This last provision tempts me to add that the Government would do well to appoint at once a Royal Commission, or, rather, two Commissions, to decide on a compulsory national uniform for both sexes.  Experts should recommend the most comfortable, becoming, and economical dress that could be devised, with considerable variety for the different trades and professions.  Such a law would do more for social equality than any readjustment of taxation.  It has been often noticed that every man looks a gentleman in khaki; and it is to be feared that many war brides have suffered a painful surprise on seeing their husbands for the first time in civilian garb.  There need be no suggestion of militarism about the new costume; but a man’s calling might be recorded, like the name of his regiment, on his shoulder-straps, and the absence of such a badge would be regarded as a disgrace, whether the subject was a tramp or one of the idle rich.  This suggestion may seem trivial, or even ludicrous; and I may be reminded of my dislike of meddling legislation; but the importance of the philosophy of clothes has not diminished since ’Sartor Resartus.’  Clerical dignitaries might be trusted to vote for this mitigation of their lot.

Some may wonder why I have not expressed a hope that the guardianship of our intellectual and spiritual birthright may pass into the hands of the National Church.  I heartily wish that I could cherish this hope.  But organised religion has been a failure ever since the first concordat between Church and State under Constantine the Great.  The Church of England in its corporate capacity has never seemed to respect anything but organised force.  In the sixteenth century it proclaimed Henry VIII the Supreme Head of the Church; in the seventeenth century it passionately upheld the ‘right divine of kings to govern wrong’; in the eighteenth and nineteenth it was the obsequious supporter of the squirearchy and plutocracy; and now it grovels before the working-man, and supports every scheme of plundering the minority.  In fact, we must distinguish sharply between ecclesiasticism, theology, and religion.  The future of ecclesiasticism is a political question.  In the opinion of some good judges, the acute nationalism now dominant in Europe will quickly pass away, and a duel will supervene between the ’Black International’ and the ‘Red.’  Catholicism, it is supposed, will shelter all who dread revolution and all who value traditional civilisation; its unrivalled organisation will make it the one possible centre of resistance to anarchy and barbarism, and the conflict will go on till one side or the other is overthrown.  This prediction, which opens a truly appalling prospect for civilisation, might be less terrible if the Church were to open its arms to a new Renaissance, and become once more, as in the beginning of the modern period, the home of learning and the patroness of the arts.  But we must not overlook the new and growing power of science; and science can no more make terms with Catholic ecclesiasticism than with the Revolution.  The Jacobins guillotined Lavoisier, ‘having no need of chemists’; but the Church burnt Bruno and imprisoned Galileo.  Science, too strong to be victimised again, may come between the two enemies of civilisation, the Bolshevik and the Ultramontane; it is, I think, our best hope.