“But that is exactly the business of the church,” said the bishop brightly, “to reconcile men to their duty.”

“By chanting the Athanasian creed at ’em, I suppose,” said the big employer, betraying the sneer he had been hiding hitherto.

“This thing is a fight,” said the big employer, carrying on before the bishop could reply.  “Religion had better get out of the streets until this thing is over.  The men won’t listen to reason.  They don’t mean to.  They’re bit by Syndicalism.  They’re setting out, I tell you, to be unreasonable and impossible.  It isn’t an argument; it’s a fight.  They don’t want to make friends with the employer.  They want to make an end to the employer.  Whatever we give them they’ll take and press us for more.  Directly we make terms with the leaders the men go behind it....  It’s a raid on the whole system.  They don’t mean to work the system—­anyhow.  I’m the capitalist, and the capitalist has to go.  I’m to be bundled out of my works, and some—­some “—­he seemed to be rejecting unsuitable words—­“confounded politician put in.  Much good it would do them.  But before that happens I’m going to fight.  You would.”

The bishop walked to the window and stood staring at the brilliant spring bulbs in the big employer’s garden, and at a long vista of newly-mown lawn under great shapely trees just budding into green.

“I can’t admit,” he said, “that these troubles lie outside the sphere of the church.”

The employer came and stood beside him.  He felt he was being a little hard on the bishop, but he could not see any way of making things easier.

“One doesn’t want Sacred Things,” he tried, “in a scrap like this.

“We’ve got to mend things or end things,” continued the big employer.  “Nothing goes on for ever.  Things can’t last as they are going on now....”

Then he went on abruptly to something that for a time he had been keeping back.

“Of course just at present the church may do a confounded lot of harm.  Some of you clerical gentlemen are rather too fond of talking socialism and even preaching socialism.  Don’t think I want to be overcritical.  I admit there’s no end of things to be said for a proper sort of socialism, Ruskin, and all that.  We’re all Socialists nowadays.  Ideals—­excellent.  But—­it gets misunderstood.  It gives the men a sense of moral support.  It makes them fancy that they are It.  Encourages them to forget duties and set up preposterous claims.  Class war and all that sort of thing.  You gentlemen of the clergy don’t quite realize that socialism may begin with Ruskin and end with Karl Marx.  And that from the Class War to the Commune is just one step.”

(5)