make room
for their unemployed mates.

"And, perhaps, you are not aware that Australia is a land where Nature
is so generous that in its short history it has reached the highest
level in the world's wheat and wool production. Yet in that land, twenty
times the size of your Germany and with one-thirteenth of your
population, the workers discourage immigration of people of their own
British race, because they foolishly fancy the newcomers would create
competition in their high-priced work; and that is in a wonderful land
crying out for development and only having an average population of one
person to the square mile."

I finished in a highly-strung manner, but Wilbrid came forward and put
his hands on my shoulders.

"My boy," he said calmly, "you are right, and I am also right. That
selfishness on the part of the workers is but the fear of having their
wages cut and becoming unemployed with the advent of further
competition. Remove that fear and keep the unemployed from cutting wages
and the selfishness will disappear. The Humanist creed recognises all
men as sparks of Divinity. There will be no 'scabs,' 'pimps,'
'blacklegs,' or other vile, cruel epithets. The men and women who work
will combine with those unemployed. The result will be such a world's
combination of labor that all sources of profit-winning will be in the
hands of the men who toil. It will indeed be a conquest of the world.

"Already we control the Governments of Germany and Austria. France and
England will certainly follow at the next elections. The French workers
do not forget that, during the war, their Government successfully
organised the whole of the industries; and the English toilers remember
how the Asquith Government successfully controlled all the great
munition factories and limited the employers' profits to 10 per cent.,
giving the surplusage to the State. Now I note that the British workers
are demanding that just as the State successfully controlled great works
during the war and claimed the profits in excess, so it should control
all works now and let the profits go also to the Common Good--yes,
that's the term. It's almost a divine inspiration. The Common Good is
the doctrine of the Humanist! Watch the cause! It will sweep the earth!"

As he shook hands with me, I could feel his nerves twitching.

Nap and I walked back to the great camp almost in silence, and little
sleep came to me that night.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Terms