reconciliations or compromises. Behind every extremist it seemed
stood a further extremist prepared to go one better....

The bishop had spent most of the morning with one of the big
employers, a tall dark man, lean and nervous, and obviously tired

and worried by the struggle. He did not conceal his opinion that
the church was meddling with matters quite outside its sphere.

Never had it been conveyed to the bishop before how remote a rich
and established Englishman could consider the church from

reality.
"You've got no hold on them," he said. "It isn't your sphere."

And again: "They'll listen to you--if you speak well. But
they don't believe you know anything about it, and they don't

trust your good intentions. They won't mind a bit what you say
unless you drop something they can use against us."

The bishop tried a few phrases. He thought there might be
something in co-operation, in profit-sharing, in some more

permanent relationship between the business and the employee.
"There isn't," said the employer compactly. "It's just the

malice of being inferior against the man in control. It's just
the spirit of insubordination and boredom with duty. This

trouble's as old as the Devil."
"But that is exactly the business of the church," said the

bishopbrightly, "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 preachingsocialism. 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)
From this conversation the bishop had made his way to the

vicarage of Mogham Banks. The vicar of Mogham Banks was a
sacerdotal socialist of the most advanced type, with the

reputation of being closely in touch with the labour extremists.
He was a man addicted to banners, prohibited ornaments, special

services at unusual hours, and processions in the streets. His
taste in chasubles was loud, he gardened in a cassock and, it was

said, he slept in his biretta; he certainly slept in a hair
shirt, and he littered his church with flowers, candles, side

altars, confessional boxes, requests for prayers for the
departed, and the like. There had already been two Kensitite

demonstrations at his services, and altogether he was a source of
considerable anxiety to the bishop. The bishop did his best not

to know too exactly what was going on at Mogham Banks. Sooner or
later he felt he would be forced to do something--and the

longer he could put that off the better. But the Rev. Morrice
Deans had promised to get together three or four prominent labour

leaders for tea and a frank talk, and the opportunity was one not
to be missed. So the bishop, after a hasty and not too digestible

lunch in the refreshment room at Pringle, was now in a fly that
smelt of straw and suggested infectious hospital patients, on his

way through the industry-scarred countryside to this second
conversation.

The countryside had never seemed so scarred to him as it did
that day.

It was probably the bright hard spring sunshine that emphasized
the contrast between that dear England of hedges and homes and

the south-west wind in which his imagination lived, and the crude
presences of a mechanical age. Never before had the cuttings and

heapings, the smashing down of trees, the obtrusion of corrugated
iron and tar, the belchings of smoke and the haste, seemed so

harsh and disregardful of all the bishop's world. Across the
fields a line of gaunt iron standards, abominably designed,

carried an electric cable to some unknown end. The curve of the
hill made them seem a little out of the straight, as if they

hurried and bent forward furtively.
"Where are they going?" asked the bishop, leaning forward to

look out of the window of the fly, and then: "Where is it all
going?"

And presently the road was under repair, and was being done at
a great pace with a huge steam-roller, mechanically smashed

granite, and kettles of stinking stuff, asphalt or something of
that sort, that looked and smelt like Milton's hell. Beyond, a

gaunt hoarding advertised extensively the Princhester Music Hall,
a mean beastly place that corrupted boys and girls; and also it

clamoured of tyres and potted meats....
The afternoon's conference gave him no reassuring answer to his

question, "Where is it all going?"
The afternoon's conference did no more than intensify the new

and strange sense of alienation from the world that the morning's
talk had evoked.

The three labour extremists that Morrice Deans had assembled
obviously liked the bishop and found him picturesque, and were

not above a certain snobbish gratification at the purple-trimmed
company they were in, but it was clear that they regarded his

intervention in the great dispute as if it were a feeble waving
from the bank across the waters of a great river.

"There's an incurablemisunderstanding between the modern