Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/230

 say as much. You want a new spirit in society, a new bond between men. You want a new bond between men. Well, so do I, so do we. We realise that if we are going to go ahead we need first and foremost solidarity. Where we fail in our present position is in our lack of solidarity.

"And how are we to get it. You suggest us the answer in your writings. We must have a new bond between men, the bond of real brotherhood. And why don't we find that bond sufficiently among us? Because we have been brought up from childhood to mistrust ourselves and to mistrust each other. We have been brought up in a kind of fetish worship. We are like tribes of savages with their witch-doctors. And who are our witch-doctors, our medicine men? Why, they are professors of science and professors of medicine and professors of law and professors of religion, all of whom thump on their tom-tom drums and overawe us and take us in. And they take us in with the clever cry, 'Listen to us, and you will get on, get on, get on, you will rise up into the middle classes and become one of the great washed.'

"The trick of this only educated men like yourself see through. The working man can't see through it. He can't see that, for every one that gets on, you must have five hundred fresh slavers and toilers to produce the graft. Tempt all men to get on, and it's like holding a carrot in front of five thousand asses all harnessed to your machine.  One ass gets the carrot, and all the others have done your pulling for you.

"Now what we want is a new bond between fellow-men. We've got to knock down the middle-class fetish and the middle-class medicine-men. But you've got to build up as you knock down. You've got to build up the real fellow-feeling between fellow-men. You've got to teach us working men to trust one another, absolutely trust one another, and to take all our trust away from the Great Washed and their medicine men who bleed us like leeches. Let us mistrust them—but let us trust one another. First and foremost, let us trust one another, we working men.

"Now Mr Somers, you are a working man's son. You know what I'm talking about. Isn't it right, what I say? And isn't it feasible?"