oman slaves often laboured in noble toil,
building temples which have defied the corroding power of time and
which still inspire the heart with admiration and awe. But these
slaves of to-day build nothing that endures. The cities of their
labour might perish to-morrow, but in their perishing no beauty would
disappear from the earth. The very efforts which the toilers have made
to improve their state have been movements of blindness and folly.
They have organised {93} far-reaching systems by which they seek
through the limitation of output to improve their condition. The gate
through which they press towards deliverance is the gate of dishonesty.
That is the proof of the servitude not of body only, but of mind and
spirit, to which they have been brought. 'I do not hesitate to express
the opinion,' wrote Huxley in 1890, that if there is no hope of a large
improvement in the condition of the greater part of the human family;
if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater
dominion over nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which
follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and
the intensity of want with its concomitant physical and moral
degradation amongst the masses of the people, I should hail the advent
of some kindly comet which would sweep the whole thing away as a
desirable consummation.' Since then, wealth has enormously increased,
science has triumphed more and {94} more over nature, but the increase
of the one and the triumph of the other have only produced an increase
of physical and moral degradation on the part of masses of the people.
Whoever ponders the two Reports in which for the first time that
degeneration is fearlessly and mercilessly exposed, cannot any longer
be blind to that. It is not, however, by means of a 'kindly comet'
that the arrest comes. For God's judgments shut not the door against
hope.

V

In the days of old a prophet surveying the decay of Israel used a
phrase which grips the heart: 'They build up Zion with blood, and
Jerusalem with iniquity,'[4] and so has visualised our pitiful state
also. It is not, however, quite the same. For Zion was the temple,
and stood for the hunger of the soul. We no longer build any temples.
We build factories and playhouses and endless miles of grey and
colourless {95} streets. To-day the prophet would vary the words,
'They build up theatres and cinemas with blood and London with
iniqui