to die on the floor, by her son. The shame of it,
in Christian London!

Were the poor always with us? Probably. But the awful human vermin
that I knew, were they always with us? I doubt it; nay, I do not
believe it. I believe they are part of England's sin, of England's
modern wickedness. I believe they are the maggots bred out of the sore
upon which our modern industrialism is based. When I looked upon the
vilest of this city spawn, if my rising gorge permitted thought at
all, I always had visions of little shrinking children whipped to work
in English factories and mines and potteries; of souls ground out of
anaemic bodies that Manchester might fatten. Free trade--licensed
slaughter! The rights of the individual--the sacred liberty of the
subject! Oh, I know it made England the emporium of the world, and
built up some splendid fortunes, and--well, I believe it gave us the
human vermin of our cities.

There is no cure for them in this world. Nor yet for their damned and
doomed offspring--while the individual liberty shibboleths endure,
while mere numbers rule, or while our degenerate fear of every form of
compulsion lasts. And the present tendency is, not merely to stipulate
for complete freedom of action for the poor wretches, but to invite
them to govern, by count of heads. So marvellously enlightened are we
becoming!

Those nightmarish two years seem a long way off. I must be careful not
to mislead myself regarding them. I have used such phrases as 'The
poor of London.' I think I would delete those phrases if I were
writing for other than my own eyes. I would not pretend that I like
the poor of London, as companions. But they have, as a class, notable
and admirable qualities. And many of the very poorest of them have
more of courage, and more I think of honesty, than the average member
of the class I came to know better later on: the big division which
includes all the professional people. The human wrecks are of the
poor, of course. But the really typical poor people are workers; the
wrecks, their parasites.

Nothing in life is much more remarkable to me than an old man or an
old woman of the poorer working-class, say, in South Tottenham, who,
at the end of a long, struggling life remains decent, honest, cleanly,
upright, and self-respecting. That I think truly marvellous. I am
moved to uncover my head before such an one. The innate decency of
such people thrills me to pride of race, where a naval review or a