time when it will be instituted. I freely admit it is the
only form of Socialism possible among true Socialists. But the world is
full of mentally and morally and socially diseased people who, I believe,
must go through the school of State Socialism before, as a great mass,
they are true Socialists and fit for voluntary Socialism. Unionism is the
drill for Socialism and Socialism is the drill for Anarchy and Anarchy is
that free ground whereon true Socialists and true Individualists meet as
friends and mates, all enmity between them absorbed by the development of
an all-dominant Humanity."

"Mates! Do you know that's a word I like?" said Ned. "It makes you feel
good, just the sound of it. I know a fellow, a shearer, who was witness
for a man in a law case once, and the lawyer asked him if he wasn't mates
with the chap he was giving evidence for.

"'No,' says Bill, 'we ain't mates.'

"'But you've worked together?' says the lawyer. 'Oh, yes!' says Bill.

"'And travelled together?'

"'Oh, yes!'

"'And camped together?'

"'Oh, yes!'

"'Then if you're not mates what is mates?' says the lawyer in a bit of a
tear.

"'Well, mister,' says Bill, 'mates is them wot's got one pus. If I go to
a shed with Jack an' we're mates an' I earn forty quid and Jack gets sick
an' only earns ten or five or mebbe nothin' at all we puts the whole lot
in one pus, or if it's t'other way about an' Jack earns the forty it
don't matter. There's one pus no matter how much each of us earns an' it
b'longs just the same to both of us alike. If Jack's got the pus and I
want half-a-crown, I says to Jack, says I, "Jack, gimme the pus." An' if
Jack wants ten quid or twenty or the whole lot he just says to me,
"Bill," says he "gimme the pus." I don't ask wot he's goin' to take and I
don't care. He can take it all if he wants it, 'cos it stands to reason,
don't it, mister?' says Bill to the lawyer, 'that a man wouldn't be so
dirt mean as to play a low-down trick on his own mate. So you see,
mister, him an' me warn't mates 'cos we had two pusses an' mates is them
wot's got one pus.'"

Geisner laughed with Ned over the bush definition of "mates."

"Bill was about right," he said, "and Socialism would make men mates to
the extent of all sharing up with one another. Each man might have a
purse but he'd put no more into it than his mate who was sick and weak."

"We'd all work together and share together, I take it," said Ned. "But
suppose a man would