that statesmen did not see it must be so.  Old-Age Pensions, too, and State-Insurance (so soon as it was socially digested), began to be considered a mark of disgrace—­for the simple cause that it is not the receiving of money that is resented, but the motive for which the money is given and the position of the giver.  The State can only give for economic reasons, however conscientious and individually charitable statesmen may be; while the Church gives for the Love of God, and the Love of God never yet destroyed any man’s self-respect.  Well, you know the end.  The Church came forward once more and, under certain conditions, offered to relieve the State of the entire burden.  Two results followed—­first, all grievances vanished; and secondly, the whole pauper population of England within ten years was Catholic in sympathies.  And yet all this is only a reversion to medieval times—­a reversion made absolutely necessary by the failure of every attempt to supplant Divine methods by human.

“Now look at it all in another way—­the general situation, I mean.

“The Socialist saw plainly the rights of the Society; the Anarchist saw the rights of the Individual.  How therefore were these to be reconciled?  The Church stepped in at that crucial point and answered, By the Family—­whether domestic or Religious.  For in the Family you have both claims recognized:  there is authority and yet there is liberty.  For the union of the Family lies in Love; and Love is the only reconciliation of authority and liberty.

“Now, as I have put it—­and as we all now see it—­the argument is simplicity itself.  But it took a long time to be recognized; and it was not until after the appalling events of the first twenty years of the century, and the discrediting of the absurd Socialistic attempt to preach the Law of Love by methods of Force, that civilization as a whole saw the point.  Yet for all that it was beginning to mould popular opinion even as early as 1910.

“Turn now to a completely different plane.  Turn to Art.  This, too, drove men back to the Church.”

(Mr. Manners’ air was becoming now less professional and more vivid.  He glanced quickly from face to face with a kind of sharp triumph; his long, thin hands waved a slight gesture now and again.)

“Art, you remember, in the end of the Victorian era had attempted to become realistic—­had attempted, that is, the absurdly impossible; and photography exposed the absurdity, For no man can be truly a realist, since it is literally impossible to paint or to describe all that the eye sees.  When photography became general, this began to be understood; since it was soon seen that the only photographer who could lay any claim to artistic work was the man who selected and altered and posed—­arranged his subject, that is to say, in more or less symbolic form.  Then people began to see again that Symbolism was the underlying spirit of Art—­as they had known perfectly well, of course, in medieval days: