accursed is the indifference which is neither one nor the other, the
muddy mess which men call friendship." The truth underlying these
words is put in a severe form, but there is truth in it. Our
compromises in politics, and the consequent slow and doubtful progress
we make in social conditions, have many explanations, but the abiding
one is, that at the moral root of things we have not, as Mark
Rutherford means it, those real loves and hatreds which vitally
influence conduct. Take any wrong that happens to appeal to your sense
of indignation, and ask why it continues? in what does it get its lease
of existence? And the answer is, the fact that we have too many Sauls
among the prophets. The wrong remains because, although we do not
profess to be its friends, its friends have no need to reckon with us
as its foes.

I have already alluded to my experience in a hard school. Indulge me
if I return to it for a moment. My earlier years were spent in a
Lancashire cloth mill. In it I wrought from morning to night side by
side with youths of my own age and men who were older. For the most
part, young and old, they were practised in almost every conceivable
coarse and brutal way of casting their existence as rubbish to the
void. But I think I can truthfully say that, while I tried to be loyal
to the conditions of contact, and as a comrade in the ranks was not
unpopular, yet they knew that neither within those grim walls nor
without them was I of their world.

It is not easy, sometimes it is very hard, to take up this positive
position amid one's daily surroundings. And it is not only hard to do
the thing itself; it may be even harder to do it wisely. It is not
pleasant to have your conscientious attitudes to things which to you
are neither expedient nor permissible interpreted by the old words used
as a sneer: "Stand aside, for I am holier than thou." Young people
like to be what is called "popular" with those who touch their lives;
and within well-defined limits they owe it to themselves and others to
cultivate the qualities that invite popularity. If, however, the price
of popularity is some form of compromise with things that harm and
things that hate--then, if you are worth world-room, you will draw the
line sharply and keep on one side of it. And that can be done without
giving the impression that you are either a prig or a snob. When you
go the right way about it, the attitude I advise is far harder in
con