Geisner laughed with Ned over the bush definition of “mates.”

“Bill was about right,” he said, “and Socialism would make men mates to the extent of all sharing up with one another.  Each man might have a purse but he’d put no more into it than his mate who was sick and weak.”

“We’d all work together and share together, I take it,” said Ned.  “But suppose a man wouldn’t work fairly and didn’t want to share?”

“I’d let him and all like him go out into the bush to see how they could get on alone.  They’d soon get tired.  Men must co-operate to live civilised.”

“Then Socialism is co-operation?” remarked Ned.

“Co-operation as against competition is the main industrial idea of Socialism.  But there are two Socialisms.  There is a socialism with a little ‘s’ which is simply an attempt to stave off the true Socialism.  This small, narrow socialism means only the state regulation of the distribution of wealth.  It has as its advocates politicians who seek to modify the robbery of the workers, to ameliorate the horrors of the competitive system, only in order to prevent the upheaval which such men recognise to be inevitable if things keep on unchanged.”

“But true Socialism?  I asked Nellie last night what Socialism was, but she didn’t say just what.”

“What did she say?”

“Well!  We were coming through the Domain last night, this morning I mean.  It was this morning, too.  And on a seat in the rain, near a lamp, was a poor devil of a woman, a regular hardtimer, you know, sleeping with her head hung over the back of the seat like a fowl’s.  I’d just been asking Nellie what Socialism was when we came to the poor wretch and she stopped there.  I felt a bit mean, you know, somehow, but all at once Nellie bent her head and kissed this street-walking woman on the cheek, softly, so she didn’t wake her.  ‘That’s Socialism,’ says Nellie, and we didn’t speak any more till we got to her place, and then she told me to ask you what Socialism was.”  Ned had shifted his position again and was sitting now on his heels.  He had pulled out his knife and was digging a little hole among the grass roots.

Geisner, who hardly moved except to roll cigarettes and light them, lay watching him.  “I think she’s made you a Socialist,” he answered, smiling.

“I suppose so,” answered Ned, gravely.  “If Socialism means that no matter what you are or what you’ve been we’re all mates, and that Nellie’s going to join hands with the street-walker, and that you’re going to join hands with me, and that all of us are going to be kind to one another and have a good time like we did at Mrs. Stratton’s last night, well, I’m a Socialist and there’s heaps up in the bush will be Socialists too.”

“You know what being a Socialist means, Ned?” asked Geisner, looking into the young man’s eyes.

“I’ve got a notion,” said Ned, looking straight 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.”