of them? Again it was just custom. The ears had got so accustomed to phrases such as the 'sacredness of property,' the 'right of a man to do what he liked with his own,' that the heart forgot the sacredness of the Gospel and the rights of the people in the land of their birth. It is time we stopped mouthing about the cannon-fodder of war, and began to speak about the cannon-fodder of custom.

II

If poor, blundering, pitiful humanity had not been blinded by custom to the folly of war, it would have made an end of war long ago. But all the days of youth humanity has shut into dreary barracks, learning all sorts of foolish things. And the history it learns is just the history of war after war! At fourteen the centuries seem to a boy but a river of blood. He deems it an inevitable weapon in the progress of the world—this ceaseless killing! It is custom alone that prevents humanity from making an end of that horror. And strikes are only war in another form—the bludgeon of force! Kaiserism is not dead. World dominion for me or destruction for you has its counterpart in two shillings for me or ruin for you. The spirit is the same. If custom had not deadened us to the meaning of war and strike, we would shrink back in horror at the very sound of the words. But, instead of that, ere humanity has recovered from the woe of the one, we are plunged into the woes of the other.... It sounds a respectable sort of word! And the right of a man to stop working seems elementary—for we are not slaves. But humanity has learned there is a higher word than rights—and that is duty. We owe service to our brethren. We can pay too high a price for two shillings more a day if they mean starving women and perishing children. Life is more than livelihood; and if the endeavour to better livelihood means the destruction of life, then it is condemned. And that is what it means. Europe is perishing. Vienna is dying. All over the world Rachel is weeping for her children. What Europe needs is coal and raw materials, that it may have wherewith to buy food. And we go on strike. And ships can no longer carry food or cotton; and Europe will starve ... starving is a good discipline and I shouldn't mind ... but, God! the little children ... the babies.... 'Strike,' we shout, finding it easy through long custom. But our striking is only completing the work that Kaiserism began. And the little graves are dug faster and faster; and you can hear the falling of tears like soft rain.... What savages we are, unable through any disciple to learn that the world can only be saved by submitting to law and by ceasing to wield the bludgeon of force.... When one thinks of the poor suffering, quarrelling, dying slaves of custom; when one sees the world in one blinding flash convulsed in the death throes—Oh, God! if only there came a gale from Heaven—a sudden, rushing wind. Only that could save a world blinded like this.

III

You may imagine that I am exaggerating the power of this tyrant of whose despotism you are unconscious. But you have only to think and you will at once recognise that my words are but the words of soberness. Use your eyes as if for the first time—and what a world this is that surrounds us! I read the other day a paragraph in the morning paper that made my blood cold. A discharged soldier got his gratuity and spent his day in jollity. He came home at night and, in the presence of his children, trampled his wife to death, and not his wife only, but the unborn child—and in the presence of his children. That, in the most cultured city in Bible-loving and Christian Scotland. And every day the tale is much the same. Little children are perishing, mothers are broken-hearted, and the streets are strewn with human wreckage. The casualties of war pale in significance before the casualties of peace! But this does not move us: we are accustomed to it. These crowded, reeking public-houses, thirty to the half-mile, battening on the misery of the poor—we have seen them from our youth and they move us not. How many in our Circuses and Terraces and Places will even trouble themselves to so much as vote for the deliverance of their fellow-citizens? Very few in these particular places, if I mistake not. For they cannot shake themselves loose from the yoke of custom.

IV

And this same tyrant blinds us to the goal to which we are hastening. The last great proof of the power of custom is that when nations and empires were perishing they never knew they were perishing. Men were so accustomed to the riches and greatness and security of the Roman empire, that even when it was tottering to its fall they never realised that it was doomed. All nations have gone the one road. They have abolished God or the gods! They have cast duty to the winds; they have given themselves to Mammon and to pleasure; and they perished—but they never knew that the world that seemed to them so secure was passing away. And unless there comes a change—a mighty gale from Heaven—then this world we know must perish. Custom alone blinds us to the fact, plain to the open eye. Scotland cannot feed her people but for a few weeks in the year. For the rest they must be fed by the food brought from overseas by the fruits of our industries. If these industries fail ... we perish. The Clyde will no longer hum with the throbbing engines or great ships come with food.... And every strike, every stoppage of labour, is but a step towards the abyss.... But probably that is what God means. He makes the wrath of men to praise Him—He will use hunger as the instrument wherewith to scatter the great Scottish race broadcast over the world, to people the mighty plains of Canada and the wastes of Australasia. A great silence will fall over the plain of central Scotland. The most hideous of all the workings of man will be beautified when the lichen grows over the crumbling ruins. The mavis will sing in the thorn-tree, dewy with fragrance, where Motherwell now stands ... or Anderston. That may be the hidden purpose of our follies and our crimes. This, at least, is sure, that if we cannot shake ourselves loose from the grip of custom—custom will be our destruction.

CHAPTER V

THE LAST DELIVERANCE

Every great social advance made by men in the past has been made under the pressure of public opinion. That public opinion was created by a free and an unfettered Press. The grim fact that we are now faced with is that the day of the free Press is over. Syndicates of capitalists control the Press of the country, and newspapers whose circulation approaches a couple of millions create the opinion their owners desire. The duty of the newspaper is to record facts, and communicate to the people the correct data on which public opinion can be based. If the Press purposely suppresses what is true, lends itself to the colouring of the records so that the false seems to be the true and the true false, then it becomes the greatest public peril. A generation that is doped with doctored news can scarcely arrive at the truth. The newspapers are supplied free by the bureaux of the interested with news that serve their purpose. Thus it comes that the machinery for creating public opinion is largely in the hands of those whose purpose is that public opinion shall not destroy or lessen their profits. There are noble exceptions; but, taking it as a whole, the syndicated Press of this country is no longer a mirror of the truth.

I

In the United States of America and in Canada there are one hundred and twenty millions who speak our language, whose religion is also ours, who are the most intelligent and hard-headed people on the face of the earth, yet if one were to believe what the Press of this country says, one would be driven to the conclusion that they are poor foolish idealists who have said