The Hon. Member: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker! Is the Hon. Member in order in calling me an insolent swine?

     (See Hansard passim)

A distinguished literary man has composed and perhaps will shortly publish a valuable poem the refrain of which is "I like the sound of broken glass."

This concrete instance admirably illustrates one of the most profound of human appetites: indeed, an appetite which, to the male half of humanity, is more than an appetite and is, rather, a necessity: the appetite for rows.

It has been remarked by authorities so distant and distinct, yet each so commanding, as Aristotle and Confucius, that words lose their meanings in the decline of a State.

[Pg 57]

Absolutely purposeless phrases go the rounds, are mechanically repeated; sometimes there is an attempt by the less lively citizens to act upon such phrases when Society is diseased! And so to-day you have the suburban fool who denounces the row. Sometimes he calls it ungentlemanly—that is, unsuitable to the wealthy male. If he says that he simply cannot know what he is talking about.

If there is one class in the community which has made more rows than another it is the young male of the wealthier classes, from Alcibiades to my Lord Tit-up. When men are well fed, good-natured, fairly innocent (as are our youth) then rows are their meat and drink. Nay, the younger males of the gentry have such a craving and necessity for a row that they may be observed at the universities of this country making rows continually without any sort of object or goal attached to such rows.

Sometimes he does not call it ungentlemanly, but points out that a row is of no effect, by which he means that there is no money in it.[Pg 58] That is true, neither is there money in drinking, or breathing, or sleeping, but they are all very necessary things. Sometimes the row is denounced by the suburban gentleman as unchristian; but that is because he knows nothing about human history or the Faith, and plasters the phrase down as a label without consideration. The whole history of Christendom is one great row. From time to time the Christians would leap up and swarm like bees, making the most hideous noise and pouring out by millions to whang in their Christianity for as long as it could be borne upon the vile persons of the infidel. More commonly the Christians would vent their happy rage one against the other.

The row is better fun when it is played according to rule: it sounds paradoxical, and your superficial man might conceive that the essence of a row was anarchy. If he did he would be quite wrong; a row being a male thing at once demands all sorts of rules and complications. Otherwise it would be no fun. Take, for instance, the oldest and most solid of our national[Pg 59] rows—the House of Commons row. Everybody knows how it is done and everybody surely knows t............