Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/116

 "But you know what you've said yourself. You didn't change the Roman Empire with a revolution. Christianity grew up for centuries without having anything at all to do with politics—just a feeling, and a belief."

This was indeed what he had said himself, often enough: that a new religious inspiration, and a new religious idea must gradually spring up and ripen before there could be any constructive change. And yet he felt that preaching and teaching were both no good, at the world's present juncture. There must be action, brave, faithful action: and in the action the new spirit would arise.

"You see," he said, "Christianity is a religion which preaches the despising of the material world. And I don't believe in that part of it, at least, any longer. I believe that the men with the real passion for life, for truth, for living and not for having, I feel they now must seize control of the material possessions, just to safeguard the world from all the masses who want to seize material possessions for themselves, blindly, and nothing else. The men with soul and with passionate truth in them must control the world's material riches and supplies: absolutely put possessions out of the reach of the mass of mankind, and let life begin to live again, in place of this struggle for existence, or struggle for wealth."

"Yah, I don't believe it's so all-important who controls the world's material riches and supplies. That'll always be the same."

"It won't."

"It will. Conservatives or bolshevists or Labour Party—they're all alike: they all want to grab and have things in their clutches, and they're devilish with jealousy if they haven't got them. That's politics. You've said thousands of times that politics are a game for the base people with no human soul in them. Thousands of times you've said it. And yet now—"

He was silent for a while.

"Now," he said slowly. "Now I see that you don't have only to give all your possessions to the poor. You've got to have no poor that can be saved just by possessions. You've got to put the control of all supplies into the hands of sincere, sensible men who are still men enough to know that manhood isn't the same thing as goods. We don't