lerable crime in oneself to rob the poor-box
than in one's neighbour to have an unwashed neck. Englishmen never
began to sing the praises of cleanliness as the virtue that makes a
nation great until they had themselves taken to the bath. True, they
often wash, as they govern themselves, not directly but by proxy; but,
even so, cleanliness has been exalted into a national virtue till the
very people of the slums, where the bath is used only for the storage
of coal, have learned to shout "Dirty foreigner!" as the most
indignant thing that can be said at a crisis.

There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that some one
else is an evildoer. Our scandal about our neighbours is nearly all a
muttered tribute to our own virtue. It fills us with a new pride in
ourselves that it was not we who gambled with trust money or made love
to our neighbour's wife or ran away in battle. By kicking our
neighbours down for their sins we secure for ourselves, it seems, a
better place on the ladder. The object of all religion is to destroy
this self-satisfied indignation with our neighbours--to make us feel
that we ourselves are no better than the prostitute or the foreigner.
Similarly philosophy bids us know ourselves instead of following the
line of least resistance and damning others. That is why one would
like to see Englishmen concerned about injuries done to Englishmen by
Englishmen, even more than about injuries done to Englishmen by
foreigners. Indignation against the latter, necessary though it may
be, is apt to become a mere melodramatic substitute for native virtue.
There are crimes enough at home for any Englishman to practise his
indignation upon without ever letting his eye wander further than
Dover--crimes of underpayment, crimes of overwork, crimes of rotten
houses, crimes that are murder in everything but swiftness and theft
in everything except illegality. It is fine, no doubt, that Englishmen
should become hot with anger at the news of a Benton murdered in
Mexico as it is fine that the democracies of Europe should be inflamed
with indignation at the murder of a Ferrer in Spain. These things are
evidence of large brotherhoods, of an extension of those family
charities which are at the back of all advance in civilisation. On the
other hand, can none of this passionate fraternity be spared for John
Smith, aged fourteen, done to death by the half-time system, or for
his father killed on the line as the result of t