published them for the
intelligence of the working men to whom they were addressed. There was
one Tory poster that represented the interior of a public house; in
front of the bar, with a quart pot in his hand, a clay pipe in his
mouth, and a load of tools on his back, stood a degraded-looking brute
who represented the Tory ideal of what an Englishman should be; the
letterpress on the poster said it was a man! This is the ideal of
manhood that they hold up to the majority of their fellow countrymen,
but privately--amongst themselves--the Tory aristocrats regard such
'men' with far less respect than they do the lower animals. Horses or
dogs, for instance.

The Liberal posters were not quite so offensive. They were more
cunning, more specious, more hypocritical and consequently more
calculated to mislead and deceive the more intelligent of the voters.

When Barrington got round to the back of the platform, he found the man
with the scarred face standing alone and gloomily silent in the shadow.
Barrington gave him one of the Socialist leaflets, which he took, and
after glancing at it, put it in his coat pocket without making any
remark.

'I hope you'll excuse me for asking, but were you not formerly a
Socialist?' said Barrington.

Even in the semi-darkness Barrington saw the other man flush deeply and
then become very pale, and the unsightly scar upon his forehead showed
with ghastly distinctiveness.

'I am still a Socialist: no man who has once been a Socialist can ever
cease to be one.'

'You seem to have accomplished that impossibility, to judge by the work
you are at present engaged in. You must have changed your opinions
since you were here last.'

'No one who has been a Socialist can ever cease to be one. It is
impossible for a man who has once acquired knowledge ever to relinquish
it. A Socialist is one who understands the causes of the misery and
degradation we see all around us; who knows the only remedy, and knows
that that remedy--the state of society that will be called
Socialism--must eventually be adopted; is the only alternative to the
extermination of the majority of the working people; but it does not
follow that everyone who has sense enough to acquire that amount of
knowledge, must, in addition, be willing to sacrifice himself in order
to help to bring that state of society into being. When I first
acquired that knowledge,' he continued, bitterly, 'I was eager to tell
the good news to oth