have its lodge, in connection wherewith should be not only addresses on political and social subjects, but also football and cricket clubs, entertainments for both sexes such as dances, whist-drives, excursions of archaeological and educational interest, and lantern (and, later, cinematographic) lectures on the wide aspects of Imperial Britain.  Its appeal was to the young, the recruit in the battle of life, who in a year or two would qualify for a vote and, except for blind passion and prejudice, not know what the deuce to do with it.  The octogenarian Earl of Watford was President; Colonel Winwood was one of a long list of Vice-Presidents; Miss Winwood was on the Council; a General Hankin, a fussy, incompetent person past his prime, was Honorary Secretary.

Paul worked with his employers for a year on the League thinking little of its effectiveness.  One day, when they spoke despairingly of progress, he said, not in so many words, but in effect:  “Don’t you see what’s wrong?  This thing is run for young people, and you’ve got old fossils like Lord Watford and General Hankin running it.  Let me be Assistant Secretary to Hankin’ and I’ll make things hum.”

And thinking the words of the youth were wise, they used their influence with the Council, and Paul became Assistant Secretary, and after a year or two things began to hum so disconcertingly that General Hankin resigned in order to take the Presidency of the Wellingtonian Defence Association, and almost automatically Paul slipped into his place.  With the instinct of the man of affairs he persuaded the Council to change his title.  An Honorary Secretary is but a dilettante, an amateur carrying no weight, whereas an Organizing Secretary is a devil of a fellow professedly dynamic.  So Paul became Organizing Secretary of the Young England League, and made things hum all the louder.  He put fresh life into local Committees and local Secretaries by a paternal interest in their doings, making them feel the pulsations of the throbbing heart of headquarters.  If a local lodge was in need of speakers, he exercised his arts of persuasion and sent them down in trainloads.  He visited personally as many lodges as his other work permitted.  In fact, he was raising the League from a jejune experiment into a flourishing organization.  To his secret delight, old Lord Watford resigned the chairmanship owing to the infirmities of old age, and Lord Harbury, a young and energetic peer whom Paul had recently driven into the ranks of the Vice-Presidents, was elected in his stead.  Paul felt the future of the League was assured.

With a real Member of Parliament to preside, a. real dean to propose the vote of thanks, another Member of Parliament and two ex-mayors of the borough to add silent dignity to the proceedings, well-known ladies, including, now, a real Princess to grace the assembly, this meeting of the Hickney Heath Lodge was the most important occasion on which Paul had appeared in public.