Crowds: A Moving-Picture of Democracy

OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONSEvery now and then when I am in London (at the instigation of some busi-ness man who takes the time off to belong to it), I drop into a pleasantbut other-worldly and absent-minded place called the House of Commons.I sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of the mem-bers all about me and watch the steamships, strangely, softly, suddenly-Shakespeare and Pepys, outside on the river, slip gravely by under glass.Or I go in and sit down under the gallery, face to face with the Speaker, look-ing across those profiles of world-makers in their seats; and I watch and lis-ten in the House itself. There is a kind of pleasant, convenient, appropriatehush upon the world there.Wisdom.The decorous, orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one-one listensto It, to the soft clatter of the endless belt of words.Every now and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech, or possiblyin the middle of a sentence, slip up quietly and take a look (under glass)3 GERALD STANLEY LEEat The People, or he uses a microscope, perhaps, or a reading glass on ThePeople, Mr. Bonar Law's, Mr. Lloyd George's, Ramsay MacDonald's, WillCrook's, or somebody's. Then he comes back gravely as if he had got thepeople attended to now, and finishes what he was saying.It is a very queer feeling one has about the People in the House of Commons.I mean the feeling of their being under glass; they all seem so manageable, soquiet and so remote, a kind of glazed-over picture in still life, of themselves.Every now and then, of course one takes a member seriously when he stepsup to the huge showcase of specimen crowds, which members are alwaysreferring to in their speeches. But nothing comes of it.The crowds seem very remote there under the glass. One feels like smashingsomething-getting down to closer terms with them-one longs for a Depart-