gine in which these old free-thinkers firmly and confidently trusted
has itself become an engine of oppression and even of class oppression.
Its free parliament has become an oligarchy. Its free press has become a
monopoly. If the pure Church has been corrupted in the course of two
thousand years, what about the pure Republic that has rotted into a
filthy plutocracy in less than a hundred?

O, hidden face of man, whereover
The years have woven a viewless veil,
If thou wert verily man's lover
What did thy love or blood avail?
Thy blood the priests make poison of;
And in gold shekels coin thy love.

Which has most to do with shekels to-day, the priests or the
politicians? Can we say in any special sense nowadays that clergymen, as
such, make a poison out of the blood of the martyrs? Can we say it in
anything like the real sense, in which we do say that yellow journalists
make a poison out of the blood of the soldiers?

But I understand how Swinburne felt when confronted by the image of the
carven Christ, and, perplexed by the contrast between its claims and its
consequences, he said his strange farewell to it, hastily indeed, but
not without regret, not even really without respect. I felt the same
myself when I looked for the last time on the Statue of Liberty.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] In the conclusion of this chapter I mean by the Republic
not merely the American Republic, but the whole modern representative
system, as in France or even in England.

_Is the Atlantic Narrowing?_

A certain kind of question is asked very earnestly in our time. Because
of a certain logical quality in it, connected with premises and data, it
is very difficult to answer. Thus people will ask what is the hidden
weakness in the Celtic race that makes them everywhere fail or fade
away; or how the Germans contrived to bring all their organisation into
a state of such perfect efficiency; and what was the significance of the
recent victory of Prussia. Or they will ask by what stages the modern
world has abandoned all belief in miracles; and the modern newspapers
ceased to print any news of murders. They will ask why English politics
are free from corruption; or by what mental and moral training certain
millionaires were enabled to succeed by sheer force of character; in
short, they will ask why plutocrats govern well and how it is that pigs
fly, spreading their pink pinions to the breeze or delighting us a