y. These are peoples
that have lost the power of astonishment at their own actions. When they
give birth to a fantastic fashion or a foolish law, they do not start
or stare at the monster they have brought forth. They have grown used
to their own unreason; chaos is their cosmos; and the whirlwind is the
breath of their nostrils. These nations are really in danger of going
off their heads en masse; of becoming one vast vision of imbecility,
with toppling cities and crazy country-sides, all dotted with
industrious lunatics. One of these countries is modern England.

Now here is an actual instance, a small case of how our social
conscience really works: tame in spirit, wild in result, blank in
realisation; a thing without the light of mind in it. I take this
paragraph from a daily paper:—"At Epping, yesterday, Thomas
Woolbourne, a Lambourne labourer, and his wife were summoned for
neglecting their five children. Dr. Alpin said he was invited by the
inspector of the N.S.P.C.C. to visit defendants' cottage. Both the
cottage and the children were dirty. The children looked exceedingly
well in health, but the conditions would be serious in case of illness.
Defendants were stated to be sober. The man was discharged. The woman,
who said she was hampered by the cottage having no water supply and
that she was ill, was sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment. The sentence
caused surprise, and the woman was removed crying, 'Lord save me!'"

I know no name for this but Chinese. It calls up the mental picture of
some archaic and changeless Eastern Court, in which men with dried faces
and stiff ceremonial costumes perform some atrocious cruelty to the
accompaniment of formal proverbs and sentences of which the very meaning
has been forgotten. In both cases the only thing in the whole farrago
that can be called real is the wrong. If we apply the lightest touch of
reason to the whole Epping prosecution it dissolves into nothing.

I here challenge any person in his five wits to tell me what that woman
was sent to prison for. Either it was for being poor, or it was for
being ill. Nobody could suggest, nobody will suggest, nobody, as a
matter of fact, did suggest, that she had committed any other crime.
The doctor was called in by a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children. Was this woman guilty of cruelty to children? Not in the
least. Did the doctor say she was guilty of cruelty to children? Not in
the least. Was these any e