SOURCE: "Please Excuse Me, Comrade," in Ten Contemporaries: Notes toward Their Definitive Bibliography, second series, by John Gawsworth, Joiner & Steele Ltd., 1933, pp. 109-11.

In the following essay, Collier presents a sardonic discourse on writing prose.

As a writer, my position is a difficult one. I cannot see much good in the world, nor much likelihood of good. There seems to me to be a definite bias in human nature towards ill, towards the immediate convenience, the vulgar, the cheap: a sort of stick whose fall into darkness must be the end of every rocket-like ascent from pleasant, grunting savagery. I cannot therefore believe very enthusiastically in myself or in my fellow men, for we are past the starry stage. I would rather probe the beating heart of humanity with a bodkin than with a pen. And, as the love borne to Mary by her lamb is said to...