it was honest advertising since I never failed to deliver the goods.  I started out to prove my strength and to flay my opponents, and you tell me, you group of black-coated conservatives, that I make myself ridiculous because I strike an attitude.  The people laughed—­but, by George, they laughed with me!  Oh, I know you think that I am wandering from my point; but I haven’t forgotten your question, and I am going to answer it, if you will give me time.  You ask me what I believe—­”

“If you could tell me in few words and plainly.”

“Well, first of all, I make no pretence.  I do not promise to work miracles.  I do not, like your conventional candidates, talk in platitudes.  I do not undertake to achieve a regeneration of politics out of unregenerate human nature.  As long as we have cherries we shall have blackbirds; as long as we have politics we shall have politicians.  I acknowledge the good and the bad, and all that I promise is to get as good results as I can out of the mixture.  Definitely I stand for a progressive reorganization of society—­for a fairer social order and a practical system of cooperative industry, the only logical method of increasing production without reducing the labourer to the old disorganized slavery.  I believe in the trite formula we workers preach—­in the eight-hour day, the old age pension, which is only the inevitable step from the mother’s pension, the gradual nationalization of mines and railroads.  I believe in these things which are the commonplace of to-morrow; but it is not because of my beliefs that the people follow me.  It is something bigger than all this that catches the crowd.  What the people see in me is not the man who believes, but the man who acts.  I stand to them not for words—­though you and Benham think I’ve made my way by a gift of tongue—­but for deeds—­for things performed as well as planned.  Other men can tell them what they want.  My hold over them is that they feel I can get them what they want—­a very big difference!  Oh, I use words, I know, like the rest.  I have read a few books, and I can talk as well as any political parrot of the lot when I get started.  But the words I use are living words, if you notice them.  I talk always about the things that I can do, never about the things that I think.  Well, that is my secret—­my pose, if you prefer—­to present my argument to the crowd as an act, not as an idea.  There are plenty of imposing statues standing around.  What they see in me is a human being like themselves, one who wants what they want, and who will fight to the last ditch to get it for them.”

It was plausible; it sounded convincing and logical; and yet, even while Stephen responded to the Governor’s personal touch, some obstinate fibre of race or inflexible bent of judgment, refused to surrender.  Vetch was probably sincere—­it was fairer to give him the benefit of the doubt—­but on the surface at least he was parading a spectacular pose.  The role of the Friend of the People has seldom been absent from the drama of history.