, yet when today I recall the days of my initiation, my mouth forms the motion of a loving smile, and I see myself as a mere stripling with the milk of Balliol still wet upon his lips. In those dew-drenched, dawn-golden days it had in fact seemed to me that no occasion could arise when I could ever hesitate as to the correct course to pursue or the correct view to take. My original formula appears to me today to have been almost fantastic in its ingenuousness. It ran as follows: " You have no political ambitions and you possess certain specialised information and certain rigid principles. When subjects arise which are either outside your range of knowledge or which do not conflict with your principles you will vote obediently on the side of the party which you support. In all other matters you will speak or vote according to your own convictions."
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