s. They are real, it is true. Man must wrestle with his mother
earth for every bit he eats. She does not feed him willingly; she
produces that which he cannot eat. He must lacerate her bosom with his
spade ere she will yield him bread, and he must sweat with toil before
she will give him his crust!

Yet this is but the shadow of something terribly worse. The non-producer
will live, whatever becomes of those who toil. What is war but one of
the many things which rob man of his bread? The soldier is a consumer,
not a producer. I do not say he is not a necessity. He is all that, but
he must be fed. What matters it to him what is the price of meat; he
will have his three-quarters of a pound of meat every day. Aye, and he
earns it too! Who would grudge the brave fellows in Egypt the stores we
send out? None of us. Yet we cannot but feel that the sword and
bayonet, like the thorn hedge, take up soil which might grow corn, and
the higher it grows the greater the shadow, and therefore the poorer the
crops which are nighest to it. It is a necessity, but it is an expense.

What are the so called dangerous classes? They live, they do not starve;
they live on honest people. Judges, police, and jailers are fed by those
who never trouble them. Crime is like a leech on the body, it will have
blood. The wrongdoers are not the thorn hedge which we need for our
protection, but the thistle, which has rare powers of reproduction, and
uses the wind as its chariot to ride to other lands. Is it any wonder
that wickedness is so difficult to eradicate? Those of us who have tried
to keep our gardens free have sorrowed many a time when we have thought
that the rain, so welcome to our newly-born flowers, will call into
vigour the enemy that tries to strangle them. And this is but a figure
of the terrible truth that prosperity to a nation always means a growth
of crime, and that any event, even a public holiday, which should refresh
and recuperate, means the resurrection of violence and an increase of
suffering.

5. The first lie dug the first grave, and has never ceased to dig
others. We have often imagined the scene when Abel was missed--when his
mother questioned his murderer as to where he had last seen his brother.
How they would listen for his step, until suspense could be no longer
borne, and the father would go out, only to find the corpse of his
beloved child! Can we not hear the mother cry out, as she touches the