fiction, that democracy has nothing in it to command our allegiance
unless it promotes our individual comfort and prosperity, and that the
whole duty of a citizen is to vote with his party and get an office for
himself, or for some one who will look after him. Men tell us that to
succeed means to get money, because with that all other good things can
be secured. Men tell us that the one thing to do is to promote and
protect the particular trade, or industry, or corporation in which we
have a share: the laws of trade will work out that survival of the
fittest which is the only real righteousness, and if we survive that
will prove that we are fit. Men tell us that all beyond this is
phantasy, dreaming, Sunday-school politics: there is nothing worth
living for except to get on in the world; and nothing at all worth
dying for, since the age of ideals is past.

It is past indeed for those who proclaim, or whisper, or in their hearts
believe, or in their lives obey, this black gospel. And what is to
follow? An age of cruel and bitter jealousies between sections and
classes; of hatted and strife between the Haves and the Have-nots; of
futile contests between parties which have kept their names and confused
their principles, so that no man may distinguish them except as the Ins
and Outs. An age of greedy privilege and sullen poverty, of blatant
luxury and curious envy, of rising palaces and vanishing homes, of
stupid frivolity and idiotic publicomania; in which four hundred gilded
fribbles give monkey-dinners and Louis XV. revels, while four million
ungilded gossips gape at them and read about them in the newspapers. An
age when princes of finance buy protection from the representatives of a
fierce democracy; when guardians of the savings which insure the lives
of the poor, use them as a surplus to pay for the extravagances of the
rich; and when men who have climbed above their fellows on golden
ladders, tremble at the crack of the blackmailer's whip and come down at
the call of an obscene newspaper. An age when the python of political
corruption casts its "rings" about the neck of proud cities and
sovereign States, and throttles honesty to silence and liberty to death.
It is such an age, dark, confused, shameful, that the sceptic and the
scorner must face, when they turn their backs upon those ancient shrines
where the flames of faith and integrity and devotion are flickering like
the deserted altar-fires of a forsaken worship.