ive on, and they mean to
live on, and Nature furnishes them with the means by giving them extra
cunning. Many of these fellows, poor disabled fellows, inhabit the dark
places of the underworld. Let us call them out of their dark places and
number them, classify them, note their disabilities!

Truly they came down to the underworld through great afflictions. They
form the disabled army of civilisation's industrial world who have been
wounded and crippled in the battle. All sorts of accidents have happened
to them: explosions have blinded them, steam has scalded them, buffers
have crushed them, coal has buried them, trains have run over them,
circular saws have torn them asunder. They are bent and they are
twisted, they are terrible to look at; as we gaze at them we are
fascinated. March! now see them move! Did you ever see anything like
this march of disabled men from the gloom of the underworld?

How they shuffle and drag along; what strange, twisted and jerky
movements they have; what sufferings they must endure, and what pain
they must have had. All these thoughts come to us as we look at the
march of the disabled as they twist and writhe past us.

The procession is endless, for it is continually augmented by men and
women from the upperworld, who as conscripts are sent to the army below,
because they have sustained injuries in the service of the world above.

So they pass! But the upperworld has not done with them; it does not get
rid of its natural obligations so easily. It suffers with them, and pays
dearly for its neglect of them. The disabled live on, they will not die
to please us, and they extract a pretty expensive living from the world
above. The worst of it is that these unfortunates prey also upon those
who have least to spare, the respectable poor just above the line. They
do not always sit at the gates of the rich asking for crumbs, for the
eloquence of their afflictions and the pity of their woes strike home
to the hearts and pockets of the industrious poor who have so little to
spare. But it is always much easier to rob the poor!

It is our boast that Englishmen love justice, and it is a true boast!
But when we read of accidents and of surgical operations, does our
imagination lead us to ask: What about the future of the sufferers? Very
rarely, I expect.

The fact is, we have got so used to this sight of maimed manhood that it
causes us but little anxious thought, though it may cause some feelings