still continue to officer them and to prefer foreigners
for'ard. In South Africa the colonial teaches the islander how to shoot,
and the officers muddle and blunder; while at home the street people play
hysterically at mafficking, and the War Office lowers the stature for
enlistment.

It could not be otherwise. The most complacent Britisher cannot hope to
draw off the life-blood, and underfeed, and keep it up forever. The
average Mrs. Thomas Mugridge has been driven into the city, and she is
not breeding very much of anything save an anaemic and sickly progeny
which cannot find enough to eat. The strength of the English-speaking
race to-day is not in the tight little island, but in the New World
overseas, where are the sons and daughters of Mrs. Thomas Mugridge. The
Sea Wife by the Northern Gate has just about done her work in the world,
though she does not realize it. She must sit down and rest her tired
loins for a space; and if the casual ward and the workhouse do not await
her, it is because of the sons and daughters she has reared up against
the day of her feebleness and decay.

CHAPTER XVI--PROPERTY VERSUS PERSON

In a civilisation frankly materialistic and based upon property, not
soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that
crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes
against the person. To pound one's wife to a jelly and break a few of
her ribs is a trivial offence compared with sleeping out under the naked
stars because one has not the price of a doss. The lad who steals a few
pears from a wealthy railway corporation is a greater menace to society
than the young brute who commits an unprovoked assault upon an old man
over seventy years of age. While the young girl who takes a lodging
under the pretence that she has work commits so dangerous an offence,
that, were she not severely punished, she and her kind might bring the
whole fabric of property clattering to the ground. Had she unholily
tramped Piccadilly and the Strand after midnight, the police would not
have interfered with her, and she would have been able to pay for her
lodging.

The following illustrative cases are culled from the police-court reports
for a single week:-

Widnes Police Court. Before Aldermen Gossage and Neil. Thomas Lynch,
charged with being drunk and disorderly and with assaulting a
constable. Defendant rescued a woman from custody, kicked the