ht back.

"There are socialists and Socialists, just as there is socialism and
Socialism. The ones babble of what they do not feel because it's becoming
the thing to babble. The others have a religion and that religion is
Socialism."

"How does one know a religion?"

"When one is ready to sacrifice everything for it. When one only desires
that the Cause may triumph. When one has no care for self and does not
fear anything that man can do and has a faith which nothing can shake,
not even one's own weakness!"

There was a pause. "I'll try to be a Socialist of the right sort," said
Ned.

"You are young and hopeful and will think again and again that the day of
redemption is dawning, and will see the night roll up again. You will see
great movements set in and struggle to the front and go down when most
was expected of them. You will see in the morning the crowd repent of its
enthusiasm of the night before. You will find cowards where you expected
heroes and see the best condemned to the suffering and penury that weaken
the bravest. Your heart will ache and your stomach will hunger and your
body will be bent and your head gray and then you may think that the
world is not moving and that you have wasted your life and that none are
grateful for it."

"I will try not," said Ned.

"You will see unionism grow, the New Unionism, which is simply the
socialistic form of unionism. You will see, as I said before, penal laws
invoked against unionism here in Australia, under the old pretence of
'law and order.' You will see the labour movement diverted into political
action and strikes fought and lost and won at the polling booths."

"Will it not come then?"

"How can it come then? Socialism is not a thing which can be glued like a
piece of veneering over this rotten social system of ours. It can only
come by the utter sweeping away of competition, and that can only come by
the development of the socialistic idea in men's hearts."

"Do you mean that unions and political action and agitations don't do any
good?"

"Of course they do good. A union may make an employer rob his men of a
few shillings weekly less. An act of Parliament may prevent wage-slaves
from being worked sixteen hours a day. An act of Parliament, granted that
Parliament represented the dominant thought of the people, could even
enforce a change of the entire social system. But before action must come
the dominant thought. Unions and Parliaments are really