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204 gone through this, as you will know, before, and I am determined never to stand it again. As soon as there are two parties in any body I am—in then out I go. Yet you should know that the H. Branch would have gone out six months ago if it had not been for respect of my sentiments; they have been very discontented for a long while. As to detail: please understand the H.B., though as numerous as all the rest of the League I think, had no power on the Council; if we had stayed in and fought the matter we should have been outvoted every time by at least 8 to 3, so what was the use of our being there? Something I might have done in keeping Commonweal rational, but only by threatening withdrawal of supplies: such a 'censorship of the piper' would be too odious for me to endure. And again what would have been the use since I was in any case going to withdraw my subsidy at the end of the year, as I now have done, paying all up to the end? Nay, supposing I had gone on with that subsidy, it would not have saved the paper, which was making a fresh deficit every week. I must have doubled it, as I did the early part of the year—up to the Conference in fact.

Well, now, what were we to do? Go once a week to a private hell to squabble causelessly with men that after all we like? Or withdraw from the Council? That would have been only a covert and less honest way of leaving the League, and would have hampered both them and us. Call a general conference? To what end? What more could we discover at it than that we didn't agree? Besides, these conferences are really bogus affairs.

In short, my dear boy, whenever you want to get rid of me you need never put on your boots. I never wait to be kicked downstairs. Don't misunderstand the affair: we have borne with it all a long time; and at last have gone somewhat suddenly. For my part I foresaw all this when we allowed the Bloomsbury branch to be expelled. They deserved it, for it was that pig of a D who began it all; but they being out, it was certain that the Anarchists would