ere prepared to face, for the sake of imperilled
truth, the anger of the powers that be and the laughter of the
world. Courage of that type is a plant of slow growth in Established
Churches; and as long as my friends hug the yoke of Establishment,
I cannot sympathize with them when they cry out against its galling
pressure. To complainants of that class the final word was addressed
by Gladstone, nearly seventy years ago: "You have our decision: take
your own; choose between the mess of pottage and the birthright
of the Bride of Christ."

IV

POLITICS

I

_MIRAGE_

"Operations had to be temporarily suspended owing to the mirage."
This sentence from one of Sir Stanley Maude's despatches struck me
as parabolic. There are other, and vaster, issues than a strategic
victory on the Diala River which have been "suspended owing to the
mirage." Let us apply the parable.

The parched caravan sees, half a mile ahead, the gleaming lake
which is to quench its thirst. It toils along over the intervening
distance, only to find that Nature has been playing a trick. The
vision has vanished, and what seemed to be water is really sand.
There can be no more expressive image of disillusionment.

To follow the "Mirage" of receding triumph through long years of
hope deferred was the lot of Labour generally, and it was especially
the lot of agricultural labour. The artisans gained their political
enfranchisement in 1867, and, though they made remarkably little use
of it, still they had the power, if they had the will, to better
their condition. But the agricultural labourers remained inarticulate,
unnoticed, unrepresented. A Tory orator, said--and many of his class
agreed with him, though they were too prudent to say it--that the
labourer was no fitter for the vote than the beasts he tended. But
there were others who knew the labourers by personal contact, and
by friendly intercourse had been able to penetrate their necessary
reserve; and we (for I was one of these) knew that our friends in
the furrow and the cow-shed were at least as capable of forming
a solid judgment as their brethren in the tailor's shop and the
printing-works. There was nothing of the new Radicalism in this--it
was as old as English history. The toilers on the land had always
been aspiring towards freedom, though social pressure made them
wisely dumb. Cobbett and Cartwright, and all the old reformers
who kept the lamp of Freedom alive in the dark day