The Dynamiters had one custom which was, I suppose, unique. At each meeting, one of the members was chosen by lot to murder the Vice-Chancellor, and had to report at the next meeting on the attempt made and the reasons for its failure. Apart from this, it was simply a home of rather _démodé_ revolutionary talk, with a foreign element in it so strong that I once introduced a motion to have French talked at the debates. It proved, however, that our German comrades had not enough of the international spirit to tolerate the proposal. The _x_+1’s were, I must admit, a more interesting Society. There was no reason whatever for their being so called. They debated literary questions mostly, not without acumen, but with a rather painful striving after originality. Thus, one member would try to resuscitate the dead laurels of Tennyson; another would condemn Masefield as a mawkish sentimentalist, another would write in disproof of the existence of Dr. Johnson. The most characteristic note of the Society was its repudiation of all the courtesies of debate. The President always opened the proceedings by saying that it was his unpleasant duty to allow Mr. So-and-so to read his paper, on the hackneyed subject of So-and-so; he could only hope that it would be as brief as possible. When the paper was ended, the Secretary would rise, and remonstrate with the honourable member for having read so uninterestingly, and would proceed to move a vote of censure on him, which was solemnly carried. In speaking, if you referred to anyone who had addressed the House before you, you were bound to mention him by reference to some physical defect, or unpleasant personal characteristic, as “the honourable member who forgot to shave this morning,” or “the honourable member whose ears are so much too large for her,” and so on. At the conclusion of the proceedings, a vote of censure was passed on all the officers. The President then rose, and proposed the dissolution of the Society; the Treasurer seconded, and the motion was carried _nem. con._ I do not know why we enjoyed it, but we did. Alas, one begins to discover even as an undergraduate that man’s most violent innovations turn almost at once into a sort of archaic ritual.