Page:William-morris-and-the-early-days-of-the-socialist-movement.djvu/151

128 closely associated in the official work of the League at that time were Joe Lane, Frank Kitz, and David J. Nicol. Lane was co-trustee with Morris of the Commonweal, Nicol was sub-editor, and Kitz was Secretary of the League.

Lane I hardly knew personally, having only met him once or twice at conferences. He was an intensely earnest man, but as I gathered, of a rather narrow, doctrinaire mind, who perpetually worried himself and others with his pet dogma the iniquity of the State, and the necessity of the complete abolition of all political government. Nevertheless Morris had much respect for him.

was of a wholly different mould. He was a dyer by trade, and had sometimes been employed by Morris at his Merton Abbey works. He was, I always understood, a fairly competent workman, but irregular in his habits. A sturdily made, bluff, breezy chap, fond of his beer and jolly company, and with something of originality in his composition, Morris liked him for a time and forgave him a thousand faults. There was a rough humour and wit in him, and a sort of perverse ingenuity of ideas, and bold aptness of phrase which made his talk and his public speaking attractive to the crowd. He was a rebel by temperament rather than Anarchist by philosophy. He was out for the social revolution rather than for Socialism, Communism or Anarchism. What precisely his idea of the social revolution was he never perhaps made quite clear.

In the pages of To-Day Bernard Shaw, who, like Morris, was attracted by Kitz's unconventional characteristics, devoted two amusing articles to a good-humoured sally on Kitz's revolutionary bluster.

David Nicol was yet another type. Possessed of a good education, and originally of some moderate means, he was drawn into the movement by his idealist tendencies. He had some literary gift, and one or two of his songs, such as the 'Workers' Marseillaise' and 'The Coming of the Light,'