founded politician put in. Much good it would do
them. But before that happens I'm going to fight. You would."

The bishop walked to the window and stood staring at the brilliant
spring bulbs in the big employer's garden, and at a long vista of
newly-mown lawn under great shapely trees just budding into green.

"I can't admit," he said, "that these troubles lie outside the sphere of
the church."

The employer came and stood beside him. He felt he was being a little
hard on the bishop, but he could not see any way of making things
easier.

"One doesn't want Sacred Things," he tried, "in a scrap like this.

"We've got to mend things or end things," continued the big employer.
"Nothing goes on for ever. Things can't last as they are going on
now...."

Then he went on abruptly to something that for a time he had been
keeping back.

"Of course just at present the church may do a confounded lot of harm.
Some of you clerical gentlemen are rather too fond of talking socialism
and even preaching socialism. Don't think I want to be overcritical.
I admit there's no end of things to be said for a proper sort of
socialism, Ruskin, and all that. We're all Socialists nowadays.
Ideals--excellent. But--it gets misunderstood. It gives the men a sense
of moral support. It makes them fancy that they are It. Encourages them
to forget duties and set up preposterous claims. Class war and all that
sort of thing. You gentlemen of the clergy don't quite realize that
socialism may begin with Ruskin and end with Karl Marx. And that from
the Class War to the Commune is just one step."

(5)

From this conversation the bishop had made his way to the vicarage of
Mogham Banks. The vicar of Mogham Banks was a sacerdotal socialist of
the most advanced type, with the reputation of being closely in touch
with the labour extremists. He was a man addicted to banners, prohibited
ornaments, special services at unusual hours, and processions in the
streets. His taste in chasubles was loud, he gardened in a cassock
and, it was said, he slept in his biretta; he certainly slept in a hair
shirt, and he littered his church with flowers, candles, side altars,
confessional boxes, requests for prayers for the departed, and the like.
There had already been two Kensitite demonstrations at his services, and
altogether he was a source of considerable anxiety to the bishop. The
bishop did his best not to know too exactly what was going on at Mogham
Banks. Soon