e Catholic
Church has left or possibly her wisdom preserved. There are innumerable
persons with eye-glasses and green garments who pray for the return of
the maypole or the Olympian games. But there is about these people a
haunting and alarming something which suggests that it is just possible
that they do not keep Christmas. It is painful to regard human nature
in such a light, but it seems somehow possible that Mr. George Moore
does not wave his spoon and shout when the pudding is set alight. It is
even possible that Mr. W. B. Yeats never pulls crackers. If so, where
is the sense of all their dreams of festive traditions? Here is a solid
and ancient festive tradition still plying a roaring trade in the
streets, and they think it vulgar. if this is so, let them be very
certain of this, that they are the kind of people who in the time of
the maypole would have thought the maypole vulgar; who in the time of
the Canterbury pilgrimage would have thought the Canterbury pilgrimage
vulgar; who in the time of the Olympian games would have thought the
Olympian games vulgar. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that they
were vulgar. Let no man deceive himself; if by vulgarity we mean
coarseness of speech, rowdiness of behaviour, gossip, horseplay, and
some heavy drinking, vulgarity there always was wherever there was joy,
wherever there was faith in the gods. Wherever you have belief you
will have hilarity, wherever you have hilarity you will have some
dangers. And as creed and mythology produce this gross and vigorous
life, so in its turn this gross and vigorous life will always produce
creed and mythology. If we ever get the English back on to the English
land they will become again a religious people, if all goes well, a
superstitious people. The absence from modern life of both the higher
and lower forms of faith is largely due to a divorce from nature and
the trees and clouds. If we have no more turnip ghosts it is chiefly
from the lack of turnips.

VII. Omar and the Sacred Vine

A new morality has burst upon us with some violence in connection with
the problem of strong drink; and enthusiasts in the matter range from
the man who is violently thrown out at 12.30, to the lady who smashes
American bars with an axe. In these discussions it is almost always
felt that one very wise and moderate position is to say that wine or
such stuff should only be drunk as a medicine. With this I should
venture to disagree with a