Such is the society I think they will build unless we can knock it down as fast as they build it.  Everything in it, tolerable or intolerable, will have but one use; and that use what our ancestors used to call usance or usury.  Its art may be good or bad, but it will be an advertisement for usurers; its literature may be good or bad, but it will appeal to the patronage of usurers; its scientific selection will select according to the needs of usurers; its religion will be just charitable enough to pardon usurers; its penal system will be just cruel enough to crush all the critics of usurers:  the truth of it will be Slavery:  and the title of it may quite possibly be Socialism.

THE ESCAPE

We watched you building, stone by stone,
The well-washed cells and well-washed graves
We shall inhabit but not own
When Britons ever shall be slaves;
The water’s waiting in the trough,
The tame oats sown are portioned free,
There is Enough, and just Enough,
And all is ready now but we.

But you have not caught us yet, my lords,
You have us still to get. 
A sorry army you’d have got,
Its flags are rags that float and rot,
Its drums are empty pan and pot,
Its baggage is—­an empty cot;
But you have not caught us yet.

A little; and we might have slipped
When came your rumours and your sales
And the foiled rich men, feeble-lipped,
Said and unsaid their sorry tales;
Great God!  It needs a bolder brow
To keep ten sheep inside a pen,
And we are sheep no longer now;
You are but Masters.  We are Men.

We give you all good thanks, my lords,
We buy at easy price;
Thanks for the thousands that you stole,
The bribes by wire, the bets on coal,
The knowledge of that naked whole
That hath delivered our flesh and soul
Out of your Paradise.

We had held safe your parks; but when
Men taunted you with bribe and fee,
We only saw the Lord of Men
Grin like an Ape and climb a tree;
And humbly had we stood without
Your princely barns; did we not see
In pointed faces peering out
What Rats now own the granary.

It is too late, too late, my lords,
We give you back your grace: 
You cannot with all cajoling
Make the wet ditch, or winds that sting,
Lost pride, or the pawned wedding rings,
Or drink or Death a blacker thing
Than a smile upon your face.

THE NEW RAID

The two kinds of social reform, one of which might conceivably free us at last while the other would certainly enslave us forever, are exhibited in an easy working model in the two efforts that have been made for the soldiers’ wives—­I mean the effort to increase their allowance and the effort to curtail their alleged drinking.  In the preliminary consideration, at any rate, we must see the second